What does it mean to be ‘initiated’? And what does that have to do with adulthood?
“Before the marking ceremony last month, the group arrived at John Hinkel Park and we orientated them to the space. I explained to the boys that for the ceremony, we would have the youth or uninitiated on one side of the amphitheater and the adults (the implicit assumption being that they are ‘initiated’) would sit on the other side. One of the lads slyly commented at this point:
> My Dad should be sitting with us then
There was a chuckle across the group and I acknowledged the observation with a quick “That’s real, there are uninitiated adults out there” before moving on with our preparation. I would love to return to that comment with the group in time but for now, I want to explore the concepts of initiation and adulthood here.”
An exploration into these themes and others, touching on the family unit, human development, and coming-of-age. What does this piece invoke in you?
I was expecting this to be a weird SF faux-intellectual thing, and so was not at all surprised to see Mount Tam mentioned in a piece about making up a new cultural paradigm.
You have to be initiated into something, and that something has to be actually meaningful. Consider graduation, which I think I say fairly is the most common initiation rite our society has. Graduation is interesting, sociologically, both because it’s visibly losing meaningfulness as we watch – compare at one extreme the high school graduation scene from [70s coming-of-age movie here; Fame, maybe?] and at the other your kids’ kindergarten graduation – and because this is mirrored linguistically. Right now, you graduate. Previously and grammatically, you are graduated; you’ve been moved from the ‘has not finished [thing]’ category to the ‘has finished [thing]’ one. The point of [rites generally] is to do something within a broader social context, not to make anybody feel happy or fulfilled or whatever. Meaning is signal is categories, so whatever it is you’re being initiated into has to be either exclusive or symbolic or ideally both – anybody and their dog can make it through high school at the moment, and a high school degree doesn’t represent any particular aptitude for anything except not being thrown out of a system which can’t throw you out, so it’s not a particularly meaningful rite. College graduation is trending this way, I think I can say uncontroversially.
‘Adult’ is an exclusive category, i.e. ‘not-a-child.’ There isn’t a set of criteria you have to meet to be an adult (except in the trivially incoherent legal sense*). This is not like inclusive categories like, say ‘doctors,’ which do have specific criteria you have to meet. Modernity does not like inclusive categories where it can be helped. It doesn’t like to graduate people, in the technical sense of ordering them by some criterion; we worry (fairly) about systemic barriers and whether the criterion is fair and all sorts of other things. Result: we’ve been steadily getting rid of inclusive categories at a cultural level where we can, and so there aren’t meaningful rites left which apply to everybody. Individuals and individual families can still have some (often of the form ‘do something really hard, get meaning from it;’ cf. marathons, starting a company, raising children), but there isn’t a set of goals which apply to everybody in society.
*Consider what specifically it is about having been alive for 18 years, rather than 17 years and 364 days, which suddenly makes you competent to help pick your congressperson, but still not competent to have a glass of wine with dinner.
Opening is too snide, I apologize. A common pattern I see online is ‘[the sort of person who moves to San Francisco and has a blog about the sociology of adulthood, volunteering, and interpretive dance] notices that modern society is bad at cohesion, tries to fix it, fails.’
Folks using their heuristics like this is what I have to endure if I ‘show-up-as-my-whole-self’ (tongue-in-cheek). To add/subtract from your expectations: I’m Australian; I actually kinda hate SF, [and I probably have more SF fatigue than you do ;P] I originally moved to the Bay to play ultimate frisbee in the USA (and medalled at the World Club Champs with a Bay area team); My early career was in Defence Intelligence, including a deployment to Afghanistan; I consider my time at bootcamp to be a form of initiation into adulthood.
But perhaps the Bay just takes all input and turns them into the same sausage? 😉
> You have to be initiated into something, and that something has to be actually meaningful.
Yes, one has to be initiated into something meaningful. That is in part what we are trying to create with the program. We are one of a range of small scale programs run across the western sea-board. Whether these programs are ‘successful’ as a whole has not been measured, and how one decides to measure would bring many challenges. However, our particular program has been running for 15 years now, and one of my current co-leaders actually went through the program themselves, as a teen. The program feels like a success for many of the families and youth involved.
I agree that graduation could have been seen as a stand-in for a distinct rite of passage, and that it is pretty weak in that role.
> … whatever it is you’re being initiated into has to be either exclusive or symbolic or ideally both
Yes, we are going for a symbolic recognition of the beginning of adulthood. Exclusivity for adulthood is certainly not what we are aiming for (although it is possible that a youth won’t mark with their group).
> There isn’t a set of criteria you have to meet to be an adult
We have meaningful descriptors with expressions like “man-child”, “peter pan syndrome” and folk talking about ‘adulting so hard’ etc, pointing to a sense of being an adult beyond the legal definition. I’m not suggesting everyone has commonly-agreed, hard-and-fast criteria but there being some sense of being ‘adult’ beyond the basic legal definition. And then shared a sense of my own understanding of ‘full adulthood’. Do you disagree, and suggest that we culturally have no qualitative sense of adultness?
You talk about specific actions [that could be construed as adulting?] (cf. marathons, starting a company, raising children) but you don’t think those actions roll up into aggregate values of adulting?
I think that, conceptually, ‘adulting’ is exactly backwards. Being an adult – probably ‘maturity’ is a better word – isn’t performative, it’s an inherent quality; there is no list of things I can do which will make me mature, but many things which a mature person will naturally do in particular circumstances. Getting the causality mixed up is a problem – C.S. Lewis says it better than I could; “When I became a man I put away childish things, including… the desire to be very grown up.”
The lists of trials I put forward were meant to be individual or familial responses to the problem that there’s no society-wide maturity-demonstrating ritual anymore, so people largely select their own, with the obvious interpersonal legibility, equivalence, and significance problems.
EDIT: …And part of the legibility problem is that there’s no socially-universal ritual, there’s no socially-universal definition of ‘maturity,’ which just throws the whole issue up a level.
I’d use “adulting” to refer to things that you need to do as an adult in society–getting a job, signing a lease, paying taxes, buying groceries and cooking, etc. Maturity may make these tasks easier, but isn’t necessarily a requirement.
I think that, conceptually, ‘adulting’ is exactly backwards. Being an adult – probably ‘maturity’ is a better word – isn’t performative
That’s the point of the phrase, isn’t it? It’s pointing at an essentially immature self-image — “immature” is a little too harsh a word, but there isn’t really a better one — by highlighting the performative nature of tasks like watering the plants or making car payments. It uses irony to do that, because it comes out of a demographic that views irony as mating plumage, but the intent’s pretty clear.
“What does it mean to be ‘initiated’? And what does that have to do with adulthood?…”
To be “Initiated” is still used by building trades “craft” unions like The United Association of Plumbers & Steamfitters which I’m a member of.
I was first indentured (I promised to labor for a certain number of years) to the employer/union/some State-of-California-input partnership as an apprentice plumber, then I was formerly initiatated into the union about a 19 months after my indenturing, and then after 9,000 hours of labor, five years of classes, plus tests administered by the employer/union partnetship, and some more tests by The County of Santa Clara, I was initiated as a “Journeyman Plumber”.
This was based on traditional medieval guild ways, for decades the main employers association that contracts with the union for labor was the Master Plumbers Association (it isn’t anymore, now the two main employer groups have “contractors” in their name instead of “Master”).
So “initiated” means something like membership and graduate, and the status is only open to adults.
That this isn’t more commonly known is because so much of modern society doesn’t follow the centuries old traditions of the guilds, though Universities (which started as scholars guilds) still do to some extent, an undergrad is equivalent to an apprentice, someone with a bachelor’s degree is equivalent to a journeyman, and a masters degree makes one a “master”.
As an aside “credentialism” is often maligned, and in its present form justifily so, but I suspect that the problem is too few crendentials.
When most of the population worked the plow and the dairy only artisans, merchants, and scholars needed the credentials provided by the guilds (the warrior/ruling class had their seperate page to squire/lady-in-waiting to knight/lady system), but now with our largely non-agricultural labor and non-craft union populace the scholars guild path is the only one left that most know of to signal able to work as a full adult, which since the call to actually be a scholar is smaller than the number of graduates, and graduates are a minority (though I think “some college” is becoming close to the majority of young adults now), this is a “square peg in round hole” situation, and the old guildstyle apprenticeship on-the-job-training and credentialing system would fit better for filling most jobs, ‘depth that non-union employees and employers can’t coordinate with each other, and the old craft unions fill a small portion of the total jobs so ‘taint gonna happen and we’re stuck with what is.
Thanks for sharing about the structure of your craft unions initiation and induction process. Being a software engineer, I’ve often seen the structure and professionalization of older industries (builders, sparkies, plumbers, pilots, medicine etc) as something lacking in the software field (with both pros and cons).
I agree that the academic pathway rarely seems to be a satisfying form of initiation as things currently stand.
Because I’m interested in this, and so many SSC’ers don’t use the public libraries websites getting past thr paywall method, here’s another long quote from The New York Times:
“A Sliver of the Electorate Could Decide 2020. Here’s What These Voters Want.
A demographically disparate group values both moderation and great change.
By Nate Cohn
Nov. 5, 2019
Today’s America is so deeply polarized that it can be hard to imagine there are people who are really not sure whether they want to vote for President Trump or his Democratic rival.
But these “mythic,” “quasi-talismanic” “unicorn” swing voters are very real, and there are enough of them to decide the next presidential election.
They are similar in holding ideologically inconsistent views, but they otherwise span all walks of life, based on an analysis of 569 respondents to recent New York Times Upshot/Siena College surveys in the six closest states carried by the president in the 2016 presidential election.
These voters represent 15 percent of the electorate in the battleground states, and they say there’s a chance they’ll vote for either Mr. Trump or the Democrat.
They don’t neatly fit archetypes of swing voters like so-called suburban soccer moms. In fact, men are likelier to be undecided than women. And they are not necessarily the white voters without a college degree, particularly in the Midwest, who decided the last election.
The poll adds a new mix of characters to the quadrennial cast of swing voters, like a somewhat conservative, college-educated suburban man who does not approve of the president’s performance, but strongly opposes a single-payer health system. Or a young man, perhaps even black or Latino, who is not conservative on policy but resents his generation’s stringent cultural norms and appreciates the president’s defiant critique of political correctness.
For now, these persuadable voters in battleground states have a favorable view of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, but not of Elizabeth Warren, our polling shows.
Persuadable voters are so powerful because their votes effectively count twice: A voter who flips from one party to the other not only adds a vote to one side, but also subtracts one from the other side’s tally. A wide array of evidence confirms their decisive role in recent elections.
In the last presidential election, millions of voters flipped from Barack Obama to Donald Trump or from Mitt Romney to Hillary Clinton. In the Midwestern battlegrounds, the flood of white, working-class defections to Mr. Trump overwhelmed the smaller stream of white, college-educated voters who defected from the Republicans.
There are places like Howard County, Iowa, population 9,000, where Mr. Trump improved over Mr. Romney by nearly 1,000 votes, while Republican turnout increased by only 22 votes and turnout among unaffiliated voters increased by 50 votes.
One might assume that places like Howard County will again be at the center of the contest. But there is no outsize mass of white working-class or rural voters who voted for Mr. Trump among the undecided in the Times/Siena polls.
We talked to 3,766 voters in 6 of the most competitive states.
Instead, the Times/Siena polling suggests that the electorate remains deeply divided along the lines of the 2016 election, with many groups contributing a sliver of undecided voters to the broader pool.
The size of that persuadable pool depends on how they are defined. Although there is reason to think some voters have more of a partisan lean than they realize, let’s call the 15 percent who are still thinking of voting for Mr. Trump or a Democrat the potentially persuadable.
As a group they are 57 percent male and 72 percent white, and 35 percent have college degrees. Most, 69 percent, say they usually vote for a mix of both Democratic and Republican candidates. Among those who voted in 2016, 48 percent say they voted for Mr. Trump, 33 percent for Hillary Clinton, and 19 percent for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or no one. Those who voted in the midterm election voted for the Republican congressional candidate by one point.
These potentially persuadable voters are divided on major issues like single-payer health care, immigration and taxes. But they are fairly clear about what they would like from a Democrat. They prefer, by 82 percent to 11 percent, one who promises to find common ground over one who promises to fight for a progressive agenda; and they prefer a moderate over a liberal, 75 percent to 19 percent.
Over all, 40 percent describe themselves as conservative, compared with 16 percent who say they’re liberal. Forty percent are moderate.
Mr. Trump leads Ms. Warren, 49 percent to 27 percent, among this broadly defined group of persuadable voters, slightly improving on his margin over Mrs. Clinton. He holds a narrow 43-37 edge over Mr. Biden, a slight improvement for the president over the Republican performance in the midterm election but far from matching his tallies in 2016.
What explains the group’s Republican tilt? Some fairly likely Republican voters could be remaining open-minded to an unspecified Democratic nominee, but quickly returning to the president’s side against a known challenger.
Democrats might prefer to focus on a more stringent way to define persuadable voters. Many of those who said they could go either way selected Mr. Trump against all of his Democratic rivals, or selected all three Democrats against Mr. Trump. They might be less persuadable than they let on. Excluding those voters leaves 9 percent of the electorate that showed no consistent partisanship — they can be called the truly persuadable.
These truly persuadable voters supported Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 by eight points and have less developed views on the presidential race. They support Mr. Biden over the president, 38 percent to 27 percent, but prefer the president to Ms. Warren, 37 to 20. Mr. Sanders is in between, with the president leading him, 34 percent to 32 percent. This group voted for Mr. Trump by a smaller margin in 2016, 37 percent to 30 percent, with the rest casting ballots for minor candidates.
Looking at the full pool of potential persuadables, it can be hard to glean any clear insights. But individual demographic groups present a clearer picture of voters pulled in different directions by their ideology, identity, self-interest or attitudes about the president.
The white college-educated persuadable voters, in either the broad or narrow definition, have something in common: They may not love the president, but they are not sold on progressives.
They oppose single-payer health care, 60 percent to 37 percent, and oppose free college, 55 to 41.
They disapprove of the president, but only 32 percent disapprove of both his performance and his policies.
Steven Basart, 28, is getting his Ph.D in computer science and describes himself as a Democrat. Yet he would consider voting for Mr. Trump, depending on the Democratic nominee.
If it were Ms. Warren, he’d vote Republican, he said: “I think she’s going too far to the left, which would take our country in a bad direction.”
Mr. Basart is not a fan of Mr. Trump’s personality, but he says it’s overshadowing some of his accomplishments.
“There are plenty of things not to like about Trump, because he says things that are not nice and potentially racist,” said Mr. Basart, who is Latino. “I care somewhat about those things, but I mostly just care about policies, because at the end of the day, that’s what affects people.”
The relatively small number of persuadable women runs against the assumptions of most electoral analysts, who have long assumed that women are likelier to be up for grabs than men. Now, men are likelier to be undecided than women across all major age, race and educational groups. Like the white working-class voters who remain solid for the president, it seems many women, particularly nonwhite and college-educated women, remain anchored to the swing they already made in 2016.
Persuadable men and women generally hold similar views on the issues, including on the president. But they are deeply split over an assault weapons ban, with persuadable women supporting an assault weapons ban by a 26-point margin and persuadable men opposed by 18 points — including 42 percent of undecided men who say they are strongly opposed.
The undecided white working-class voters often seem as if they would be quite receptive to Democrats based on their views on the issues. They support single-payer health care, for instance.
But they approve of the president’s performance by a comfortable 63-32 margin, and they are as about as conservative as Republicans on the cultural issues that divide today’s politics. By a margin of 84 percent to 9 percent, they say political correctness has gone too far. They say academics and journalists look down on people like them, and agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against minorities.
The persuadable nonwhite voters seem to be an unusual group. They are likeliest to be male — 64 percent are men — and 39 percent are younger than 35. They back single-payer by the widest margin, 54 percent to 40 percent. Those who voted say they voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and for Democrats in the 2018 midterms.
By a wide margin of 52-32, they prefer a Democratic nominee who would bring fundamental, systematic change to American society over one who would return politics back to normal in Washington.
Yet Mr. Trump’s approval rating is positive among these nonwhite persuadable voters, with 50 percent saying they approve and 44 percent saying they disapprove. A majority opposes an assault weapons ban. They want a more moderate Democrat, 69-26, over a liberal, even as they demand fundamental change, and 35 percent self-identify as conservative.
Young nonwhite men have not traditionally been considered a key swing demographic. As a group, they overwhelmingly back Democrats. They are the sort of voters whom Democrats would ordinarily think of as a turnout target.
A disproportionate number of persuadable voters tend to be low-turnout voters as well: 28 percent didn’t vote in both 2016 and 2018, compared with 17 percent of those who say there’s no chance they’ll vote for the other side.
There’s a common view in politics that campaigns can make a choice between turnout, in which candidates play to their base and try to mobilize new voters, and persuasion, in which they reach out to swing voters.
It turns out that many of the low-turnout voters are also the persuadable ones. They don’t have the clear, ideologically consistent views that make them a natural fit for either party, and so they are less likely to vote as well.”
With all that in mind, while it’s s few months until I get to vote in the primary, please convince me why Warren (who looks like the most likely nominee at this point) won’t lose in the general election next year (and please don’t cite popular vote polls, it’s the Electoral College that decides).
I’m also interested in suggestions from supporters of both parties on what their parties tactics and strategies should be.
Where is the idea that Warren is most likely the nominee coming from? From the national polls, she is decidedly in second place (and maybe dropping, if that isn’t just noise). If I was Biden I would be pretty content with my position, right now.
From my quick look at polling of swing-state Trump vs. D matchups, it looks like both Biden or Sanders currently win the electoral college, while Warren loses by just a hair. And if my memory serves me, usually after the primaries there is a rallying around the nominee, so I would consider this to be an underestimate.
Bottom line: Warren would be a riskier choice for Democrats than Biden, but they probably aren’t going to nominate Warren anyway. Warren supporters who think Biden is too centrist would be better off to throw their weight behind Sanders, who has better odds of winning the general, and is just a hair behind Warren in the primaries.
I’m not the target market for the Dem primaries, but I have gotten the impression from my media consumption that she is the frontrunner. So I think the media is printing “Warren-mentum” articles right now, and that’s probably where the idea comes from.
As to why I think she actually may be the frontrunner, there are a couple of things. One, hypothetical head-to-head polls this far out are usually pretty volatile and unreliable. So I tend to discount all of those pretty heavily. On the other hand, Warren seems to be leading in several of the earliest states (Iowa, maybe New Hampshire?). I get the impression that a lot of Biden’s support is soft, based primarily on name recognition and comfort / familiarity. If Warren does, in fact, win the early primaries, then I would expect some of Biden’s support to fade off as Warren gets more recognition. And I think a bunch of Biden’s numbers in, e.g., South Carolina, are based on African-American voters, who have previously shown a preference for the “known” candidate early (e.g. Hillary in 2008) and then switching late once someone they previously considered non-viable becomes (apparently) viable. (I’ll grant you, Warren is not precisely analogous to Obama for obvious reasons). As to Sanders, I just don’t think Bernie can win the nomination. His support is currently lower than Warren, he’s running in the same lane, but he’s a known commodity and isn’t any kind of preferred “identity” (Warren could at least be the first female President) which makes me think his support probably tops out as-is and bleeds to Warren gradually. Which also hurts Biden, because I don’t see a lot of current-Bernies as choosing Biden over Warren.
Warren appeals very much to the type of people who do political coverage for mainstream news sources–it’s not so clear she’ll appeal as much to voters as a whole.
Sure, that’s possible. I wasn’t speculating on whether she’d win in the general election (I think she would, FWIW). But the Democratic primary electorate seems to me closer to “people who do political coverage” than to “voters as a whole.” The exceptions seem to be the very poor, the very uneducated, and minority voters, but with the exception of African-American minority voters I’m not sure if they have sufficient primary turnout to nullify Warren’s advantage with the educated white Democratic folks. Seemingly not if everything stays as-is, since Biden’s still mostly ahead nationally, but I’m also viewing Warren and Sanders as basically the same candidate, with Warren likely to cannibalize Sanders voters eventually. Taken together, they’re bigger than Biden. I think that may cascade quickly, especially if Biden finishes fourth or fifth in Iowa (last poll I saw had him fourth).
I’m not the target market for the Dem primaries, but I have gotten the impression from my media consumption that she is the frontrunner. So I think the media is printing “Warren-mentum” articles right now, and that’s probably where the idea comes from.
Polling data pretty clearly shows that Elizabeth Warren is #1 among Democratic voters overall, and #2 among college-educated middle-class white Democratic voters – which is to say, the group most reporters spend most of their time hanging out with. Warren is #1 among Democratic voters in the first two primary states (New Hampshire and Iowa), #2 among Democratic voters in the first four primary states, and #2 among Democratic voters in all the primary states weighted by delegate count. All of this has been fairly stable for a couple of months, IIRC. Cite primarily Nate Silver, but what I’ve seen from other sources supports this.
So it’s easy for reporters to construct a narrative where Warren is going to win Iowa and New Hampshire and then everyone is going to fall in line behind the front-runner, and to want and believe that narrative to be true. But e.g. the black voters of South Carolina favor Biden by a good margin, and it’s far from obvious that they’re going to change their mind just because the white guys in IA and NH gave Warren a modest edge in delegates.
The nomination is Biden’s to lose, but it wouldn’t be terribly hard or surprising for him to lose it. But for the moment, it’s more fun to talk about Warren.
Polling data pretty clearly shows that Elizabeth Warren is #1 among Democratic voters overall, and #2 among college-educated middle-class white Democratic voters – which is to say, the group most reporters spend most of their time hanging out with.
Is that a typo – are the #1 and #2 supposed to be transposed – or am I missing something? Because if she’s #1 overall, that seems pretty consistent with being a frontrunner. I agree that Biden seems more popular with the minority Democratic base, but it’s my (admittedly unscientific) opinion that that’s fairly soft, that Obama isn’t coming in to campaign directly for Biden, and that African-American voters are pretty adept at sussing out “viability” prior to committing.
Right, clumsy typo there. #1 for college-educated whites, and #2 for Democrats overall.
Regarding viability, and African-American voters alleged ability to recognize same, polling also fairly consistently shows Biden having better odds than Warren in taking down Trump.
Polling data pretty clearly shows that Elizabeth Warren is #1 among Democratic voters overall, and #2 among college-educated middle-class white Democratic voters – which is to say, the group most reporters spend most of their time hanging out with.
Switched these two, otherwise all good points.
Also see prediction markets, where she has a significant lead IMO for purer forms of the same reasons.
Yep. Which is why I’ve got Predictit money on her failing to secure the nomination.
Poor people who don’t have money to gamble online with get the same number of votes come election day. Wealth disparities such as this are a classic example of where prediction markets fail to aggregate people’s actual knowledge.
The problem is that dollars aren’t knowledge-units, or even a proxy for knowledge units.
Consider this example: A rich person considers himself somewhat news savvy, and thinks the odds of a candidate winning an election are something like 60/40, so he puts $1000 on “yes”.
Two poor homeless people somehow overhead the candidate speaking confidentially, saying that he was about to drop out. They can only muster enough money for $100 on “no”, which is their entire life savings.
Clearly the two poor people have more knowledge units than the rich person. But they cannot express this knowledge on the market place. In fact, if you trust the prediction market as a knowledge aggregator, you would mistakenly think that that there is 10X more knowledge units on “yes” than “no”.
A simple poll would actually be a superior aggregator of knowledge units in this case (1 “yes”, 2 “no”).
Prediction markets have no solution for this AFAIK.
Wherever someone asks me for directions at a gas station, I always lie to him and tell him to go the opposite way that I am going, in order to reduce traffic on my route.
I assume everyone else does the same thing, rational self interest and all.
How do you think polling is conducted? Someone sets up a booth downtown and waits for people to come by?
I mean, isn’t the whole idea of “there is no incentive to participate in polls” contradicted by the ample historical and ongoing evidence of people participating in polls?
I’m not necessarily going to bat for Cliff, I just didn’t like your analogy. But: usually by phone, as I understand it. Lately I’ve been getting a lot of email asking me to participate in polls as a registered voter, too. Which I’ve always ignored, for what it’s worth.
There are lots of problems with these methodologies, one of them being that they undersample people who’re less likely to have phones and email accounts, such as, for example, homeless people. I expect pollsters have all sorts of more or less sophisticated statistical corrections for this, but I wouldn’t expect these corrections to get you very close to an unbiased sample.
Whether it’s better or worse than prediction markets is a question I’m not equipped to answer. But I don’t find this type of armchair reasoning very satisfying.
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of email asking me to participate in polls as a registered voter, too. Which I’ve always ignored, for what it’s worth.
Right, but some people don’t ignore it, and participate, despite not having any obvious self-interest motive. I wonder how Cliff reconciles this.
And of course this whole objection could be side-stepped if I made it a paid poll, but I prefer to wallow around in the mud and chaos of the discourse like a hog.
The question isn’t whether people participate in polls without any obvious self-interest motive. Obviously they sometimes do. The question is whether the data we get from those polls is better than what we get from prediction markets given their respective drawbacks.
Like I said, I don’t have an answer to that question. But the profit motive is a least a concrete advantage for prediction markets, in that it provides a concrete mechanism for correcting them, and waving your hands at unspecified altruistic motives definitely doesn’t make a symmetrical argument in favor of the legacy system.
I’m not attempting to argue in favor of polling over prediction market in the general sense, but only under certain conditions, which I think are met by Warren/Biden and in my simplified toy example.
Cliff seemed to imply that prediction markets were superior even in my toy example. The question of “are prediction markets better in general” isn’t one that I’m interested in debating right now. The question I’m interested in is “do polls ever , even hypothetically, have better prediction power than prediction markets”, and I think the answer is yes.
Prediction markets have a hard time converging on true probabilities within a factor determined by the expected rate of return of competing investments. There’s a dozen bets where I’m confident I could pick up an easy 5%, but I have better places to put my capital.
It ultimately comes down to whether the economy is doing better than forecasters are collectively good at their jobs. And while the markets have anti-inductive properties, it’s (currently) not that hard to pick the direction of the bias.
LOL, I was assuming you meant an Internet poll or something that someone could choose to participate in, otherwise the hypothetical is even more inane.
A prediction market OBVIOUSLY would be better in your toy example. Do YOU understand how a poll works? They don’t contact every person who exists, they pick a random sample. In your toy model, the homeless guys who have great information exerted a significant influence on the prediction. They deliberately sought out and participated in the prediction market. A poll would almost certainly miss them.
And IF it didn’t (highly unlikely) they would be given the same weight as everyone else. It’s unlikely the sample size of the poll would be such that they would have a greater influence on the prediction than with the prediction market.
It’s really hard to imagine how you could have come up with the idea that your example was a bad one for prediction markets. By the way, your example also makes a lot of money for some homeless guys, which they take from a clueless rich dude.
Do YOU understand how a poll works? They don’t contact every person who exists, they pick a random sample.
In your toy model, the homeless guys who have great information exerted a significant influence on the prediction. They deliberately sought out and participated in the prediction market. A poll would almost certainly miss them.
What’s the arg here, that polling misses people but prediction markets don’t?
If we are in the world of hypotheticals (which we are), then we can just make the poll reach everybody, solving the problem.
If we are in the actual world, then there’s no way two homeless people could even sign up for a Predictit.com account (you need a bank account, address), so they wouldn’t be able to offer the information anyway.
Where is the idea that Warren is most likely the nominee coming from?
Well, lets look at primaries:
Warren is currently winning in Iowa and New Hampshire. Even Biden’s campaign is accepting that their path forward is losing those two, and trying to regain momentum in Super Tuesday… but that’s a risky strategy; it puts him behind and cedes outright control of the narrative for a few weeks there to Warren. If it wins, it puts him in line for a slugfest with her and if he can’t pull it together on Tuesday, he’s out.
While these people likely exist, I predict that most of the people who said they could vote for either candidate in the NYT poll were lying, possibly to themselves as well as the pollsters. Most people I know who call themselves independent reliably vote for one party or the other- they just enjoy thinking of themselves as independent thinkers.
I think that a lot of people that consider themselves “independent” are also more extreme than the two main parties are, and don’t feel represented by them. So you end up with a lot of independents choosing between the Democrat candidate and the Green candidate, not the Democrat and the Republican.
“Independent voters are a myth” has been conventional wisdom for a while.
I can think of one category of people who could act as genuine swing voters. These are folks who are fanatical “single issue” voters, but they have more than one issue that they’re fanatical about, and each issue is spoken to by a different party. I’m thinking for instance of a committed environmentalist who is really into guns and gun rights.
A person like that might re-decide each election which issue is more important to them at that particular time.
Do you have any actual data source for this? Many is doing kind of a lot of work there. People also change views over the course of 10+ years, so someone who voted Obama in 2008 might be practically a completely different person now for a variety of reasons. It would have to be a fairly sizable percentage for it to carry any meaning for me (enough to clearly not be a combination of people aging out of their previous political views + lizardmen).
Oh, hey, someone wrote an article about my people. Some niggling points:
-I think ‘have a positive view of’ and ‘will vote for’ are getting conflated especially on Sanders. I know a lot of people who have a positive view of Sanders in the sense that he’s honest, has integrity, etc, and also think his policies would be bad. I honestly believe he thinks his policies are right for America (which I can’t say about, eg, Warren).
-The single payer healthcare question is obscuring the more important division: I know a lot of people who would be fine with some tweaks to the system to solve various problems or even an expansion. People are generally dissatisfied with Obamacare but they’re split on whether the project needs to be fixed or replaced. And there’s a divisive view on whether they’d be willing to raise taxes to pay for fixes. But it’s very rare they support banning private healthcare.
-These statistics are being framed to paint a narrative. Anytime I hear about 70% white transmuted to be ‘mostly white’ I transmute it back to ‘as white as the general population’. Likewise, the choice to say they mostly voted for Republicans when the split was 51-49 (well within any reasonable margin of error) points a certain way. So it goes.
Anyway, if I were God-King of the Democrats I’d run Biden with a young moderate-ish progressive minority VP. Someone who can fire up the progressive base without alienating everyone else. Biden doesn’t need to speak against racism to get minority support: he has that. But social justice is beginning to work like the religious right does for the Republicans: a minority group within the party that’s powerful enough to demand its pound of flesh. If there’s a reasonably prominent black lesbian politician with social justice cred who’s willing to strictly speak to the motte of social justice then that would be ideal. It might not be quite as exciting but first woman VP and first LGBTQ VP are still something. (Also first black VP, but… eh, Obama. Also, you can tease that she might run in 2024 if Biden loses or 2028 if he wins.)
If I were God-King of the Republicans, I would pray they run someone weak. Trump needs to be able to be on the attack. Who will Trump have trouble attacking? Biden will be hard to attack because he’s so well known and his reputation isn’t as bad as Hillary’s. It will be hard for anyone to redefine Biden, even Biden, let alone Trump. Klobuchar would also be hard to attack, not because she has no flaws but because her most salient flaws are being abusive and aggressive. Trump has no ground to stand on there. Yang could sort of be attacked for being an egghead but it’d be difficult to walk the line to not have it be “cool-headed, smart Yang and high school bully Trump” which would backfire. But he could do it. Buttigieg is a borderline case but his race and labor relations record and his swings back and forth and his overeducated background are all vulnerabilities. (Sanders would be fairly easy to attack as a radical and his socialist base is a decided minority of the country. He might weather it though. Warren would be hilariously easy to attack. I doubt she could survive.)
I actually think Biden would be easier to attack, given that Biden and his family come up a lot in the impeachment context. If we’re presuming the 2020 election includes Trump, then Trump will likely have been impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate. Any random Democrat could try to use the impeachment narrative to attack Trump. But if Biden does it, that gives Trump the best opportunity to punch back and claim that he was just trying to deal with the aftermath of Biden’s cronyism – which ties in well to Trump’s “swamp” anti-establishment themes.
Warren can of course be attacked on substance – her espoused positions thus far are much further left than prior Dem nominees – but not as much on the themes Trump loves the most (swamp, Deep State, media antagonism, anti-DC) because she’s not as entangled with the prior administration. The other attacks would be on her authenticity (apocryphal Indian heritage, maybe claims of pregnancy discrimination, and perhaps her changing positions before running for President versus after) but to be honest I don’t see Trump making those as successfully. At some point, I just don’t think it’s as effective to mock “Fauxcahontas” directly to her face on stage as it is to retweet the meme on Twitter. It could work though, since Trump’s brand is “saying whatever he really thinks” versus “carefully calculating for advantage.”
ETA: Corrected typo (House –> Senate re acquittal)
The sense I get from analysts like those at FiveThirtyEight (okay mostly just them) is that yes, Warren will likely pay an electoral penalty in the general election for not being more moderate, but that there are lots of other factors and it’s not clear in practice who would do better overall (general election polling this early on isn’t very indicative historically). On personality and concrete issues like health care, Warren might well do better than Biden with that group. Or Warren might poach two voters from Jill Stein for every one she loses to Trump in those battleground states. I feel like voting based on electability is largely a mug’s game and it’s generally best to vote non-strategically in primaries.
There is research on this and generally centrists do better. Combine that with actual polling and I think it’s reasonable to assume Biden is the most electable.
I agree the research shows centrists generally do better, but it’s not a strong enough correlation that that should be conflated with “Warren will definitely do worse than Biden” or “Warren will definitely lose to Trump.” Just evidence.
I would take it as, “Warren will definitely have a harder time than Biden. This does not necessarily mean she will lose or that Biden will win by more because vulnerabilities and difficulty do not map one to one with ultimate success.”
1. I am incredibly skeptical that 2020 will be decided on issues. 2016 sure as heck wasn’t, 2012 arguably wasn’t. 2008 definitely wasn’t. Trump being trump, he’ll never talk about the issues, he’ll just want to be on the attack. I somehow doubt this election will come down to a nuanced debate about healthcare policy, or whatever.
2. The thing is, when people talk about these persuadable voters, they mean low-information or dumb voters (two separate groups, not all low-info voters are dumb and vice versa). These voters are the least likely to care about nuanced political views and most likely to grab onto to overarching narratives of a campaign. Again, this won’t be nuanced policy positions.
This topic comes up every so often. I still find Keys to the White House an interesting guide, since it’s successfully predicted every election from 1984 to today.
By the keys, the incumbent wins on Incumbency.
The incumbent loses on Party Mandate.
The incumbent probably wins on Contest, Long Term Economy, and Challenger Charisma.
The incumbent probably loses on Policy Change and Incumbent Charisma.
Third Party depends on what the Libertarians do, and so far, they don’t look likely to do better than they did in 2016. I doubt Gabbard will run independently, let alone pull a lot of votes.
Short Term Economy probably depends on whether certain predictors cited a few weeks ago lead to an actual recession within the next 11 months.
Social Unrest probably depends on what Antifa or Unite the Right does. Neither looks likely to me.
Scandal seems perpetually true, in a way that I think breaks that key, but 2020 is uniquely weird – the scandals play out in a way that seem to let everyone pick their own loser.
Foreign / military failure and success seem like toss ups, depending on China, North Korea, and Iran, and possibly Russia.
So by my count, the incumbent party has probably four wins, probably four losses, and five tossups. By the KttWH model, it needs eight wins, but it looks rather likely to pick up 3P, STEcon, and no F/M fail keys if nothing blows up (more), and Scandal might end up being a Rorschach blot. I think Warren is likely to lose for this reason, even assuming she wins the nomination.
I think persuadables are a good bellwether, but at the end of the day they matter a lot less than the people whose choice isn’t between elephant or donkey, but between elephant and not voting or donkey and not voting.
I agree with you that fundamentals are the best predictor of their behavior.
True, those are only a few polls, but it fits with the pattern in 2018, where the Republicans lost support everywhere. It’s not just California and New York, they lost seats in Michigan and Iowa too.
, even as they demand fundamental change, and 35 percent self-identify as conservative.
That sounds inconsistent, but only because “conservative” in U.S. politics doesn’t mean what the word means in other contexts. Someone who would like to reverse the New Deal changes, as at least some conservatives would, wants fundamental change from the system that almost all of us have known for our entire lives.
Trump campaigned on fundamental change, although it isn’t clear he delivered.
As I do from time to time, I discovered that Tim Keller gave a series of talks at Oxford recently that were essentially sermons. In listening to the one on suffering, he remarked that the modern secular worldview makes people quite vulnerable when it comes to suffering as it deems it pointless, meaningless, and purely a negative thing.
So non-religious people, how do you view suffering and what are you strategies to deal with it when it occurs?
It is part of life. It is affirming of life. It is also part of our personal story; just as you wouldn’t want to read a book without trial and adversity and suffering, a life without these things would similarly lack something.
“This too shall pass” means all experience is fleeting, and should be treasured.
Must disagree. Conflating “trial and adversity” with suffering is a mistake. One can have the former without the latter, and that is the desirable state.
That is a subtle distinction which I think is correct but misleading; most people think pain IS suffering, for instance, and the idea of pain without suffering isn’t meaningful within their frame of reference.
I’m trying a slightly different way of framing the ideas to see it somebody can get it.
Getting a burn because you accidentally touched the hot stove isn’t suffering. Being sore for a few days after over-exercising a bit isn’t suffering. Eating spicy food isn’t suffering. I’d say that even breaking your arm isn’t necessarily suffering, if the proper medical treatment is applied.
Also, there are absolutely stories that people love that have narrative conflict, but zero suffering. The entire iyashikei genre exists to be that. But even beyond that, “I love it when a plan comes together” does not require suffering to be highly enjoyable.
I think you’re hitting on a related topic – for some suffering it’s apparent that there’s “trial and adversity” and some meaning can be made out of it. But other suffering seems meaningless.
If one cannot attribute a why/meaning to the suffering, does it intensify the suffering? Does attribution of meaning really change the nature of the suffering?
If one cannot attribute a why/meaning to the suffering, does it intensify the suffering? Does attribution of meaning really change the nature of the suffering?
Yes. It’s pattern-matching as a form of placebo, or actually allowing the sufferer to see a path towards exit from the suffering, and work towards that.
Suffering is experience, but I disagree that it’s generally affirming of life in a positive way. Some limited suffering for a purpose is, but a lot of suffering really is meaningless or cruel.
The best I can hope to do with serious but meaningless suffering is accept.
“Meaningless” implies a meaning to any experience, beyond experiencing it. When you start treating the experience as the meaning of experience – when you treat experience as its own purpose – this sort of fades away.
Humans require a narrative, though, which is why stories rather than data are passed down. If you boil suffering down to any physical or emotional pain that negatively affects a person psychologically, suffering itself has “meaning” assigned to it no?
That’s a slightly different version of “meaning”, I think.
Meaning in the sense quanta used it, is, I believe, somewhat closer to “purpose”..
So the pain of giving birth might have a purpose, a joy in it, that is absent from the pain of appendicitis, and thus may feel different to the person experiencing it.
Purpose in all experience makes experience different, subjectively. One might describe this as “Living in the now”, as opposed to the subjective experience of experiencing a thing with anticipation of it ending, which is living in the future, or experiencing a thing reminiscing of your experience prior to that thing, which is living in the past.
I think some of what people experience as suffering is the experience of wishing for things as they are not, in the moment. All experience can be savored, explored, and, in a sense, enjoyed, for the sake of the experience itself.
Pending listening to the whole 45min talk – there are secular worldviews and then there are secular worldviews. In general, what people generally have isn’t a ‘modern secular worldview,’ but rather the absence of a traditional, religious one. This understandably doesn’t provide a lot of suffering-conceptualization mechanisms, but the problem is very much a solved one if you’re willing to be rigorous about it. Suffering is an opportunity to exercise virtue if it is real (i.e. you’ve just lost your arm to a car accident), but probably it’s an illusion (you’ve lost status you shouldn’t care about in the first place) or could have been easily avoided (what did you think was going to happen when you gambled away all your money?).
Ancient ways of dealing with suffering are lightly addressed – the definition of “modern secular” is more hedonist/the material world is all there is/maximize personal utility…and then the disutility that is suffering is purely a negative thing.
He’s begging the question, and it’s not even an interesting question – sure, ‘people who don’t have a good coping mechanism for suffering’ don’t have a good coping mechanism for suffering, but so what? We knew that already. There are lots of non-religious people who don’t spend all their time bemoaning the unjust world they live in, and there are plenty of religious people who do. I’ll cheerfully agree that religions generally and Christianity specifically are very good at providing coping mechanisms, but they’re not the only game in town, and those mechanisms have problems too.
Listening – I admit the style turned me off a bit so I may have missed something, though. The sermon-y format is unfortunate; to my mind he’s making about 50% each of two separate arguments. I’d love to have a talk with him about this.
Suffering is bad and I want to avoid it as much as possible. If it occurs, I rely on my friends to get me through it. I assume this is the modern secular worldview that makes me vulnerable, but I don’t really see what’s wrong with it.
I’m not willing to listen to what Tim Keller has to say about it for 50 whole minutes, but I’d read a transcript or summary if it existed.
I can’t think of a rational way to view it as anything but pointless, meaningless, and purely a negative thing. You can make up stories about it “building character” but it seems like BS to me. I guess I tell myself “whining about it means you’re a weakling.”
Well as a simple example, what about negative reinforcement learning for children?
Fall on their bums a bit, skin their knees on gravel, scratch their skin on concrete when falling off a bike. Through these “growing pains” they’ll learn to fall correctly, get used to the immediate pain and recovery, and overall “build character”.
Vs. a lot of super-cushioned playgrounds nowadays supervised by adults leading to more grown kids not knowing how to fall…extend the analogy to other areas of life, and you may have kids that can’t handle failure if they’ve never suffered it. A lot of kids entering college, for instance, get a rude awakening when they realize they really aren’t that special, aren’t the smartest, the strongest, the most attractive, or the most popular anymore.
So suffering is often compared to a flame – it can refine and strengthen something that would otherwise be brittle, or it can also burn up whatever it is that it touches.
Suffering is indeed pointless, meaningless, and negative. Stoicism is a pretty decent means of dealing with suffering when you can’t avoid or ameliorate it.
FWIW I would say, and I think many secularists would say, that the religious notion that suffering is redemptive and meaningful is one of the worst of the falsehoods that religion spreads: it pointlessly leads people to endure suffering they could and should ameliorate instead, and sometimes even to rationalize seeking out suffering, or worse yet, inflicting it on others.
Would you helicopter parent kids, sparing them from the elements by dressing them up warmly, dodging all potential illness with hand washing and quarantine from sick peers, and catching them every time they’re about to fall?
If so, they have a good chance of developing allergies since their immune systems needs exposure, and grows through sickness, while their reflexes will be quite dull if they are never allowed to fall.
Similarly, would you make sure they never have a sense of failure? Surely you’d say *some* aspects of life that are accompanied by suffering actually helps people grow?
Sure, but these are cases, thankfully less common now than they were in the past, where suffering is an as-yet unavoidable byproduct of a necessary growth process. There’s no reason inherent in the universe why it has to be unavoidable even in these cases. If we could develop a way to produce the right immune system behavior without the sickness, we obviously should, and it’s at least plausible that one day we will.
Do you think growth ends when childhood ends though? What about courtship, heartbreak from break-ups/betrayals, eventual marriage, raising children, balancing career vs. family as an ambitious person, illness within the family etc.?
@DragonMilk If you’ve only experienced break-ups and betrayals that have been mild enough to let you grow as a person, then you aren’t well-calibrated on suffering.
I find that betrayals have made me hard, uncaring, untrusting, and a worse person. I am working on becoming a better person by learning to trust people that are worth it; slowly reaching out, expecting suffering, and not finding it. Funny how that works.
FWIW I would say, and I think many secularists would say, that the religious notion that suffering is redemptive and meaningful is one of the worst of the falsehoods that religion spreads: it pointlessly leads people to endure suffering they could and should ameliorate instead, and sometimes even to rationalize seeking out suffering, or worse yet, inflicting it on others.
This!
People benefit from having a toolkit that helps them cope with inevitable suffering, but they don’t benefit from a set of memes that encourages them to seek out suffering.
Someone later in the thread asks whether regarding suffering as pointless requires wrapping people up in cotton wool (helicopter parenting etc.). No, that would be caused by regarding all suffering as too terrible to endure. There are plenty of cases where suffering comes along with something else, and the game is worth the candle; a trite example would be a painful but life saving medical treatment.
Religious reasoning produces bad decisions like denying people pain medication because someone believes the deity they worship intended this suffering. Or it denies people the (life saving) medical treatment entirely, because of some supposedly deity-given rule forbidding it.
That’s not all that religion does, and some of what it does is good.
It can be a great commfort to some people trying to cope with suffering and loss. Not all people – one acquaintance left his childhood religion, never to return, because of statements intended to provide comfort when his mother died. (I think – not sure – that he was still a child at the time.) But it’s a good toolkit for many people, even though (as you can see above) I’m pretty much incapable of steelmanning the way it’s used.
Eh. I see the point you are trying to make, but I think you are hyperbolizing. “No pain, no gain” is a pretty gosh darn secular statement, and it doesn’t require a religious mindset to generalize the idea of suffering as a moral good.
“No pain no gain” is a special case, akin to believing that medicine doesn’t really work unless it tastes awful.
Oddly enough, though, I know of a (very minor) religious group that has “to learn you must suffer” in their liturgy. So there is a certain overlap, some of the time. (Personally, I enjoy most learning. If I’d had to suffer notably to learn my professional skills, I’d have tried a different profession. Note that I am *not* in medicine, as an example with lots of needless suffering. I’m also not in any system prone to hazing newbies.)
@Dino Nerd:
I don’t understand what you mean by “special case”.
Pretty much any difficult skill or accomplishment will involve, essentially by definition, difficulty. The ability to push through that difficulty is generally prized.
Difficulty isn’t the same as suffering. If you class “having to do some hard work” as pain, then “no pain no gain” becomes pretty much of a tautology.
If you don’t make that equivalence – you presume people can enjoy studying, or regard work as routine and normal (like breathing or eating), and only sometimes involving things they don’t like (as can both breathing and eating), then that falls apart.
So as someone who enjoys learning, reads non-fiction for fun, and has been known to hike for pleasure, I see 2 different fallacies:
– Unpleasantness is good in itself. If I sit in some mega-boring class going over material I already know, ad nauseum, prevented from looking at anything new, I’m doing something important and virtuous
– The only way to accomplish anything valuable is via unpleasantness. If I sit and read the text book, and enjoy that, I won’t learn what’s in it, etc.
Much the same thing applies in other domains – getting fit by doing exercises I don’t like, in an environment I hate, is not more effective than participating in activities I love.
You may gain faster by tailoring your methods entirely to efficiency and ignoring (un)pleasantness – depending on specifics – but you may also drop out entirely, because the ultra-efficient choice is also highly unpleasant (to you). In many cases, staying out of the actively unpleasant zone works better in the long run.
I was listening to a Sam Harris podcast with guest Andrew Marantz. I generally agree with Sam Harris when it comes to the woke left, and this was an interesting podcast because Marantz is clearly a part of the woke left. Anyhow, at one point they were discussing “deplorables” and the notion of a “white person wanting to live with other white persons”, and both Harris and Marantz agreed that such people were beyond the pale.
Personally, I dont wish to live in a homogeneously white society and I enjoy a good amount of ethnic diversity, except for the wokeness, the race hustlers, and the “diversity is our strength” propaganda, but I dont find it beyond the pale for people of any ethnicity to wish to live in an ethnically homogeneous society.
I even think most woke people would understand a black person wanting to be in a black neighborhood, or a jew to live in a jewish neighborhood (or Israel).
Other than the typical “white people are the oppressor” woke narrative, is there any valid reason why preferring to live in homogeneous societies is morally suspect?
Path dependence, mainly? The choice in the U.S. today isn’t between diversity and homogeneity; those ships have literally already sailed. The choice is among different models of diversity, and a “preference for homogeneity” often cashes out in practice to a preference for more toxic models of diversity, especially when it’s a richer group expressing that preference through practices like redlining.
But also “white” as an identity is…suspect is a great word for it. White isn’t so much a heritage or ethnicity as a majority coalition of ethnicities, and people generally don’t form coalitions except to gain power.
But also “white” as an identity is…suspect is a great word for it. White isn’t so much a heritage or ethnicity as a majority coalition of ethnicities, and people generally don’t form coalitions except to gain power.
It is. But it’s also how people in the US and Canada are categorized socially. Nobody talks about British-Americans or German-Americans.
But also “white” as an identity is…suspect is a great word for it. White isn’t so much a heritage or ethnicity as a majority coalition of ethnicities
Challenge – I hear this frequently said, and it seems like an isolated demand for rigor wrt identities. Look at all the other ethnicity in America and you see the same grouping of related, if previously separate, heritages into more cohesive blocks.
By coincidence, notorious WN Mike Enoch remarked on this very topic recently, taking aim at those who would convince white americans to identify with some fragment of their ancestry instead. I will paraphrase:
White doesn’t exist, so don’t be white, don’t fight on the common ground of white identity with other whites; instead, just let your enemy classify you as white and deny you things on that basis.
He was referencing this specifically, but also punitive race/ethnicity quotas in universities, government programs that serve nonwhites, etc.; all the usual things they bring up. The point is that nobody can possibly believe that a denial of white identity is being made in good faith, when it is the basis of so much of the attack on european americans: it is simply another psychological weapon in the attack.
It’s possible I’m biased by being Ashkenazi, which is a non-central example of an ethnicity that gets marked as white. With us it’s generally pretty clear that we’re Jewish for the purposes of heritage and ethnic pride, but white for the purpose of being Not A Minority. If you’re a first or second generation immigrant that gets marked as white you’ve probably got a similar situation going. And I think if you’re, say, Appalachian you’re kind of falling for a con if you identify primarily as white–you end up giving much more to the coalition than you’re getting.
Honest question: as a Jewish person, do you enjoy being part of a minority, insofar as you can form groups, and advocate in favor of that minority? I would expect that you would. I think it’s very natural for every person to feel a little bit like that.
You get to be part of society at large, and you also have an ingroup that is bigger than your family but smaller than all of society. I can see that as being immensely useful.
My JDar went off with your initial comment. Your mistake is to assume that other ethnic subgroups see whiteness in the transactional way that you do. Most don’t, not considering their ethnic group as being of any real importance. Many whites don’t even have a predominant ethnicity, they are mixes.
And I think if you’re, say, Appalachian you’re kind of falling for a con if you identify primarily as white–you end up giving much more to the coalition than you’re getting.
I think you’re mistaken in thinking Appalachians have a meaningful choice to identify as a different racial or ethnic group that would improve their position. A common identity they put down on the census is “American”. It doesn’t get them jack. They could do even worse by identifying as being from Appalachia. I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere where that wouldn’t be a net negative for your social standing (Note: I have not lived in Appalachia which may be the one place it would help).
I’ve felt that I benefit from being able to identify as not just white because I’m a little bit Chinese and Hawaiian. No one gives a shit about my umpteen white ancestral groups, but I’ve deflected an awkward question or two with “I’m not just white, so that doesn’t apply to me or don’t ask me.”
But also “white” as an identity is…suspect is a great word for it. White isn’t so much a heritage or ethnicity as a majority coalition of ethnicities, and people generally don’t form coalitions except to gain power.
Perhaps you can define them as someone lacking resentment/entitlement for reparation towards White people, perceived or otherwise? If you can make a case for solidarity between “People of Colour” despite those colours and culture being wildly different, you must assume that some people might prefer to be surrounded by people who lack this sense of solidarity against them.
If you can make a case for solidarity between “People of Colour” despite those colours and culture being wildly different, you must assume that some people might prefer to be surrounded by people who lack this sense of solidarity against them.
I keep thinking the best possible endpoint for American race relations is for everyone to end up effectively in the “white” category. Maybe we can invent some Martians who are green and Other, and then just put everyone else in the “white” category that amounts to “normal Americans with whom I’m happy living, working, and doing business.”
people generally don’t form coalitions except to gain power
In Yorkshire, my family is from (specific village); in England, we’re from Yorkshire; in Great Britain, we’re English, in Canada, we’re British, and now that I’m living in the US, I’m Canadian.
Maybe on-point, maybe not: during the immigration wave in the United States of the late-1800s and early 1900s, immigrants would often self-segragate by place-of-origin. People from one area of Italy would find a home near other people from that area of Italy, people from a town in Poland would move in close to other people who had connections to that town in Poland, etc.
This left traces behind. In the metro area that I live, there are still neighborhoods with nicknames like “Poletown”, “Greektown”, “Little Italy”, etc. Reputedly, those neighborhoods were dominated by immigrants of those ethnicities during the immigration-boom years.
Even today, there are neighborhoods and suburbs which are the place to find most people of certain ethnic groups. Most of the European-origin ethnic groups have blended into the generic “white”, though a person’s family name might give away part of their background. The distinctive ethnic groups are now Jewish, Black, and post-1960s immigrants from places outside of Europe. (The most obvious to me: there are present-day neighborhoods where half the billboards are Arabic-plus-English.)
Generally, the thought of a person moving to an all-white neighborhood brings up memories of things like neighborhood covenants against selling to certain racial groups, or other practices. The revulsion against such history probably removes the bare factual assertion that such neighborhoods are mirrors of an all-Black neighborhood, or an all-Jewish neighborhood.
“…during the immigration wave in the United States of the late-1800s and early 1900s, immigrants would often self-segragate by place-of-origin. People from one area of Italy would find a home near other people from that area of Italy, people from a town in Poland would move in close to other people who had connections to that town in Poland, etc….”
Not just neighborhoods, trades as well. In San Francisco Carpenters and Cops were mostly Irish, Firemen and Plumbers mostly Italian, across the bay in Oakland Plumbers were mostly Portuguese.
There’s still ethnic social clubs, Berkeley has “Finnish Hall”, Oakland has the “Fratti Lanza” club, San Francisco has Armenian, Croatian, Irish, Italian, et cetera clubs.
I’ve personally had dinners at “The Irish Cultural Center” (an ex-cops, ironically of Filipino descent retirement party), and at the “Italian Athletic Club” in San Francisco (a Christmas party organized by a guy in the Sheet Metal Workers union).
The ethnic links are a bit attenuated (so many mixed descendents and allegiances by trade, i.e. cops not of Irish descent making a big deal about St. Patrick’s Day) but there still there.
I even think most woke people would understand a black person wanting to be in a black neighborhood, or a jew to live in a jewish neighborhood (or Israel).
Other than the typical “white people are the oppressor” woke narrative, is there any valid reason why preferring to live in homogeneous societies is morally suspect?
It’s true: If centuries of past and ongoing racial oppression didn’t exist, then whites wanting to segregate would be no big deal.
And we’d also probably have a “white history month” and celebrate “white pride”, along with all the other races living in harmony together, with slavery, Jim Crow, racial discrimination, imperialism, and white nationalism never being a thing that happened/is happening.
It’s true: If centuries of past and ongoing racial oppression didn’t exist, then whites wanting to segregate would be no big deal.
I honestly dont get this line of thought. If white people are so bad, why is it important to have non-whites living among them?
Or are you saying that because, to quote Ilhan Omar, “some people did something”, white people should be treated differently than all others?
It still doesnt compute. People alive today are not responsible for the sins of their ancestors, and I’m pretty sure everybody’s ancestors did some bad things at some point.
People alive today are not responsible for the sins of their ancestors, and I’m pretty sure everybody’s ancestors did some bad things at some point.
Note that I conspicuously phrased my position to include both the past and present tense. If you want to argue against a strawman, you don’t need me to help you with that.
I honestly dont get this line of thought. If white people are so bad, why is it important to have non-whites living among them?
Because access to land is power. Imagine if California passed a bill to deport all Republicans. Would you say “well, Democrats suck, so I don’t see what the big deal is of not having to live with them anymore…”
Note that I conspicuously phrased my position to include both the past and present tense. If you want to argue against a strawman, you don’t need me to help you with that.
No, I was arguing against your position, which includes the past tense. If you are now restating your position to only include the present tense, please advise.
Because access to land is power. Imagine if California passed a bill to deport all Republicans. Would you say “well, Democrats suck, so I don’t see what the big deal is of not having to live with them anymore…”
Yes, access to land is power. Everyone all around the world has varying access to land based on many factors, and I dont see why this singles out the white race for unique treatment.
If you’re going to accuse me of straw-manning your position when all I did was attack a part of your position (the part which justifies treating whites differently than everyone else based on the past), please dont straw-man my position by talking about deportation.
No, I was arguing against your position, which includes the past tense. If you are now restating your position to only include the present tense, please advise.
Things that happened in the past are a good indicator of things that are happening in the present, absent information to the contrary. If the sun comes up on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, but you haven’t checked to see if the sun came up on Wednesday, do you think the odds are only 50/50?
And note, just for clarities sake, that I believe we have strong information regarding the existence of present day racism and white nationalism, so what happened in the past is just the cherry on top.
Yes, access to land is power. Everyone all around the world has varying access to land based on many factors, and I dont see why this singles out the white race for unique treatment.
Whites are singled out for special treatment in the U.S. because of the (correct) assumption they have more power than blacks.
This is like asking “everyone has different amounts of money based on many factors, so why are we singling out the rich for unique treatment, making them pay a higher tax rate?”
Of course you could contest the assumption that racial power inequality exists. Which was my original point: If you assume a totally separate reading-of-reality than not just the left, but the mainstream, then many things that happen in the left/mainstream seem nonsensical. But the reading-of-reality is where the argument is. If you assume gravity doesn’t exist, then those arguing that apples fall from trees also seem nonsensical.
Of course you could contest the assumption that racial power inequality exists.
I dont. I contest that this racial power inequality should be used to justify assigning moral blame to one person for wanting something, and not assigning moral blame to another for wanting the same thing, just because the people are different races.
I contest that this racial power inequality should be used to justify assigning moral blame to one person for wanting something, and not assigning moral blame to another for wanting the same thing, just because the people are different races.
Let’s say I have two loaves of bread, and a poor person has none. Me and him both want the same thing (loaves of bread).
If I refused to share any of the loaves of bread and he died, would you say it is unjust so assign moral blame to me, since we both wanted the same thing, after all? (loaves of bread)
In this case bread-having is the axis of power, but you could replace it with any power inequality you want (race, nationality, ect).
“And yes, preventing someone from accessing a piece of bread is an action.”
I’m not seeing why this is supposed to be a hypothetical situation. How much do you have to donate to save a life of a poor person in the third world? How much could you donate without starving yourself? How much did you donate?
If I shoot a gun (the action), which kills someone (the result, someone who is harmed) I am not to blame?
In many contexts, but not every single context: if a man is invading your home and you pull the trigger on him, I think you would agree that you would not be blame.
Like, you can obviously be assigned moral blame for the bad results of an action, and that action still be morally justified by the good results that outweigh it.
If I swerve the trolley and kill a guy, the answer to “who’s fault is it that this guy died?” isn’t “its nobodies”.
Let’s say I have two loaves of bread, and a poor person has none. Me and him both want the same thing (loaves of bread).
If I refused to share any of the loaves of bread and he died, would you say it is unjust so assign moral blame to me, since we both wanted the same thing, after all? (loaves of bread)
There are people all over the world right now who are starving. And you are not feeding them. I’m assuming you could, but instead you’re involved in silly arguments over white people on the Internet.
There are people all over the world right now who are starving. And you are not feeding them. I’m assuming you could, but instead you’re involved in silly arguments over white people on the Internet.
**SHAME**
Do you understand how thought-killing this line of thinking is?
“Let’s do thing x, it would be good”
“If thing x is good, but you aren’t doing it already, that implies that you are bad. Unless you want to admit that thing x isn’t actually good. Checkmate!”
Do you understand how thought-killing this line of thinking is?
“Let’s do thing x, it would be good”
“If thing x is good, but you aren’t doing it already, that implies that you are bad. Unless you want to admit that thing x isn’t actually good. Checkmate!”
You didnt say that sharing bread with poor people would be good. If you had, I would have agreed with you.
You said:
If I refused to share any of the loaves of bread and he died, would you say it is unjust so assign moral blame to me, since we both wanted the same thing, after all?
I’m just pointing out that this example is not convincing. In fact, I’m pointing out that according to the logic which undergirds your example, you should be assigned moral blame right now.
The way I see it, people bear the moral responsibility for the results of their actions and decisions. So you had better think about what the best decisions to make in throughout your life are, if you care about doing “good” at all.
It’s not like its impossible to think of utilitarian reasons not to donate your life saving to malaria nets in Africa, if that’s what you are worried about.
Do you think I would disagree with this statement?
That you should be assigned moral blame? Yes.
That the logic of your examples suggests you should be assigned moral blame? I dont know. Maybe you dont realize that the example you used was superficially nice sounding but fatally flawed. Nobody has a responsibility to end the suffering of everyone on earth. You dont have to give bread to hungry people, the hot girl doesnt need to sleep with incels, and Jeff Bezos doesnt have to give every poor person in America $10000.
You have a responsibility to support your family, if you have one.
You have a responsibility towards your employer and your co-employees to work diligently and honestly.
You have a responsibility towards your co-citizens that you will follow the law.
Your responsibilities towards others shrink as they are further away from you. Your responsibilities towards citizens of other countries are basically:
1. Dont invade their country
2. Dont destroy the earth
I like Nassim Taleb’s formulation:
With my family, I’m a communist. With my close friends, I’m a socialist. At the state level of politics, I’m a Democrat. At higher levels, I’m a Republican, and at the federal levels, I’m a Libertarian.
Why? What is the moral theory that justifies this?
I’m quite sure that others can do a much better job on this one than I can. But I’ll throw this out there: practicality and effectiveness.
I should add that the “distance” in this theory is not merely physical. Your brother is “close” even if he lives in Australia and you live in the US. But physical distance also matters.
You dont understand the needs of those who are too far away from you well enough to help them. You dont understand how your action might affect anything else within their environment. And you wont know either. You can feel good giving money to some charity for Africa, but maybe that charity really fcked things up, and you’ll never know. And when I say fcked things up, I mean maybe the charity thought it was doing good, but it actually did harmful things. Or maybe not. Maybe the charity was employing sexual predators. Maybe the charity was paying off the local warlord. Maybe the charity did work that put some local entrepreneur out of business. As a white savior giving your $20 after seeing that tear-jerker of a commercial, you dont know, you dont care. You’re a good person because you give to charity. The charity will thank you for your money and assure you that you are a good person.
I realize this falls short of what you requested. But I believe it’s in the right direction. Anyhow, I hope someone else will explain it better than this. It’s not my own, more intelligent people than I have discussed this idea. I should probably read up on it.
You dont understand the needs of those who are too far away from you well enough to help them. You dont understand how your action might affect anything else within their environment. And you wont know either. You can feel good giving money to some charity for Africa, but maybe that charity really fcked things up, and you’ll never know
You’ve done a good job of answering the question of why, practically speaking, it makes more sense to focus efforts on people closer to you. But that doesn’t absolve you of the moral responsibility for the way your decisions effect people not close to you. To reference an earlier post, moral blame is not the same thing as whether an action is morally justified. If the good of the action outweighs the bad, then the action is morally just. If you swerve the trolley, killing 1 to save 5, you still killed a guy. We would all just understand that the good results outweighed the bad results.
To bring it back though: The counter-point to the “focus at home” strategy, is that we are all human, and want basically the same set of things (food, shelter, love, health, power over their lives). So you have to be really careful before putting the “how could I know what he wants?” blinders on.
For example, if the group making the “how could I know what they want?” claim is actively oppressing the other group (e.g., enforcing political power over them), the “distance argument” starts to look more like a facade. It is reasonable to suspect that a slave owner claiming he can’t possibly know what is best for the slave, so its best to just do what’s best for himself, might not actually be assigning equal moral value to all humans.
If the good of the action outweighs the bad, then the action is morally just. If you swerve the trolley, killing 1 to save 5, you still killed a guy. We would all just understand that the good results outweighed the bad results.
Presuming that the guy who is controlling the trolley is not the guy who attached 1 person on a track and 5 on another, I dont think he deserves any moral blame. Not killing anybody was not an option, so he took the least bad option. I would blame the guy who attached the people on the tracks.
To bring it back though: The counter-point to the “focus at home” strategy, is that we are all human, and want basically the same set of things (food, shelter, love, health, power over their lives). So you have to be really careful before putting the “how could I know what he wants?” blinders on.
I agree 100%.
For example, if the group making the “how could I know what they want?” claim is actively oppressing the other group (e.g., enforcing political power over them), the “distance argument” starts to look more like a facade.
Oppressing other groups is bad. And governing from far away is very much analogous to charity from far away, it’s bad. World government is evil. Globalists are wrong. The EU and the UN are abominations.
It is reasonable to suspect that a slave owner claiming he can’t possibly know what is best for the slave, so its best to just do whats best for himself, might not actually be assigning equal moral value to all humans.
It sounds like you two are talking past each other a bit due to different definitions/connotations of the term “moral blame”.
Guy in TN, I think, is using it as follows: “moral blame” is inextricably linked to (identical to?) the negative terms in a global utility function. The sum* may be positive, but the negative terms are still there.
jermo sapiens, by contrast, I think goes: “moral blame” is an emotional judgment of the rank of the sum of said utility function, and does not inherently refer to negative terms in the function.
*Utilitarianism caveat: morality-based arithmetic may or may not conform to Euclidean geometry.
I think there’s a paradox involved here from the perspective of the United States. At least since the Civil Rights era, American culture is supposed to be blind to ethnic origin or skin color. Someone of any ethnic group that comes in and assimilates to US culture* is an American. American society should not shun people who are otherwise culturally American for being of a different racial or ethnic background, and someone who is judging someone’s American-ness based only on ethnic or racial qualifications is essentially un-American. American cultural homogeneity is necessarily counter-indicated by efforts to impose ethnic homogeneity in the guise of American-ness.
* I can only speak as a single individual, one on the right side of the political spectrum. The problem the right has with unchecked immigration is that we’re dealing with immigrants that aren’t assimilating to US culture (as understood by the right; the left obviously has other ideas about what American values are and whether assimilation is necessary or even good), either because they’re here illegally or because they want the advantages of prosperous American society without assuming the values that led to that prosperity (at least according to those of us on the right). The American right wants a (right-wing) American culture; dissing anti-abortion activists because they’re black, gun owners because they’re Korean, or small business owners because they’re south Asian Indian doesn’t promote right wing American values. I admit there’s a catch twenty-two here, as nobody agrees on what American values should be, so someone looking to conceal ethnic prejudice can use values as a cover for why generic members of any particular group are treated with disdain.
Other than the typical “white people are the oppressor” woke narrative, is there any valid reason why preferring to live in homogeneous societies is morally suspect?
As someone who is decidedly non-woke – in fact, I’d consider myself anti-woke – I would say that preferring to live with other people of one’s race is morally suspect for standard liberal reasons. Which is that that’s a preference for being close to and interacting with individuals based purely on the race to which they belong. This goes against what I see as a standard liberal value, which is that individuals should be treated as individuals, completely independently of their race.
This also means that I see black people who prefers to live in a black neighborhood as being no less morally monstrous than a white person who prefers to live in a white neighborhood.
Now, if someone wants to live in a particular culture because they like that culture, and that culture correlates strongly with a certain race, that’s something completely different and something I don’t see as morally suspect or wrong in itself. As long as if, say, God came down and zapped every individual in that culture to become another race or a dozen different races, that person’s preference for living in that culture doesn’t change one whit.
Now, if someone wants to live in a particular culture because they like that culture, and that culture correlates strongly with a certain race, that’s something completely different and something I don’t see as morally suspect or wrong in itself.
I would think that’s the case almost 100% of the time. And I would add that culture correlates very strongly with race. I cant imagine anyone, even the most racist, disliking a culture but being happy with people from that culture just because of matching skin color.
Consider the schelling model of segregation. The gist is that even with only a moderate preference for living near people like you (e.g., a desire to have 33% of your neighbors look like you), you get a ton of segregation very quickly. This isn’t even “an X person wanting to live in an X neighborhood.” This is “X person not wanting to live in a mostly non-X neighborhood.” Hard to find fault with someone that wants just 1/3 of the people around them to look like them. Unless you have an active desire to live with people that don’t look like you, it’s hard to reverse the resultant segregation.
I like the polygons thing. I would like to test it more though. For example, my hunch tells me there are solutions where everybody is happy, and I’m not sure how this particular algorithm works. Does it count only direct neighbors?
Anyhow, assuming the polygons thing is correct, and the stable equilibrium is segregated societies. Ok fine, it’s disappointing. But is it a catastrophe that requires a massive social engineering scheme? I dont think so. I believe we should seek to create a world which is compatible with human nature, not seek to create a human nature which is compatible with the world we want.
Isn’t this just the “separate but equal” argument? And in theory, “separate but equal” is fine. But, empirically, there is but lip service to the idea, and segregation results in an entrenchment of inequality and a suppression of exit rights.
It’s not even about malice, often. It’s that “separate but equal” can only be maintained through re-distribution, and those that must give understandably don’t want to. (But then it’s all to easy for malice to exploit those feelings.)
The “separate but equal” policies that we learn about in school were actually enforced by law, though. It seems clear that that violates exit rights, and entrenches inequality inasmuch as the dividing lines reflect it; it seems much less clear that stepping back and letting voluntary self-segregation happen would. In fact it can only happen in the presence of a reasonable level of exit rights, can’t it?
The interesting thing is we blew straight through more voluntary solutions (like not having the government shaft black people constantly and not having it punish anyone who wanted to put white people and black people in the same train car) and went all the way to disparate impact in something like a decade. Voting rights need mandatory protection, and government redistribution is always nonvoluntary so those cases aren’t interesting.
But to me it looks like there mostly aren’t as many disparate impact suits as there could be. Partly because it doesn’t occur to most people how the doctrine ought to apply to so many things, and partly because most people just aren’t going to bother bringing a suit. Even if they are actually discriminated against they usually won’t bother. And it’s really unlikely anyone will bother if everyone seems to accept the status quo, and there’s no clear intentional discrimination even if the disparate impact is clear. For example, many jobs asking for a bachelor’s degree cause disparate impact, and it would be very expensive or difficult to prove that the degree is relevant to the job. In a lot of cases, the degree probably isn’t relevant. A sufficiently dedicated push could potentially flip society on that issue or similar ones.
As Nornagest points out, enforcing segregation by law is not the same thing as letting segregation happen naturally.
I have never seen a compelling argument why enforcing diversity by law is good and enforcing segregation by law is bad that doesn’t rely on some moral assumptions that I don’t share.
segregation results in an entrenchment of inequality
That is true for self-segregation as well, if cultural differences aren’t just superficial. It seems to me that the ideal of a multicultural society with equality of outcomes is incoherent.
If you truly want equality of outcomes, shouldn’t you support forceful assimilation. Of course, that has a problematic history as well.
Not really. As Nornagest points out, enforcing segregation by law is not the same thing as letting segregation happen naturally.
And we have a lot of segregation anyways! De jure matters a lot, but a decent number of people want it de facto and get it.
I’m suspicious of the reasons of a significant chunk of people who segregate whether white/black/asian/etc., but I’m suspicious of a lot of reasons people give. I’m not as worried as the articles that seem to believe some people are stealing opportunities from others by not wanting to live next to them. That may be occasionally true, but most of the time the reasoning is nonsense. A lot of bad things happen (or are done) to poor people or black people that have no effect on other people’s live either way.
I don’t see how substantial voluntary segregation (which we see everywhere) suppresses exit rights. If the black students and white students mostly sit at different tables in the cafeteria, with a few people sitting at the opposite-race table instead, how does that entrench inequality, or require redistribution to keep equal? Seems like everyone gets the same cafeteria lunch but chooses whom to sit with for reasons you don’t like.
@albatross11:
Suppression of exit rights within “voluntary” segregation occurs via social pressures.
I would be less wary of self-segregation’s track record if the environment also had a space where people could voluntarily integrate, and not suffer for it.
My perception is that nerds and jocks will tend towards conflict theory if (self-)segregated, and stick with mistake theory if more people are nerdy jocks and jocky nerds. (…oh god, this is the moral to High School Musical)
In our world, with plenty of voluntary segregation, we also see substantial mixing between groups, including interracial marriages and black families living in mostly-white neighborhoods and whites living in mostly-black neighborhoods and all the rest. People being people, this doesn’t always go perfectly, but it actually seems to be working out pretty well overall. Despite traditional and social media that sometimes seem to be trying to drum up as much black/white racial hatred as possible, race relations in the US mostly go pretty well.
The only way to eliminate voluntary segregation of this kind is to impose some kind of different set of choices on individuals. What government program or law would keep white residents from leaving a neighborhood that had become majority black? Would you forbid them selling their house and moving away? What government program would you propose to address the extensive voluntary segregation by race in dating and marriage, or in friendships, or in choice of TV shows and movies?
If you give people free choice, they will often self-segregate. That’s visible in peoples’ choices of where to live, where to work, whom to sit with in the cafeteria, whom to date, what TV shows and movies to watch, what sports to play, what churches to attend, etc. The only way around that is to override their choices and force someone to do stuff they don’t want to do. Sometimes, they’ll self-segregate on race, sometimes on language, national origin, occupation, social class, education level, interests, political views, religion, gender, etc.
The reason the parable of the polygons is interesting, IMO, is that it shows how you get segregation without any kind of formal discrimination. You don’t need laws banning triangles from living in square neighborhoods, you just need individual preferences to be slightly in favor of more people like me as neighbors, and you get segregation. In practice, I think any way you might try to break that segregation up is going to involve making a fair number of people less happy. And not just in housing–a small preference to date within your own race or religion or social class works the same way.
The interesting question is why we see this as a problem to be solved, rather than an interesting emergent property of people and societies. IMO, the way the segregation really goes away is when the distinction people are segregating on becomes less important to most people. Over time, lots of white ethnic groups went from being seen as a different shape (Irish vs Italians, for example) to being seen as the same shape (generic white Americans). In 2019, I think you will have to search very far to find someone of mostly English descent upset that his daughter is marrying someone of Italian descent, but I think in 1919 it would have been much more common. My equivalent of a hundred years ago might have been uncomfortable working in an office with lots of Asians, whereas it just seems like normal life to me.
There are advantages to living/working around people very similar to yourself (ease of communications, shared values), and also disadvantages (monoculture of ideas and talents). Working out an optimal tradeoff isn’t trivial, and in fact looks very situation dependent and not like something that could be done via law in any sensible way.
The interesting question is why we see this as a problem to be solved, rather than an interesting emergent property of people and societies. IMO, the way the segregation really goes away is when the distinction people are segregating on becomes less important to most people.
I get the motivation behind fighting segregation, but it insists that everyone must seek diversity. If that aligns with your values, that’s great, but enforcing that on everyone sounds like orwellian dystopia.
That’s a pretty cool simulation. I’m skeptical of how illustrative a model it is, though, since it seems to rely at least somewhat on polygons only being willing to move because they want more segregation, and on there being no coordination among the polygons. In the manual mode, I tried deliberately setting up minimally-segregated equilibria, but was prevented from doing so by the impossibility of moving “happy” or “meh” polygons.
Even in the random case, I think the “more segregated polygons won’t move” criterion is doing a significant portion of the work. For example, try setting the slider to make the polygons 100% segregationist (maximizing the desire for segregation, but also making almost every shape willing to move). I’ve had it running for several minutes and it seems to consistently stay in low single-digit segregation levels (often at 0%).
The fact that they just randomly moved polygons definitely made it break for higher levels of desired segregation. I also agree that it probably isn’t illustrative of the real world, though, if someone’s happiness really was 30% dependent on being near similar people, then this probably does work at some level. I know a lot of people resisted the “white flight” in the 50s and 60s, but at some point they pretty much all moved, so there is obviously some level at which almost anyone will leave if their neighborhood becomes too different.
In my experience, this kind of thing is more closely tied to class than race.
Also, I don’t think that not being able to move a happy polygon was a problem. People rarely move when they are happy with their current situation, and I don’t think there is a lot of opportunities today for people to move en masse in a coordinated way.
If next year, your overwhelmingly white suburb has a Chinese engineer, an Indian cardiologist, and a black accountant move in, you probably don’t mind much–they’re unlikely to bring a lot of crime or a drop in quality of the local schools or trash all over the yard with them. If the following year, three lower-class white families move in with their extended families and a car up on blocks in the driveway, you probably care a lot.
Race correlates with the stuff everyone cares about. Some people also care to some greater or lesser extent about race. My not-that-informed guess is that most people care more about the correlates (crime, schools, quality of life in the neighborhood) than they do about the race of their neighbors.
That certainly depends on what changes and how many of them are moving in.
You are correct that at a very low rate, none of those are likely to be disruptive.
But Chinese immigration into San Francisco was so large and disruptive in the late 1800s that it created its own neighborhood where whites weren’t welcome, which kicked off massive protests and resulted in a Federal law restricting Chinese immigration.
Black migration to the North was so disruptive that it created race riots and the collapse of the Northern inner cities.
Lower class whites also have crime rates lower than upper class blacks, so your example the lower class whites would likely not be a problem at all.
@EchoChaos says: “…But Chinese immigration into San Francisco was so large and disruptive in the late 1800s that it created its own neighborhood where whites weren’t welcome, which kicked off massive protests and resulted in a Federal law restricting Chinese immigration…”
As an aside: In what was the lobby of a former post office in San Francisco there’s a series of paintings made in the 1940’s on “The History of San Francisco”, which ends with the founding of the United Nations with the American, British, and Soviet flags most prominent (there was a failed effort in the ’50’s to remove the murals as “Communist propaganda” which given the artist they likely were), and a part of the murals shows a protest by the 19th century mostly Irish California “Working Man’s Party” and a “Chinese Out!” sign is clearly visible.
Most of what had been the post office adjacent to the old lobby are now Chinese restaurants.
I don’t think the race of the neighborhood has nearly the influence that the class of the neighborhood does on people deciding where to live. Those two tend to be correlated, but the class is the one that really matters.
The number of people that wouldn’t want to live between two black Hollywood stars in Malibu is vanishingly small, I suspect. Just as the number of people that want to live between two white meth addicts in a trailer park is vanishingly small.
In fact, it may not be possible possible to live between two of the (checks notes) 148 blacks in all of Malibu.
Poor whites are pretty fantastic people, and I’ve worked with plenty of them to know.
You’re dodging the statement by assuming the criminality of them.
Given the choice to live in majority black Prince George’s County, Maryland or majority white Loudoun County, Virginia, to use examples I actually know of similarly wealthy counties, it’s clear from the relative growth rates what people actually prefer.
Those two counties are a terrible comparison. One is an established middle class neighborhood with good growth, the other one is a traditionally rural area that has seen rapid development in the last 30 years, and has the highest median household income of any county with more than 65,000 people.
Obviously the main reason so many people are moving there is that they are building new houses, whereas Prince George is an established area, but even if that wasn’t the case, the fact that Loudoun has a median household income almost $60,000 higher proves my point far stronger than yours, seeing as though Loudoun is an unusually diverse area.
They are the richest black and richest white counties in America, both in driving range of DC and filled with professionals. If there were an even richer black county to compare, I would compare it.
There may be a middleground. People will start to leave if class expectations / quality of life expectations are not met, and each person on the margin starts to feel like an alien and moves. And then when they move a new threshold is hit that causes more people to move on the margins etc.
I don’t believe most people consider deviations from of absolute homogeneity a deal-breaker, but they’re being asked to be viscerally indifferent to something resembling the inverse of that.
I think there’s a huge confounder here because race correlates with a bunch of other stuff: income, wealth, culture, crime, school performance, etc. So all else being equal, having your neighborhood change from 100% white to 50% white/50% black is going to come with having poorer neighbors whose kids do worse in school and who have a larger (but still very small, note) fraction of criminals among them.
Consider a recent Chinese immigrant with absolutely no dog in the American black/white racial fight. Will he prefer to move into the 50/50 black/white neighborhood or the 100% white neighborhood? Why? It’s surely not pro-white bigotry.
Not quite sure what is meant by valid reason. For most people, anti-racism is a valid reason in of itself.
For those of us that can’t viscerally feel the the disgust at the idea of any form of white-self-preference, The proximate answer is that it’s a disgust reaction/moral double standard that people were socialized into.
We might ask two related questions:
1. How does the socialization work in the face of the double standard
2. Why would the socialization come about
I think both are just related to historical optics. There aren’t prominent or persistent examples of underdog story where comparatively affluent POC were attempting to keep whites out of their communities or nations and subsequently having another group using violence to keep them out. You do have instances of attempts by whites to gain access to land and resources, and perhaps ‘Markets’ in a commercial sense, but not for access to jobs or access to neighborhoods or access to schools.
There aren’t prominent or persistent examples of underdog story where comparatively affluent POC were attempting to keep whites out of their communities or nations and subsequently having another group using violence to keep them out.
So the purges in post-colonial Africa wouldn’t count, because the Africans were poorer than the whites. I highly doubt this “mitigating factor” would apply to, say, Ukrainians running out the Jews. It seems to me like the justifications for the double standard are just ad-hoc rationalizations.
I think the socialization in large part involves what tragedies and atrocities are brought to the fore (what gets featured prominently in education and media) —
Under what circumstances would an individual be socialized into a narrative that those purged in post-colonial africa didn’t have it coming for their past misdeeds? That’s how i tend to think about it. I know what i was taught in school so i have a rough idea of what semi-educated people know about Africa and the Ukraine
I’m not relativistic to the point where i’d claim you can’t conclusively argue that one form of ethnic cleansing was comparatively more justified than another, but I don’t believe the assumptions people generally have about these events is going to fit that mold, necessarily.
The same reason the people who camped around the oasis in the desert and won’t let anyone else move in are worse than the folks who camped in a random spot and won’t let anyone else move in.
Also, wanting to live somewhere else out of reasonable fear of harm is better than unreasonable fear of harm.
Now, none of this is a legal argument and legally, no you can’t make that distinction. Again, nothing I say here is legal advice.
The same reason the people who camped around the oasis in the desert and won’t let anyone else move in are worse than the folks who camped in a random spot and won’t let anyone else move in.
You’ve lost me. Lots of homogeneous populations live in relatively small or rather hostile territories (Iceland is a pretty marginal place to settle). And lots of diverse populations live in very nice territory (like lots of the Mediterranean which has had nice places to live for millennia).
If you’ve camped around the oasis in the desert and won’t let anyone else in, people will die of dehydration in the desert. If you’ve camped around nowhere in random location, then people are far less harmed by your xenophobia (here standing in for racism/segregation).
My actual position is much more like Guy in TN, but the question was for any other valid reason then an unpleasant and misleadingly uncharitable misstatement of my actual position.
So in your analogy the mostly white towns of rural Montana are the oasis? For refugees from the middle east and africa?
I’m sorry but this does not compute for me at all. Feels like a stretched analogy poorly designed to reach a predetermined conclusion. And the question I originally asked was why is it ok to treat whites differently in this regard. If your analogy is that white people themselves are an oasis, that is extremely racist.
@jermo I think you might do well to keep mining this vein. Scratching the surface of a lot of grossly left-wing anti-racist stuff, I often find weapons grade white supremacy (when I don’t just find pure racial hatred finding a convenient avenue of attack). For instance, I see narratives about difference underpinned by the unspoken assertion that the “white” way of doing things is unquestionably the best, and that any respect in which, or any extent to which, people around the world are not mimicking whites, they are failing; and further, the blame for this falls entirely at the feet of whites. Nonwhites are not even afforded the capacity to fail, or be evil, so deprived are they of depth and agency in this disgustingly white-centred-yet-white-hating worldview.
To give some context, I am absolutely a Malcolm X black nationalist and I support the creation of a sovereign african american state within the lower 48 as the only possible permanent solution to the problem that began with the slave trade; and if your visceral reaction to that is to object on the grounds that the nation would have quality of life and GDP and crime figures more like those of Jamaica than those of Europe, you are literally going to hell and I won’t pray for you.
Scratching the surface of a lot of grossly left-wing anti-racist stuff, I often find weapons grade white supremacy (when I don’t just find pure racial hatred finding a convenient avenue of attack).
Yes, you are not the first and you wont be the last. I recall Sargon of Akkad debating some progressive and cornering him into saying “if you have a level playing field whites win every time”, and Sargon going in for the kill after that. I cant find the clip, sorry.
The thing is it’s not that these people are actually racist. They are sincere. But their positions are adopted after only a superficial review because it’s popular with the cool kids.
I’d say feel free to create a black or white ethnostate if you can find a place to put it, but don’t be surprised when most people aren’t interested. I’d much rather live in my integrated multiracial society than in an all-white ethnostate.
If you’ve camped around the oasis in the desert and won’t let anyone else in, people will die of dehydration in the desert. If you’ve camped around nowhere in random location, then people are far less harmed by your xenophobia (here standing in for racism/segregation).
A lot of the wealthiest areas in the U.S. are less white than many poor rural areas, which is why I was confused. The places inside cities that are super white, I couldn’t afford to live in, and I’m not poor. But if I was LeBron James, I could live in those places. So I think those are segregated based on wealth.
My actual position is much more like Guy in TN, but the question was for any other valid reason then an unpleasant and misleadingly uncharitable misstatement of my actual position.
This reason makes sense to me. If your central worry is about a resurgence of white supremacy along the lines of David Duke or the al-trite, I agree David Duke is bad and suspicious and so is much of the al-trite. But I think their politics don’t drive segregation in most of the U.S. Even if they all disappeared tomorrow, I’d expect things to look almost the same. I’d expect some improvement in some less central areas, but literally no change in cities.
EDIT:
@jermo sapiens
Yes, you are not the first and you wont be the last. I recall Sargon of Akkad debating some progressive and cornering him into saying “if you have a level playing field whites win every time”, and Sargon going in for the kill after that. I cant find the clip, sorry.
One of the interesting things about a lot of U.S. thought about race. It’s like Chinese people never existed! Like all the stories in the NYT about the special gifted high schools. If you skimmed you would’ve thought the proposed changes would’ve mostly transferred schools slots away from white people.
I guess I should be madder about this, but damn! The audacity of it.
In general, a lot of discussion about race in the US is based on the models of the world that make sense for black/white relations, but that don’t work very well for Asian/white or Hispanic/white relations.
If your analogy is that white people themselves are an oasis, that is extremely racist.
Nope. But in our society, white people have, historically and modernly, greatly monopolized wealth and authority. I just want to be left alone is a reasonable position. I just want to be left alone, as I stand on someone else’s back, rather less so. And now we shift into, well that was in the past (or slavery wasn’t really beneficial/redlining wasn’t that bad/Jim Crow just proves the state needs to butt out) and we’ve redone the bit with Guy in TN above us.
As for the rest of this discussion chain, I’m an American citizen, what China/Japan/etc. should do/are doing is not really fucking relevant to my life, or my country. If your argument is about whites in Japan, you really should have said that.
All of this reads to me like an attempt at decontextualization and universalization for relatively transparent political purposes. I should have simply registered my disagreement and moved forward.
But in our society, white people have, historically and modernly, greatly monopolized wealth and authority. I just want to be left alone is a reasonable position. I just want to be left alone, as I stand on someone else’s back, rather less so.
Here is the “whites are uniquely bad” trope I was expecting.
Whites have been at the center of the industrial and scientific revolution, thanks to a number of factors, including the great amount of coal found in Great Britain, the rule of law, and the patent system, to name a few.
Yes, there was colonialism and all that stuff, but no amount of colonialism can explain the wealth we have in the west today. Our wealth is mostly due to the industrial and scientific revolution. I’m hoping I wont have to google what percentage of US GDP is from sugar/cotton plantations and what percentage is from technology, to prove it, but I’m ready if I need to.
I’m convinced much of this discussion turns on the question “are whites oppressing blacks?”
If you think the answer is “no”, then basically the whole debate over race the US: the question of segregation, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, must look like madness.
And in libertarian/economic-liberal circles, where government power is seen as the only form of actual power, the inclination is to say “no” for any time after Jim Crow laws were repealed. While for progressives/economic leftists, we place private power on equal footing with government power, so simply removing Jim Crow isn’t enough.
For policy debates, if you believe the answer is “yes”, you can’t even have a discussion over race with someone who believes “no”, since the underlying assumptions are what drive the best policy decisions. But you aren’t going to convince the “no”s to switch to “yes” unless they change their understanding of what power is (e.g., is a factory refusing to hire someone “force”, in the same way that a law banning someone from working there is?), which are the same assumptions which happens to underlie the liberal economic theory they also support. It’s a tough tangle.
But you aren’t going to convince the “no”s to switch to “yes” unless they change their understanding of what power is (e.g., is a factory refusing to hire someone “force”, in the same way that a law banning someone from working there is?), which are the same assumptions which happens to underlie the liberal economic theory they also support.
No, I say “no” because I don’t think a black person who applies for a job is more likely to be discriminated against on account of his race than a white person. It’s not a matter of (neo)-liberal political ideology, which I don’t really like.
It probably would help to specify what kind of oppression you’re thinking of, who’s doing it, whom it’s being done to, etc. “Are whites oppressing blacks?” is a little like “Are blacks victimizing whites?” or “Are women taking advantage of men?” or “Are policemen abusing their power?” The answer to all those questions is “Yes, sometimes.” But the details of who and how often and how much all matter quite a bit.
“Are whites discriminating against blacks in employment decisions?” will surely get the same answer–yes, sometimes. How often, and how big is the effect, and who’s doing it and who’s suffering for it–those are relevant questions for figuring out how to respond.
When people voluntarily segregate–without the power of the law to enforce anything–is this a mechanism by which they’re oppressing others? I don’t think the answer to that is at all obvious. If I consciously try to move to a neighborhood that’s almost all white[1], whom is that oppressing, and how? How about if I consciously date only people of my religion? Is that oppressing someone?
[1] I’m not planning to–I like my very multicultural region just fine.
When people voluntarily segregate–without the power of the law to enforce anything–is this a mechanism by which they’re oppressing others? I don’t think the answer to that is at all obvious. If I consciously try to move to a neighborhood that’s almost all white[1], whom is that oppressing, and how?
I think if you move it up from the personal to the business level, so the economic power involved becomes more obvious, it becomes clearer.
For example, if a business said “we are only going to purchase [generic product] from white clients”, that would be classic case of racial discrimination (no different than if a business said they were going to only sell to white customers). Now switch the generic product for real estate: What if the business only bought homes from white customers, in white neighborhoods?
So conceptually, purposefully buying homes only from white people, isn’t much different from, for example, a hotel refusing to book rooms to black customers.
I am sure there are a lot of people who don’t view, say, a factory refusing to hire black workers as a form of oppression. But if you do think that is a form of oppression, I find it hard to square how refusing to buy houses from black sellers is conceptually any different.
At the interpersonal level (dating, ect) the economic power involved goes away, so I think the analogy can stop there.
I don’t think that quite works. I used to deliberately buy coffee from a supplier who bought it directly from small farmers (almost all indigenous peoples, so racial in a way), and chicken directly from small farmers (much less Hispanic than factory-farm chicken). It doesn’t seem to me that that was in any way oppressive.
We were discussing voluntary residential segregation earlier. That might range from whites slightly preferring to have mostly white neighbors (thus the parable of the polygons–I think that model originates with Schelling) to whites having a strong preference for mostly white neighbors that dictates where they will buy/rent, all the way to attempts to establish some kind of all-white neighborhoods or buildings or something.
Now, as far as I can see, the first two of those are impossible to forbid by law, whereas any attempt to use zoning or contract law to establish a whites only (or blacks only or Chinese only or whatever) neighborhood or town or apartment building would absolutely violate existing American discrimination law. I think the original question (maybe just where I came in) was whether whites’ preference for white neighbors, without any legal enforcement mechanisms, was evil. That’s where a bunch of people have answered “yes,” whereas I don’t see why it’s evil.
I can see that there are situations where it might lead to bad outcomes, and it seems kind-of dumb and narrow-minded to me, but the preference doesn’t seem evil. It certainly seems no more evil than blacks, hispanics, Chinese, Jews, etc., seeking to live mainly surrounded by people like them. There are benefits as well as costs to that sort of thing.
The argument for why it’s evil seems to turn on whites having a uniquely horrible history of excluding nonwhites. I don’t think that works–I don’t think whites have a uniquely horrible history of such things, and I don’t think our history would inform whether having such a preference is evil now anyway.
In my (strongly anti-nationalist cosmopolitan) view, preferring to live in homogeneous societies is morally suspect because favoring people of one’s own tribe/ethnicity over other human beings is always bigoted and wrong; it places illusory and damaging distinctions above our common humanity. This absolutely applies regardless of ethnicity, not just to white people. It’s also absolutely true that the vast majority of people display some degree of this favoritism and that it may be partially an innate tendency (though it is certainly exacerbated by social conditioning). But it’s something decent people should recognize and try to avoid in themselves and should not encourage in others.
However, the degree of badness of the preference depends highly on the means used to act according to it. Making your own choice without trying to influence anyone else’s choice is not so bad; using social sanctions to try to nudge others to choose homogeneity is much worse; using state power to force homogeneity, and particularly to forcibly exclude “others” from your neighborhood in order to preserve the homogeneity you like, is worst of all. So it’s legitimate to be much *more* condemnatory of white preferences for homogeneity simply because historically white people have much more frequently used force to preserve homogeneity, and arguably continue to do so today through mechanisms ranging from exclusionary zoning to immigration restrictions.
I’m 100% with you until you started using historical “white people were super bad” stuff.
using state power to force homogeneity, and particularly to forcibly exclude “others” from your neighborhood in order to preserve the homogeneity you like, is worst of all
I’m assuming you’re a strong critic of Israel then.
Israel’s level of state enforced homogeneity doesn’t even rise to the historical American South, let alone China/Japan.
Even if you include the non-Israeli occupied Palestinians in that rule, they’re about where historical America overall was relative to say Indian tribes.
And I’ll note that most open borders supporters are also against Israel.
Israel’s level of state enforced homogeneity doesn’t even rise to the historical American South, let alone China/Japan.
Agreed.
And I’ll note that most open borders supporters are also against Israel.
Also agreed. FTR, I am pro-Israel, and I encourage them to live as they wish. People should be able to live in a diverse society if they wish, and should be able to live in a homogeneous society if they wish.
FTR, I am pro-Israel, and I encourage them to live as they wish. People should be able to live in a diverse society if they wish, and should be able to live in a homogeneous society if they wish.
I agree with both of those things, I was just pointing out that I find the “open borders for Israel” talking point to be fairly stupid. There are a small number of hypocrites who want Israel to control their borders but not America, but most people are consistent one way or the other.
There are a small number of hypocrites who want Israel to control their borders but not America, but most people are consistent one way or the other.
Yes and there are a larger number of slightly less hypocritical hypocrites who want diversity in America (short of open borders) and no diversity for Israel. The troll twitter account “Open Borders for Israel” was quite effective at unearthing them.
There is an even greater number of even slightly less hypocritical hypocrites who will virtue signal by calling America racist and never level the same charge against Israel.
Israeli Residents, Including Mayor, Protest Sale of Home to Arab Family
‘We don’t have a problem cooperating with Arab businesses, but we won’t have them live here. We stand by the residents in this protest. Afula must remain a Jewish city,’ council member of the northern city says
Afula is a city in Northern Israel, not a West Bank settlement. They may not have segregated drinking fountains, but it really looks like legally sanctioned housing discrimination is a thing. Perhaps a better comparison is the historical American North, with its de facto sundown towns and so on.
FWIW your assumption re: Israel is correct. Nations are foul squalid things unworthy of the allegiance of any civilized human being; tribal nations especially so.
Nations are foul squalid things unworthy of the allegiance of any civilized human being; tribal nations especially so.
Until we evolve to be non-tribal rational beings, I’m afraid we’re stuck with them. Do you consider yourself to be a member of any tribe, whether ethnic, cultural, or ideological?
Oh sure, I’m a member of a bunch of tribes (including Jewish, for whatever that’s worth in this context, and as you may already know I’m drawing on a pretty rich history of anti-nationalist Jewish intellectuals here). I just disapprove of founding political entities for the purposes of aggrandizement of particular tribes. One of the respects in which the USA is less bad than many other nations, for example, is that it isn’t founded on tribal aggrandizement, and indeed its founding principles tend to push against tribal aggrandizement.
I disagree a bit here–nations *can* be terrible things that motivate people to murder their neighbors with the best of motives. But humans are tribal, deep down in our basic nature. Nations can (and at best, do) harness that tribalism in positive directions. It’s a better world when I see the poor guy living down the street from me as “us” rather than “them,” and nationalism is one way that works to help me see him that way.
In very broad terms, I think the societies that function best are the ones that take human nature, even the worst parts of it, and harness them to positive ends. Think capitalism turning greed and obsessiveness into positives that make the world into a huge wealth and well-being engine, social and marital customs that turn lust into a drive to make a stable family, social conventions that turn envy into a drive to work harder and maintain your house better, etc. All those things have plenty of downsides, too, but there’s a reason the most successful societies we know have all of them to some greater or lesser extent. All the most successful societies we know also are nations and have nationalism and party politics of some kind, and I expect that this is a way of harnessing the potentially dark human tendency toward tribalism in a positive direction. If we could just discover aliens, we’d probably manage to turn our tribalism into human-tribalism, but until then, this might be the best we can do.
I agree with your later comment, though–I like very much that the US’ definition of who’s an American is based on ideas and shared culture, rather than on blood-and-soil nationalism.
Asians have far more often used state force to enforce homogeneity.
Communist (really more fascist) China is doing it right now against the Uighurs to a degree that would make the most stalwart supporter of apartheid blanche, and Japan was of course the past master of it and still struggles with the legacy of it.
What you’re missing here is that there are advantages to being surrounded with people with similar culture and background and assumptions and social class and such–it’s easier to get along with the neighbors, you’re more likely to share the same goals and concerns, etc. It’s easier to make friends, to organize as a neighborhood to deal with some collective problem, etc. That’s offset by some disadvantages–monocultures in thinking and interests and life situation and such. But it’s a tradeoff, and most of that tradeoff isn’t motivated by any kind of hatred or anything.
As an example, most people marry others of the same race, national origin, language, and approximately the same age. There are a lot of reasons why this is true–there are big advantages in a marriage to having a lot of shared cultural assumptions and references.
As another example, people usually have friends who are a similar age and in a similar part of their life–young parents are often friends with other young parents, for example. That’s segregation by age and life choices, and it makes sense because young parents have similar constraints and experiences and concerns and can sometimes pool resources to do things together–taking their kids to a theme park together, for example, or swapping babysitting for date nights.
So it’s legitimate to be much *more* condemnatory of white preferences for homogeneity simply because historically white people have much more frequently used force to preserve homogeneity, and arguably continue to do so today through mechanisms ranging from exclusionary zoning to immigration restrictions.
First, I don’t think there have been laws to enforce residential segregation in the US for something like two generations (50 years or so) by now, and restrictive covenants haven’t been enforceable for about the same length of time. Exclusionary zoning is absolutely not done by race in the US[1]. So the things you’re talking about as extra bad are forbidden by law in the US, have been for a couple generations, and are widely viewed as evil and unacceptable by whites as well as everyone else. This strikes me as a pretty weak reason to condemn white preferences for homogeneity.
Second, before you tell me that American whites have used force to preserve homogeneity more often than other groups, can you maybe explain whom you’re comparing us with? How do we compare with people in India, Japan, and Nigeria, for example?
[1] Immigration restrictions seem like a complete red herring.
Exclusionary zoning is not explicitly racial anymore, but it has a strong disparate impact which entrenches and perpetuates the consequences of prior explicit segregation. This is unlikely to be coincidental or even unintended, especially e.g. in the case of wealthy communities resisting the construction of affordable housing developments. The book to read on this is Richard Rothstein, _The Color of Law_.
Immigration restrictions are not a red herring at all. They forcibly exclude people based on arbitrary accidents of birth, and often are explicitly motivated (and even more often implicitly motivated) by a desire to preserve the ethnic composition of a state.
It’s certainly true that nonwhites have also used force to preserve homogeneity, and Japanese immigration restrictions are a good example. Japanese state-sponsored racism is also a problem in the global context, but in the North American neighborhood homogeneity dynamics context that is the usual one for discussions of how blameworthy homogeneity preference should be, white state-sponsored racism is the more salient problem.
It’s certainly true that nonwhites have also used force to preserve homogeneity, and Japanese immigration restrictions are a good example. Japanese state-sponsored racism is also a problem in the global context, but in the North American neighborhood homogeneity dynamics context that is the usual one for discussions of how blameworthy homogeneity preference should be, white state-sponsored racism is the more salient problem.
I think a lot of assumptions are doing a lot of work here. Whats the evidence that Japanese immigration restrictions are a negative for the world? Isn’t there a large positive to having a place like Japan that produces its own quirky things like pokemon and anime? Thinking of diversity only in an intra-territorial way seems backwards.
I think you’re moving the goalposts a bit there. As long as there are differences in economic outcomes across racial groups, zoning that serves to make houses more expensive will have disparate impact. But it’s worth noting that the disparate impact here makes it harder for blacks to move into the nicest neighborhoods than whites, but also harder for whites to do so than Asians. It’s a little hard to explain that pattern by white bigotry. If you look at the ethnic makeup of the expensive neighborhoods with the best public schools where I live, you’ll see a disproportionate number of East Asians and South Asians, and a disproportionate fraction of the whites will be Jewish. Again, this isn’t the pattern you’d see if this were white people discriminating via zoning laws to keep the nonwhites and non-WASPS out.
Historically, we had whites doing exactly that, via zoning laws and restrictive covenants, a couple generations ago, so we know exactly what it looks like. You get neighborhoods full of white people who go to mainline Protestant churches–not neighborhoods full of Chinese and Vietnamese and Indian familes living next door to white families with a smattering of black and hispanic families.
Immigration restrictions are not a red herring at all. They forcibly exclude people based on arbitrary accidents of birth, and often are explicitly motivated (and even more often implicitly motivated) by a desire to preserve the ethnic composition of a state.
Immigration restrictions do indeed exclude people based on arbitrary accidents of birth–that’s actually the point of those restrictions. But given that basically every nation on Earth has them (certainly most every nation you’d actually want to live in), it’s kind-of hard to see this as being some kind of product of the unique bigotry of whites.
Some people would like to run our immigration system to tune the US’ ethnic mix to something more to their liking. Among them, some want a whiter country, but many others want a less-white country. I think it’s not so hard to find quotes from mainstream powerful people noting the benefits of the US changing from a majority-white to a majority-nonwhite country. Now, personally, I don’t think it’s especially important what continent the majority of our ancestors came from, but if it’s bad for people to campaign to set up immigration laws to keep the country white, it’s hard to see why it’s not also bad for others to campaign to set up immigration laws to turn the country browner. Either both groups are bad or neither is.
There is a large difference between “black person wants to live in a black neighborhood” versus “black person wants to live in a homogeneously black society“. Racially homogenous society could be accomplished only by forced racial segregation, which is a bad thing.
There is a large difference between “black person wants to live in a black neighborhood” versus “black person wants to live in a homogeneously black society“
What is the difference really? It’s only one of scope. In the latter case, our hypothetical african american has expanded his view of the world in which he lives beyond the neighbourhood he physically inhabits, and has begun to think about the institutions he is subject to. I applaud him and I certainly don’t doubt his morals, far from it. And if we want to take the example to its logical conclusion, a sovereign black nation carving a chunk out of the USA, then fine, I am still happy. Were you so upset when Britain lost its possessions in the Caribbean? Are you desperate to take the Bahamas as a part of Florida? If not, why so mad at the prospect of a black on the mainland with analogous ideas?
Racially homogenous society could be accomplished only by forced racial segregation, which is a bad thing.
I don’t believe this, but I also don’t believe this is said in good faith. I am regularly subjected to things which I don’t want and which most people don’t want, and I am told it’s called democracy, and I am told to suck it up, and I am told that I am evil for disagreeing with democracy in any of its particulars. When I hear people on your side of this argument talk about how forced segregation is evil, what I am actually hearing is that you brand anyone evil even for daring to opine that re-organising one’s nation might be a good idea; let alone building enough momentum to change the constitution and get it done. Pity the 49% of people who vote against segregation! They are so wretched that they don’t even love democracy! All in all I detect a lot of post-hoc reasoning back to the axiom of “diversity is our strength”, but more generally the axiom “political engagement within prescribed parameters good, metapolitical thought, leaving the overton window, or even considering who is setting those parameters ENTIRELY FORBIDDEN”.
What is the difference really? It’s only one of scope.
I do not claim that it would be ok to form some black closed neighborhood with no whites allowed, that would be indeed essentially the same thing as creating racially homogenous society. I think that it is perfectly fine when an individual is moving from one dwelling to the next to make decisions based on what is a current culture of a neighborhood, and “race” is sometimes proxy for culture. If someone prefers to live among Chinese people in predominantly Chinese quarter, I don’t see nothing wrong with that, but it is a very different matter to declare Chinese quarter off limits to whites or blacks.
Difference between people preferring to live in a certain neighborhood and people wanting racially homogenous society is that if racial homogeneity of society or even of neighborhood isn’t enforced by racialized legal restrictions or by some sort of extralegal violence, it will not stay racially pure forever. So, in order to enforce racial purity, you need restrictions on personal freedom.
Of course I do not claim that all restrictions on personal freedom are bad, but those based on racial justifications pretty much always are
That is a cute model, but it does not at all correspond to what is happening in the real world, where countries that want to achieve and maintain racial purity have to resort to pretty drastic measures.
It corresponds very well to what happens when there aren’t restrictions on mixing across groups. Personal preferences mean that there’s still some amount of voluntary segregation, but also that there’s some level of voluntary mixing, and the balance between those shifts over time based on the preferences of the people in the society.
That is a cute model, but it does not at all correspond to what is happening in the real world, where countries that want to achieve and maintain racial purity have to resort to pretty drastic measures.
Which countries want to maintain racial purity? And, I understand why this discussion veers off on tangents like this, but I would like to point out that the original point was about individuals wanting to live with people sharing their ethnicity (or at least their culture).
Also, I think it’s interesting that the polygon model was used as a way to argue that if people even had a slight preference for their own group, dramatic segregation would occur rapidly. And now, you’re arguing that dramatic segregation cant occur unless drastic measures are taken. So as arguments in favor of assigning moral blame to those who want to self-segregate, we have 2 contradictory positions. I realize they come from different people, but it’s interesting nonetheless. It supports my view that people start from the premise that segregation is bad and work backwards from there.
Perhaps I was too dismissive of polygon moving exercise… If you don´t interpret its result as several racially homogenous societies, but as partly voluntary mixed, partly voluntary segregated single society, then that is indeed what I think happens in a real life without forced segregation.
@jermo sapiens
Which countries want to maintain racial purity?
Oh, c´mon, surely you could think of some examples, especially from the past.
If I wanted to steelman the “woke” argument here, I’d say that Social Justice advocates believe that racial minorities seek to live with their own kind for protection against bigotry, whereas people in the majority group seek to live with their own kind because they dislike minorities and want to deny them access to material and social resources. In their view, Black people only want to live with other Blacks because they want a “safe space” where they don’t have to worry about being harassed or discriminated against, not because they’re racist against Whites. This is compounded by the fact that White people typically have greater access to land, wealth, education and career opportunities, and so forth; thus, Whites who keep out non-Whites are harming them in a way that non-Whites keeping out Whites are not.
And in fairness, a lot of Social Justice advocates do apply the same logic to non-White majority groups when they’re talking about foreign countries. For instance, many of them are strongly critical of Israel’s cultural/religious homogenity and Japan’s racial/ethnic homogenity. It’s gotten to the point where Japan is frequently held up as an example of what the West should strive not to be, and it’s common to see arguments on the cultural left about how closed borders are the underlying cause of Japan’s economic and social crises.
As for my own personal take, I’m generally opposed to double standards, and I think racial homogenity is something that’s undesirable in general, whether it’s majority or minority groups seeking to isolate themselves. For example, the Hasidic Jewish communities here in NYC are extremely isolated and insular, and that makes me deeply uncomfortable with them. It doesn’t help that I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from people who were raised in those communities and taught from childhood that gentiles were untrustworthy, punished for celebrating Christian or secular holidays, forced into arranged marriages, ostracized for being queer or not conforming to gender standards, and so forth.
The interesting thing to me is that as a left-leaning person, I thought this was obvious/everyone knew it. Obviously I was wrong. That forces me to re-evaluate arguments from people I thought were simply taking a disingeuous position – i.e. intentionally ignoring this (to me) elephant in the room in order to make their points.
I thought this was obvious/everyone knew it. Obviously I was wrong. That forces me to re-evaluate arguments from people I thought were simply taking a disingeuous position – i.e. intentionally ignoring this (to me) elephant in the room in order to make their points.
This is the value of discussing in good faith with your political opponents. Thank you.
FTR, though, although I do think LadyJane made a good argument for applying a double standard towards the majority, I dont think it settles the issue. But I’m glad the argument was made as it allows my arguments to address the actual opposing arguments, rather than some strawman.
On LadyJane’s actual point:
I’d say that Social Justice advocates believe that racial minorities seek to live with their own kind for protection against bigotry, whereas people in the majority group seek to live with their own kind because they dislike minorities and want to deny them access to material and social resources.
So SJ advocates believe an empirical claim about what is going on in the mind of minorities and majorities. I think it’s a fair assumption to believe that, but I also think it’s fair to assume that both minorities and majorities find things easier/simpler and more familiar in homogeneous settings. That is, there is no need to invoke “fear of bigotry” and “dislike of minorities” to explain each group’s behavior.
Obviously, the reality is probably a mix of both, but there is also probably one factor which is dominant over others. I would bet on the simplicity/familiarity factor being the dominant, and I would expect SJ advocates to consider “fear of bigotry” and “dislike of minorities” to being dominant.
It’s gotten to the point where Japan is frequently held up as an example of what the West should strive not to be, and it’s common to see arguments on the cultural left about how closed borders are the underlying cause of Japan’s economic and social crises.
Can we probe this some? I agree the West should be striving not to be Japan, but how much of that is down to closed borders? Like, isn’t an extremely low birth rate a problem regardless of your immigration policy?
My understanding is that Japan’s birth rate is not markedly lower than that of natives of other post-industrial countries, but there’s a virtual absence of high fertility replacement migration that obscures the effect of low native TFR.
Migration will affect population growth but not necessarily TFR unless the migrants have a different TFR, which they usually do.
My point is, isn’t that only putting the problem off? Like, my impression is that after a few generations the immigrant population is going to be below replacement, too. So maybe you stopped your welfare state from collapsing this generation, but you did it by turning above replacement fertility people into below replacement fertility people… you’d better hope that works forever.
@Nick — It depends on the problem you’re trying to solve.
If you’re a post industrial nation trying to fund tax coffers pensions with no other concerns the smart thing might be work visas aimed at high income earning people that aren’t raising kids (who go to public school and therefore cost money)
Some have argued and i don’t have the data to confirm or refute on hand that migration can be a net fiscal drain even in the first generation because the incomes aren’t particularly high and the children need to go to school which can be quite pricey. The US case is muddled because the same household can have very different fiscal impacts at the state/federal/local level.
If you’re only interested in keeping population stable or growing in theory it’s sustainable as long as your own country is small relative to the rest of the world you could just disregard TFR and just focus on migration.
I agree it’s not sustainable if you want the whole world to adopt the kind of economic and social order that generates negative TFRs, but it’s a long-run consideration are few leaders except maybe the chinese are thinking that far ahead. I also doubt any OECD leader is going to complain that, say, Africa might inherit the world b/c they were the last ones to undergo the demographic transition and were therefore were used extensively to replace falling populations elsewhere.
But as *i* said elsewhere i don’t think negative TFR is a permanent phenomenon. Internal social/economic factors will eventually countervale, and using replacement migration to maintain density levels, prevent ‘labor shortages’, etc. will only act to prevent the transition.
If this were applied to white minorities like Afrikaaners by the left, I would find it more believable. But I find they protest places like Orania generally.
@EchoChaos: That’s less because they’re hypocrites and more because they’re ignorant of exactly what’s going on in South Africa. They assume that the racial dynamics in South Africa match those in North America or Western Europe, just with different population ratios. In my experience, the Social Justice advocates who actually have some knowledge about South African politics and culture have more nuanced views.
If this were applied to white minorities like Afrikaaners by the left, I would find it more believable. But I find they protest places like Orania generally.
The Afrikaners are a special case, and it is very unlikely you’ll get sympathy for them, especially among the left. If you are the ethnic minority literally ran the system that made apartheid into an internationally known term, you kinda lose the moral high ground for later claiming that you only live amongst your own.
Why should I presume the an unreasonably charitable interpretation of their outlook when I’ve got pretty good historical evidence pointing me towards, “hmm, they’re probably just racist?”
This is sort of the exact “sins of the fathers” problem that I am concerned about.
Afrikaners are a minority with a government that has specifically used them as a target to rally racial resentment.
The fact that Afrikaner politicians a generation ago did something should have no bearing on that if you’re actually being consistent.
And it’s why a lot of whites think that social justice is anti-white versus anti-racist.
ETA: And note that actual South African racists don’t like Orania, because of its anti-racist insistence on not using black labor, which they view as exploitation.
Adding a second comment: I wouldn’t live on Orania (I’m not Afrikaner) or even an American Orania, because my black family members couldn’t live with me and I care more about them than I do about random white Americans.
But what I am opposed to is the idea that whites have been especially evil historically and therefore are the one people who aren’t allowed to have all-white or white majority towns.
This is true even for groups that have objectively done bad things in the past because that group is “all humans”.
For example, nobody is saying that the British oppressing the Nigerians was fine because the ancestors of those Nigerians sold people into horrific slavery in the Caribbean.
If you are the ethnic minority literally ran the system that made apartheid into an internationally known term
And then gave up power, a decision I’m sure many are starting to regret. But other white groups should still give up power, and you’ll have plenty of sympathy for them when they are minorities, right Aftagley?
nobody is saying that the British oppressing the Nigerians was fine because the ancestors of those Nigerians sold people into horrific slavery in the Caribbean.
No. Regrettably, there are people who do say this. It’s a thing.
And then gave up power, a decision I’m sure many are starting to regret. But other white groups should still give up power, and you’ll have plenty of sympathy for them when they are minorities, right Aftagley?
I really think you should ease up on the snark here.
No. Regrettably, there are people who do say this. It’s a thing.
That saddens but fails to surprise me. I should’ve said it’s not mainstream in Social Justice thought, because there is always a group with weird thoughts like that.
But what I am opposed to is the idea that whites have been especially evil historically and therefore are the one people who aren’t allowed to have all-white or white majority towns.
This is true even for groups that have objectively done bad things in the past because that group is “all humans”.
I was writing a response to this, but I realized that LadyJane said it way better than I could up above. I’m sympathetic to groups like this who want to live in insular communities as a protection against bigotry, less so for those who are doing so as a result of their bigotry.
My opinion then, comes down to one question: do I think the group in question is especially bigoted, or especially fearful of being bigoted against. I’m not South African, I don’t know the specifics here, but the history of that particular group of people (as well as some surface-level research) makes me think they’re bigoted, so they don’t have my support.
And then gave up power, a decision I’m sure many are starting to regret.
As opposed to continuing apartheid and having an increasingly violent resistance movement that likely ended in revolution and mass slaughter of the previous totalitarian government? I’m sure that they can now, in the relatively peaceful and prosperous SA look back on the SA of the 1970s and regret the changes but I’m damn sure none of them would want to live in the hypothetical 2020 SA in which apartheid was never rolled back.
But other white groups should still give up power, and you’ll have plenty of sympathy for them when they are minorities, right Aftagley?
Sympathy is such a weird word to use here. No, I wouldn’t have sympathy for them, but I tend not to be a very sympathetic just kind of in general. I can appreciate that their life is harder now than it was when they benefited from a system of repression and exploitation, but that doesn’t mean I have sympathy for them now.
No. Regrettably, there are people who do say this. It’s a thing.
Not saying this doesn’t happen, but I’ve honestly never heard it. Mind linking towards a source?
My opinion then, comes down to one question: do I think the group in question is especially bigoted, or especially fearful of being bigoted against. I’m not South African, I don’t know the specifics here, but the history of that particular group of people (as well as some surface-level research) makes me think they’re bigoted, so they don’t have my support.
This isn’t a gotcha or anything like that, but basing your judgment, even partially, of whether some particular group of people is bigoted based on what their ancestors were like seems quite bigoted. When trying to judge a particular group of people, why not actually judge those specific individuals that make up that group of people? Sure, that takes a lot more work, possibly more work than it’s possible to accomplish, but in that case I would default to agnosticism instead of rounding people off to their ancestors.
Sure, that takes a lot more work, possibly more work than it’s possible to accomplish, but in that case I would default to agnosticism instead of rounding people off to their ancestors.
Ancestors? I’m not judging them by their ancestors, I’m judging them by the South Africa that existed up until 1994. I have a sweater given to me by my dad that has been around longer than a non apartheid South Africa. If someone was on the younger side of working age when Apartheid ended, they likely wouldn’t have retired yet.
At worst, I’m judging these people based on their parent’s actions, but a surface-level review of the town makes me think it slants a elderly. Should they be judged by their distant ancestors? clearly not. Should they be judged by what they did 30 years ago when they’re now taking action that makes it look like they didn’t learn anything? probably.
Leaving aside whether these particular Afrikaners are bad, is there any white minority that you believe should be allowed to create their own exclusive towns?
Poles? Germans? English? Scots-Irish?
The Chinese have been every bit as awful to minorities as whites or worse, but Chinatowns aren’t condemned by social justice, so it clearly isn’t related to historical treatment.
It’s not clear to me what the difference between “bigoted” and “prefers to associate with their own kind” is. But it’s hard to believe that the motive of preferring to associate with people of your race is evil when held by whites but laudable when held by anyone else. Personally, I’d say it’s not evil at all, though it’s kind-of narrow minded and limiting.
Wanting to limit your surroundings to people of your own race in a place with a long and bitter history of racial hatred and a lot of violent crime seems like something that could plausibly be done simply for the sake of safety. It’s very hard for me to see taking actions like this to avoid being murdered, raped, or robbed as evil, even if you and your ancestors did some really bad stuff in the past.
At worst, I’m judging these people based on their parent’s actions, but a surface-level review of the town makes me think it slants a elderly. Should they be judged by their distant ancestors? clearly not. Should they be judged by what they did 30 years ago when they’re now taking action that makes it look like they didn’t learn anything? probably.
I mean, judging people based on their parents’ actions seems no less bigoted than judging them based on the actions of their distant ancestors or even just the actions of complete strangers.
And are you judging them by what they did 30 years ago? As in, those specific individuals that comprise the group that’s under discussion? There tends to be a decent amount of turnover in most societies, if only due to birth and death, in 30 years, and rounding that off to “what they did 30 years ago” without actually rigorously checking the individuals seems, again, bigoted.
I don’t know about South African law, but in the US, there’s no way you’re going to get the formal legal ability to do that, for any racial group. What you can and do get is voluntary segregation. Sometimes, that has a threat of violence or ostracism behind it–presumably, some town in Idaho that’s half white supremacists is not a great place for a black family to move into. The law should (but may not in practice) come down hard on anyone using violence to try to force that family out, but on the other hand, it’s not a shock if the family looks around and decides they’d rather not live there even without any threat of violence.
And the overwhelming majority of residential segregation in the US comes out of a mix of personal preferences and economics–where are the jobs, how much do houses cost here, etc. That’s why the really high-end neighborhoods tend to have a lot of Asians.
Orania is legal in South Africa, although unpopular with the current government.
But I’m talking the moral and social justice point, not particularly the legality, which I think you have right. As I’ve said, given that I have black family, this isn’t exactly of critical interest to me in actual life.
It is my experience that Social Justice tends to be white Blue Tribers who are looking for a handle to bash the outgroup, which is why they don’t admit to any group of whites that could justly do this while ignoring Asian atrocities and being accepting of their ethnic enclaves.
Not saying this doesn’t happen, but I’ve honestly never heard it. Mind linking towards a source?
I don’t have any serious sources, blog posts, what have you, to link to. I’m sorry. There’s a brand of colonialism apologia that will make arguments of the kind that slavery wasn’t so bad because these slaves were bought and they were going to be enslaved anyway. It ignores entirely the sheer fact that an increase in demand will in turn cause people to drive up supply, but I find it depressing enough that people could fool themselves into thinking that justifies slavery and I don’t want to bother with it any further.
@EchoChaos says: “…white Blue Tribers who are looking for a handle to bash the outgroup…”
Somehow this statement reminded of Virginia governor Northam’s blackface and Klan robe old yearbook photo revelation, black Virginians were less likely to say he should resign than either white Democrats or Republicans, the Republicans presumably may have just wanted a Democrat to reason, but that white Democrats were less forgiving than black Democrats is interesting.
It may be that since white Democrats are younger on average than black Democrats, and the young are just less forgiving of these things explains this, but in-group social norm policing may be involved, I’m thinking of college students who chastise each other on what are correct words to use (i.e. “Latinx” instead of Latina or Latino) but are less likely to hassle construction workers building on campus, and won’t go across town to evangelize actual Latinos to de-genderize their language.
I’m thinking now of my joining Facebook this year where I occasionally posts links to the songs I loved in the ’80’s, and there’s one band I put on the radio back then, but I fear to post now because some lyrics could be thought of (without context) as “anti-black”, and it’s not my three black “Facebook fiends” I fear offending, one I saw already “liked” the band, one was also a volunteer at the radio station in the ’80’s and knows the context, and the other is so Metal that he wouldn’t care, instead it’s the half dozen non-black ladies who are now school teachers plus two leftist guys that I fear would be most offended (or feel they must be), and I can easily imagine the two conservative leaning “Facebook friends” of mine complaining about the “PC” friends, and a “flame war” would start (in the ’80’s 90% of all of them were “anarchist” punk rockers and this would go differently, also no internet).
Pre-Facebook (six months ago) I didn’t have to think of this stuff.
@DeWitt says: “…will make arguments of the kind that slavery wasn’t so bad because…”
The sea passage alone made the intercontinental slave trade worse, not even counting other New World brutalities, the accounts of the conditions on the ships are truly awful, there’s a reason the British went from slave traders to suppressing the trade in a relatively short period of time, and that the U.S. Constitution listed a year after which no more slaves were to be imported.
That seems like a reasonable definition, but I don’t think it’s the one that everyone else uses. Right now, if someone says “I prefer to live in a neighborhood and work in a job with people of my own race,” they’re likely to be called a bigot regardless of whether they have any animus toward other races or seek to injure them in any way. Indeed, I’d guess that at this point, most racism in the US is more of the “I’d rather avoid you” form than the “I want to kill/beat up/chase away all of you,” though I don’t really have any data about that.
I think there’s a really important distinction you brought up before, between “we like us” and “we hate you” separatists. The polygon game was a demonstration of the idea that you can get de facto segregation out of just “we like us” sentiments, with nobody hating anyone else.
I think the potential social problem here occurs when the “we like us” sentiments create a kind of ingroup that’s very hard to break into, *and* when you have to join that ingroup in order to be successful. So if most of the WASPS prefer their own kind and most of the Irish Catholics prefer their own kind, but it’s still possible for the Irish Catholics to become partners in law firms, then it’s probably not such a big problem. But if the “we like us” tendency means that only WASPs get offered jobs in the top law firms, while only Irishmen can get a job on the police force, then that creates some problems.
This is IMO the strong argument for why sometimes, voluntary segregation makes trouble in the world. It’s not a problem if wealthy old white men want to have a private club where only their kind can join…unless access to that club is the main way you get access to the best jobs and business deals and such. The thing is, that can be a problem even if not a single member of that club has any particular animus toward outsiders.
On the other hand, there’s a genuine dilemma here. Personal freedom includes the freedom of whom you want to spend your time with. Private clubs ought to be free to include or exclude whomever they choose, for any reason or none. There are substantial benefits to having places where you can let your hair down and be with people very much like yourself. It’s not obvious how to trade off the benefits of allowing that personal choice and freedom against the benefits of breaking down barriers to letting outsiders succeed.
And in practice, it seems like one way those barriers have been broken down in the past was that the US had a lot of different paths to success. Plenty of people who were excluded from those clubs a few generations back because they were the wrong kind (Jews, Irishmen, Italians, blacks, etc.) were eventually so successful that the clubs wanted them to join or didn’t dare tell them no. Plenty of utter nobodies made fortunes over the years, plenty of “not one of us” groups prospered, and then they became the people you wanted *inside* your club.
Another example of non-bigotry related segregation is what I have termed, “the Costco problem”. In our nieghborhood’s Costco, the traffic never flows properly, contra the Costco by my parent’s house. And this is because a high % of the immigrant community don’t queue or move through aisles in the same way as you normally see. This makes a Costco trip marginally more frustrating that it should be and you waste an extra 3-5 minutes compared to if it was all people descended from pre 1900 immigrants.
“…is there any valid reason why preferring to live in homogeneous societies is morally suspect?”
Put in that anodyne way, that doesn’t sound bad, and hardly different than how people already chose neighborhoods based on affinity, but as a practical and historical matter efforts to make societies more homogeneous (Khmer Rouge, Nazis, et cetera) have created the worst Hellscape known to humanity, and what efforts there are made towards greater ‘diversity’ hardly near at all in being oppressive.
I may bother to respond to some of the follow up issues in this thread, but especially compared to 40 years ago where I live “race” and “culture” hardly correlate at all anymore, chances are that a “fellow white” I encounter will be foreign born and I share more culturally with the non-whites I encounter are pretty common, multiple tines have I brought my sons to local playgrounds and the only other folks there with American accents are non-white, besides I think a lot of so-called “racial cultural differences” in the U.S.A. are regional cultural differences in disguise – which if I get to it will likely be a very long post, suffice it to say some centuries old “Negro” ballads share far too many lyrics with British folksongs written down in the 18th century, and musical instruments with African antecedents are used in overwhelmingly white hamlets in Appalachia, the culture is far too shared across the color line, with links of language, religion, and (when you dig eally deep) even bloodlines, despite centuries of a legal racial caste system make me think further racial separatist projects are absurd.
Put in that anodyne way, that doesn’t sound bad, and hardly different than how people already chose neighborhoods based on affinity, but as a practical and historical matter efforts to make societies more homogeneous (Khmer Rouge, Nazis, et cetera)
Right. Which is why I asked that question and not the question of whether societies should be reshaped to become homogeneous. I’m thinking of the guy who decides to live in an area which is predominantly white and who opposes refugee settlement in his area, not genocidal maniacs.
Still, you can’t blame people for noticing all the skulls.
I’m in favor of noticing skulls wherever there are skulls to be noticed. That shouldnt preclude asking questions in fact quite the opposite.
The reason I ask these types of loaded questions with a high CW aspect to them is in fact because these questions need to be settled by discussion rather than by accumulating skulls. To paraphrase Sam Harris, the alt-right may be despicable, but their popularity stems from the fact that their claim contains a kernel of truth to them. Specifically, the conventional wisdom will have inconsistencies in it, and the people challenging conventional wisdom will exploit this inconsistency to push their agenda, which in the case of the alt-right will be very harmful.
The proper defense against this is to have good people acknowledge the inconsistencies and address them honestly and in good faith. Unfortunately this is not happening right now. When a troll puts up a “It’s OK to be white” poster, helpful responses could include ignoring them, or to reply with the message of “Obviously it’s OK to be white, why do you feel the need to express that.” The absolute worst response, the response that plays right into what the troll wants, is to go ballistic and to vow to hunt down whoever put that super hateful poster.
“…I’m thinking of the guy who decides to live in an area which is predominantly white and who opposes refugee settlement in his area…”
Since I’m on record as finding college graduates incredibly disruptive, and college students as incredibly annoying and wish so many wouldn’t move here (unfortunately I can’t suss out a way to do that that also isn’t disruptive dagnabbit!) I can’t throw many stones here, but as to ‘morally justified’, I suppose the Christian/Humanitarian/Tikkun Olam thing would be total charity of all to all (“Is the leper or the cripple worse off today?”), but most people aren’t Mother Teresa (nor are they Pol Pot!) so it’s scale of need vs. scale of sacrifice compared to most, plus relative kinship of those in need (Billionaires in cities that are swamped with homelessness sending more aid to fight malaria overseas than here at home kind of bugs me, even if the overseas need is greater, the Zuckerberg’s spent some of their fortune helping San Francisco General Hospital so I cut them more slack than others).
So let’s take a somewhat imaginary example: Iraqi translators for U.S. soldiers have been threatened with death and wish to flee to the U.S.A., in that case objecting to one (or even five) families moving within the square mile you live seems a jerk move, on the other hand, objecting to 3/4’s of the Levant moving to your small city in Michigan seems reasonable, but you get situations like the ship full of Jewish refugees trying to escape the slaughter house that Europe was about to become who went from port to port unable to disembark.
Anecdotall, a guy in my apprenticeship class objected to more immigrants coming here, bur he and his wife also adopted foreign born orphans, and a guy I worked with this last year said he voted for Trump ’cause of “too much immigration” and his wife is foreign born, so talk sorta says one thing but walk says another (though adoption and marriage kinda encourage assimilation if that’s the concern).
I feel far from qualified to pass moral judgements on them (or on much of this stuff).
I have a lot of faith in assimilation, the melting pot, and the resilience of “American culture”, but I recognize that scale matters, a million extra Mexicans in all of California would be relatively easy to absorb (but not if they all move to say the City of San Leandro at once! Yes I’m aware that I picked a city with a Spanish name, it’s still a most anglophone town now).
In contrast to a million extra Mexicans in California, 100 million extra Indians in California would be harder (scale and cultural differences matter).
What are the moral minimums and maximums?
Yeah, talk to your pastor, ’cause I just don’t know!
Among other things, we’ve established by experiment that Mexicans who come to the US assimilate pretty well. Their grandkids still don’t do as well in school as we’d like, but the cultures are quite compatible and third-generation Mexicans are basically generic Americans with Spanish-sounding last names.
True enough, even of a lot of the second generation that I’ve encountered.
Being competition of the “low-skilled” that are already here has some resonance, as does a lot of the first generation coming to an area changing it’s character Richmond, California went from “Louisiana style fried fish” places to tacos fast), but fears that their kids won’t assimilate?
They do, and pretty quickly.
Also, sometimes not fully assimilating seems advantageous, many second generation east Asians seem on average more likely to get into the professional class better than the third and up generations.
@EchoChaos,
No disagreement, scale and legality matter, and judging by my experiences working construction in the earlier 2000’s the language barrier can be a real jobsite safety hazard.
I was initially interested – I like jazz and would like to learn more about it.
However, in the teaser, this snippet was shared:
COWEN: Let’s say you were not married, and you’re 27 years old, and you’re having a date over. What music do you put on in 2019 under those conditions?
GIOIA: It’s got to always be Sinatra.
COWEN: Because that is sexier? It’s generally appealing? It’s not going to offend anyone? Why?
GIOIA: I must say up front, I am no expert on seduction, so you’re now getting me out of my main level of expertise. But I would think that if you were a seducer, you would want something that was romantic on the surface but very sexualized right below that, and no one was better at these multilayered interpretations of lyrics than Frank Sinatra.
I always call them the Derrida of pop singing because there was always the surface level and various levels that you could deconstruct. And if you are planning for that romantic date, hey, go for Frank.
As a 27-year-old, it is truly mindblowing that these guys would think that any 27-year-old would be seduced by the music of Frank Sinatra. In my generation, Frank Sinatra is uniformly known as “old people’s music” and has all the sex appeal of a nursing home bingo night; by “old people”, we don’t mean our parents, we mean our grandparents. I know, I know, Principle of Charity and all that — but I can’t take Gioia seriously, and will not listen to the podcast or buy his book as a result. His misreading of the sex appeal of Sinatra to young people makes me think that his other points about the music industry will amount to “old man yells at cloud”.
There’s a common phenomenon where parents are totally lame but grandparents are cool. As a 60-year-old straight man I don’t know if this applies here.
Completely unrelated side-note, but this reminds me of what I saw in my social circles when Dos Equis changed their Most Interesting Man in the World marketing campaign character a few years ago, from someone who was clearly in his 60s/70s (it seems the actor was 68 when the campaign launched in 2006) to someone who looked to be middle/late-middle age. All the women in my social circles (mostly in their mid-late 20s) seemed to agree that the new character was much less sexy and charismatic, primarily because he was obviously so much younger than the previous character.
As a straight man, I found this a little bit unexpected, but not terribly so.
As a 27-year-old, it is truly mindblowing that these guys would think that any 27-year-old would be seduced by the music of Frank Sinatra.
It’s also such a weird cultural window into the minds of people who have no clue what dating is like in 2019 for 27 year-olds. I also happen to be that age/dating demographic, and I literally can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d be relying on music after someone has already come back to my place. The phrase is “netflix and chill”, not “Sinatra and slam” for a reason.
Do boomers really think the kids still sit around listening to music together? Is that what dating used to be like?
Gen X-er here, but yes, music used to be a big deal. A playlist was like a bookshelf – it showed something about the selector’s taste, and if offered a low investment way to complement that person’s taste. It wasn’t uncommon to play music and then talk with the music as background.
Does your generation actually put on videos prior to messing around, and if so, which are the most seductive? (Is it Property Brothers?).
My understanding is that the new generation doesn’t even watch Netflix as much as they share Youtube shorts and memes, so maybe that will be next.
Wait, I thought “Netflix and chill” was just a euphemism for “come to my place so we can have sex”? Are people going to their date’s place to actually watch Netflix and chill?
People also don’t necessarily just start going at it the second they walk in the door (I mean, they do sometimes, I suppose). Come over, start some movie/show for background noise/initial distraction, then start making moves.
Consider also that sometimes people do things like drink/smoke/etc. prior to…engaging, and having something on TV can help get through that initial phase before the good stuff starts. Again, people do sometimes just come over and immediately go at it, but a typical case is going to involve at least a minimal amount of normal or flirty-normal interaction before the sexy stuff starts.
Wait, I thought “Netflix and chill” was just a euphemism for “come to my place so we can have sex”? Are people going to their date’s place to actually watch Netflix and chill?
I mean, it is obviously a euphemism, but you don’t just show up and commence with the sex (or at least, in my experience and that of my friend circle, that doesn’t happen). Watching a show or whatever together gives you an opportunity to cuddle for a little bit without too much pressure on either side.
Many people appear to enjoy a background noise during the experience.
Many people appear to enjoy a background noise during the experience.
What? No. You turn that shit off.
My ex-gf used to insist we put on things like podcasts and TV shows during sexytimes because she was so concerned with my roommates (as in, housemates) overhearing us. I kept telling her that there was no secret, that they knew exactly what was going on every time she came over, but it was still really important to her.
I certainly don’t need background noise, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to turn it off either. If things start happening halfway through a movie, I’m not going to stop to turn the movie off, I’m just not going to be paying attention to the movie.
1. No one has discrete music collections anymore, we all just use spotify. On the rare cases where someone’s a traditionalist, they might have an itunes library, but browsing that kind of interface isn’t really a group activity.
2. Sure, playlists are still a thing and I guess meticulously crafting one would be the kind of thing I’d appreciate if someone pointed it out to me, but music recommendation algorithms being what they are, if I hear a playlist I just assume it’s being picked by spotify’s invisible hand.
Does your generation actually put on videos prior to messing aroun
3. Yeah. It’s a coy way of getting onto a couch/bed/whatever with someone w/out having to be too blunt with your intentions (mind you – by this point everyone knows what’s going on). You start by devoting around 75% of your attention to the video and 25% of it to your partner and start steadily realigning those percentages until fun times ensue.
if so, which are the most seductive? (Is it Property Brothers?).
4.Honest to god, It has once been Property Brothers for me, but mostly it’s less about seduction material than it is just content that requires a low mental investment; think shows like the office or Friends or golden girls. Anything where you can follow along while still being periodically distracted.
My understanding is that the new generation doesn’t even watch Netflix as much as they share Youtube shorts and memes,
5. Yeah, Youtube’s ok, and I’ve had a quite pleasant evening that began with watching some talks given by Robert Sapolsky, but ads are kind of a mood killer. You want to ensure you stick to non-monetized content; and hopefully stuff that will last long enough to not require constant interaction.
FWIW, when I think about listening to music with other people, it is either something like “new album from [our favorite band] was just released, lets hang out and listen to it” or hanging out and taking turns playing music the think/hope the other person likes.
if I hear a playlist I just assume it’s being picked by spotify’s invisible hand
Doesn’t a person’s Spotify list tell you something about them, possibly more than a selected playlist?* I imagine it would be like swiping right on someone’s Android to see what Google thinks they’re interested in.
* I wish I could get the Luke Cage soundtrack out of my Google Play music list, FWIW. It was insult to injury – first I got tricked into thinking the soundtrack would have the musical numbers, but it was mostly atmospherics, and now I can’t get rid of it.
Man, I’d be happy if I could keep that damned U2 album off my iPhone. I’ve deleted it like five times now, supposedly from all my devices, but it keeps coming back. I’d even be happy if it didn’t auto-play when I plug it into my car; I don’t use Apple Music for anything.
It’s not as if “let’s go to my/your place and watch a video” was unknown in the VCR era. (“The Seven Samurai” will always hold a special place in my heart, even if I didn’t get around to watching the end till many years later.)
(Though as a GenXer, I also remember the long period that Sinatra was uncool before he became cool again.)
I’m going to dissent here (as someone also in that general age group). There are definitely people who still get together and just sit around listening to music. Not Frank Sinatra, granted, but dating is still very much like that for plenty of people.
Interesting – I have the opposite case; my friends and I will often put some Sinatra or similar-era music on as background for conversation or a game or whatever.
Yeah, I should clarify, I’m not alleging people don’t listen to music anymore only that (at least in my experience) 27 year olds aren’t thinking “I’m having a date come over, I need to meticulously select which music I’ll be playing.”
“…Do boomers really think the kids still sit around listening to music together? Is that what dating used to be like?”
I’m early Gen-X instead of a Boomer, but my wife who’s only a couple of years older than me is just over thr line into boomer-ness (though you still totally look like you could be a Zoomer or young Millennial though honey!), as I recall it in the ’80’s and early ’90’s listening to mixed tapes and vinyl records, or “jamming” with guitars were things done on dates, as were drinking, inhaling, motorcycle rides, restaurant meals, picnics, going to art galleries, theaters, concerts, readings, and renting Betamax or VHS tapes.
…Those were different times.
And the poets studied rules of verse,
And all the ladies rolled their eyes
Sittin’ by the fire…
Radio just played a little classical music for you kids,
The march of the wooden soldiers
And you can hear Jack say…
…Sweet Jane
I’ve no real idea what dating is like for youngsters now, except that it’s my understanding that you don’t ask each other out after meeting face-to-face nearly as much, and you “date” a lot less overall.
Do boomers really think the kids still sit around listening to music together?
I don’t know the jazz guy, but Tyler Cowen is a Gen-Xer.
Is that what dating used to be like?
I’m a decade or so older than you, but music was definitely a major concern of mine when dating in college. (I then got married shortly after graduating, and every time I read a thread about dating I remember what a great idea that was.)
I’m about ten to fifteen years older than you, and your link led to “see also”: “Cusper” and “Generation Jones
While only a couple years seperate us, my wife is usually classed as a latter Boomer, and I’m usually classed as a early Gen-Xer, but we don’t feel as much cultural affinity for earlier Boomers or late X’ers and younger than we do those just over the Boomer/X divide, but except for “an interest in video games” (I played some in the ’80’s, and only when my son has begged my to afterwards, my wife never had the habit), this description is pretty spot on!:
“… Baby Boomers/Generation X
1954-1965 as identified by Jonathan Pontell
1958-1967 as identified by Mark Wegierski of the Hudson Institute.
1960-1965 as identified by Lancaster and Stillman, Mayo Clinic and Andrea Stone writing in USA Today 1962-1967 as identified by Smit.
1964-1969 as identified by Codrington.
Characteristics
This population is sometimes referred to as Generation Jones, and less commonly as Tweeners. These cuspers were not as financially successful as older Baby Boomers.
They experienced a recession like many Generation Xers but had a much more difficult time finding jobs than Generation X did. While they learned to be IT-savvy, they didn’t have computers until after high school but were some of the first to purchase them for their homes.
They were among some of the first to take an interest in video games. They get along well with Baby Boomers, but share different values. While they are comfortable in office environments, they are more relaxed at home. They’re less interested in advancing their careers than Baby Boomers and more interested in quality of life…”
Until the 2008 crash, I almost felt more affinity for my grandparents generation than the other generations not in my age cohort, as we were too young to rise with the economic plenty of the earlier Boomers, and too old to come of age with the “Tech boom”, and it seemed we’d always be financially behind both those older and those younger, but then Lehman Brothers went under, and the cohort that graduated during that recession got pushed even further behind my “Cusper” generational cohort.
The “cusper” idea made a lot of sense to me when I became aware of it. Apparently “Generation Jones” is a relatively old concept, though it didn’t seem to make it into popular understanding so much, at least not where I was paying attention. The “Xennial”/”Oregon Trail” thing seems to have picked up steam in the past 5 years or so, probably as more and more media is devoted to the “Millennial” concept and those of us around my age realize how different people even just a couple years younger are.
I never identified with “Generation X” — those were the people older than me. I was initially fine with the “Generation Y” idea in the 90s, but after I became an adult, and everyone else younger than me then became adults (and “Generation Y” became “Millennials”) the differences became more and more stark.
I’m going to object to the “Oregon Trail Generation” designation , as Oregon Trail was made publicly available in 1974, early enough that most Xers, not merely those born at “the tail end of the 70s and the start of the 80s” are of an age to be familiar with it. Pushing things like this later in time seems to be a fairly common error; I remember a Washington Post column singing the praises of the Millennials, the first generation to grow up with video games… this after the Post had spent a number of column-inches over the past years denigrating the Xers for growing up playing video games.
You say it doesn’t work; I’m only a little older than you and it can work. Maybe half of the songs I played at my wedding were 50s or older, and that’s not because I was catering to older relatives. Although I always aimed to dance to old music on a date, not sit around listening.
I didn’t date many women, but despite me spending no effort looking for it, most of the women I dated enjoyed dancing. It’s not like my wife even took dancing lessons before we danced together.
At least one of the female coworkers I’ve had also really liked male singers like Michael Buble who’s done some covers of “old” music.
I’m a musician, and had already requested the book “Music: A Subversive History” from the library when I read that interview on-line today. I agree both Cowen and Gioia are showing their age in that exchange, but, as others have pointed out, putting on music for a date was a thing once upon a time. The “generational” thing is also something I’ve seen – my experience is that your parents tastes are not hip, but your grandparents can be OK. Don’t let this prevent you from reading the book – from what I read in the rest of that interview he seems to know a lot and has interesting things to say.
If anyone believes Epstein killed himself, please make your case below. Alternatively, regardless of what you believe, if you just want to make a case for it, please do so.
I dont believe he killed himself but this is just based on Alex-Jonesy conspiracy theories than hard evidence.
I hope this more starts discussion than dissuades it: a similar thread I posted about a month ago. Interesting, but there’s a lot of room for more detailed opinions.
The chief medical examiner of the jurisdiction in which he died, says it was suicide. The only positive evidence that says otherwise is that the hyoid bone was broken in a way that is more common in homicide than suicide, but not not even close to uniquely associated with homicide. And suicide in the face of a lengthy prison sentence for anything that the general population will round off to “raping children”, is not exactly rare – I was just recently made aware of a case involving the stepson of a prominent webcomic artist, and nobody is claiming that was really a conspiratorial murder.
The arguments against suicide are extremely weak. “A hypothetical conspiracy would obviously have benefited from X”, has never been good evidence that a conspiracy existed and did X. Also, the alleged obviousness is not obvious. Conspiratorially murdering a person to stop them from talking, replaces the risk of the victim talking with the combined risk of the victim’s lawyer talking, the victim’s co-conspirators talking, and any of the various people approached to carry out or cover up the murder talking. Finally, being in jail does not really make suicide all that difficult; jailers don’t much mind people they think of as kiddie-rapists killing themselves, and “suicide watch” is a thing for making sure the jailers don’t get blamed rather than for making the suicides not happen.
But did he have the means to carry it out? If he hanged himself, what did he use? I heard his bedsheets were made of paper, and there was no support structure that could have been used.
Also, the camera malfunction just sounds like a really hacky plot twist from a B-movie.
okay, this changes what data I want to look at, if not my current assessment.
How long were those cameras malfunctioning? Why were they malfunctioning? How were they malfunctioning? Was this a “huh, these cameras stop working at the same time for no reason, and fifteen minutes later, Epstein is dead! Weird.”
How frequent are camera malfunctions of any kind? How long do they go undetected?
Where were these camera’s located? Were they on the opposite side of the prison? Could the blind spot be exploited for an opportunity?
How many cells in the prison had malfunctioning camera’s near them? Is it possible that the vulnerability of this cell was known, and that is why he was put in this cell?
Considering stupidity is always a good heuristic, but Hanlon’s Razor isn’t infinitely sharp.
Consider the absurd case where these two cameras were the only cameras between the cell and the door, and they fail at the same time literally 15 minutes before Epstein dies, and that the chance of any camera failing within a 15 minute period is 1 in 100,000.
Now, “infinitely sharp” is a stupid bar. What if two is a pretty reasonable number of cameras to be malfunctioning at any given point, and they were described as “near the cell” because this prison really isn’t that big?
and that the chance of any camera failing within a 15 minute period is 1 in 100,000.
You are probably overestimating the quality of camera equipment in prisons (product quality, installation quality, proper upkeep, and proper/competent usage) by orders of magnitude.
You are probably overestimating the quality of camera equipment in prisons (product quality, installation quality, proper upkeep, and proper/competent usage) by orders of magnitude.
Almost certainly. The case was labeled “absurd” after all. But one in 100,000 for fifteen minutes means that a given camera should fail once every couple of months. Note that this isn’t five nines of uptime, its the chance of it going from working to failing within a fifteen minute period. The reasonable case allows for them to have failed at some point in the past, and simply haven’t been fixed yet.
Consider the absurd case where these two cameras were the only cameras between the cell and the door, and they fail at the same time literally 15 minutes before Epstein dies,
What’s the source on the cameras having failed at the same time fifteen minutes earlier, as opposed to having failed separately many years earlier and never being repaired because nobody really cared?
Also, from what I remember, it wasn’t that they both failed, it’s that for unspecified reasons the footage wasn’t usable. There are plenty of non-conspiracy related reasons why some footage would end up not being useful for a certain investigation.
What’s the source on the cameras having failed at the same time fifteen minutes earlier, as opposed to having failed separately many years earlier and never being repaired because nobody really cared?
There is no source at all. It almost certainly failed in the past and wasn’t repaired yet. I was constructing an absurd hypothetical where Hanlon’s Razor wouldn’t convince me.
I would like to know which cameras failed, why, and when, because I’m curious and I think my beliefs will change based on the answers.
Right, but is there any reason it should have been?
Because given the allegations against Epstein, it is important that you do everything you can to make sure that nothing untoward happened. Failure to do so is what’s driving the conspiracy theories. The only American case I can think of off hand where the government has a bigger stake in investigating and demonstrating to the public what went wrong is the death in custody of Lee Harvey Oswald.
If I were a betting man (and there was a way to get absolute proof), my money would be on ‘Epstein took advantage of government incompetence to commit suicide’, and ‘someone in the prison system deliberately made it easier for Epstein to commit suicide’ is far more likely to me than ‘Epstein was murdered in a way as to look like a suicide’. However, something definitely went wrong, and the public has a major stake in knowing what went wrong and making sure it never happens again. Further, if the prison is not culpable, they have a major reason to want to rule out some sort of foul play. A lizardman quotient of the population will always believe this was murder even with an open investigation, however there are a lot of people that would be persuaded by an open, transparent and bipartisan look at identifying what happened.
If the government wanted to demonstrate that this wasn’t a coverup, they would have gotten an outside investigator to publicly acknowledge the facts immediately, and a week later we’d have a congressional committee getting a list of details like:
“Yes, the cameras outside the cell were not functional. Here’s the maintenance report that was submitted when they went down. Here’s a summary of why the cameras were not fixed: half the cameras in the system are down regularly, and it takes weeks to get a replacement, and this isn’t discussed because it’s policy to let prisoners believe all cameras are working. Here’s who signed off on that policy, months before Epstein was incarcerated. Here’s a note from the duty officer noting that the cameras outside the cell Epstein was going in were down, and a note from his superior telling him there’s no other available cell. Here’s a plan for the system to improve the camera system so this doesn’t happen again.” Yes, in this example the superior officer that said “I know the cameras are down, put him in there anyways” is going to be in some sort of trouble, deserved or otherwise, but it’s better than half the country convinced that this was a government sanctioned hit job.
I don’t totally disagree with you in theory, but that’s not how the government works. There isn’t one guy who can flip a switch from “normal operating behavior” to “maximum accountability mode.”
Like, take the medical investigator. They’ve probably seen dozens to hundreds of suicides by strangulation. Who’s the guy in the room who says “Yes, these marks are obvious and you clearly know what happened, but run a bunch of probably useless tests anyway because otherwise conspiracy theory weirdos are going to foam at the mouth?”
I don’t totally disagree with you in theory, but that’s not how the government works. There isn’t one guy who can flip a switch from “normal operating behavior” to “maximum accountability mode.”
I understand this, but there’s obviously some point at which maximum accountability mode gets flipped, and you only need that switch flipped if none of the switches leading up to it flipped. Epstein’s connections are enough that I could see the Maximum Accountability Congressional Inquiry switch flipped, but at the very least one of the other switches should have flipped.
It could be the fault is with whichever level of government had control of Epstein isn’t exercising responsibility. Part of the problem with this is that despite the public outcry, no level of government responded by publicly flipping the ‘what the hell did you do?’ switch. The prison lost a very prominent prisoner, so it should at least do an internal investigation. The DA (or whoever was prosecuting) lost a major suspect, one that would almost certainly be a resume-booster for prosecuting (in normal circumstances), so they should be angry at the prison and want an investigation. This makes New York’s prisons look bad, so either the Mayor or the Governor or both should want an investigation. His death was certainly newsworthy, so the media should be salivating at blaming someone (rightly or wrongly), so they should be trying to get someone to leak the details. And if all those decided ‘well, even if I’m not guilty of the pedo stuff, I was still too close to him, so he’s better off dead and forgotten’, the public obviously doesn’t think that’s the case.
I mean, we’ve seen the opposite, where a switch got flipped with Jusse Smollett, where a dubious assault case seemingly got more police attention than most local murders because the victim was a minor celebrity. And then we watched the switch get flipped back (or, at least, almost) when the investigation started to go a completely different direction. When and how switches get flipped is a matter of public interest.
And suicide in the face of a lengthy prison sentence…, is not exactly rare
Do you have any numbers? I’m pretty suspicious of this mix of an inside-view rational actor model and an outside-view empirical claim.
Beyond the basic number of the incarcerated suicide rate, all I have heard is the widely publicized claim that jails have 10x the suicide rate of prisons. This is usually explained in a very irrational manner, shock of first incarceration, which did not apply to Epstein. Is this actually true: is the high rate of jail suicide entirely explained by people in jail for the first time? Are prison suicides predicted by sentence length? Are jail suicides predicted by potential sentence length? These seem like the very first numbers that would be produced by someone studying this subject. I’m less optimistic about learning whether sex crime charges predict suicide or homicide.
(I also worry that the jail/prison comparison may be misleading. It’s probably per inmate-year, while we probably want rates per inmate.)
Overall suicide rate is 46 per 100,000 per year in US jails, compared to 15 per 100,000 in prisons and 13 per 100,000 for the general public. Of these, roughly 1/3 are in the first week of incarceration – and for the minority placed on “suicide watch”, that probably translates to the first week after their lawyer finally gets them out of restraints and prolonged sleep deprivation.
Federal jails have a lower rate of suicide than state, probably due to the preponderance of white-collar offenses, but beyond that there doesn’t seem to be good quantitative data on suicide rate vs. offense charged. But Epstein was clearly at a very enhanced suicide risk in that period.
By comparison, the homicide rate for jail inmates is 3 per 100,000 per year. Also, jail homicides are disproportionately by stabbing, cutting, or bunt force trauma.
If someone dies by strangulation in their first (unrestrained) week in jail, the prior should be about 98% that they committed suicide even without knowing what they were in for and what their future was likely to hold.
Thanks, that looks like a good paper. It says that lifers are overrepresented among prison suicides, which answers one question.
Yes, 1/3 is pretty high. But, again, this wasn’t Epstein’s first week in jail. Maybe the first week resets, but I doubt it. The paper is ambivalent.
Why do you mention the homicide rate? This wasn’t an apparent homicide, so I can’t see any possible reason that the rate of apparent homicide is relevant.
Epstein had an extremely plausible motive for suicide.
It was very clear from the political/media context that Epstein was never getting out of prison. The previous sweetheart deal he’d gotten had ended the career of the guy who gave it to him in a very visible way, even though that guy was a cabinet secretary. Whatever friends he was able to call on to put him back in his life of luxury were no longer taking his calls.
He was a man in his sixties who had just gone from being an extremely wealthy and powerful person living in luxury with all the girls he wanted and with many very important people willing to take his calls, to locked in a cage surrounded by people who wanted to do horrible things to him and told him so. The rest of his life was going to be prison cells, either in general population with a high risk of being beaten or raped or killed, or in protective custody that would amount to being locked in a tiny cage most of the day and being in near-solitary confinement. He was surrounded by prison guards who surely were eager to let him know what they thought of him and how he could expect to be treated, and who knows what kind of treatment he’d had at their hands already.
That doesn’t guarantee that it was a suicide, but at least it makes suicide entirely plausible. He was in about as despair-inducing situation as you can imagine, with absolutely no prospects for things to get better.
It’s a cliche that people announce that if they die by apparent suicide, it was really murder. How often do people who said that people were trying to kill them proceed to die by apparent suicide? It must be super common among schizophrenics, but other than cases dismissed as schizophrenic, are there any other high profile examples?
I have a thorough understanding of the concept which was recently described as ‘enlightenment’ here and am willing to answer questions posed. Please be patient as I may not be especially attentive. I am not associated with any formal organisation and have no particular motivations for doing this other than a pathological sense of honesty.
Please be advised that, if you also think you have a thorough understanding of enlightenment, I will probably tell you you’re doing it wrong.
In this context, let it suffice to say: a particular psychological state coupling more or less extreme depersonalisation with a sensation of fundamental awareness of nonexistence. Variously central examples are known.
However, this definition has been selected for brevity and may not cause the correct associations to form in your personal brain. More specific questions may help.
Strictly speaking, the most accurate response I could make would be ‘there is no enlightenment’, but this is liable to be misperceived. It is not the case that ‘enlightenment’ is indistinguishable from its absence, nor that everyone (indeed, anyone) is already enlightened and unaware, etc.
Alternatively: Enlightenment is the state of recognising the identicality of ‘is’ and ‘is-not’.
This post might seem impolite, but reductio ad absurdum is one of the ways I deal with misunderstanding things. I make the absurd statement, someone who actually understands shows me where I went wrong, and I thank them for helping me.
That being said:
If ‘is’ and ‘is not’ are identical
My brother is 900 ft tall
My brother is not 900 ft tall
are the same proposition, which seems wrong.
Is this what you are trying to say instead?
“Whether you model any part of the universe as a distinct entity or not, the universe stays the same. This includes the part of the universe that is ‘you’.”
With enlightenment, your brother is 900ft tall, your brother is not 900ft tall, you have no brother, you do not exist, there is no such thing as ‘tall’, and all of these things are true and obvious at the same time without contradiction. This state is not pathological, even though it may seem to be from the outside, because you also understand it. While not existing.
You will probably think this IS pathological, because you don’t understand it, but that’s okay, because you don’t exist.
Loosely speaking, enlightenment is a schizotypal state and it is, in fact, true that schizotypy and autism are incompatible opposites; I like to characterise this through the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator classifications of ‘S’ and ‘N’, though this is easily misperceived by people who, being Ses, mistake the symbol for the content. Point is, your characterisation is cognitively the opposite of enlightenment, so it’s not surprising that the two don’t make sense together.
Please understand this is not intended to be pejorative. I am at pains to be terse and some politeness may be lost in the process.
No offense is taken; thank you for trying to help me.
I have one final question, which is that you say “because you also understand it. While not existing.”
Do you believe that “I think, therefore I am” is false? I suppose I should have realized that people who think the self didn’t exist might make that claim, it just hadn’t occurred to me before.
Yes, “I think, therefore I am” is false. First of all, I remain unconvinced that ‘I think’. There seems to be an I which perceives thought, but does thought even require a subject? I mean, just because ‘thought’, does that imply ‘something thinking’? This is not obvious to me. If thought, perception, can happen on its own, without the need for anything else, then every experience “I” have can be explained equally well.
Well, to me, the most accurate statement is “the labels, brother, foot, etc.” are merely labels that only somewhat precisely represent the things that they are trying to represent. I recognize that the statement is somewhat vacuous and greatly overgeneralizes the external reality, which is what is REALLY real, but that simultaneously any label can map more or less well to the reality that is out there. i.e. ‘my brother is 900 feet tall’ is farther from describing existence than ‘my brother is not 900 feet tall'”
Is this compatible or incompatible with what you consider enlightenment?
In this context, let it suffice to say: a particular psychological state coupling more or less extreme depersonalisation with a sensation of fundamental awareness of nonexistence.
I have had instances of this, but always managed to re-collpase my psychological state back into it’s baseline state. From by (admittedly brief) experience, it would be very difficult to navigate life in that state. Do you find this to be the case, or did you just end up adapting?
I continue to act as if there is an objective reality, not because I believe there is one, but because there’s no way to act as if there isn’t. “Acting as if” doesn’t make sense in an acausal context, so there’s no point trying. Thus, I act as if there is an objective reality so that I have something to do with my time.
I remain open for further questioning if you would like expansion. I have been variously obliged to simplify or leave avenues underspecified due to time constraints.
I will grant you that I managed to find the time to effuse about acid/base chemistry at length, but chemistry is much less complex and easier to explain.
I continue to act as if there is an objective reality, not because I believe there is one, but because there’s no way to act as if there isn’t.
Does this look like “My senses aren’t caused by any external reality. Therefore, there probably isn’t an external reality, or any reality at all”
Or “The nature of my mental content is incompatible with reality. No objective reality could contain mental content like this, therefore, there is no objective reality.”
EDIT: third option:
Or is it more like “an objective reality is like a square circle, utterly nonsensical”. Come to think of it, has your philosophy of math changed before and after enlightenment? Does 2 + 2 still equal 4?
In either case, how do you know that Descarte’s demon isn’t batting for both teams? That is, shouldn’t it be possible for an extremely powerful being in an objective reality to exhaustively generate brains and spoof its senses until it created one that believed there could not be an objective reality?
Or does meditation lead to an insight or shift so powerful and certain that you can’t doubt it? An anti-divine light, or a cogito ergo nihilus? (the demon could probably still create a brain that couldn’t doubt a false statement, but knowing that doesn’t help the brain in question.)
It can’t. Drug-induced psychosis has similarities to, but is ultimately distinct from, enlightenment-induced psychosis. This is, unfortunately, just a qualia fact about which I can only say ‘if you had experienced both, you would recognise the difference.’ I realise this is unsatisfying and apologise.
It sounds you are saying that becoming enlightened makes one an extreme reductionist, very aware of the fact that there are no humans or chairs as such, just various arrangements of atoms.
No, no, there are no atoms either.
This is a common misconception.
Of course you are aware that there are just various arrangements of atoms, but you are also aware that the atoms are also maya.
I roughly get the Hindu take on this: once you figure out that nothing outside your mind exists, you must conclude that you’re the only existing entity, namely Brahman.
But the Buddhist take doesn’t make any sense to me. A mind that doesn’t even exist can’t possibly know that atoms don’t exist. Thus every brain that claims that nothing exists – including my own brain if it would claim such a thing – is inherently untrustworthy.
The brain doesn’t know that atoms don’t exist. It doesn’t claim anything. There isn’t even a brain, or a mind, or knowledge, or trust, or ‘can’ or ‘is’.
I’m sorry, I’m being unnecessarily cruel here by repeating this. It is, of course, a fundamental difference in outlook. I cannot explain it to you in terms you would accept, which is of course why the entire study of Zen (Chan, Tsien, etc.) came about to attempt to convey it without explaining it, with minimal success.
I am not at this immediate moment particularly interested in promoting enlightenment (though I am in general), but simply answering questions out of a perverse sense of totally pointless honesty, so I am trying to explain things (to the limits of my communication facility) instead of attempting to backdoor your brain. However, because I don’t want to turn people off the idea completely, please do consider the, hypothetical, possibility of a universe in which you perceive (which is to say, the perception exists and includes a perception of a ‘you’ doing the perceiving) that a brain that doesn’t exist perceives that atoms exist and also that they don’t exist, at the same time, and this is okay, because it’s correct. Of course it’s difficult to conceptualise, that’s practically the point, but try to imagine that it ISN’T inherently untrustworthy, just because.
Sure, atoms are not a fully meaningful label either, nor is the wavefunction, or maybe even the unified field. But there is none of it is objectively false. While we do not know what the onltological basis of reality ultimately is, it is self-evidently clear that there exist distinctions and correlations in some general sense, and that those add up to what we ultimately experience. Distinctions and correlations are quite distinct from ‘nothing’.
I’m fine with a nonexistent brain believing all sorts of contradictory things, just as I’m fine with a nonexistent unicorn believing the same things.
But if I did a lot of vipassana meditation and would derive some sort of evidence from it that nothing exists (myself included), then there are two possibilities: (1) indeed nothing exists and (2) I exist and my evidence about nothing existing is wrong. What I’m saying is that (2) will always remain a possibility. You can’t say “but I know that I’m not wrong on this!” because you already said that there’s no you and no knowing.
So how do you deal with the off case that you got it all wrong and you actually do exist?
It depends on what you want. I don’t experience the sensation of suffering; rather, I perceive complete control of my own affect and can feel what our host might describe as ‘transcendental bliss’ at will. This is the primary thing that I estimate others would consider a benefit. If you are wracked with anxiety, guilt, sorrow, you may find value in experiencing these sensations as illusive.
However, I am not convinced that enlightenment can be approached for its value, and not for its own sake.
if you also think you have a thorough understanding of enlightenment, I will probably tell you you’re doing it wrong.
In case somebody else claims a thorough understanding of enlightenment and you both tell each other “you’re doing it wrong”, how can innocent onlookers (such as me) determine who is right?
You cannot. This is unfortunate but unavoidable. You will just have to achieve your own particular enlightenment, at which point you understand they were both wrong.
Does it happen that somebody claims to achieve enlightenment but later claims that he was wrong before and only now he has achieved enlightenment?
Here’s the same problem from another angle: what if I’m already enlightened, I just don’t know it? You might say that that’s not how it works and I’m totally not enlightened yet. But why would I listen to that if you’re going to say that anyway whether I achieved my own particular enlightenment or not?
You wouldn’t. If you are enlightened, you don’t care, because you don’t exist, and neither do I. What difference could it possibly make?
It may be helpful if I further say, there are no enlightened people. There are no unenlightened people. It is not possible to achieve enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a state in which an entity can ‘be’ or ‘not be’. It is not possible to know that you are enlightened. If you are enlightened (and you may be), you will know it. There is no such thing as choice. None of this is real. You make all your own choices freely.
Enlightenment is knowing and accepting all of these things, simultaneously, as equipotent facts.
It is also not that, but there is a limit to the number of levels I like to go at once with people who aren’t there yet, you know?
Indeed, I find that since enlightenment can’t be measured at all neither in self nor in others, I don’t care about it, just as I don’t care about cromulence or vorpalness.
I recall there is a similar problem with sanyasa initiation ceremony. The problem is that a sanyasi is supposed to not care about bullshit such as ceremonies, so if someone comes up and says “hey I’m ready to be a sanyasi, please initiate me” it means he’s not ready. I don’t know why do they even have such a ceremony.
To your additional explanation I have to say that it sounds like being stoned with an extreme I-dont-give-a-fuck attitude. No offense intended by that (although you’d probably say that neither of us exist anyway).
I have also become detachedly curious to find out, now that some people have read some of what I have to say, how crazy those people think I am on a scale of one to canasta sunflowers.
My glib model of DSP: Reality is a lie, nothing is real. Independently, I have delusions of a reality that looks and behaves exactly like the reality that isn’t there.
Honestly, it sounds like berkeleyan idealism, only without that whole god business.
You seem to be able to form beliefs about the structure of the lie-reality that function much the same as my beliefs about regular reality. That is, my brother is and is not 900ft tall, but we both call him to ask what size pants he wears before buying him jeans.
Approximately “Enlightenment is opening one’s mind so wide that one’s brain falls out”. Progressed past solipsism but not to the level of hippie stoner
I’ll be honest, I was leaning pretty far towards “canasta sunflowers” until I realized you were the same person who explained acid-base blood chemistry better than I could despite literally just studying it for an upcoming exam. Your statements that e.g.
It is not possible to know that you are enlightened. If you are enlightened (and you may be), you will know it. There is no such thing as choice. None of this is real. You make all your own choices freely.
are blatantly self-contradictory; I’m inclined to parse them as either: “hey you know words aren’t intrinsically tied to reality, right?” or “I’m gonna sound deep by contradicting myself!”. I’ll grant a small possibility of “thinking about these contradictions will break you out of your contradictory thoughts”, but I’m skeptical that there’s truly something to break out into.
I consider stoicism to be a philosophical component of the mindset I have been describing. In fact I have previously described my philosophy as a ‘stoic-Zen hybrid’.
However, it’s important for me to emphasise that ‘enlightenment’ as defined here also entails certain specific qualia. It’s one thing to disregard your suffering as irrelevant and another (I assume, having never really been in the position of not doing so) to viscerally feel that there is none. Similarly, stoicism does not necessarily imply the perception of nonexistence or of the perfectly comfortable conjunction of contradictories. ‘Enlightenment’ as I’m describing it is a philosophical attitude and a perception or series of perceptions. You haven’t felt it unless you can truthfully attest that even your own cognition is false. It is not enough merely to think some things in a particular order.
A thorough conversation should rule out the majority of people who are not actively faking it, simply by whether they display instinctive understanding of certain things which are particularly bizarre to most people. However, I would never be willing to make a claim on a specific degree of accuracy.
As a class, sure, “probably all frauds”. Individually, I would prefer not to.
Please be advised that, if you also think you have a thorough understanding of enlightenment, I will probably tell you you’re doing it wrong.
Related to this, how confident are you that there is only one accurate understanding of enlightenment? If that level is high or some equivalent thereof, from what do you draw your confidence?
I would say I’m reasonably confident that the kind of ‘enlightenment’ which was recently featured here in the context of PNSE and which I’ve been defining and discussing so far is one thing with one accurate understanding, and that that accurate understanding heavily depends on understanding schizotypy and dissociation, based on personal experience and observation. I cannot present evidence to convince another person of this reliably, which is why this conversation is rated for entertainment purposes only. However, I hope to at least encourage people to think about the things I’ve said and hopefully draw conclusions of their own.
I am willing to stipulate that there may be other definitions of ‘enlightenment’ which mean other things. I was not consulted by any committee to decide the terminology. 😛
(I was also, mostly, joking in the quoted segment.)
Sure. I like to answer questions and explain things. I want people to know things, generally. It’s sort of like a moral position. I don’t expect to gain from this in any way. I don’t even expect to convince anyone of anything, since this is all very subjective. I just want to answer questions and give people things to think about if they want to do so.
Because, if existence is an illusion, but I’m stuck perceiving it anyway, I have to find something to do with my time, and this is aesthetically appealing to me.
“Because, if existence is an illusion, but I’m stuck perceiving it anyway, I have to find something to do with my time, and this is aesthetically appealing to me.”
Correct answer. You should have just said this in the first place
Doesn’t your inability to stop perceiving existence make it real in a way? What is keeping you from being able to stop perceiving existence? Is that thing real?
Could the existence of aesthetic preferences mean that you aren’t really enlightened, but in a state of delusion?
Also, why would you have to do anything with your time if everything is an illusion? Why not spend all your time in ‘transcendental bliss’? Or at least, the time you have until you die of thirst (assuming that thirst and hunger are also an illusion in your eyes, but not in ours, so we see you die).
I think the word “real” may be causing some confusion here.
Take a brick. If you happen to have one handy, look at it. Or any object in your sight.
What does it mean for the brick to be real? That you experience it?
You don’t experience the brick.
You don’t experience seeing the brick.
You experience an illusion that you call a brick. This isn’t controversial, I don’t think, you know this already.
Where is the brick real? What does it mean for something to be real? What does “real” mean?
You don’t experience an objective reality, and a subjective reality isn’t real.
(What are you? Are you real?)
All… sort of. This is a misleading description, but it is the closest I can get to trying to describe something in a way I think other people might sort of understand. Just keep in mind that it is wrong.
The thing that the word “brick” refers to is plenty real, in the sense that it relates to other things with specific names in fairly predictable ways.
For example, if I slam the brick in your face, you will probably exhibit behavior that is consistent with “suffering.” Others will notice this and will probably put me in jail and charge me with causing “suffering.”
My perception may be partially subjective, but it is sufficiently related to something objective to allow me to act with some level of agency. This objective part is “real” and something I simply have to deal with it (fortunately, I don’t have a particular desire to smash bricks in your face or the face of other people).
You argue that your model predicts reality, not that it is reality. And if you think about it, it doesn’t predict reality either, it predicts what your model will describe reality as.
This is a state I’ve been trying to understand for a long time, to determine if it is worthwhile to practice towards.
First of all, I’m very curious about the qualia of enlightenment (I’m already quite familiar with the noetic and ontological changes the state brings about). Would you say that your experience is overall an increase of the valence of positive qualia (when compared to typical dualistic experience), a reduction in the valence of negative qualia, an overall flattening of both valences, or some combination of the above?
I understand that in states typically referred to as enlightenment, many emotions can be seen from a different perspective (from the “outside,” perhaps?) and thus lose their qualitative power or are dissipated completely. But in every case with which I’m familiar, there is always some state of qualia left behind. What’s it like and is it worthwhile?
My concern is that if I seek to achieve this state, I’ll miss out on a lot of other positive and/or interesting qualia experiences (romantic love and sex, for example, or the feeling of closeness from friendship, or the joy of building things, or the feeling of awe, or wabi-sabi type emotions that combine sadness with beauty). If these things are diminished or disposed of, is it worthwhile just for the sake of realizing nonexistence and getting rid of a little anxiety?
Second, what “location” would you say you’re at in the PNSE context, and how did you get there?
Consider a 30 year old person who is working in the IT industry. They then become enlightened. Does that make their everyday job harder? Does it make them less likely to become a very successful tech industry leader?
Consider a 30 year old person who is married and has two infant children. They then become enlightened. Will it be more difficult to them to raise children? Do they become a worse parent? Does this make their relationship with their spouse worse? Will the spouse wish that they hadn’t become enlightened?
People who really want to make comms work generally don’t join the Marine Corps. They pick one of the other services, where they’re more likely to spend their time in an air-conditioned operations center instead of rolling around in the mud getting shot at.
That may be the first enlistment, actually. I’m not quite sure what that table is. But yes, the Marines have historically been pretty stingy with the bonuses.
Yes, both tables I pointed to are for initial enlistments. There are other tables of bonuses for people who are re-enlisting. Those bonuses tend to be much higher.
Is there a biochemist in the house? I’m a respiratory therapy student who doesn’t understand the mechanism for respiratory acidosis; this is not strictly necessary for me to become an RT, but the book’s explanation is annoyingly incomplete and I don’t like not knowing why it happens. It’s no good asking the prof either, long story. I have a very basic (har) understanding of chemistry half-remembered from high school.
So, CO2 in the blood meets H20, resulting in H2CO3, carbonic acid. Seems straightforward, because carbonic acid wants to give up an H+ ion, and that’s the definition of an acid, yes? Except that, once it’s gotten rid of that H+, you’re left with HCO3-, aka bicarb, aka that stuff your kidneys dump into the blood to counter acidosis. So it seems like CO2 should produce a problem that fixes itself. My understanding here is not helped by the book’s vagueness; it also says that dissolved CO2 functions as an acid by itself (it doesn’t have an H to give up) and seems to treat bicarb and the loose H as interchangeable with the carbonic acid itself, because of the way it dissociates in solution. My best guess is that bicarb is a weaker base than carbonic acid is an acid (I don’t really get what makes something a “strong” versus “weak” acid). What am I missing?
Okay, basically, acids are substances that, in water, tend to increase the concentration of solvated protons (H+). Strong versus weak acids are defined more or less arbitrarily by the degree to which they do so, and isn’t really relevant here.
So, if you put CO2 in water, it can combine with H2O to produce carbonic acid and dissociate into H+ and bicarb, or it can claim OH- from the water to form bicarb leaving H+ behind, which are, formally, exactly the same thing. So CO2 is an acid because it increases the amount of H+ in water, not because it has any to release, but because it takes up the part that ISN’T H+, leaving that behind.
So, if you have a solution with a lot of solvated protons and solvated bicarbonate ions, that’s ‘acid’. If you have a solution with a lot of undissociated H2CO3, and an excess of OH- ions from water that has lost protons, that’s ‘alkali’ (aqueous base). The bicarbonate floating around after CO2 dissociates doesn’t ‘fix the problem’ because it is in equilibrium with the H+, and its equilibrium is slanted toward dissociation. Adding MORE bicarbonate ions, on the other hand, moves the equilibrium toward combining them, because, loosely speaking, there are more anions around to soak up the H+ than there is to soak up, so at any given time more of them will be H2CO3 than H+ and HCO3-. Similarly, this surfeit of protons is made up from the protons that are always running loose in water (which dissociates into H+ and OH- at a certain concentration naturally ), so there will be more OH- around.
HCO3- is also called the “conjugate base” of carbonic acid, because it is the base that is produced when the acid loses a proton. Acids always produce bases when losing a proton and vice versa. (HCO3- is also amphoteric and has its own conjugate base, carbonate, CO3(2-), when it acts as an acid.
The confusing part here is probably that, when solvated, the chemical species which are formally present in solution are basically the opposite of how they are described; in ‘acid’, a potentially acidic chemical is present in base form, and vice versa.
Okay, so (rephrasing in layman’s terms to make sure I understand correctly) the problem here is the presence of the loose proton/H+. The bicarb may be there in equal amounts, but at any given moment it will not be bonded with the H+ in carbonic acid form, so the H+ will be free to wreak whatever havoc it accomplishes in the body when its concentration gets too high. I’m not super-concerned with the mechanism of that havoc right now. Increasing the bicarb will increase the probability that those H+ ions latch onto one to form carbonic acid, and you get compensated acidosis, neutral pH, not a problem. Is this correct?
HCO3-, aka bicarb, aka that stuff your kidneys dump into the blood to counter acidosis
Despite the claims of many reputable sources, the kidney cannot dump an ion into your blood, because this would result in buildup of static charge. It must move some positive ion along with the bicarb, probably Na⁺, that is, it’s really moving NaHCO₃.
Yes, also technically true, but since these are solvated at physiological pH — and trust me, you should be glad they are, because you probably don’t want your blood full of precipitated baking soda — this is equivalent to moving bicarbonate ions and also, separately, moving sodium ions.
The sodium ions can be formally regarded as forming NaOH with the hydroxide ions left over from the self-dissociating water, if you care about that sort of thing.
There are also pumps which can move one anion out and another anion in to equalise charge, incidentally, which is not particularly relevant at this juncture.
The Deffeyes diagram is helpful for understanding carbonate chemistry. It graphs pH on axes of alkalinity vs total dissolved carbonate. Adding an acid or base affects alkalinity but not dissolved carbonate so it causes a vertical movement on the graph; adding CO2 increases dissolved carbonate but doesn’t affect alkalinity so it causes a horizontal movement; sodium bicarbonate (or other chemical species where carbonate or bicarbonate are charge-balanced with cations) will yield a diagonal movement. The change in pH depends on how the pH curves are spaced and sloped in that region of the graph.
I don’t doubt that global warming is a real phenomenon, I have relatively little doubt that it’s mostly (>50%) due to humans, but how dangerous is it really?
David Friedman’s arguments sound pretty convincing to me, but I admit the possibility that this might be due to my ignorance of the subject, that I may have not heard yet the best contra-arguments.
You can read David Friedman’s position and arguments here:
If I understood correctly, David Friedman thinks that the global warming is real, I don’t remember exactly what he thinks about its cause, but he claims that not only it will be not catastrophic for humanity, but it is uncertain that it will be a net negative, because:
1. It will also have some positive effects:
– increased agriculture productivity due to more CO2 and more land for agriculture in the North (Canada, Siberia)
– less deaths due to cold (he says more people die due to cold than due to heat)
2. The negative effects won’t actually be that bad: won’t be that much change, won’t mean American big cities under water, and a century would be enough time to adapt to those changes:
– if the Dutch managed centuries ago to live safely under sea level, by making dikes, Bangladesh and other more exposed countries and regions can do the same
So, people who think global warming will be catastrophic, what are the best contra-arguments to all this?
I am unconvinced about global warming because of the execrable quality of available data, but, presuming that it does happen as described: It won’t really be bad for America or even Europe, but it will mean mass death and economic collapse in the third world. ‘Bangladesh and other more exposed countries and regions can do the same’ is probably mostly false and, in any case, would take a lot of money and time which, respectively, invite opportunity costs and mass death in the interim. Many people think this is a bad thing.
However, it is also my opinion that mass death on more or less the same scale is currently unavoidable regardless.
“mean mass death and economic collapse in the third world”
Why?
“‘Bangladesh and other more exposed countries and regions can do the same’”
Outside some really backwards areas in Africa, farming is scientific everywhere, they can switch crops in response to gradually shifting weather conditions, and by gradual I mean they will take decades. As to protecting certain areas below sea level, they only need to be as wealthy in 2100 as the Netherlands was in 1950.
I assume similar claims were made about overpopulation. Sure, we in the first world can farm more intensely, but can the third world? Be real.
“mean mass death and economic collapse in the third world”
Why?
Because asking them to do anything different will cause marginal deaths, and the population projections for pretty much the entire developing world define the size range of those margins.
Is there data on the number of deaths among those who failed to adapt to the Green Revolution?
“Because asking them to do anything different will cause marginal deaths,”
Maybe, but that would include anything necessary to avert global warming. Although per capita carbon emissions are well below developed country standards, oil increasing in price by 10% will still be quite the pinch.
I think that warming will happen to the tune of something like 1-4 C by 2100 or whatever and think the data is probably good enough to determine whatever estimate they are giving although that’s predicated on no technological breakthroughs in energy or geoengineering.
I agree with delta sigma pi that if it is bad, it pretty much has to be in the third world. I’d make an even stronger statement and say the economic effect on the Americas and Europe won’t even be noticeable.
I think the third world probably won’t be that badly affected overall, but while most regions probably won’t be very affected either way, a few may be hurt very badly. But the overall hurt of excessive decarbonization in most economies would be even worse, so I’d say it’s best to just ride it out.
There may be some places where mitigation aid would be a better bang for the buck than other forms of aid, but there’s a ton of uncertainty here.
but while most regions probably won’t be very affected either way, a few may be hurt very badly.
I think the most at risk are not the low lying coastal areas that people talk about—projected sea level rise is pretty tiny from a geographical point of view. It’s the places, such as some parts of India, where temperatures are already pushing against human limits.
I’ve been warned that global warming will be a disaster in 5 years, every year of my life since the 80s. There’s alot of money and power to be gained by warning about disaster.
Were these warnings coming from people you intellectually respect? If yes, is there something unusual about this topic that is driving their irrationality? If no, then is there something unusual about this topic that is driving your acknowledgement of what ought to be dismissed?
Were these warnings coming from people you intellectually respect?
Teachers, environmentalists, leftwing politicians, so no.
If yes, is there something unusual about this topic that is driving their irrationality?
No, I dont think so. Just typical jumping on a “let’s save the world” bandwagon.
If no, then is there something unusual about this topic that is driving your acknowledgement of what ought to be dismissed?
The cure is 1000x worse than the disease. Warming of a few degrees (assuming it’s going to happen) would be disruptive, in a good way for some, in a bad way for others. Taxing combustion out of existence will be catastrophic, specially for the poor. When (if) we figure out nuclear fusion and really good battery technology, we can get rid of fossil fuels.
Curious then, for you to be repeating their words.
The cure is 1000x worse than the disease
This is a very bad explanation for any audience that isn’t already in agreement with you. It’s missing most of the terms needed for a naive expected value calculation that takes everything offered at face value!
Curious then, for you to be repeating their words.
I dont think so. I’m repeating their words to discredit them.
This is a very bad explanation for any audience that isn’t already in agreement with you. It’s missing most of the terms needed for a naive expected value calculation that takes everything offered at face value!
Perhaps. I dont have the resources to show this, although I believe Bjorn Lomborg has done a pretty good job. I dont have the resources to double-check everything Lomborg has done, but he’s advancing an argument that the elite doesnt like, so that gives him some credibility that others lack.
Also, it just seems like common sense. You can choose to wake up tomorrow morning in one of two worlds. In world 1, the earth is 2 degrees warmer than today. In world 2, the price of fossil fuels is 10x what it is today. Which world would you like to live in?
I dont think so. I’m repeating their words to discredit them.
A dangerous tactic, to be sure – not only is it the primary vector for rhetorical toxoplasma, but one risks a host of pitfalls ranging from the dry Bayesian multiple update to the juicy outgroup-booing.
Luckily, we have techniques like direct attribution and ideological Turing tests that it can be used with to keep the level of discourse high.
I believe Bjorn Lomborg has done a pretty good job.
Cheap rhetoric, dubious summary of the evidence, and an unobjectionably-milquetoast recommendation carefully devoid of numbers. But he includes reference links, several of which aren’t paywalled. I give it ★★★✩✩.
he’s advancing an argument that the elite doesnt like, so that gives him some credibility that others lack.
This heuristic fails catastrophically in groups above Dunbar’s number.
Also, it just seems like common sense. You can choose to wake up tomorrow morning in one of two worlds. In world 1, the earth is 2 degrees warmer than today. In world 2, the price of fossil fuels is 10x what it is today. Which world would you like to live in?
The obvious question – from where are you picking these two as the possibilities? I have no idea what it looks like for fossil fuels to increase in price by an order of magnitude, over the long term, in isolation (or as a primary cause). Likewise, based on my reading of the current projections a 2⁰F increase is the minimum rather than something we can plausibly opt out of. Apples to gravity isn’t quite a matter for common sense, imo.
In terms of how much one should trust the source of such warnings, it’s worth looking at the previous round, the overpopulation hysteria of the late sixties and seventies. As best I recall it, you had a similar level of “all the experts say” rhetoric. And in that case we have another fifty years of data to demonstrate that the conventional view was wildly wrong.
People have been pushing population control as a means of fighting climate change for a while. I’ve encountered an alarming (IMO) number of people who have actually said “I plan not to have children” or “I feel guilty about having children” because of expected climate change. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it here at SSC.
It’s a shame people don’t feel so guilty about the burden caused by governments’ massive unfunded entitlement liabilities.
I remember in the ’90’s watching a documentary called something like “China beyond thr clouds”, which followed the lives of different folks in a Chinese rural village, it didn’t depict anything as horrible as some of the stuff in your link – but I’d be surprised if the Chinese state would allow the filmmakers to show those things!
Still it wasn’t exactly flattering, the main family followed was of the villages school teacher who had illegal children, and difficulties of that situation were mentioned, but my main memory of the film was the part where a lady Communist party official from outside the village was speaking to a old local woman on the “importantance of birth control”, since neither women could speak the same dialect a local man translated, and I remember the befuddled look of the old woman (who was clearly pass child bearing age) as she was being lectured by the really fat CCP agent about preventing births that would be miraculous if they happened, and I thought: “Well she’s filling her quota, bureaucracy is the same the world over!”
The odd thing about not having kids because of climate change is that you could offset all the carbon emissions of a child for a couple hundred bucks a year (and this will probably decrease in the coming decades for adults).
People pay tens of thousands for fertility treatments or adoption, but are put off by potential carbon emissions from having a kid? I don’t think many people actually know that carbon offsetting is so cheap. Why doesn’t Greta Thurnburg shame regular people into buying carbon credits?
Probably more than a few who don’t want kids for some other inadequately examined reason and have settled on climate change as an adequately pious justification, though.
I’ve met quite a few people whose stated reason for not having more/any children, was the environment. I am skeptical of this, though. The same people would complain about the difficulties of parenthood, etc.
Because having children is bad for the environment, or because they don’t want their children to suffer under the effects of climate change (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen both, but I’m not sure which people are referring to here)?
Basic cognitive dissonance minimizing behavior is to fortify a conflicted decision by focusing on all the downsides and ignoring the upsides.
It doesn’t mean that their stated main reason isn’t the true main reason. In fact, a person who makes a decision primarily for ideological reasons (or to fit into their social group), but would act differently in the absence of that ideology, is probably much more likely to need anti-cognitive dissonance coping techniques.
I have never seen anyone claim that climate change will lead to disaster in the next 5 years. If that is a common behavior in the States, it would explain to me why people doubt it.
There are two different claims that are easily confused if you don’t pay attention:
1: If we don’t do anything very large about global warming, catastrophe will occur in X years.
2: If we don’t do anything very large about global warming in the next X years, catastrophe will eventually occur.
The former, with X of five or even twenty, is uncommon. The latter, with X usually ten to twenty, is common.
One can’t prove that the latter is false, since eventually may not have arrived yet. But one can be suspicious when, after X years have passed, the same people are making a similar statement with a new deadline.
But one can be suspicious when, after X years have passed, the same people are making a similar statement with a new deadline.
Yes indeed. And this view should be informed by the simple fact that power and money will flow to those who can identify a serious threat, and therefore there is always a very important bias towards over-hyping a problem. Scientists are not all immune to this bias despite being scientists.
How contradictory opinions and findings are treated is also telling. Sean Carroll recently had Michael Mann on his podcast, and Carroll made the point that in science, glory awaits those who can disprove your theory, and therefore there is no reason to fear this bias. This is somewhat true in non-politicized fields. But not true in climatology today. If you dont toe the party line you get labeled a shill for big oil and you get ostracized.
I’m not an expert, but I understand that there are concerns about climate change that are not strictly tied to warming and/or rising water levels. For example, there will be weird weather patterns in the interim, and it’s hard to say what the finished picture will look like because the inputs keep changing. Europe is warmer than it should be given its latitude because of a current running up the east coast of America, and that current could be shut down by melting glaciers, paradoxically making Europe colder. And more CO2 dissolving in the ocean will drive down its pH (due to a process I happen to have asked about in the post below this one), which will mess up fisheries. I’m told we’re going to have a lot more jellyfish in the future, since they tolerate changes in pH much more readily than other fish.
So, there are two things you haven’t mentioned. There are likely others. I have no firm opinion on GW/CC since I don’t really understand it that well.
If I understood correctly, David Friedman thinks that the global warming is real, I don’t remember exactly what he thinks about its cause,
Probably in large part anthropogenic, although climate is a sufficiently complicated system to make that only probably. There is a lot of uncertainty about climate sensitivity to CO2, and if the true value is at the low end of estimates, something else may be adding a substantial amount to the human causation.
– less deaths due to cold (he says more people die due to cold than due to heat)
The old journal article on the subject estimated almost twenty times as many deaths from cold than from heat. I’m posting this from a laptop in an airplane in flight (!), but when I get back to my desktop I can provide a link. I haven’t seen any estimate of how sensitive either death rate is to temperature, but it’s relevant that warming tends to be greater in cold times and places than in warm, due to the interaction with water vapor.
I tried to edit my post when I noticed I had failed to mark the first quotation. Unfortunately the connection to the airplane server—Jet Blue now has free wifi—went down, and by the time I was able to get back on it was too late to edit.
Here is an account of the Lancet article on death rates from cold vs from heat.
I’ve spent a lot of time engaged with David Friedman’s thoughts about climate change, and I think the important relevant quip you need is, “reversed stupidity is not intelligence.” David Friedman is absolutely right about the low-quality of thinking–stupidity!–generally present in many expressions of mainstream and ‘consensus’ views. I don’t think you can do much better for a persuasive proof that there are lots of low-quality perspectives, many toting themselves as the ‘consensus’ or ‘only’ perspective, arguing that climate change is doom-level-bad than by spending time with David Friedman’s blog posts on that subject. Some figures on the alarmist side remain, I think, completely borne out as honest and careful… I’m thinking in particular of James Hansen, who I remember thinking David Friedman would be inclined to agree is a careful thinker. If you form an opinion without reading anything Hansen has written, then in my opinion you are short-changing yourself.
Perhaps you are of the mind that even the most careful of specialists cannot be trusted to accurately report the estimations of their specialty, because the all-too-human instinct to view oneself–and one’s profession–as important will skew every specialist to thinking the problem their specialty perceives as having outsize importance. So naturally all climate scientists will overstate the scale of the problems climate science perceives, and underestimate our adaptability.
Even if you think so, there has been highly motivated (the good kind of motivation–the kind that wants to get the *true* answer, not the popular or virtuous-looking or this-will-make-my-life-meaningful or this-will-make-my-tribe-look-smart-and-my-profession-high-status answer)… I’m talking, of course, about hedge funds.
There are limits to what you’ll learn if you look for how people with serious money are looking to try and make more of it by knowing more about climate change than other people. Bonus if it’s their own money they are investing. There are short-comings to this perspective, e.g. it is not particularly easy to short coastal real estate, so a lot of land ends up in the hands of the most optimistic rather than the person with the clearest eyes about large downside risks/trends. If you have WSJ access, this link may be helpful to you: https://www.wsj.com/articles/funds-say-climate-change-is-now-part-of-their-investing-equation-11560218940. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund is not, to my mind, a bunch of hippies.
You can also read the table-of-contents/intro/first chapter of “Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming” on Amazon’s search-inside feature. Or let me recommend that you do some of your own searching around Google for investment firms and what they are spending money assuming is likely to happen… https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hedge-funds-millions-europe-killer-heat-waves-climate-change/ is another good link.
Alternately, you can look at the expense that some cities are planning to undertake to adapt to the impacts they know to expect. E.g. it’s easy to find details on Boston’s planned-and-abandoned seawall.
These things won’t tell you that much about how to value the marginal effort to reduce emissions to mitigate overall climate change globally. That’s a hard problem. I think an analysis will be incomplete if it doesn’t think a bit about 10% chances of very bad things. If 90% of the time, in a world where scientists were as alarmed by something as they are by climate change now, it would turn out to be as much a technology-will-solve-that non-issue as the population bomb turned out to be… is 90% a good enough risk with climate change? Some additional search terms: “ocean acidification” “clathrate gun” “albedo feedback.” There have been times where scientists or others who had done the work to know if something was bad, said “it’s bad!!” and were ignored, with terrible consequences. E.g. if I know the story right, in the Irish Potato famine, lots of people, including British ones, on the ground in Ireland were saying “it’s bad!!” but the English in England weren’t possessed of the political will to collectively look at the scale of the problem.
Another thing you can do, that is about as good as deciding to try and know the right answer about climate change, is to decide to *not* know, and to award your time to being respectful and facilitating challenging in-depth conversation between experts by keeping your non-expert opinion out of the way. That’s been my approach lately. Ask again in a couple weeks, if you’re still interested, and I’ll chime in with more thoughts.
I think an analysis will be incomplete if it doesn’t think a bit about 10% chances of very bad things.
Nordhaus, if I correctly understand him, gets something like half his estimate of the costs of warming out of very bad things with probabilities much less than 10%.
But if one does that, one should also allow for low probability high cost cases in the other direction. To take the most obvious one, we are currently in an interglacial that has been running for longer than average. Its end would leave every port in the world high and dry and could easily put half a mile of ice over the present locations of London and Chicago. I don’t think it is likely that AGW is what is holding back the end of the interglacial, but it isn’t impossible.
As best I can tell, Nordhaus does not do that, because he isn’t looking for evidence in the opposite of the currently orthodox direction.
The solution to falling global temperatures is already apparent and readily available. In the event that we start to experience that, we already know the hedge.
The solution to falling global temperatures is already apparent and readily available.
Are you imagining “we” as a person? If temperatures start to fall, it will take a fair while before people who had been warning of the dangers of AGW decide they were wrong and reverse their position. Consider, as an analogous case, how the fears of population catastrophe managed to continue for decades after the predictions they were based on had been falsified–Ehrlich still hasn’t conceded he was wrong, despite the failure of the predicted mass famines to occur in the 197o’s.
Once scientific opinions start shifting, it will take a still longer time for relevant behavior to change, because lots of people will have taken actions committing themselves to the solution of what was believed to be the problem.
> But if one does that, one should also allow for low probability high cost cases in the other direction. To take the most obvious one, we are currently in an interglacial that has been running for longer than average.
There is a 2016 paper that includes the argument that we skipped the next glaciation period as a result of human activity [deforestation and land-use] *prior* to industrialization. That is the difference between a CO2 ppm of 240 (projected based on non-AGW forcing) and 280 (actual) I think you’ll find that glaciation has been factored into most widely used climate models. I wouldn’t discount Nordhaus because he doesn’t look at something (glaciation) that is nowhere near a risk at the moment.
I wouldn’t discount Nordhaus because he doesn’t look at something (glaciation) that is nowhere near a risk at the moment.
Does “nowhere near a risk” mean probability below .00001 or probability below one percent? I haven’t gone over Nordhaus’ list of low probability/high cost effects of AGW, but I’m pretty sure he includes things there is less than a one percent chance of happening.
Funds are pouring billions of dollars into technologies and industries they think will benefit from a transition to a clean-energy world and avoiding those that are likely to be hurt by it.
This would be wise whether or not global warming was real, so long as investors expected these industries to be subsidized and their competitors to be taxed.
So naturally all climate scientists will overstate the scale of the problems climate science perceives, and underestimate our adaptability.
I suspect that a lot of these failures come out of uncertainty over the relationship between variables. This results in phrases which start with “if this trend continues” and lead to some catastrophic result, frequently due to linear extrapolation. It’s very difficult to determine if a trend with a few noisy data points is linear, sinusoidal, logarithmic, exponential or multiple sigmoid curves, etc.
So the conditional of “if this trend continues” followed by extrapolation may be true, the overall presentation, especially in the media, results in hyperbole.
Somewhat tangential – I think that looking only at the effects in the US (or Europe, or both) will lead to bad predictions, because of the globalized economy.
Yes, the US can probably afford to handle direct sea level rise effects, and direct heat effects, though they might not bother in places like Puerto Rico, regardless of the local impact.
But my (American) employer depends on people in poor countries to produce the actual goods they ship. This isn’t going to work too well if those poor countries can’t afford to protect their population, or if the country collapses into anarchy because of climate-change related conflicts. My employer’s costs could go up a lot, either because they take on this responsibility themselves, or because they move their manufacturing somewhere a lot more expensive.
And my cheap-in-the-US goods mostly come from low income countries. When the prices of those goods go up, my standard of living will presumably go down.
FWIW, I’m also not so sure life in the US won’t be directly affected (negatively) by climate change. But I am not a meteorologist, and most of the info available is insanely partisan. So I hesitate to make any specific predictions.
Not an expert, but in my opinion the word “catastrophic” sometimes causes confusion.
I think an ice-free Arctic ocean would be a catastrophe, I think glacier-free Alps would be a catastrophe, I think the mass extinction that is already underway is a catastrophe, not to mention the smaller catastrophes of more severe storms and droughts in many parts of the world.
I do not believe global heating will wipe out human civilisation, but there are a lot of catastrophes short of that.
And the positive feedback loops are a terrifying unknown. Melting ice lowers albedo and raises heat absorption from the sun, melting permafrost releases methane, higher temperatures promote forest fires, changes to rainfall (in either direction) can cause problems for vegetation. The truth is we don’t really know how serious these feedback loops are, but my understanding is that they’re considered serious enough that we should be very, very cautious of them.
And the other scary thing is how delayed all the effects are. Long-term climate forecasts are useful for this stuff, but I think the general public (and politicians and journalists) look at the *present* rapid heating, and they look at the *present* emissions and compare the two. But when you actually look at the long-term forecasts (or just climate science more generally) you see that there’s a big delay. The rapid heating going on right now is a consequence of the emissions of the past. The emissions of the present will lead to even worse heating. Even if we halted our emissions right now the world would keep getting hotter.
I think an ice-free Arctic ocean would be a catastrophe
This one leaps out to me because I don’t understand it at all. An ice-free route between Asian and European markets would be amazing for humanity and lower carbon emissions by ships.
Re: increased agricultural productivity from more CO2:
Agricultural output is a result of a range of inputs. While one input has been improving (CO2 availability) several others are diminishing (depending on regional context).
Heat and water stress are the obvious concerns. There are biological limits to how much heat and how little water crops can survive in, let alone thrive. Technology can tweak these on the edges but there are diminishing returns as we reach the outer limits. One could switch to indoor farming then but those operations are incredibly expensive, error-prone and at the moment they fail pretty regularly (AFAIK indoor cannabis is the only successful at-scale agri industry, for a range of political/legal reasons).
Water stress is a contemporary fear in much of the American West, Australia, and India (as a sample of agricultural systems with a global footprint that I’m more familiar with). Each of these regions share a similar pattern of relying on large scale extraction of ground water, from huge reservoirs that are slowly but surely emptying out. When folks champion the green-revolution or scientific agriculture, this is one of the reasons I am concerned that the productivity we have gained will be ‘temporary’ and that we are wildly spending millennia of water savings in a century. Climate change is just an accelerant to this wider over-consumption.
If contemporary agricultural lands start becoming non-viable en masse, can we just pivot north/south? At least in the south, there isn’t anywhere substantial to go. In the north, we have swaths of low-density land in Canada, Russia and other friends of the arctic circle. Won’t increasing agriculture in these regions just: 1) Lower albedo for land that was previously snow-pact 2) increase deforestation for land that was previously forest 3) break up even more permafrost, unlocking some carbon/methane stock that has been previously locked into the soil? Thus speeding up climate change.
Also, has Friedman updated his views since 2011? (I am not taking the time right now to personally check)
The modeling has updated since then and many specific facets of climate related system have had deeper study. Unfortunately, most of the time I hear that these facets are looking worse than anticipated. Some examples that spring to mind:
“We find that observed maximum thaw depths at all sites are already regularly exceeding modeled future thaw depths for 2090 under IPCC RCP 4.5.”
Important to note here that when these global mean temps are listed as 3C, that the *vast* majority of the earth’s surface will be below that average: the ocean, the incredible heat-sink that we are trying to break. And the rest of the surface, the land, where the humans are, will be higher, between 4-6C. Don’t base your back-of-the-envelope thinking and projects on just the global average.
All that to say: do we really have a full century? I get that we are essentially pitting the ‘innovation’ rate against entropy-in-the-global-system but the sheer rate and scale of change is concerning.
I think the mass extinction that is already underway is a catastrophe, not to mention the smaller catastrophes of more severe storms and droughts in many parts of the world.
Talking about updating one’s views… . The IPCC claimed AGW was increasing drought in the fourth report, retracted that claim in the fifth. What is your evidence that AGW is leading to more severe storms and droughts, beyond the fact that some people predicted it would?
Heat and water stress are the obvious concerns. There are biological limits to how much heat and how little water crops can survive in, let alone thrive.
Fortunately, one of the effects of increased CO2 concentration is to reduce water requirements for plants, since they don’t have to pass as much air through the leaves to get the carbon they need.
Also, has Friedman updated his views since 2011?
My post on IPCC predictions vs what happened was done in 2014. I have mostly taken the latest IPCC report as at least a first approximation to the science, although somewhat biased in a catastrophist direction.
I haven’t tried to follow all claims in either side about things that make the problem worse (or better), since disentangling the true from the false from the results of selective filtering is hard. You can find a few examples of claims that I think are at least moderately dishonest, and heavily reported, on the blog, such as this.
Important to note here that when these global mean temps are listed as 3C, that the *vast* majority of the earth’s surface will be below that average: the ocean, the incredible heat-sink that we are trying to break. And the rest of the surface, the land, where the humans are, will be higher, between 4-6C.
Important to note, and generally ignored, is that warming is greater in cold places and times than in hot. So if global mean is 3°C, that means that winters are four degrees milder, summers two degrees hotter, that average temperatures in warm climates are up two degrees, in the arctic up four degrees (invented numbers, like, I presume, yours, to make the qualitative point).
In other words, the pattern of warming is biased in our favor, due to the interaction of water vapor and CO2, both greenhouse gases. Milder winters are usually a good thing, just as hotter summers are a bad thing, and warmer temperatures are usually a good thing in cold places, bad in hot.
> “I think the mass extinction that is already underway is a catastrophe, not to mention the smaller catastrophes of more severe storms and droughts in many parts of the world”
David, you’ve grabbed someone else’s quote there, from further up in the thread.
Fortunately, one of the effects of increased CO2 concentration is to reduce water requirements for plants, since they don’t have to pass as much air through the leaves to get the carbon they need.
I assume you are not suggesting that the increased CO2 uptake is sufficient to offset the reduction in environmental water flows and the increased water-loss from warmer temperatures?
I haven’t tried to follow all claims in either side about things that make the problem worse (or better), since disentangling the true from the false from the results of selective filtering is hard.
Yes, it is a shit-show, in part because there are strong vested interests in the energy sector that have been sowing FUD for decades, and because any issue of sufficient size will attract the passion/energy of folks that either don’t have time or the analytical/communication skills to add signal and not noise, or bring their own agendas. As a group’s size increases linearly, the opportunity for us to find ‘low-quality thinking’ will increase super-linearly. For me, that there are dumb arguments out there made “on the behalf of” AGW does not invalidate AGW as a pressing concern.
Important to note, and generally ignored, is that warming is greater in cold places and times than in hot.
Yes. The coldest places, places with significant ice and snow, are warming ‘faster’ or take on a higher burden of the global mean temp increase. Considering the degradation of albedo that comes as a result, the increase rate of sea level rise that one assumes will follow, and the disruption to ecologies that have adapted to a specific range of snow/glacier melt, I would not read that as a “biased in our favor”
If there were a parallel universe earth:
– that was baseline hotter by 2 degrees C
– had arrived at that baseline over the progression of hundreds of thousands of years
– with ecologies that had been shaped by that progression
– and with a human civilization that was also established during that ‘glacial’ change in climate (nice word play, don’t you think)
Then there could be a lot of things about it that are ‘biased in our favor’ and it could be positively delightful. Much much better on balance than the same scenario but trading +2 for -10 celsius. Ice ages suck in many many ways for us.
Unfortunately we are seemingly arriving at +2 (and perhaps more warming) in the space of a few hundred years. Yes, the increased heat is problematic but also the current rate of change is disrupting ecologies and climate systems, potentially faster than they can adapt.
Australia is an example of an ecological system that has adapted to being dry and hot over the process of millennia. Bush fires and drought have long been a part of the history of the place. But it is currently in the grip of ‘unprecedented’ waves of fires. The perspective of someone that has been managing fire risks in Australia for 47 years: https://amp.smh.com.au/national/this-is-not-normal-what-s-different-about-the-nsw-mega-fires-20191110-p5395e.html this is what ‘milder winters’ means in some parts of the world: a longer fire season, greater risk of ‘natural’ disaster and greater instability. Australian and West coast USA are some of the ecological canaries-in-the-coal-mine; if things are this bad now, what will they look like in 20 years? In 50?
“… the pattern of warming is biased in our favor…” California and Australia are examples of ecologies/climate regions that are trending negatively as things warm. Are there tangible examples of places were AGW is actually making things better? Not just a generic “plants grow faster because more CO2, yay” but actually looking at specific systems that seem to be ‘benefitting’?
This community leans right much further than I encounter in my meat-space social circles, so I’d like y’alls perspective on the ongoing impeachment hearings. Some questions to consider:
1. Was there a conspiracy on the part of the administration to tie aid/support for Ukraine to their influencing the 2020 election? (Y/N)
2. If so, was the president aware of and/or orchestrating said conspiracy? (Y/N)
3. If such a conspiracy did occur would it be improper? (Y/N)
4. If it is improper, does it rise to the level of impeachment? (Y/N)
1. No. Trump was looking for dirt on Biden though, and that’s at least as legal as initiating a 2 year investigation into the POTUS based on some sleazy opposition research.
2. N/A
3. Not more improper than the Mueller investigation.
4. N/A
Pretty clearly President Trump et. al. were trying to get Ukraine to provide dirt. The President himself literally asked them to do this, so it’s similarly clear he knew about it, although I don’t know if I’d want to dignify this whole ridiculous mess by claiming anybody orchestrated anything. I can’t come up with a coherent democratic philosophy which has a serious problem with this but not with super-PACs, and I think all forms of obvious political grandstanding are bad, which given the Senate this absolutely is at the moment unless the House knows a whole lot of things I don’t.
which given the Senate this absolutely is at the moment unless the House knows a whole lot of things I don’t.
I don’t think the other party having control of the Senate is a reason to hold off on impeachment – it’s pretty much par for the course. Since you need a 2/3rds majority to remove, you’ll almost always need the cooperation of the other party no matter who controls it. You just have to hope that whatever you uncover is explosive enough that it can push the other party into supporting it.
1. Probably Yes for a definition of “influencing” that amounts to the Ukranian government making an official proclamation that Biden is a Crook without regard for whether or not that was true (and without regard to whether people on his own side were engaged in equally corrupt dealings).
2. If #1 is a Yes, #2 is definitely a Yes
3. See #2. If true, the bit where Trump threatened to withhold aid over this, constitutes redirecting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for his private political ends.
4. Same as #3, plus if we allow this power to fall into the hands of a competent president, then that president’s party will be effectively impossible to remove from power.
Note that the next competent politician to sit in the Oval Office, will probably be a Democrat.
For 4) we already know what it looks like when a competent administration has this power, it’s called Obama’s investigation of the Trump campaign that dragged on for two years into the Mueller report.
What the heck do you call the whole Russia investigation other than a fishing expedition primarily for political gain? Or the Steele dossier, literally paying foreigners for dubious dirt on a political candidate? Yeah, they laundered that through a Brit and the DNC, but when it gets introduced as evidence in a secret federal court…
Yes there was some actual dirt uncovered in that investigation, although the scale was much lower than originally advertised. In any case I doubt any of that gets pursued with nearly so much vigor if it didn’t directly serve the Dems’ political interests.
So basically like so many Trump crises this is all about optics and process crimes. If you’ve got enough allied bureaucrats and a friendly press to publish the right leaks, and you know the magic words for plausible deniability, feel free to use the power of government to attack the results of the democratic process and the power of foreign aid to extort allied governments.
If you’re Trump and you clumsily try to get your buddy Rudy to do it, you’re a Traitor etc.
I get that we have the process for a reason, but I also totally get why Trump supporters or even non-Trumpist Republicans are having a hard time drawing a moral distinction that makes Trump uniquely evil here.
I think if the RNC or Trump wants to spend campaign money to fund oppo research on Biden from Ukrainians or anyone else its totally fine. Leveraging hundreds of millions of dollars of military support approved by Congress is not okay.
Biden used a billion dollars in aid to get a Ukrainian political appointee fired, who just might have turned some unpleasant light on his son’s activities that look an awful lot like accepting attempted influence peddling.
Biden’s bribe went through the right channels and Hunter has enough plausible deniability that he probably isn’t technically a criminal, but the optics would have been bad.
Either way the Obama administration openly extorted a political action out of Ukraine, via threat of withheld, taxpayer funded aid.
I’m not arguing the technicalities here. It’s possible, even likely, that Trump’s maneuver violates some law that Biden did not.
But where is the moral distinction? It requires begging the question and assuming that getting some Ukrainian prosecutor canned was critical to American interests, but investigating possible Ukrainian influence peddling is ONLY of interest to Trump’s political interests.
On your actual point (sorry for the digression) why is okay to pay foreigners for oppo research, but not accept it from them? Since the latter was what got the whole “Trump colluded with Russia” thing started.
Why is it irrelevant? If we’re basing an impeachment proceeding on a double standard, held for purely political reasons, that seems highly relevant.
The Democrats want me to believe that Trump did a highly improper, unprecedentedly bad thing, literally betraying America for the sake of naked political ambition, so serious that we must implement impeachment to defend the Constitution.
But if Trump’s actions are just clumsy, bull in a china shop, damn the process versions of stuff more adept politicos do all the time, and the difference is fundamentally procedural rather than moral, that’s a tougher case to make.
On your actual point (sorry for the digression) why is okay to pay foreigners for oppo research, but not accept it from them? Since the latter was what got the whole “Trump colluded with Russia” thing started.
Legally, a political campaign can employ a foreign national, while they cannot accept any kind of donation (either cash or a “thing of value”) from a foreign national. Opposition research is a “thing of value”.
Additionally, Trump’s decision to try to get valuable opposition research from Ukraine isn’t just a violation of campaign finance law, it’s also probably felony extortion and possibly bribery.
I guess I don’t think “double standard” is a persuasive argument. Like if one murderer gets let go, then from now on all murderers must be released to avoid a double standard?
If murder happened all the time, but it was only prosecuted when committed by the political opponents of the majority government, then yeah, that would be relevant.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but a double standard applied only when advantageous to you is no standard at all.
@broblawsky – It seems there are 3 things:
1) Alice is offered dirt on her opponent Bob by a Clipistani official. It is illegal for her to accept.
2) Alice offers something of value to a Clipistani official to get dirt on Bob. This is also illegal.
3) Alice hears that the Clipistanis might have some dirt on Bob. So she hires Daria, from Foolandia, to travel to Clipistan and get the dirt. Daria, while in Clipistan, gathers up freely offered dirt and pays for dirt when it helps grease the wheels, then writes it up in a nice report and delivers it to Alice. This is totally fine.
I’m with you till you get to 3? To me these all have the same outcome and treating them as clearly distinct is problematic.
Thank you for the links. I think the Daily Beast one is, however, yet another example of question begging here. Trump was not asking the Ukrainians for “oppo research”. He was asking them to investigate a potential crime. Opinions may differ on whether there was any sort of justification for such an investigation, but calling it oppo research off the bat is assuming away that key question.
I believe that while that is the official position of the FEC, but it’s pretty controversial and hasn’t been legally tested.
In particular, if it were true, it would be illegal for a US Citizen to donate opposition research that was valued at more than campaign donation limits, and politicians would need to declare the value of information received from US Citizens along with their identities, right?
I don’t see how investigation of a single crime is opposition research.
If Trump said “Give me all your files on Biden”, that’s probably opposition research, although the points made about whether or not that is really a donation is relevant here.
But the idea that it is not allowable to request foreign investigation into a specific investigation of someone because he may one day run against Trump (as far as I know, Biden is still not the Democrat nominee) is fairly silly.
1) Alice is offered dirt on her opponent Bob by a Clipistani official. It is illegal for her to accept.
2) Alice offers something of value to a Clipistani official to get dirt on Bob. This is also illegal.
3) Alice hears that the Clipistanis might have some dirt on Bob. So she hires Daria, from Foolandia, to travel to Clipistan and get the dirt. Daria, while in Clipistan, gathers up freely offered dirt and pays for dirt when it helps grease the wheels, then writes it up in a nice report and delivers it to Alice. This is totally fine.
I’m with you till you get to 3? To me these all have the same outcome and treating them as clearly distinct is problematic.
The difference between A+B and C is the possibility of a corrupt exchange. In the case of A, Alice owes the Clipistani government something. Obviously, we want to avoid situations where our politicians are in hock to foreign governments. In the case of B, we have the same problems as A, along with questions of bribery. In the case of C, the only person Alice owes is Daria, and because she hired Daria legally as part of her campaign, the extent of that obligation is limited to a normal exchange of goods and services.
Thank you for the links. I think the Daily Beast one is, however, yet another example of question begging here. Trump was not asking the Ukrainians for “oppo research”. He was asking them to investigate a potential crime. Opinions may differ on whether there was any sort of justification for such an investigation, but calling it oppo research off the bat is assuming away that key question.
He was asking them to investigate his foremost political rival. It’s valuable to his political campaign, which makes it opposition research. As a legal analogy: imagine a President asking a foreign government to donate to a charitable foundation in their name, which could then be leveraged to support a reelection campaign as well. If Trump had let Barr push for this without getting personally involved, he’d have some protection. By directly pressing Zelensky to assist Barr, he compromised himself.
Beyond the legal complexities of the situation, here’s the core question: do you really want the already-dysfunctional American political environment to degenerate into a bidding war for the support of foreign intelligence agencies? Because that’s where we end up headed if Trump doesn’t get punished for this.
I don’t see how investigation of a single crime is opposition research.
If Trump said “Give me all your files on Biden”, that’s probably opposition research, although the points made about whether or not that is really a donation is relevant here.
But the idea that it is not allowable to request foreign investigation into a specific investigation of someone because he may one day run against Trump (as far as I know, Biden is still not the Democrat nominee) is fairly silly.
It’s illegal for Trump to request the investigation. If Barr had pushed for it by himself, this wouldn’t be illegal, or at least Trump wouldn’t be implicated. Trump isn’t the US’s chief law enforcement official; Barr is. It isn’t Trump’s job to investigate people.
Edit: to preempt anyone claiming Trump is the US’s chief law enforcement officer, I’d like to cite the White House’s own website, which lists the AG as “chief law enforcement officer of the federal government”. Also, Trump can’t have a law enforcement role: he’s commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and Posse Comitatus bars the armed forces from a law enforcement role outside of special circumstances.
imagine a President asking a foreign government to donate to a charitable foundation in their name, which could then be leveraged to support a reelection campaign as well.
Presidents have foreign governments contribute to their charitable foundations all the time. I believe the saudis have contributed to all of the recent ones. There are also the myriad donations to the clinton foundation from foreign governments.
Beyond the legal complexities of the situation, here’s the core question: do you really want the already-dysfunctional American political environment to degenerate into a bidding war for the support of foreign intelligence agencies? Because that’s where we end up headed if Trump doesn’t get punished for this.
As I’ve said elsewhere, presidents have fought entire wars they didn’t believe in for domestic political advantage. reagan spent billions on bombers he knew were obsolete because it was good politics, and Kennedy spent a fortune closing a non-existent missile gap for the same reason. Getting someone investigated is small change compared to that, and I cannot get outraged over a president requesting an investigation of someone who seems to have been corrupt.
“to preempt anyone claiming Trump is the US’s chief law enforcement officer, I’d like to cite the White House’s own website, which lists the AG as “chief law enforcement officer of the federal government”.”
This reflects a common pattern of the deep state treating its “traditions” as if they were the law of the land. We wrote it on a website, so there! The constitution establishes that the President is the head of the executive branch. If the executive branch has the power to do something according to the constitution, then the President has the same power unless specifically stated otherwise.
Presidents have foreign governments contribute to their charitable foundations all the time. I believe the saudis have contributed to all of the recent ones. There are also the myriad donations to the clinton foundation from foreign governments.
At no point did a sitting President directly request those donations, however. That’s a critical factor. Trump didn’t do anything (obviously) illegal when the Russian government cyberattacked the DNC, even though they were able to provide valuable opposition research for his campaign. And I’m going to head off any discussions about the Clinton Foundation: the Trump administration has had 3 years to investigate the Clinton’s and they’ve never tried to bring charges against them. There’s nothing there.
As I’ve said elsewhere, presidents have fought entire wars they didn’t believe in for domestic political advantage. reagan spent billions on bombers he knew were obsolete because it was good politics, and Kennedy spent a fortune closing a non-existent missile gap for the same reason. Getting someone investigated is small change compared to that, and I cannot get outraged over a president requesting an investigation of someone who seems to have been corrupt.
Then I hope you’ll be equally non-outraged when, under the next Democratic administration, conservative political leaders and donors are “investigated” into terrified compliance. The wall of separation between law enforcement and the Executive is perhaps the single most important factor separating liberal and illiberal democracies. Once it’s breached, all hell breaks loose.
Then I hope you’ll be equally non-outraged when, under the next Democratic administration, conservative political leaders and donors are “investigated” into terrified compliance. The wall of separation between law enforcement and the Executive is perhaps the single most important factor separating liberal and illiberal democracies. Once it’s breached, all hell breaks loose.
I would amend it to say politically-motivated investigations are the most important factor separating liberal and illiberal democracies. Whether they are launched by political officials directly or politically-motivated deep state officials “civil servants” doesn’t make any difference. The deep state fired the first shot with the Mueller investigation. Alternatively, there is “no proof” it was politically motivated. And there’s “no proof” Trump wanted Biden investigated for political reasons.
Then I hope you’ll be equally non-outraged when, under the next Democratic administration, conservative political leaders and donors are “investigated” into terrified compliance. The wall of separation between law enforcement and the Executive is perhaps the single most important factor separating liberal and illiberal democracies. Once it’s breached, all hell breaks loose.
We already tried to be outraged. We were told it was mere public servants doing their sworn duty to investigate a serious crime.
This alleged crime has more evidence for its existence now, without an investigation, than that one had after a multi year investigation by the FBI, IC, and then a special prosecutor.
Its the President’s duty to ensure that Ukraine’s 2016 is not repeated. Its also his duty to investigate corruption by American governmental officials. That those things sometimes will benefit his campaign is unavoidable.
At no point did a sitting President directly request those donations, however. That’s a critical factor.
Please. their might not have been a record of the request, but tens of millions do not just appear.
the Trump administration has had 3 years to investigate the Clinton’s and they’ve never tried to bring charges against them. There’s nothing there.
that they didn’t try is not evidence that there’s nothing there, but that’s besides the point. There’s no way, for example, that trump is violating the emoluments clause but Clinton wasn’t raking in huge donations while secretary of state. But one of these things is considered perfectly normal and the other is impeachable. the double standard is appalling.
Then I hope you’ll be equally non-outraged when, under the next Democratic administration, conservative political leaders and donors are “investigated” into terrified compliance.
You mean like the Mueller investigation? Because I wasn’t outraged by it. I didn’t like the spectacle, and you could probably convince me that some of the people caught up in it got worse than they deserved (e.g. I don’t like Mike Flynn, and I’m glad he’s not in the white house, but I don’t think he deserved to have his whole life destroyed), but from what I’ve gathered it looks like some tax cheats went to jail, which I’m entirely in favor of.
You mean like the Mueller investigation? Because I wasn’t outraged by it. I didn’t like the spectacle, and you could probably convince me that some of the people caught up in it got worse than they deserved (e.g. I don’t like Mike Flynn, and I’m glad he’s not in the white house, but I don’t think he deserved to have his whole life destroyed), but from what I’ve gathered it looks like some tax cheats went to jail, which I’m entirely in favor of.
The Mueller investigation wasn’t conducted by a Democratic administration. It was commissioned by the Trump administration, directed by former AG Jeff Sessions (until his recusal) and current AG Barr, and all of its investigative procedures were considered acceptable by the Trump administration. Mueller himself is a lifelong Republican. If you thought that was bad, then you should be doubly invested in making sure that Trump is punished for this violation of the law, because if he isn’t, politicized investigations will become the norm, and this power may be wielded far more competently in the future.
@EchoChaos says: “…as far as I know, Biden is still not the Democrat nominee…
And for what it’s worth I’m increasingly doubtful he will be, large amount donors are going for Buttigieg (who I also don’t think will be the nominee), the activist wing and small donors are going for Warren (and to a lesser extent Sanders), on the Left wing Sanders has been previously too independent to get institutional support within the Party so Warren will be the Left candidate, Biden’s support is broad but not deep, and frankly he seems doddering and isn’t a good debater, his supporters tend to be (there’s a lot of overlap in these categories) older, non-white, more conservative (relative to other Democrats), and/or more likely to live in “red states”, which is great base of support for a candidate to win the general election, but a terrible one for winning the Party.
At this point it looks to me like Warren has it in the bag to be nominee, and she’ll lose in the electoral college.
Sanders won’t be the nominee, but if he somehow is his almost Trump-like cantankerousness may appeal to enough non-voters to do better than Warren would, but I have a hard time imagining a self-described “socialist” wins unless a deep recession starts very soon and lasts until next year.
If Biden is the nominee and loses the Democratic Party will go further Left, which will also happen if Warren or Sanders wins the general election.
Whichever Party wins the Presidency won’t have a majority of the House of Representatives in 2022, and they’ll be stalemate and snipping.
FWLIW, they’re niche things, but I think any Democrat would have good picks for Labor Secretary and the NLRB, otherwise Biden has a slim chance to actually win, Gabbard and Harris are easy on the eyes, and Sanders is just immensely entertaining, but nobody (either Democrat or Republican) will get even a tenth of their promised agenda passed except for maybe some court appointments if the Senate is with them, and I predict the Senate will stay Republican at least until 2024 (so yes, I basically just predicted five more years of the status quo).
I would amend it to say politically-motivated investigations are the most important factor separating liberal and illiberal democracies. Whether they are launched by political officials directly or politically-motivated deep state officials “civil servants” doesn’t make any difference. The deep state fired the first shot with the Mueller investigation.
By the “deep state” you mean the Trump administration, right? Because they’re the people who commissioned the special counsel investigation.
Alternatively, there is “no proof” it was politically motivated. And there’s “no proof” Trump wanted Biden investigated for political reasons.
If you seriously believe that the idea that investigating Biden wouldn’t be politically useful didn’t cross Trump’s mind, I have to doubt whether there’s any point to continuing this conversation.
The Mueller investigation wasn’t conducted by a Democratic administration. It was commissioned by the Trump administration, directed by former AG Jeff Sessions (until his recusal) and current AG Barr, and all of its investigative procedures were considered acceptable by the Trump administration
Oh, please, the accusations began during the obama administration, and mueller was largely independent, and clearly more closely aligned with congressional democrats than anyone in the trump administration.
If you thought that was bad, then you should be doubly invested in making sure that Trump is punished for this violation of the law, because if he isn’t, politicized investigations will become the norm, and this power may be wielded far more competently in the future
I said it wasn’t so bad. and the best way to encourage politicized investigations is for them to be seen as useful for reversing election results.
The Mueller investigation wasn’t conducted by a Democratic administration. It was commissioned by the Trump administration, directed by former AG Jeff Sessions (until his recusal) and current AG Barr, and all of its investigative procedures were considered acceptable by the Trump administration.
Not even half true. The genesis is an Obama administration investigation that violated regulations and lacked probable cause without representing unsubstantiated political material as corroborated.
Mueller himself is a lifelong Republican.
A motto that not only makes little sense, but has little substantiation, particularly based on his staffing choices. Plus, there is little evidence he actually managed the probe, rather it was Weissman, a Democrat to the core (and both are well known as rabid dogs, both have caused the US DOJ to settle massive cases for prosecutorial misconduct).
If you thought that was bad, then you should be doubly invested in making sure that Trump is punished for this violation of the law, because if he isn’t, politicized investigations will become the norm, and this power may be wielded far more competently in the future.
That makes little sense. One was a massive breaking of norms with no credible evidence. This is a following of the Obama admin norms (one cannot break a norm that is already broken, more or less), with much greater evidence to support a launch of the investigation for legitimate reasons.
What you are demanding is that Trump be better than his predecessor by a significant margin. Which he already has been by tolerating the Mueller probe, and tolerating this whistleblower. Obama would have fired Comey day 1, Rosenstein and the SC immediately (as if Holder would have ever recused himself, ROFL), and put this whistleblower in jail, simply based on his documented actions.
Presidents have foreign governments contribute to their charitable foundations all the time.
When you put it like that…is there any reason a president needs to run a charitable foundation? I mean, there is obviously some PR value in using other people’s money for more or less altruistic purposes, but if the effect is mainly to whitewash the purchase of influence, why is it acceptable? Can’t philanthropists at least pretend to give their money to non-political causes?
When you put it like that…is there any reason a president needs to run a charitable foundation?
What’s the point fame and influence if you can’t monetize it? Speaking fees require you to actually, you know, speak. Much easier just to let people just mail you money.
For 4) we already know what it looks like when a competent administration has this power, it’s called Obama’s investigation of the Trump campaign that dragged on for two years into the Mueller report
I missed the part where Mueller used hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and the power of the State Department to lean on foreign intelligence and law-enforcement services to publicly defame a US politician’s family in support of the political ambitions of a different US politician.
The claim is NOT, NOT NOT NOT NOT FUCKING NOT, that opposition research is or ought to be illegal, or even that opposition research conducted in foreign countries is or ought to be illegal. And the slightest hint of charity and reading comprehension on your part would have at least lead to your asking a clarifying question on that point rather than unleashing your canned and irrelevant rant.
You don’t like what Mueller did, fine. That doesn’t make what Trump did, either A: the same as what Mueller did, or B: OK.
I missed the part where Mueller used hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and the power of the State Department to lean on foreign intelligence and law-enforcement services to publicly defame a US politician’s family in support of the political ambitions of a different US politician.
Well, there was nothing foreign about it, but otherwise it’s pretty much what Mueller did. “Hey, I see you cheated on your taxes, be a shame if you went to prison, if only there was something you could say to make me sympathize with your situation….”
There’s “no proof” of any quid pro quo just as there’s “no proof” of any quid pro quo in Ukraine.
Apologies for coming off as uncharitable, I’m doing two things here:
1) being intentionally a bit of a devils advocate for the “the Swamp is just pissed their own tactics are being used on them” position, much more strongly than I actually hold such a position
2) the last time we talked about this, your position seemed to be that the primary provably bad thing that Trump did was refer the Ukrainians to Rudy instead of the proper State Department hack. Biden’s boast about a quid pro quo with Ukraine was fine because it went through the right channels and, in your mind, the benefit to America rather than just Biden was more clear.
Anyway, Mueller didn’t spend “hundreds of millions” but he (and the related investigations) did turn the power of the state and intelligence services on an investigation of domestic and foreign individuals. It is undeniable that that investigation was likely to politically benefit Democrats, and pretending it was just for the good of America requires a lot of charity that Trump is not being extended.
If “amount of taxpayer dollars” is the issue, Biden DID use hundreds of millions of dollars to meddle in the internal politics of a foreign state.
I’m honestly struggling to find the moral distinction here that doesn’t require question begging, and if you’d extend me an ounce of charity perhaps you could help me there rather than dismiss it as a canned rant.
EDIT: there’s also the letter from Senators leaning on the Ukrainians to cooperate with the Mueller investigation in a “nice alliance we have here, shame if something changed that” sort of way. Again, smart enough not to be explicit, but the intent seems similar.
None of this is relevant to whether Trump technically violated a law, but I think it is very relevant to how I ought to feel about it.
If “amount of taxpayer dollars” is the issue, Biden DID use hundreds of millions of dollars to meddle in the internal politics of a foreign state.
I’m honestly struggling to find the moral distinction here that doesn’t require question begging, and if you’d extend me an ounce of charity perhaps you could help me there rather than dismiss it as a canned rant.
Unless I’m confused, you’re mixing two things.
1) Loan guarantees which the executive branch can enter into, or not, which was Vice President Biden’s lever to get the result the US wanted (interference in a foreign government).
2) Foreign Aid, which congress had decided would be provided, which was President Trump’s lever to get a foreign government to investigate a US citizen and the son of his main election opponent.
So, we’ve got different things, over which different branches of government have authority, being used for different purposes.
None of the above is legal advice and is based on my very minimal review of this situation.
the last time we talked about this, your position seemed to be that the primary provably bad thing that Trump did was refer the Ukrainians to Rudy instead of the proper State Department hack. Biden’s boast about a quid pro quo with Ukraine was fine because it went through the right channels and, in your mind, the benefit to America rather than just Biden was more clear.
First off, “State Department hack” is being gratuitously uncharitable. If you’re going to apologize for being uncharitable, you kind of have to make an effort to stop doing that.
Second, basically yes. Private gain and public gain are two different things even if they are sometimes hard to distinguish.
I’m honestly struggling to find the moral distinction here that doesn’t require question begging,
Fair enough. It is absolutely wrong for an elected official to use the state’s money or resources to pursue his private gain, and pursuing private political gain is exceptionally bad. The right and duty of an elected official is to use the state’s money and resources to pursue public gains, and if he wants he may privately (or publicly) hope that this will inspire the public to vote for him or his partisan allies. These are, at least in principle, two things as different as selling goods for money and picking pockets. Demanding that, because Alice was allowed to do the thing that resulted in money moving from Bob’s pocket to hers, we have to allow your guy to do the other thing that has that effect, doesn’t cut it.
Are the borders fuzzier in politics than in commerce? Yes, of course. Do politicians frequently lie about which side of that fuzzy border they are on, in ways that we find hard to prove? They’re politicians and their lips are moving, so you do the math on that one. None of that means that the clumsy oaf of a politician who leaves his muddy footprints all over the pitch-black region should have a get-out-of-jail-free card.
And if you’re genuinely confused as to figure out how to distinguish the two, a few pointers.
If the “public good” you are pursuing starts with harm to your political enemies, or even more so their families, then you just might be a crook. This alone is not proof, but it is suggestive
If the “public good” requires that public money allocated by congress for one purpose be allocated or withheld for another, then you just might be a crook. This alone is not proof, but it is suggestive.
If the “public good” requires the cooperation of a government you yourself have condemned as corrupt, and you make no apparent effort to ensure that they stay honest this time, then you just might be a crook. This alone is not proof, and please take this disclaimer as applying to all the rest even as I decline to repeat it.
If the “public good” involves the vigorous public prosecution or even investigation of crimes that would normally be ignored or quietly handled, then you just might be a crook.
If the “public good” involves the direct intervention of your elected self in matters that would normally be handled by professional civil servants two levels below, you just might be a crook
If the “public good” involves matters that would normally be handled by professional civil servants being instead handed over to your personal hirelings, you just might be a crook.
If the “public good” is conducted without the usual level of public transparency or with more than the usual level of secrecy, then you just might be a crook.
If, when word of the “public good” leaks out anyway, you denounce the whistleblower as a traitor and suggest he ought to be executed, you just might be a crook.
Just off the top of my head.
And if all of these things are true, then we’re past suggesting criminality. At that point, claiming that you are being misunderstood in your selfless pursuit of the “public good” is like Henry II claiming that he only meant for someone to talk to Becket and maybe convince him to be less turbulent. The law is not required to believe transparent lies or take blatant weasel-wording at face value. Nor is Congress, nor am I.
I honestly meant “hack” in the sense of “basically anonymous/interchangeable bureaucrat tasked with executing rather than setting policy” and not anything more nefarious, but the term can be loaded so sorry.
None of that means that the clumsy oaf of a politician who leaves his muddy footprints all over the pitch-black region should have a get-out-of-jail-free card.
To be clear here, I’m trying to say something a bit more nuanced than “Obama/Biden/Clinton got away with it so Trump should get away with it too”. A double standard is no standard at all, particularly if it is only hauled out when convenient to take out your political opponents. Since that is the very thing Trump is ultimately being accused of, wielding his power for personal political ends, it is a very relevant question whether the standards being applied to Trump are sufficiently inline with the standards as they’ve been applied to less orange presidents. I agree that it would be very damaging to allow presidents to use publicly allocated funds to bribe foreign officials into helping their campaigns. But I also believe that it is very damaging to normalize investigating / impeaching sitting presidents because you’ve got control of the House and you’re pissed about how the election went down. So we should make damn sure we aren’t doing that either – if Trump is pursuing the same crooked ends with basically the same means that everyone else in his position does, just more clumsily and without the often thin veneer of “proper channels”, I’m not sure that’s worth making him the first convicted president over.
I generally agree with your “pointers”, but most of them can be applied to the people going after Trump as well:
If the “public good” you are pursuing starts with harm to your political enemies, or even more so their families, then you just might be a crook. This alone is not proof, but it is suggestive
Definitely applies to the Mueller and related investigation, which was ostensibly about protecting America from foreign meddling but was mostly about finding enough dirt on Trump to justify impeaching him. As for “more so their families”, if you are referring to Hunter Biden, he’s a grown ass man who has leveraged his dad’s name into way more privilege and wealth than 99% of Americans will ever have access to who took an obvious “appearance of impropriety” gig with a foreign company, so using the “have you no decency?” defense is uncompelling. We’re not bullying a child here.
If the “public good” requires that public money allocated by congress for one purpose be allocated or withheld for another, then you just might be a crook. This alone is not proof, but it is suggestive.
This is probably the best argument against Trump’s actions, but even here, dangling carrots in front of foreign governments to get them to do things America wants is extremely common. This is after all what the Obama administration did to force Ukraine to make a personnel change – the differences here seem to be about intent (is it a public good?) and the technical details of where the money was allocated (executive loan guarantees vs. “foreign aid”). The former is what I mean by “begging the question”, the latter is what I mean by “I see the technical difference but not the moral one”.
If the “public good” requires the cooperation of a government you yourself have condemned as corrupt, and you make no apparent effort to ensure that they stay honest this time, then you just might be a crook. This alone is not proof, and please take this disclaimer as applying to all the rest even as I decline to repeat it.
This is particularly uncompelling. We have to deal with corrupt foreign (and domestic) governments all the time, including ones we have called out as corrupt.
If the “public good” involves the vigorous public prosecution or even investigation of crimes that would normally be ignored or quietly handled, then you just might be a crook.
The Mueller investigation. Lots of people written up on tangential or process crimes that would have gone ignored except they were useful as leverage to go after Trump. Clearly had insiders leaking selectively to gin up maximum public outrage throughout the process. May apply to this whole impeachment investigation (that’s exactly what we are debating).
If the “public good” involves the direct intervention of your elected self in matters that would normally be handled by professional civil servants two levels below, you just might be a crook.
Can you really blame Trump for not trusting career civil servants to faithfully execute his policies? Calling them “professional” gives the implication that they are non-partisan, which I’m not sure they’ve earned (particularly when it comes to Trump). This standard heavily privileges insiders from the same party as the career bureaucrats.
If the “public good” involves matters that would normally be handled by professional civil servants being instead handed over to your personal hirelings, you just might be a crook.
See above. Also, again, the technical case here is much easier to make than the moral one, and the latter is what I’m more interested in.
If the “public good” is conducted without the usual level of public transparency or with more than the usual level of secrecy, then you just might be a crook.
Are conversations between Presidents and foreign officials typically public? Are proposed investigations?
Is it “the usual level of public transparency” to use the secret FISA court to open investigations into your political opponents, using biased oppo research bought and paid for by your own political party as part of the justification?
If, when word of the “public good” leaks out anyway, you denounce the whistleblower as a traitor and suggest he ought to be executed, you just might be a crook.
Not going to defend the language of Trump here, although it looks pretty self-serving when it is denounced by people who’ve spent the last three years calling Trump traitor, crook, Nazi, and worse (not you of course, but plenty of others including some in official positions).
This is also another place where the question is being begged. Is the whistleblower leaking this privileged information because they genuinely believe a serious crime that will harm American interests has been committed, or are they doing it because they’ve had it out for Trump for political reasons and saw this as an opportunity to take him down? Both the whistleblower and the President are attempting to turn the power of the government toward an end that would undeniably politically benefit one or the other party. So is either end also enough of a public good that it trumps that? I wish I could share your certainty, but to my mind impeaching a President is also a nearly unprecedented power that needs to be wielded carefully, and I’m not convinced the Dems have crossed that bar.
Part of the issue, well really most of the issue, for me is that I can’t say with certainty that investigating Hunter Biden’s business relationships in Ukraine is unreasonable. Like, it seems really naive to assume that he was worth $50k a month unless you were trying to influence peddle. It seems like preventing foreign interests from buying off our officials via their families is very much something that serves the public good. Obviously taking out Joe Biden’s candidacy would also help Donald Trump, but was it unreasonable for Trump to think it would serve the public good as well? And if Trump could reasonably think he was serving the public good, but violated proper procedures in doing so, that’s not good but I feel quite differently about that vs. something that did not have a justifiable end goal. You’ve already granted that this is fuzzy – is Trump’s move truly that fuzz-free?
I trust that you’re being honest when you say you’ve considered that and made an honest determination that no, there was no way Trump had anything but his own interests in mind, and that plus the clumsy and inappropriate way he went about pursuing the goal are impeachment worthy.
But I have zero reason to believe that the Democratic majority and the media are pursuing this in good faith. They’ve spent far too long exerting maximum outrage and minimum charity over every Trumpian offense, real or imagined, to earn that benefit of the doubt. Let’s move on (.org) from impeachment and just have the damn election.
the bit where Trump threatened to withhold aid over this, constitutes redirecting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for his private political ends.
Isn’t that what every president, and every congressperson so far as he can, does? When a politician supports biofuels, not because he mistakenly believes they reduce AGW but because he wants farm votes, isn’t he redirecting money for his private political ends? Similarly for Trump’s tariffs, and building a wall, and lot of things done by other politicians.
Insofar as there is a plausible theory of democracy, it isn’t that politicians are philosopher kings making decisions for the good of the country, it’s that their private political ends mesh tolerably well with the good of the country.
Sort of. But there are legitimate and illegitimate ends. So, would it also be your position that this was politics as usual if he’d said, ‘Pay me a million dollars, or no aid for you’?
ETA: John Schilling makes this point much more eloquently above us, with the public vs private gain point.
I find david friedman’s point a good response to John Schilling’s comment, actually. the line between public and private good gets crossed way more often than he admits. Presidents have fought entire wars that they didn’t believe in for domestic political gain, on more than one occasion. It would be one thing if Trump were trying to lean on people to fabricate evidence or do something otherwise illegal, but I just can’t get up in arms about him wanting to invest what seems very like to be a corrupt bargain.
“influencing the 2020 election” requires a better definition.
Otherwise all of the responses will be based on what someone’s definition of “influencing the 2020 election.”
If Trump promises North Korea aid for a unilateral disarmament, that can easily be defined as “predicating aid on influencing the 2020 election,” as unilateral No Ko disarmament would surely influence the election.
If “influencing the 2020 election” means “faithfully conducting an investigation into various circumstances at Trump’s request” then my answers are:
Y, Y, N, N.
If “influencing the 2020 election” means “pretending to conduct an investigation into various circumstances at Trump’s request, where the outcome of the fake investigation is pre-ordained,” then my answers are:
N, Y, Y, Y
More specifically, “investigate Burisma and assist Barr for aid” is not impeachable, but “investigate Burisma, assist Barr, and find Hunter Biden guilty in some fashion for aid” is impeachable.
In #1, there are at least three contestable definitions baked into the statement “Was there a conspiracy on the part of the administration to tie aid/support for Ukraine to their influencing the 2020 election?” The first is “conspiracy,” which (in legal terms) requires agreement to accomplish an unlawful purpose, which rather begs the question. The second is “tie aid/support for Ukraine,” which is vague on two levels – “tie” can mean “if not this, then not that” or it can mean “we’re all working together here on mutual common goals.” It’s sort of like when you read clickbait “science” articles breathlessly announcing that X behavior is “tied to” Y outcome, and inevitably doesn’t get into the messy details of the correlation. Moreover, “aid” is presumably the held-up military aid, but “support for Ukraine” could mean anything from geopolitical cover, to a visit to the White House (which I think has also been bandied about at some level) to “getting on Trump’s good side” with no specified current benefit. Finally, “their influencing the 2020 election” is (as mitv150 notes) a really non-specific statement, and is going to bring in a lot of hidden assumptions about what it means to “influence the election”, whether such influence is wrongful, and whether (if solicited) such solicitation is wrongful.
Given all that, I think the questions become difficult to answer. I think that there was an attempt, on the part of the administration, to persuade Ukraine to act on both stemming corruption in Ukraine, as well as assistance in ongoing investigations into 2016 election, both of which the administration probably thought genuinely reflected bad behavior by the preceding administration and deserved to be investigated. In that sense, if there’s anything “wrongful” about it, it seems more like an “isolated demand for rigor” rather than an improper ask – Trump is more interested in [he thinks real] corruption that shows he was, in fact, the victim of a poorly predicated witch hunt by Mueller / Dems (the 2016 server thing plus Ukrainian connections with the prior administration) than he is in potential corruption that would reflect badly on not-Dems. Obviously if true, it might have some impact on 2020 – but the same would be true if Ukraine had genuine video [for the sake of argument] of Joe Biden accepting a giant suitcase full of money, rubbing his hands and cackling like a supervillain that “I’ve succeeded in being bribed, hooray!” Trump asking for an investigation into that [purely hypothetical] video would not, in my opinion, be wrongful. The transcript does not, in my reading, support that Trump said “and get me some dirt, real or fake, or else we’ll cut you off at the knees.” It’s basically a muddle of Trump thinking that the Dems were corruptly cozy with Ukraine in 2016, and wanting to have the new Ukrainian administration commit to being less corrupt and to disavow any such former corruption.
So does that count as a “Y” or “N” for #1? I’m not sure. Probably a “N.”
2 is a Y if applicable at all, since the transcript / call is at issue and Trump’s on the phone.
3 is probably an “N”, again with reference to the definitions involved.
4 again depends on the definitions, but it’s fair to say that based on what I’ve read so far, I’m an “N” on impeachment.
Anti-Trump Republican with Libertarian leanings. Currently registered as “No Party Preference”. Voted for Johnson in the 2016 general election after voting for Clinton in the Democratic primary.
1. Y-ish. “Conspiracy” isn’t the word I would use, but it definitely looks like the administration was using military aid to the Ukraine as a carrot to get them to dig up dirt on Biden. And influencing the 2020 election strikes me as by far the most likely motive for that.
2. Y. The published minutes of Trump’s call to Zelensky show Trump asking Zelensky to investigate Biden in a context that strongly implies a quid pro quo for military aid.
3. Y. It’s at the very least tacky to ask another country to involve themselves in our elections. I also think it’s improper to condition military aid on this. Military aid should be considered on its own merits: if it’s in our strategic interests to support Ukraine, we should support them. Attaching petty conditions unrelated to our strategic interests shows very poor judgement on Trump’s part.
4. Not sure. I’ve read a fairly persuasive argument that Trump’s quid pro quo violated federal election laws by offering government funds in exchange for material support to an election campaign, which would certainly be illegal, but I don’t think it’s necessarily impeachable unless either 1) Trump’s conduct here is at least a standard deviation worse on this front than routine political backscratching, or 2) there’s a bipartisan consensus that it’s time to start seriously enforcing this aspect of federal election laws. 1 is plausible to me but I don’t know enough to say with confidence. 2 strikes me as very unlikely.
As a resident right winger my perspective is that I simply don’t care about the details because:
A. Democrats have cried wolf so badly since before Trump got elected that they’ve lost any remnant of credibility they might have had as good-faith protectors of “our constitutional system,” etc. (not that I’m claiming Republicans are much better on this score). Anything less than him caught on camera shooting somebody and right wingers will assume it’s just a partisan witch hunt.
B. You’re not going to get Trump supporters to abandon him over it/support impeachment because they’ve got no alternatives (including Pence, I’d think) with remotely similar policy positions or chances of being POTUS in the near future. And this may be precisely why Democrats want so badly to get rid of Trump in particular.
Related to B: a heuristic I’ve proposed a few times: don’t be surprised if people don’t abandon politician X over scandal Y if you wouldn’t abandon a politician with all your favorite policy positions over the same thing.
For example, I didn’t think Bill Clinton’s behavior with an intern was appropriate, but I don’t think he should have been impeached over it and thought it was a big, partisan waste of time at the time.
For another: I really disapprove of Elizabeth Warren’s deception (deceptions?) related to her academic career but they aren’t bad enough I wouldn’t vote for her if I strongly agreed with her policy positions, especially if the alternative were someone as far off from those positions as e.g. Trump.
So for me I can simply ask myself whether, were he still running for something, I would abandon Ron Paul over scandal Y because A. Ron Paul is pretty close to holding my ideal policy positions and B. There are very few other politicians holding his positions so I don’t have a lot of good alternatives waiting in the wings. If the answer is “no, I wouldn’t stop supporting Ron Paul over this scandal” then I shouldn’t be surprised when others won’t abandon whomever over the same thing.
I feel like politics could be a lot more “serious” if there were a general agreement to abide by this heuristic. Not going to happen, of course, because scandals are super effective.
Note that I’m not saying I’m certain the Trump Ukraine thing is the sort of scandal one should never care about because nobody would abandon his preferred policy position candidate over it. However, the ability to distinguish these is currently severely hampered by the ultra-partisan, bad faith climate.
Anything less than him caught on camera shooting somebody and right wingers will assume it’s just a partisan witch hunt.
Even then plenty of people’s trust in the media is so low that there’d be a lot of “Well, we need to wait for all the facts to come out,” “That shooting was taken out of context,” and “the videos were deceptively edited.”
Hell, I might even agree with some of those takes!
A. Democrats have cried wolf so badly since before Trump got elected that they’ve lost any remnant of credibility they might have had as good-faith protectors of “our constitutional system,” etc. (not that I’m claiming Republicans are much better on this score). Anything less than him caught on camera shooting somebody and right wingers will assume it’s just a partisan witch hunt.
Lot of hyperbole here that I think deserves elaboration. This latest scandal is noticeably different from prior cases in that a statistically significant chunk of the population that had previously disliked Trump but also disapproved of impeachment changed their minds on the latter – similar shifts can been seen in the House, be it from personal conviction or as representation of constituents. Does this shift matter to you? How large would this group need to be to factor into your opinion?
I genuinely don’t intend to be all that hyperbolic, though of course I don’t speak for every right winger. Maybe I am also different in having very little respect for most of the Republican party as well as most of the Democratic party as there are too many bad things most members of both parties agree on, especially (imo overly interventionist) foreign policy.
So if you tell me a lot of Republicans agree that “it’s different this time,” then my first question would be “which Republicans, specifically, think that?” As per the guideline I suggest above it would be most convincing if prominent conservatives whose policy preferences align with Trump’s to some degree, such as Pat Buchanan, came out in favor of impeachment.
I’m an independent, not a Republican, but my opinion shifted from “don’t like the guy, but this is obviously a witch hunt” to “yeah, he probably deserves impeachment” after these allegations came out. A politically inexperienced candidate shooting his mouth off is one thing; a sitting President actively exercising actual power, who’s had two or three years to learn better, is another.
Not that I think he’ll actually be removed, and I don’t even blame the Senate much for that: from a Senate Republican perspective, in the current political environment, even Trump waving his executive powers around like a six-year-old with a whiffle bat can’t do as much damage as a Democratic President could in four to eight years, and kicking Trump out is basically ceding the election to whoever the Dems want to nominate. This of course sets us up for another round of constitutional hardball, partisan brinksmanship, poisonous rhetoric and erosion of whatever political norms we’ve got left, but what else is new?
kicking Trump out is basically ceding the election to whoever the Dems want to nominate
This is a key point: if the system were such that Democrats could say “unfortunately the guy voters picked to represent them is unfit for office but we also need to respect the policy preferences of the voters implied by his election” then it would be a lot easier to judge the possible removal of Trump based on his personal fitness for office.
But of course the system is nothing like that. Policy platforms come pre-packaged with individual politicians and all their personal foibles and failings, so any time the opponent screws up on a procedural or ethical level, as opposed to a policy level, it’s rightly seen as a great opportunity to push one’s own policy agenda. Accusations of politicians’ ethical impropriety or unfitness from anyone who doesn’t share their policy preferences are therefore prima facie highly suspect.
Policy platforms come pre-packaged with individual politicians and all their personal foibles and failings, so any time the opponent screws up on a procedural or ethical level, as opposed to a policy level, it’s rightly seen as a great opportunity to push one’s own policy agenda. Accusations of politicians’ ethical impropriety or unfitness from anyone who doesn’t share their policy preferences are therefore prima facie highly suspect.
This is true and well said, though on the other hand, I don’t blame the Democrats for this state of affairs. Game theory, subjectivity/bias, the impossibility of knowing exactly what another person would do, the perceived importance of the stakes, etc. create the incentives.
It’s a nice that we have an eight year limit before switching brands of insanity/corruption.
I genuinely don’t intend to be all that hyperbolic
I would recommend avoiding collective nouns then, unless you are willing to dive into the statistics. Blanket statements regarding one hundred million people are rarely nuanced.
As per the guideline I suggest above it would be most convincing if prominent conservatives whose policy preferences align with Trump’s to some degree, such as Pat Buchanan, came out in favor of impeachment.
That would certainly be a signal strong enough to knock down most mottes, but I think we can make do with less; I would prefer if you answered my question before posing a counterfactual:
How large would this group need to be to factor into your opinion?
I think there is much to be learned from movement at the margins, and I am very specifically not dividing along party lines.
Lot of hyperbole here that I think deserves elaboration.
I don’t think its hyperbolic at all.
This latest scandal is noticeably different from prior cases in that a statistically significant chunk of the population that had previously disliked Trump but also disapproved of impeachment changed their minds on the latter
It’s principally different in that this accusation is about an event that actually took place!
I do think it’s hurting trump, but as part of an accumulation of accusations, not because there’s much merit to this particular attack.
Credit for your consistency on Clinton vs Trump. FWIW I take the opposite horn of that dilemma: I thought at the time in opposition to most of my social circle, and still think, that Clinton should have been removed from office. Moreover, I think the failure to hold him accountable for his corrupt behavior was damaging to institutional quality generally and a significant contributor specifically to someone as corrupt as Trump becoming electable.
Briefly, this is because they both blatantly abused the power of their office for personal gain, and then they both tried to hide the fact they’d done so from the proper mechanisms of oversight. That’s exactly the sort of thing that impeachment is supposed to prevent, whether or not it is done in a technically legal way (thus the fact that impeachable offenses need not be criminal violations). There should be zero tolerance for that sort of behavior in any elected official, indeed in anyone with any high degree of institutional power, but especially in one entrusted with the power of the Presidency– and it is a terrible idea to entrust anyone with anywhere near that much individual discretionary power, I agree 100% with quanta413 on this point. Arguably what Trump did is even more consistent with the original intent of impeachment because it involved foreign powers, and Presidents colluding with foreign powers for their own interest against the interests of the US was a major concern of the Framers. But in any case Presidential power is so dangerous that the only way to guard against self-dealing Presidents with sufficient reliability is to strictly enforce extremely high standards against it.
1. Yes, with something like 95% probability.
2. If (1) then 99% probability of this.
3. Yes.
4. Yes, and it’d be sort of nice if they did impeach Trump. But even if they impeach they’re not going to spend any effort fixing the obvious problem of too much power having accumulated to Presidents. Congress should have reined in the executive branch decades ago. Congress will continue to wimp out, and let Presidents do crazy shit with executive branch powers as long as he is a member of their own party or its foreign policy that doesn’t affect domestic policy (putting troops in another few countries or funding every militia who might somehow theoretically benefit us in some irrelevant conflict halfway across the globe will continue to receive approximately 0 scrutiny). But most Presidents won’t be stupid enough to be so freaking obvious about their immoral use of executive branch powers.
You put a lower number on confidence than me on 2. I’m surprised. Not that our numbers are precise, but still surprised.
I couldn’t figure out how (1) could be true without (2) short of Trump being much more senile than he appears which I figured was much less than 10% likely.
Trump’s control of his campaign and subordinates is obviously pretty poor. It doesn’t require cognitive loss for him to badly screw up holding Giuliani in check.
1. “influencing the 2020 election” != “investigating corruption”. It’s telling that almost all of the “reports” which are anti-Trump choose to use language which imputes motives and additional actions rather than simply reporting a charitable description of the actual Trump actions/words involved supposedly behind the accusation.
2. Obviously if it didn’t exist…
3. If all true (a big if), then “improper” in the sense of not something I’d want a President doing.
4. No President has ever been removed from office via Impeachment. Making the first a completely partisan effort based on a non-crime wouldn’t be a good precedent. It turns impeachment into just yet another partisan weapon, to be deployed as frequently as the Party opposed to the President gains power in Congress. The opposition should go convince people to vote for their ideas instead. This is similar to losing at the ballot box and then running to a sympathetic court who overrules the people’s passed Constitutional amendment.
1. Was there a conspiracy on the part of the administration to tie aid/support for Ukraine to their influencing the 2020 election? (Y/N)
No. We have absolutely no indication that Ukraine was made aware of a tie of aid for investigation. The transcript we have doesn’t support this reading without motivated reasoning, IMHO. If there were backchannel discussions other than the one call, we don’t have evidence of that yet.
2. If so, was the president aware of and/or orchestrating said conspiracy? (Y/N)
No, because it didn’t exist.
3. If such a conspiracy did occur would it be improper? (Y/N)
It would be improper if he was requesting a specific result regardless of the facts on the ground. Tying state aid to a legitimate corruption investigation is completely not problematic, regardless of who benefits from that investigation.
A legitimate corruption investigation that completely clears Biden would actually help Biden, I think we can agree. So if Trump isn’t dictating the outcome and just asking for a fair investigation, this only benefits Trump if Biden actually is corrupt. And if he is, America deserves to know.
4. If it is improper, does it rise to the level of impeachment? (Y/N)
We have absolutely no indication that Ukraine was made aware of a tie of aid for investigation. The transcript we have doesn’t support this reading without motivated reasoning, IMHO. If there were backchannel discussions other than the one call, we don’t have evidence of that yet.
I recommend reading Ambassador Sondland’s updated testimony on this point. Especially points 5-6, where he discusses what he told Mr. Yermak, a senior advisor of the Ukrainian president. He tap dances pretty hard, but I think its very hard to read that as anything but having told him aid was conditioned on investigation.
It would be improper if he was requesting a specific result regardless of the facts on the ground. Tying state aid to a legitimate corruption investigation is completely not problematic, regardless of who benefits from that investigation.
A legitimate corruption investigation that completely clears Biden would actually help Biden, I think we can agree. So if Trump isn’t dictating the outcome and just asking for a fair investigation, this only benefits Trump if Biden actually is corrupt. And if he is, America deserves to know.
A fair investigation into whether President Trump is raping his daughter can only actually help President Trump. If I’m not dictating the outcome and just asking for a fair investigation, this only benefits me if President Trump is actually a rapist. And if he is, America deserves to know.
I’ll also direct you on this point to the large number of folks upthread arguing extensively about how inappropriate the Mueller investigation was (which I disagree with, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.
ETA: Striking a needlessly provocative counter-example. A better point would be that I believe I’ve seen you complaining about the IRS scandal. Under this model, why exactly would that sequence of events (even accepting, as I wouldn’t, my recollection of your position on that) be wrong?
I recommend reading Ambassador Sondland’s updated testimony on this point. Especially points 5-6, where he discusses what he told Mr. Yermak, a senior advisor of the Ukrainian president. He tap dances pretty hard, but I think its very hard to read that as anything but having told him aid was conditioned on investigation.
I have read that statement. It supports the reading I have above.
A fair investigation into whether President Trump is raping his daughter can only actually help President Trump. If I’m not dictating the outcome and just asking for a fair investigation, this only benefits me if President Trump is actually a rapist. And if he is, America deserves to know.
Given that the Democrats are currently investigating Trump on many charges, some substantially before his Presidency, in virtually every jurisdiction where they have investigative control, this is pretty much their argument, yes.
Do you think that it is appropriate for Democrats in New York to investigate Donald Trump with state resources? If it is (and I think it is, to be clear), then what differences would exist between that and the Attorney General investigating Joe Biden?
My argument isn’t that investigations can’t be appropriate, or inappropriate, but that ‘the innocent have nothing to fear’ which is certainly my reading of your statement, is clearly nonsense.
The reason this is inappropriate, while investigating the president in New York isn’t, is that:
1) Despite your interpretation, it seems extremely clear to me that the President was withholding aid, authorized by congress, in order to coerce this investigation.
2) Given (1) an investigation was never going to be ‘fair.’
3) Using congressionally ordered aid for personal political gain is immoral and impeachable, in my view.
Under the model you’re proposing, assuming Vice President Biden’s actions had been about his son’s job, would there have been anything wrong with them? Why?
A fair investigation into whether President Trump is raping his daughter can only actually help President Trump. If I’m not dictating the outcome and just asking for a fair investigation, this only benefits me if President Trump is actually a rapist. And if he is, America deserves to know.
We know 100% for certain that Hunter Biden cashed in on his father’s political position. We are less certain of the extent that his father participated in it, but there is sufficient basis for an investigation. Your disgusting hypothetical has absolutely zero basis for an investigation.
I’ll also direct you on this point to the large number of folks upthread arguing extensively about how inappropriate the Mueller investigation was (which I disagree with, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.
Let me see if I get this correctly. Investigating Hunter Biden’s various crooked schemes in Ukraine, China, Romania, etc,… is inappropriate, but using the state apparatus to tar a sitting president with completely made up nonsense is appropriate. Got it.
Striking a needlessly provocative counter-example. A better point would be that I believe I’ve seen you complaining about the IRS scandal. Under this model, why exactly would that sequence of events (even accepting, as I wouldn’t, my recollection of your position on that) be wrong?
Because it’s a violation of American law. The IRS admitted wrongdoing and settled, so I think I can say that I have a pretty strong case there. I haven’t particularly complained about that one, but it actually does violate the law.
The investigation I conducted concerning 2016 Ukrainian collusion and corruption, was done solely as a defense attorney to defend my client against false charges, that kept changing as one after another were disproven.
@HBC, that may be technically correct — that Trump asking Ukraine to co-operate with Rudy Giuliani in order to help his defense against (politically motivated and false) charges being levied against him is “using his office for personal gain”. But it’s a far cry from “Trump asking Ukraine to co-operate with Rudy Giuliani in order to harm his political opponents”, and a charge based on it isn’t going anywhere in the Senate or the court of public opinion.
“You can’t use your official power to investigate defenses against charges made by other people, some of which are using their official power to attack you” is so clearly unjust that they’d probably end up engendering sympathy for Trump if they tried it.
2. The president was definitely involved in whatever was going on.
3. Having the president use the threat of withholding aid to benefit himself politically this way seems like a very bad thing, and one that, if Obama had done it, would have most Republicans crying foul. (Unfortunately, it would also have most Democrats explaining that it was totally normal. Tribalism is bad for intellectual integrity.)
4. What rises to the level of impeachment is a political question, and isn’t objective. In practice, I don’t think the current allegations will get enough votes to remove Trump from office, and I think both parties’ leadership knows this. That makes a lot of the impeachment process look to me like political theater, sort-of like was done with Bill Clinton. I suspect the goal is to influence the 2020 election.
4. What rises to the level of impeachment is a political question, and isn’t objective.
Right, that’s why I asked for your perspective. Irrespective of the current situation, if hypothetical president X did what is being alleged, would you think that impeachment is warranted?
If my standards were followed, Trump would be impeached and removed from office. And before him, Obama, for murdering US citizens and violating the war powers act. And before him, Bush, for war crimes and violating the written laws w.r.t. surveillance.
This community leans right much further than I encounter in my meat-space social circles, so I’d like y’alls perspective on the ongoing impeachment hearings”
Sure, I lean a bit more Left than most men I know face-to-face and I lean a bit more Right than most women I know face-to-face, I favor Affirmative Action job set asides for residents of poor neighborhoods, dislike the idea of completely open borders, think the legality of abortion should be a local issue as should the legality of guns, strongly pro-union, pro-nuclear, pro-wind, pro-solar, but also appreciate natural gas, feel pity for ‘coal country’ and want those there to have a better fate, think a better education system would mostly mean a lot more welding classes in Richmond, California.
A Pew research quiz has me as a “Disaffected Democrat”, so use that to place me on a Left/Right spectrum.
“Some questions to consider:
1. Was there a conspiracy on the part of the administration to tie aid/support for Ukraine to their influencing the 2020 election? (Y/N)”
I don’t know, my guess is maybe the President and a couple of yes men, but I really don’t know.
2. If so, was the president aware of and/or orchestrating said conspiracy? (Y/N)”
See #1
“3. If such a conspiracy did occur would it be improper? (Y/N)”
Maybe?
I don’t know what the rules are.
“4. If it is improper, does it rise to the level of impeachment? (Y/N)”
Probably anything that Congress decides is a reason (i.e. getting ‘encouragement’ from an intern) is an impeachable offense if there’s enough votes.
Frankly I don’t live in The Ukraine and I just can’t will myself to care beyond what it means for who’ll administer the Federal government and when.
1. For what it’s worth, I don’t think there was a conspiracy. My best guess is that Trump and Guiliani made a lot of noise about wanting to investigate Burisma and Crowdstrike (Giuliani publicly, which reduces conspiracy), and Trump put a hold on funds and high level connections, but that no one was sure (a) if that was a deliberate effort by Trump to leverage cooperation or (b) whether it was just Trump not liking Ukraine and suspecting they were his enemies based on pro-Russian conspiracy theories. The principal support for this is that even Sondland seems unsure in his texts whether cooperation with Trump’s goals will cause Trump to unfreeze the aid.
So I vote a bunch of people (a) not telling Ukraine the money was held until it broke publicly and (b) trying to find a way to unfreeze the money, but probably not conspiring as I understand the term.
2. If there was a conspiracy, then I’d look to what Giulani was told by Trump and what he told Trump to assess whether the conspiracy reaches Trump. It’s *possible* that Trump just told Sondland or Volker that he wanted them to use the money as a lever to get a Burisma announcement, but I’m not sure.
FWIW, the announcement demand strikes me as a particular weak point in the Trump defense. IIRC, some of the witnesses said that the White House wanted an announcement to “lock in” Ukraine anti-corruption commitments, but an announcement that the Bidens are under investigation also has an obvious political value even if they aren’t guilty.
3. I think yes, improper, but some of that depends on situationally knowing that it’s Trump. IIRC, Obama tried to stay away from the detail decisions around investigating Trump specifically because it looks bad for the Chief Executive to be making decisions with an obvious political impact.
That isn’t to say that politicians don’t do lots of stuff with political effects, from giving money to projects in a particular state to picking speaking opportunities that have a clear political impact to Susan Rice deciding to unmask a great deal of the Trump investigation. But since this is the President and he’s being exceptionally Trump-ish, it looks more improper than every day incumbent decisions.
4. I wouldn’t vote to impeach based on what I know. I think “you made this decision within your discretion because it helps you politically” is a slippery slope.
Pre-registration: I’ve never voted a Republican for President, but I have for various lower offices, and I find it hard to imagine the Democrats producing a popular candidate for high office that I would vote for due given the party’s internal landscape at this time. That said, I’d be happy to be wrong about that. I tend to look at races on an individual candidate basis. All answers are based on me having kept only casual track of the current developments because the effort required to filter out the bullshit enough to get a coherent picture of what’s probably going on exceeded the amount of time and effort I was willing to dedicate to the task sometime in 2017-18 and I’ve been disengaging from the news cycle since.
1) Uncertain, but looks at least plausible.
2) IF 1 is yes, almost certainly.
3) In my opinion, yes, mostly due to threatening to withold previously voted-upon aid.
4) Uncertain. On the one hand, I suspect this is actually normal, everyday behavior that is becoming visible and remarked upon only because of the overt clumsiness of the actors and the hostility of others, and thus is something of a case of selective outrage. On the other hand, see 3, and I figure if this starts a trend of being more willing to use impeachment, that’s probably a good thing on balance. I default to my prior, which is to follow the process: So, investigate (currently in progress), push for a vote, see where it falls out.
The extent to which the Democrats attempt to milk this for political capital and/or play games rather than simply pushing for a vote will affect my opinion on 4.
My hypothesis going into this discussion would be that after all the testimony that has been released, nearly everyone, both left and right, would be Yes on point 1 and it would drop off from there in a manner corresponding to tribal identity. This ended up not being the case – for the vast majority of respondents, if you picked Yes for question one, you were very likely to either go Yes across the board (or Yes until question four whereupon you’d say “the senate will never vote to convict.”). At the same time, if you were right leaning, you were pretty much No down the line (with the possible exception of question 3).
I was honestly surprised by these results; I expected the largest difference to be around values/culpability of whether or not the actions taken thus far amounted to an impeachable offense, not a question of whether or not the events in question had transpired. Looking back, this might have been a result of how I asked the question; if this whole situation drags on long enough for me to want to do another survey like this, I’ll likely try and as question 1 in a way that doesn’t presume guilt. Maybe something like “If you were a Ukrainian official, would you have come to the conclusion that US aid would be restricted unless you conducted an investigation into Burisma?”
I got stuck on “conspiracy,” which I interpret as an overt and secret agreement to carry out a course of action. I’m not at all sure that any two people in this farce agreed (especially secretly) to do anything, with the likely exception of Trump and Giuliani, who presumably agreed that Guiliani should do his (largely public) investigation.
If it was did Trump intend or even attempt to pressure Ukraine to announce they were investigating Burisma, I’d say probably yes.
A criminal conspiracy doesn’t require secrecy, just an agreement to break the law in the future. Although the dictionary definition of conspiracy does involve secrecy, it’s not particularly relevant. Certainly the reason for the withheld aid was kept secret from Congress.
Trump and Giuliani agreeing, and Trump then ordering (and remaining consistent in that) is all that is required. The aid was withheld, the desired Ukrainian action was communicated. Whether any of the intermediaries was in agreement with Trump’s decision is essentially irrelevant.
Yeah, I assumed the use of the word was as I defined it above, although quite possibly incorrectly.
If Aftagley has specified a criminal conspiracy under US federal law, I would have spent more time thinking about whether the agreement was to commit a crime.
Again, Giuliani is on record last May as saying he wanted Ukraine to specifically investigate the Bidens because it would be helpful to Trump. Trump then specifically urged the Ukrainian President to investigate Biden, while indicating that withheld forthcoming aid was linked to favors.
while indicating that withheld forthcoming aid was linked to favors.
This is the part that is distinctly unproven, and given the timeline of the critical call was before Ukraine even knew aid was withheld, pretty suspect.
Zelensky: … We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
Trump: I would like you to do us a favor though …
Plenty more in the same vein from a variety of sources, including Mulvaney.
The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if
you ·can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.
That’s all part of the same conversation where Trump is asking for a favor, Zelensky indicates that he is amenable to this, and Trump asks him to work with Barr and Giuliani and says he is going to have both Barr and Giuliani call him.
That is not about the Biden investigation and it is disingenuous to suggest it is.
According to Vindman (the military expert on Ukraine who heard the call) there were discussions about Biden and Burisma in that section that were withheld from the white houses reconstruction of the call. In light of that, it’s not particularly disingenuous to claim that the favor Trump wanted also involved Biden.
I am not denying they talked about Biden. But you are obscuring the actual conversation that occurred to imply the favor was investigating Biden.
It was not, it was supporting Barr’s investigation, and implying that it was talking about Biden is dishonest.
@Aftagley
Sure, if the transcript is inaccurate then there could be explicit quid pro quo not contained there, but since we don’t have such a transcript, it is fair to continue to call that “unproven”.
@EchoChaos:
It’s a segment of the conversation consisting entirely of [Here are things I would like you to do with my people] immediately after the request for a favor. This isn’t some isolated out of context snippet. It’s immediately after he asks him to talk to Rudy.
C’mon, man. This is the kind of stuff I was talking about. No sense in trying to post here when people go full ostrich.
Don’t “c’mon man” me, please. You are the one selectively reading this.
I assume you can clearly see the part where he says “If you don’t do this then I won’t do this”?
Because that doesn’t exist in the transcript and is the only part that would be even conceivably problematic legally.
We’re both looking at the exact same transcript. You’re the one adding a “I won’t do X unless you Y” that doesn’t exist, mostly by your selective quote and assumptions.
For additional context, the Ukrainians didn’t even know that foreign aid had been suspended at this time, so they couldn’t have understood it as contingent on the investigation unless you assume facts not in evidence later.
Now, it’s possible that Trump said to some staffer “make sure the Ukrainians get the message that they don’t get aid unless they investigate Biden”. But the transcript does not support that without additional assumptions.
It looks like I may be in Paris for a week to 10 days around Christmas this year (18th-28th) What should I do while I’m there? Where should I stay? I’ve never been to France.
I’m totally fine and actually interested in taking some side trips rather than staying in Paris the whole time. E.g. taking the train to Strasbourg and spending a couple days there for the Christmas market, maybe attending a Christmas mass at the cathedral, looks nice.
I assume it’s the “off season” for tourism to a degree – how much stuff is going to be closed? Am I going to have a hard time finding food / something to do on the 25th or 26th?
As for Christmas, you might be able to find some places open but I’d buy food for myself. There’s a significant Muslim minority who should still be in operation, at least relatively. Some landmarks might be open, particularly parks that don’t require attendants. I’d attend mass. Mass at a Cathedral is a wonderful thing. You can also drive out into the countryside and see the picturesque farms covered in snow or something romantic.
Alternatively, you can go to Strasbourg. German Christmas traditions are a bit more communal. However, they’re also not strongly related to French ones.
For interests, I’d say primarily architectural and cultural. I’m into military and techie stuff but my girlfriend, who I will be traveling with, is less so (but she loves old buildings and interacting with other cultures).
Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean about German vs. French traditions? One of the appeals of Strasbourg to me was to get a little German flavor (literally) and the compact medieval part of the city looks really neat. The idea of a big public/communal event around Christmas is also appealing, I’ve never gone to a big foreign holiday.
Go to Straßburg. the Weinachtsmaerkte of The Germanies are wonderful things.
French tradition: distinct lack of wuerst, prezels and beer.
Medieval cities: great. (unless you’re on a road bike).
I’d visiting Paris without at least going into the Louvre once would be a huge missed opportunity. I’m one of those low-brow people who finds fine art and all that stuff terribly boring and snooty, and I still came out of my couple-hour visit there wishing I could have a whole week to spend in there.
Also, the view from Arc de Triomphe was easily up there with anything I saw in the Louvre. Highly recommended.
I preferred the Musee D’Orsay to the Louvre, but it comes down to personal taste. The Louvre cuts off at around 1820, while the Orsay resumes with the academic painters of the 19th century, the Impressionists, and so on.
I endorse both of these. I did these two things on my one day in Paris (from a week trip to London–so BTW, you can also go to London for a day trip) and also wished I had more time in the Louvre.
For leaving the Paris area, you could consider spending a day or two at Mont St. Michel. But it might be really annoying to break up your hotel stay.
For a day trip, I highly recommend doing a combination Vaux Le Vicomte/Fontainebleau bus tour. The former inspired the king to use the same designer for Versailles, while imho the latter is way better than Versailles. That said, also hit up Versailles. It may be a bit of a shadow of itself, but you should go at least once.
I highly, highly recommend getting the Paris Museum Pass. It more than pays for itself, and often allows you to skip lines. It also covers most of the important tourist sites. Things that won’t be covered that I still recommend: Sacre Coeur dome, a Paris Opera House tour, Eiffel Tower.
For public transport, consider the Navigo pass.
Look up the weekly organ concerts! People online have even put together maps where you can catch like 3-4 consecutive organ concerts on Sunday, if you hustle a bit.
Honestly, there are like a million great museums, parks, and churches you can check out, free or covered by the above pass. For my week-long trip, I had a massive spreadsheet of options, and saw a little over half of them?
Mont St Michel definitely looks awesome, though it seems like an overnight trip. I’m not super worried about switching hotels, but two or three times in one trip might be a bit much.
Part of my interests in side trips is that my girlfriend is actually staying for a couple weeks after me, as part of a university study abroad thing, and they will be doing a few of the typical Paris touristy things as part of their program. So I wanted to not make her double up too much.
Go to the Musee d’Orsay. Go to some other museums, too. Pay for the skip-the-line or timed-entry passes instead of the general “go to a bunch of museums” pass, unless you need to really economize.
+1 for the Musée d’Orsay: their art collection is sublime. Another museum I really appreciated was Arts & Métiers, with its original scientific artifacts.
Outside of Paris you could visit some WW1 or WW2 battlefields (maybe ones that saw fighting in the winter like the Ardennes for a more complete experience) if you’re into military history.
I just returned home from visiting Paris, using it for a couple of days on each side as staging going to/from Lyon for the Open Source Summit EU.
Both times passing through I spent an entire day doing *only* “late morning to mid afternoon in Musée d’Orsay, then mid afternoon to closing at Musée de l’Orangerie, then have dinner at some tiny out of the way 5 star restaurant where the owner / waiter / host / headchef is one person and doesn’t speak any English”. This was my 3rd time and 4th time in Paris, and if possible I will make a day of repeating every time I go to Paris.
The Musée du Louvre is overwhelming, but 1) overwhelming, and 2) old, and 3) not enough of it is moving.
d’Orsay is moving. Two hours in, and your brain and eyes start getting that “running out of brain juice” feeling one gets from watching a movie marathon. But you dont want to stop.
It’s worth noting that for much of this artwork, photographs don’t capture the colors well enough at all. You will recognize a painting from the pictures you’ve seen of it, but looking at an image on your computer is nothing like looking at the painting under the museum lights.
Side note about Lyon: The food there is exquisite, better even than Paris (where it’s merely “amazingly good”.) Some of the people visiting Lyon on this trip reported sitting down at one of the more famous restaurants, eating until they were full, and then CONTINUING TO EAT, unable to stop until all the platters on the table were empty, because the food was just that good.
I know how to find well-known fancy restaurants, which are still in fact good, and I’m price-insensitive enough that I’d still like that, but I don’t know how to find the odd stuff.
I have done it with a mix of “ask my social graph for recommendations” and “looking on google map and minmaxing on walking distance and ratings, and then look for keywords”. I’ve been very lucky so far, but it does seem to work. I’ve paid just under €100 per seat, including the wine.
My suggestion is to hunt down a tiny sandwich shop by the name of Chez Alain Miam Miam. It used to be in the Marche does Enfants-Rouge but I think he’s moved since I lived there to somewhere nearby in the temple/Marais. It’s a quirky delight of a man preparing (very slowly) the best sandwich I’ve ever had. Among the few things on earth I’ll happily stand in line for.
The Louvre is a nightmare, truly, but also unmissable culturally. I felt something like wabi-sabi turning the corner after seeing so much stuff in a day just to see the Hammurabi stele. I was buzzing with bliss for days. The Petite Palais feels much more intimate and hosted all my favorite exhibitions. I second everyone on the Orsay and the Arts et Metiers.
Saint-Chapelle is my must see church, and if you can get there on a sunny day it’s incomparable. My favorite place in the world is in Pere Lachaise cemetery but I have a somewhat gothic disposition.
If you like military stuff, Napoleon’s tomb at the Invalides is surrounded by the military museum.
Otherwise to me the chief pleasure of Paris is just walking the streets. And dozens of food places, but the walking keeps the calories in check.
For outside, I can recommend Chantilly, Bruges, Versailles, and Fontainebleau as outings, but I never went in winter, and I did very perfunctory “go see the pretty thing eat there and leave” trips which were all, frankly, wonderful because vacation.
I studied in France for a year, so these are “student-budget” friendly. Do you speak French? I’ll note the items where this is important.
Walk; Paris is very pretty and safe. I particularly recommend going to the Eiffel Tower by walking from the opposite end of the Champ de Mars.
Go to the Comedie Francaise; a last-minute poor-seat ticket is 5 euro. See a Moliere play if possible–that was his company and his theater. Read the play beforehand unless you’re absolutely fluent in French.
Go to the 19th near Buttes-Chaumont and get couscous.
Go to Chartres; that’s an all-day trip, but well worth it.
If you have any interest in history, go to Brugge and take the Quasimodo Flanders Fields tour. It won’t be cheap, but is incredible.
This seems to me to be wrong by an order of magnitude considering:
1. The U.S. illegal drug trade is only 100 billion a year.
2. Most darknet market activity involves drugs.
3. (More speculatively) I thought darknet drug deals were only a small proportion of American drug deals, and foreign markets should be similar and not valuable enough to provide enough transactions to get anywhere near 76 billion.
I don’t know much about bitcoin so cannot comment on the methods they used to estimate the number.
In PPP terms, world GDP is about $138 trillion. US GDP is about $20 trillion. That puts the world illegal drug trade, assuming it’s evenly distributed over the global economy (it probably isn’t, but I don’t know what side of the curve the US falls on), at about $690 billion. Eleven percent of that sounds high for the fraction denominated in Bitcoin, but not absurd, and there’s Bitcoin deals in weapons, gambling, extortion, prostitution etc. to account for too.
Extortion’s probably a big piece: a lot of ransomware asks for payment in Bitcoin.
Drugs might only have a total value of $100 billion, but if they pass through several middlemen, the total value of the transactions could be much higher. On the other hand, prices are lower at wholesale.
My impression is that a huge proportion of American drugs, at least 10%, pass through bitcoin wholesalers.
What caused the post-WWII baby boom, and where might it recur?
It ought to be one of the biggest mysteries in social science. The standard story that it was due to “the economy” ignores that the correlation between the economy and birthrates is almost always the opposite. If it’s something specific to economic growth at that particular development stage, why don’t we see it in developing countries going through a similar stage today? If it is a result of war, why wasn’t there a similar boom after World War I? There was an uptick in the fertility rate in the years after the war, but it immediately went back on its long term decline trend.
We know that, outside France and Austria, the baby boom was due to an increase in marriage, with more people marrying and them marrying at younger ages, rather than an increase in births within married couples at a given age.(See https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol38/40/38-40.pdf) Looking for areas where conditions would mimic those in the West in 1945, we should look for:
1. The economic conditions are most comparable to The U.S./Europe in the 1930s.
2. The age at first marriage is relatively high and can come down, and this, not widespread use of contraception, is the reason fertility rates are relatively low. Once couples marry they have relatively more children than married couples in the West.
3. Out-of wedlock births are low.
4. Fertility rates have been stagnant for a while.
Do these conditions apply to parts of the Arab world?
In the context of the baby boom in the United States specifically, the US was involved in WW2 for 4-5 years (declared war in Dec 1941, demobilized from large scale occupation/garrison deployments over the course of Oct 1945-Sept 1946). About 16 million Americans were in uniformed military service during WW2, about half of whom were deployed overseas when the war ended.
WW1, by comparison, was much shorter and less intense from the American point of view. The US declared war in April 1917 and demobilized between Nov 1918 and July 1919, and never mobilized to the extent we did in WW2: about 4 million men in uniform and about 2 million deployed overseas. The overall population was lower in 1917 than in 1941, but not by a factor of two (106M vs 133M, respectively).
So in the US, four times as many men were mobilized for WW2, and were mobilized for 2-3x as long, so it’s not surprising for a post-war fertility boost resulting from demobilized soldiers returning home would be something like 8-12x larger for WW2 than for WW1.
I know less about demographic trends in countries that were more heavily involved in WW1 than the US, though, so I’m not sure if there’s a gap to explain there and how to explain it if there is one.
In addition to what eric rall say, you also had several years of baby bust preceding ww2 due to the depression, so there was a lot of pent up demand for fertility.
I suppose it’s that people in Eastern Europe started having kids later. Not necessarily fewer kids… it’s just that when everyone used to have kids at 25, and then everyone switches to having kids at 35, there will be ten years without kids.
Why that change? In socialism your career options were limited, and some opportunities were decided based on “need”. Having kids as soon as possible made economical sense, because no business opportunity was lost, and being classified as having more needs was a good thing.
For example, “first I need my own place to live, then I will have kids, this is the responsible thing to do” simply didn’t make sense in socialism. Not having kids put you in the back of the queue. You had kids first; that put you in the queue before all the childless people; and then after a few years of waiting you had your own place to live.
If you were 18 in 1991 and decided to delay having kids, you are 46 now. It’s safe to say that almost everyone who decided to delay kids in 1991 already had them now, but fertility rates never recovered.
This is complicated because “strong economy” is an ambiguous concept. You are referring to general improvement in living standards, which is indeed mostly associated with decreasing birthrate up to a point. But those who claim that “baby boom” was due to strong economy mean something different than an increase in living standards. For example, was US economy stronger or weaker during the Great Recession than in the 60s? Living standards as measured by e.g. real median income were clearly vastly higher in 2010. But when people speak about “the economy” being strong or weak, they often actually refer to a rate of involuntary unemployment, which has a large effect on a sense of financial security of workers in general.
The flood of returning soldiers, a.k.a. available men with perceived higher-than-average social status? Contrast to today’s well-educated women and the choice of incels, deplorables, and a handful of serial monogamists.
Recently Trump suggested sending the military in to Mexico to help the government fight the cartels in response to the killing of 9 US citizens who were residents of Mexico. The Mexican government declined, saying they will handle it themselves and citing issues of sovereignty. Setting those aside, could sending in the US Army against the cartels actually help the situation, or is it likely to make it worse?
Going in and killing the heck out of whichever group killed those people would probably make the remaining ones more careful of their targets in the future; it wouldn’t matter if Mexico or the US did it.
But I don’t think the US can do anything against the cartels that will last unless it actually takes the territory or somehow does it in combination with making a Mexican government not corrupted by the cartels hold the territory, and I don’t see either of those as possible in the near term.
What Nybbler says. With Mexico’s permission, we could make things better for Americans in the vicinity of the border, but we can’t plausibly make things better for the Mexicans. And so Mexico isn’t going to give permission, so now either we leave it be or we recreate Libya on the American border and that doesn’t even make things better for the Americans.
I had thought that our efforts in Afghanistan resulted in a major step forward for our intelligence capacity to model and track groups and individuals.
Assuming that the Mexicans let us do it, could we identify and track the cartels through electronic eavesdropping, satellite and drone observation, etc.?
I guess that leaves the question of what you do once you know who the cartel leadership is and where they are…
They are terrorists, as bad as the likes of ISIS, and need to be removed. If the local government can’t take care of it, but the US can, then to be honest, sovereignty be damned. So many people, mostly Mexicans, are suffering because of them, and if it is pos
What does it mean to be ‘initiated’? And what does that have to do with adulthood?
“Before the marking ceremony last month, the group arrived at John Hinkel Park and we orientated them to the space. I explained to the boys that for the ceremony, we would have the youth or uninitiated on one side of the amphitheater and the adults (the implicit assumption being that they are ‘initiated’) would sit on the other side. One of the lads slyly commented at this point:
> My Dad should be sitting with us then
There was a chuckle across the group and I acknowledged the observation with a quick “That’s real, there are uninitiated adults out there” before moving on with our preparation. I would love to return to that comment with the group in time but for now, I want to explore the concepts of initiation and adulthood here.”
An exploration into these themes and others, touching on the family unit, human development, and coming-of-age. What does this piece invoke in you?
https://twicefire.com/priors/initiation/
I was expecting this to be a weird SF faux-intellectual thing, and so was not at all surprised to see Mount Tam mentioned in a piece about making up a new cultural paradigm.
You have to be initiated into something, and that something has to be actually meaningful. Consider graduation, which I think I say fairly is the most common initiation rite our society has. Graduation is interesting, sociologically, both because it’s visibly losing meaningfulness as we watch – compare at one extreme the high school graduation scene from [70s coming-of-age movie here; Fame, maybe?] and at the other your kids’ kindergarten graduation – and because this is mirrored linguistically. Right now, you graduate. Previously and grammatically, you are graduated; you’ve been moved from the ‘has not finished [thing]’ category to the ‘has finished [thing]’ one. The point of [rites generally] is to do something within a broader social context, not to make anybody feel happy or fulfilled or whatever. Meaning is signal is categories, so whatever it is you’re being initiated into has to be either exclusive or symbolic or ideally both – anybody and their dog can make it through high school at the moment, and a high school degree doesn’t represent any particular aptitude for anything except not being thrown out of a system which can’t throw you out, so it’s not a particularly meaningful rite. College graduation is trending this way, I think I can say uncontroversially.
‘Adult’ is an exclusive category, i.e. ‘not-a-child.’ There isn’t a set of criteria you have to meet to be an adult (except in the trivially incoherent legal sense*). This is not like inclusive categories like, say ‘doctors,’ which do have specific criteria you have to meet. Modernity does not like inclusive categories where it can be helped. It doesn’t like to graduate people, in the technical sense of ordering them by some criterion; we worry (fairly) about systemic barriers and whether the criterion is fair and all sorts of other things. Result: we’ve been steadily getting rid of inclusive categories at a cultural level where we can, and so there aren’t meaningful rites left which apply to everybody. Individuals and individual families can still have some (often of the form ‘do something really hard, get meaning from it;’ cf. marathons, starting a company, raising children), but there isn’t a set of goals which apply to everybody in society.
*Consider what specifically it is about having been alive for 18 years, rather than 17 years and 364 days, which suddenly makes you competent to help pick your congressperson, but still not competent to have a glass of wine with dinner.
Opening is too snide, I apologize. A common pattern I see online is ‘[the sort of person who moves to San Francisco and has a blog about the sociology of adulthood, volunteering, and interpretive dance] notices that modern society is bad at cohesion, tries to fix it, fails.’
Folks using their heuristics like this is what I have to endure if I ‘show-up-as-my-whole-self’ (tongue-in-cheek). To add/subtract from your expectations: I’m Australian; I actually kinda hate SF, [and I probably have more SF fatigue than you do ;P] I originally moved to the Bay to play ultimate frisbee in the USA (and medalled at the World Club Champs with a Bay area team); My early career was in Defence Intelligence, including a deployment to Afghanistan; I consider my time at bootcamp to be a form of initiation into adulthood.
But perhaps the Bay just takes all input and turns them into the same sausage? 😉
> You have to be initiated into something, and that something has to be actually meaningful.
Yes, one has to be initiated into something meaningful. That is in part what we are trying to create with the program. We are one of a range of small scale programs run across the western sea-board. Whether these programs are ‘successful’ as a whole has not been measured, and how one decides to measure would bring many challenges. However, our particular program has been running for 15 years now, and one of my current co-leaders actually went through the program themselves, as a teen. The program feels like a success for many of the families and youth involved.
I agree that graduation could have been seen as a stand-in for a distinct rite of passage, and that it is pretty weak in that role.
> … whatever it is you’re being initiated into has to be either exclusive or symbolic or ideally both
Yes, we are going for a symbolic recognition of the beginning of adulthood. Exclusivity for adulthood is certainly not what we are aiming for (although it is possible that a youth won’t mark with their group).
> There isn’t a set of criteria you have to meet to be an adult
We have meaningful descriptors with expressions like “man-child”, “peter pan syndrome” and folk talking about ‘adulting so hard’ etc, pointing to a sense of being an adult beyond the legal definition. I’m not suggesting everyone has commonly-agreed, hard-and-fast criteria but there being some sense of being ‘adult’ beyond the basic legal definition. And then shared a sense of my own understanding of ‘full adulthood’. Do you disagree, and suggest that we culturally have no qualitative sense of adultness?
You talk about specific actions [that could be construed as adulting?] (cf. marathons, starting a company, raising children) but you don’t think those actions roll up into aggregate values of adulting?
I think that, conceptually, ‘adulting’ is exactly backwards. Being an adult – probably ‘maturity’ is a better word – isn’t performative, it’s an inherent quality; there is no list of things I can do which will make me mature, but many things which a mature person will naturally do in particular circumstances. Getting the causality mixed up is a problem – C.S. Lewis says it better than I could; “When I became a man I put away childish things, including… the desire to be very grown up.”
The lists of trials I put forward were meant to be individual or familial responses to the problem that there’s no society-wide maturity-demonstrating ritual anymore, so people largely select their own, with the obvious interpersonal legibility, equivalence, and significance problems.
EDIT: …And part of the legibility problem is that there’s no socially-universal ritual, there’s no socially-universal definition of ‘maturity,’ which just throws the whole issue up a level.
I’d use “adulting” to refer to things that you need to do as an adult in society–getting a job, signing a lease, paying taxes, buying groceries and cooking, etc. Maturity may make these tasks easier, but isn’t necessarily a requirement.
That’s the point of the phrase, isn’t it? It’s pointing at an essentially immature self-image — “immature” is a little too harsh a word, but there isn’t really a better one — by highlighting the performative nature of tasks like watering the plants or making car payments. It uses irony to do that, because it comes out of a demographic that views irony as mating plumage, but the intent’s pretty clear.
I agree Nornagest, and I would go further and say that using the word ‘adulting’ is not just self-deprecating but a cry for help.
@tokugawa says:
To be “Initiated” is still used by building trades “craft” unions like The United Association of Plumbers & Steamfitters which I’m a member of.
I was first indentured (I promised to labor for a certain number of years) to the employer/union/some State-of-California-input partnership as an apprentice plumber, then I was formerly initiatated into the union about a 19 months after my indenturing, and then after 9,000 hours of labor, five years of classes, plus tests administered by the employer/union partnetship, and some more tests by The County of Santa Clara, I was initiated as a “Journeyman Plumber”.
This was based on traditional medieval guild ways, for decades the main employers association that contracts with the union for labor was the Master Plumbers Association (it isn’t anymore, now the two main employer groups have “contractors” in their name instead of “Master”).
So “initiated” means something like membership and graduate, and the status is only open to adults.
That this isn’t more commonly known is because so much of modern society doesn’t follow the centuries old traditions of the guilds, though Universities (which started as scholars guilds) still do to some extent, an undergrad is equivalent to an apprentice, someone with a bachelor’s degree is equivalent to a journeyman, and a masters degree makes one a “master”.
As an aside “credentialism” is often maligned, and in its present form justifily so, but I suspect that the problem is too few crendentials.
When most of the population worked the plow and the dairy only artisans, merchants, and scholars needed the credentials provided by the guilds (the warrior/ruling class had their seperate page to squire/lady-in-waiting to knight/lady system), but now with our largely non-agricultural labor and non-craft union populace the scholars guild path is the only one left that most know of to signal able to work as a full adult, which since the call to actually be a scholar is smaller than the number of graduates, and graduates are a minority (though I think “some college” is becoming close to the majority of young adults now), this is a “square peg in round hole” situation, and the old guildstyle apprenticeship on-the-job-training and credentialing system would fit better for filling most jobs, ‘depth that non-union employees and employers can’t coordinate with each other, and the old craft unions fill a small portion of the total jobs so ‘taint gonna happen and we’re stuck with what is.
Thanks for sharing about the structure of your craft unions initiation and induction process. Being a software engineer, I’ve often seen the structure and professionalization of older industries (builders, sparkies, plumbers, pilots, medicine etc) as something lacking in the software field (with both pros and cons).
I agree that the academic pathway rarely seems to be a satisfying form of initiation as things currently stand.
Because I’m interested in this, and so many SSC’ers don’t use the public libraries websites getting past thr paywall method, here’s another long quote from The New York Times:
With all that in mind, while it’s s few months until I get to vote in the primary, please convince me why Warren (who looks like the most likely nominee at this point) won’t lose in the general election next year (and please don’t cite popular vote polls, it’s the Electoral College that decides).
I’m also interested in suggestions from supporters of both parties on what their parties tactics and strategies should be.
Where is the idea that Warren is most likely the nominee coming from? From the national polls, she is decidedly in second place (and maybe dropping, if that isn’t just noise). If I was Biden I would be pretty content with my position, right now.
From my quick look at polling of swing-state Trump vs. D matchups, it looks like both Biden or Sanders currently win the electoral college, while Warren loses by just a hair. And if my memory serves me, usually after the primaries there is a rallying around the nominee, so I would consider this to be an underestimate.
Bottom line: Warren would be a riskier choice for Democrats than Biden, but they probably aren’t going to nominate Warren anyway. Warren supporters who think Biden is too centrist would be better off to throw their weight behind Sanders, who has better odds of winning the general, and is just a hair behind Warren in the primaries.
I’m not the target market for the Dem primaries, but I have gotten the impression from my media consumption that she is the frontrunner. So I think the media is printing “Warren-mentum” articles right now, and that’s probably where the idea comes from.
As to why I think she actually may be the frontrunner, there are a couple of things. One, hypothetical head-to-head polls this far out are usually pretty volatile and unreliable. So I tend to discount all of those pretty heavily. On the other hand, Warren seems to be leading in several of the earliest states (Iowa, maybe New Hampshire?). I get the impression that a lot of Biden’s support is soft, based primarily on name recognition and comfort / familiarity. If Warren does, in fact, win the early primaries, then I would expect some of Biden’s support to fade off as Warren gets more recognition. And I think a bunch of Biden’s numbers in, e.g., South Carolina, are based on African-American voters, who have previously shown a preference for the “known” candidate early (e.g. Hillary in 2008) and then switching late once someone they previously considered non-viable becomes (apparently) viable. (I’ll grant you, Warren is not precisely analogous to Obama for obvious reasons). As to Sanders, I just don’t think Bernie can win the nomination. His support is currently lower than Warren, he’s running in the same lane, but he’s a known commodity and isn’t any kind of preferred “identity” (Warren could at least be the first female President) which makes me think his support probably tops out as-is and bleeds to Warren gradually. Which also hurts Biden, because I don’t see a lot of current-Bernies as choosing Biden over Warren.
Warren appeals very much to the type of people who do political coverage for mainstream news sources–it’s not so clear she’ll appeal as much to voters as a whole.
Sure, that’s possible. I wasn’t speculating on whether she’d win in the general election (I think she would, FWIW). But the Democratic primary electorate seems to me closer to “people who do political coverage” than to “voters as a whole.” The exceptions seem to be the very poor, the very uneducated, and minority voters, but with the exception of African-American minority voters I’m not sure if they have sufficient primary turnout to nullify Warren’s advantage with the educated white Democratic folks. Seemingly not if everything stays as-is, since Biden’s still mostly ahead nationally, but I’m also viewing Warren and Sanders as basically the same candidate, with Warren likely to cannibalize Sanders voters eventually. Taken together, they’re bigger than Biden. I think that may cascade quickly, especially if Biden finishes fourth or fifth in Iowa (last poll I saw had him fourth).
Polling data pretty clearly shows that Elizabeth Warren is #1 among Democratic voters overall, and #2 among college-educated middle-class white Democratic voters – which is to say, the group most reporters spend most of their time hanging out with. Warren is #1 among Democratic voters in the first two primary states (New Hampshire and Iowa), #2 among Democratic voters in the first four primary states, and #2 among Democratic voters in all the primary states weighted by delegate count. All of this has been fairly stable for a couple of months, IIRC. Cite primarily Nate Silver, but what I’ve seen from other sources supports this.
So it’s easy for reporters to construct a narrative where Warren is going to win Iowa and New Hampshire and then everyone is going to fall in line behind the front-runner, and to want and believe that narrative to be true. But e.g. the black voters of South Carolina favor Biden by a good margin, and it’s far from obvious that they’re going to change their mind just because the white guys in IA and NH gave Warren a modest edge in delegates.
The nomination is Biden’s to lose, but it wouldn’t be terribly hard or surprising for him to lose it. But for the moment, it’s more fun to talk about Warren.
Is that a typo – are the #1 and #2 supposed to be transposed – or am I missing something? Because if she’s #1 overall, that seems pretty consistent with being a frontrunner. I agree that Biden seems more popular with the minority Democratic base, but it’s my (admittedly unscientific) opinion that that’s fairly soft, that Obama isn’t coming in to campaign directly for Biden, and that African-American voters are pretty adept at sussing out “viability” prior to committing.
Right, clumsy typo there. #1 for college-educated whites, and #2 for Democrats overall.
Regarding viability, and African-American voters alleged ability to recognize same, polling also fairly consistently shows Biden having better odds than Warren in taking down Trump.
Switched these two, otherwise all good points.
Also see prediction markets, where she has a significant lead IMO for purer forms of the same reasons.
Yep. Which is why I’ve got Predictit money on her failing to secure the nomination.
Poor people who don’t have money to gamble online with get the same number of votes come election day. Wealth disparities such as this are a classic example of where prediction markets fail to aggregate people’s actual knowledge.
Evidence? No one’s knowledge of their own vote is at all relevant
The problem is that dollars aren’t knowledge-units, or even a proxy for knowledge units.
Consider this example: A rich person considers himself somewhat news savvy, and thinks the odds of a candidate winning an election are something like 60/40, so he puts $1000 on “yes”.
Two poor homeless people somehow overhead the candidate speaking confidentially, saying that he was about to drop out. They can only muster enough money for $100 on “no”, which is their entire life savings.
Clearly the two poor people have more knowledge units than the rich person. But they cannot express this knowledge on the market place. In fact, if you trust the prediction market as a knowledge aggregator, you would mistakenly think that that there is 10X more knowledge units on “yes” than “no”.
A simple poll would actually be a superior aggregator of knowledge units in this case (1 “yes”, 2 “no”).
Prediction markets have no solution for this AFAIK.
Clearly a poll would be much worse, because homeless people would have no incentive at all to participate in the poll.
Your stylized hypothetical is not evidence.
Wherever someone asks me for directions at a gas station, I always lie to him and tell him to go the opposite way that I am going, in order to reduce traffic on my route.
I assume everyone else does the same thing, rational self interest and all.
There’s a big difference between actively screwing someone else over and not going out of your way to do something.
How do you think polling is conducted? Someone sets up a booth downtown and waits for people to come by?
I mean, isn’t the whole idea of “there is no incentive to participate in polls” contradicted by the ample historical and ongoing evidence of people participating in polls?
I’m not necessarily going to bat for Cliff, I just didn’t like your analogy. But: usually by phone, as I understand it. Lately I’ve been getting a lot of email asking me to participate in polls as a registered voter, too. Which I’ve always ignored, for what it’s worth.
There are lots of problems with these methodologies, one of them being that they undersample people who’re less likely to have phones and email accounts, such as, for example, homeless people. I expect pollsters have all sorts of more or less sophisticated statistical corrections for this, but I wouldn’t expect these corrections to get you very close to an unbiased sample.
Whether it’s better or worse than prediction markets is a question I’m not equipped to answer. But I don’t find this type of armchair reasoning very satisfying.
Right, but some people don’t ignore it, and participate, despite not having any obvious self-interest motive. I wonder how Cliff reconciles this.
And of course this whole objection could be side-stepped if I made it a paid poll, but I prefer to wallow around in the mud and chaos of the discourse like a hog.
The question isn’t whether people participate in polls without any obvious self-interest motive. Obviously they sometimes do. The question is whether the data we get from those polls is better than what we get from prediction markets given their respective drawbacks.
Like I said, I don’t have an answer to that question. But the profit motive is a least a concrete advantage for prediction markets, in that it provides a concrete mechanism for correcting them, and waving your hands at unspecified altruistic motives definitely doesn’t make a symmetrical argument in favor of the legacy system.
I’m not attempting to argue in favor of polling over prediction market in the general sense, but only under certain conditions, which I think are met by Warren/Biden and in my simplified toy example.
Cliff seemed to imply that prediction markets were superior even in my toy example. The question of “are prediction markets better in general” isn’t one that I’m interested in debating right now. The question I’m interested in is “do polls ever , even hypothetically, have better prediction power than prediction markets”, and I think the answer is yes.
Prediction markets have a hard time converging on true probabilities within a factor determined by the expected rate of return of competing investments. There’s a dozen bets where I’m confident I could pick up an easy 5%, but I have better places to put my capital.
It ultimately comes down to whether the economy is doing better than forecasters are collectively good at their jobs. And while the markets have anti-inductive properties, it’s (currently) not that hard to pick the direction of the bias.
LOL, I was assuming you meant an Internet poll or something that someone could choose to participate in, otherwise the hypothetical is even more inane.
A prediction market OBVIOUSLY would be better in your toy example. Do YOU understand how a poll works? They don’t contact every person who exists, they pick a random sample. In your toy model, the homeless guys who have great information exerted a significant influence on the prediction. They deliberately sought out and participated in the prediction market. A poll would almost certainly miss them.
And IF it didn’t (highly unlikely) they would be given the same weight as everyone else. It’s unlikely the sample size of the poll would be such that they would have a greater influence on the prediction than with the prediction market.
It’s really hard to imagine how you could have come up with the idea that your example was a bad one for prediction markets. By the way, your example also makes a lot of money for some homeless guys, which they take from a clueless rich dude.
What’s the arg here, that polling misses people but prediction markets don’t?
If we are in the world of hypotheticals (which we are), then we can just make the poll reach everybody, solving the problem.
If we are in the actual world, then there’s no way two homeless people could even sign up for a Predictit.com account (you need a bank account, address), so they wouldn’t be able to offer the information anyway.
Well, lets look at primaries:
Warren is currently winning in Iowa and New Hampshire. Even Biden’s campaign is accepting that their path forward is losing those two, and trying to regain momentum in Super Tuesday… but that’s a risky strategy; it puts him behind and cedes outright control of the narrative for a few weeks there to Warren. If it wins, it puts him in line for a slugfest with her and if he can’t pull it together on Tuesday, he’s out.
While these people likely exist, I predict that most of the people who said they could vote for either candidate in the NYT poll were lying, possibly to themselves as well as the pollsters. Most people I know who call themselves independent reliably vote for one party or the other- they just enjoy thinking of themselves as independent thinkers.
I think that a lot of people that consider themselves “independent” are also more extreme than the two main parties are, and don’t feel represented by them. So you end up with a lot of independents choosing between the Democrat candidate and the Green candidate, not the Democrat and the Republican.
“Independent voters are a myth” has been conventional wisdom for a while.
I can think of one category of people who could act as genuine swing voters. These are folks who are fanatical “single issue” voters, but they have more than one issue that they’re fanatical about, and each issue is spoken to by a different party. I’m thinking for instance of a committed environmentalist who is really into guns and gun rights.
A person like that might re-decide each election which issue is more important to them at that particular time.
Many people voted for both Obama and Trump
Do you have any actual data source for this? Many is doing kind of a lot of work there. People also change views over the course of 10+ years, so someone who voted Obama in 2008 might be practically a completely different person now for a variety of reasons. It would have to be a fairly sizable percentage for it to carry any meaning for me (enough to clearly not be a combination of people aging out of their previous political views + lizardmen).
Sure do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama-Trump_voters
13% of Trump voters voted for Obama in 2012
It explicitly only includes people who say they are undecided, not whose party registration is independent.
Oh, hey, someone wrote an article about my people. Some niggling points:
-I think ‘have a positive view of’ and ‘will vote for’ are getting conflated especially on Sanders. I know a lot of people who have a positive view of Sanders in the sense that he’s honest, has integrity, etc, and also think his policies would be bad. I honestly believe he thinks his policies are right for America (which I can’t say about, eg, Warren).
-The single payer healthcare question is obscuring the more important division: I know a lot of people who would be fine with some tweaks to the system to solve various problems or even an expansion. People are generally dissatisfied with Obamacare but they’re split on whether the project needs to be fixed or replaced. And there’s a divisive view on whether they’d be willing to raise taxes to pay for fixes. But it’s very rare they support banning private healthcare.
-These statistics are being framed to paint a narrative. Anytime I hear about 70% white transmuted to be ‘mostly white’ I transmute it back to ‘as white as the general population’. Likewise, the choice to say they mostly voted for Republicans when the split was 51-49 (well within any reasonable margin of error) points a certain way. So it goes.
Anyway, if I were God-King of the Democrats I’d run Biden with a young moderate-ish progressive minority VP. Someone who can fire up the progressive base without alienating everyone else. Biden doesn’t need to speak against racism to get minority support: he has that. But social justice is beginning to work like the religious right does for the Republicans: a minority group within the party that’s powerful enough to demand its pound of flesh. If there’s a reasonably prominent black lesbian politician with social justice cred who’s willing to strictly speak to the motte of social justice then that would be ideal. It might not be quite as exciting but first woman VP and first LGBTQ VP are still something. (Also first black VP, but… eh, Obama. Also, you can tease that she might run in 2024 if Biden loses or 2028 if he wins.)
If I were God-King of the Republicans, I would pray they run someone weak. Trump needs to be able to be on the attack. Who will Trump have trouble attacking? Biden will be hard to attack because he’s so well known and his reputation isn’t as bad as Hillary’s. It will be hard for anyone to redefine Biden, even Biden, let alone Trump. Klobuchar would also be hard to attack, not because she has no flaws but because her most salient flaws are being abusive and aggressive. Trump has no ground to stand on there. Yang could sort of be attacked for being an egghead but it’d be difficult to walk the line to not have it be “cool-headed, smart Yang and high school bully Trump” which would backfire. But he could do it. Buttigieg is a borderline case but his race and labor relations record and his swings back and forth and his overeducated background are all vulnerabilities. (Sanders would be fairly easy to attack as a radical and his socialist base is a decided minority of the country. He might weather it though. Warren would be hilariously easy to attack. I doubt she could survive.)
True. I suppose I should clarify that I really meant something more like: who will Trump’s attacks most damage?
I actually think Biden would be easier to attack, given that Biden and his family come up a lot in the impeachment context. If we’re presuming the 2020 election includes Trump, then Trump will likely have been impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate. Any random Democrat could try to use the impeachment narrative to attack Trump. But if Biden does it, that gives Trump the best opportunity to punch back and claim that he was just trying to deal with the aftermath of Biden’s cronyism – which ties in well to Trump’s “swamp” anti-establishment themes.
Warren can of course be attacked on substance – her espoused positions thus far are much further left than prior Dem nominees – but not as much on the themes Trump loves the most (swamp, Deep State, media antagonism, anti-DC) because she’s not as entangled with the prior administration. The other attacks would be on her authenticity (apocryphal Indian heritage, maybe claims of pregnancy discrimination, and perhaps her changing positions before running for President versus after) but to be honest I don’t see Trump making those as successfully. At some point, I just don’t think it’s as effective to mock “Fauxcahontas” directly to her face on stage as it is to retweet the meme on Twitter. It could work though, since Trump’s brand is “saying whatever he really thinks” versus “carefully calculating for advantage.”
ETA: Corrected typo (House –> Senate re acquittal)
The sense I get from analysts like those at FiveThirtyEight (okay mostly just them) is that yes, Warren will likely pay an electoral penalty in the general election for not being more moderate, but that there are lots of other factors and it’s not clear in practice who would do better overall (general election polling this early on isn’t very indicative historically). On personality and concrete issues like health care, Warren might well do better than Biden with that group. Or Warren might poach two voters from Jill Stein for every one she loses to Trump in those battleground states. I feel like voting based on electability is largely a mug’s game and it’s generally best to vote non-strategically in primaries.
There is research on this and generally centrists do better. Combine that with actual polling and I think it’s reasonable to assume Biden is the most electable.
I agree the research shows centrists generally do better, but it’s not a strong enough correlation that that should be conflated with “Warren will definitely do worse than Biden” or “Warren will definitely lose to Trump.” Just evidence.
I would take it as, “Warren will definitely have a harder time than Biden. This does not necessarily mean she will lose or that Biden will win by more because vulnerabilities and difficulty do not map one to one with ultimate success.”
A couple problems with this general argument:
1. I am incredibly skeptical that 2020 will be decided on issues. 2016 sure as heck wasn’t, 2012 arguably wasn’t. 2008 definitely wasn’t. Trump being trump, he’ll never talk about the issues, he’ll just want to be on the attack. I somehow doubt this election will come down to a nuanced debate about healthcare policy, or whatever.
2. The thing is, when people talk about these persuadable voters, they mean low-information or dumb voters (two separate groups, not all low-info voters are dumb and vice versa). These voters are the least likely to care about nuanced political views and most likely to grab onto to overarching narratives of a campaign. Again, this won’t be nuanced policy positions.
This topic comes up every so often. I still find Keys to the White House an interesting guide, since it’s successfully predicted every election from 1984 to today.
By the keys, the incumbent wins on Incumbency.
The incumbent loses on Party Mandate.
The incumbent probably wins on Contest, Long Term Economy, and Challenger Charisma.
The incumbent probably loses on Policy Change and Incumbent Charisma.
Third Party depends on what the Libertarians do, and so far, they don’t look likely to do better than they did in 2016. I doubt Gabbard will run independently, let alone pull a lot of votes.
Short Term Economy probably depends on whether certain predictors cited a few weeks ago lead to an actual recession within the next 11 months.
Social Unrest probably depends on what Antifa or Unite the Right does. Neither looks likely to me.
Scandal seems perpetually true, in a way that I think breaks that key, but 2020 is uniquely weird – the scandals play out in a way that seem to let everyone pick their own loser.
Foreign / military failure and success seem like toss ups, depending on China, North Korea, and Iran, and possibly Russia.
So by my count, the incumbent party has probably four wins, probably four losses, and five tossups. By the KttWH model, it needs eight wins, but it looks rather likely to pick up 3P, STEcon, and no F/M fail keys if nothing blows up (more), and Scandal might end up being a Rorschach blot. I think Warren is likely to lose for this reason, even assuming she wins the nomination.
I think persuadables are a good bellwether, but at the end of the day they matter a lot less than the people whose choice isn’t between elephant or donkey, but between elephant and not voting or donkey and not voting.
I agree with you that fundamentals are the best predictor of their behavior.
Warren’s up in Michigan and Pennsylvania
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/mi/michigan_trump_vs_warren-6769.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/pa/pennsylvania_trump_vs_warren-6865.html
True, those are only a few polls, but it fits with the pattern in 2018, where the Republicans lost support everywhere. It’s not just California and New York, they lost seats in Michigan and Iowa too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections#/media/File:US_House_2018.svg
That sounds inconsistent, but only because “conservative” in U.S. politics doesn’t mean what the word means in other contexts. Someone who would like to reverse the New Deal changes, as at least some conservatives would, wants fundamental change from the system that almost all of us have known for our entire lives.
Trump campaigned on fundamental change, although it isn’t clear he delivered.
Technical point: you want to separate the poli sci terms of conservative (philosophy) vs. incrementalist (preferred rate of change to current system).
As I do from time to time, I discovered that Tim Keller gave a series of talks at Oxford recently that were essentially sermons. In listening to the one on suffering, he remarked that the modern secular worldview makes people quite vulnerable when it comes to suffering as it deems it pointless, meaningless, and purely a negative thing.
So non-religious people, how do you view suffering and what are you strategies to deal with it when it occurs?
Suffering is experience.
It is part of life. It is affirming of life. It is also part of our personal story; just as you wouldn’t want to read a book without trial and adversity and suffering, a life without these things would similarly lack something.
“This too shall pass” means all experience is fleeting, and should be treasured.
What if the suffering will not pass, as in the case of slow painful deaths?
Death is the passing.
That is treating suffering as a thing to escape from, instead of just another transient experience.
Must disagree. Conflating “trial and adversity” with suffering is a mistake. One can have the former without the latter, and that is the desirable state.
That is a subtle distinction which I think is correct but misleading; most people think pain IS suffering, for instance, and the idea of pain without suffering isn’t meaningful within their frame of reference.
I’m trying a slightly different way of framing the ideas to see it somebody can get it.
Getting a burn because you accidentally touched the hot stove isn’t suffering. Being sore for a few days after over-exercising a bit isn’t suffering. Eating spicy food isn’t suffering. I’d say that even breaking your arm isn’t necessarily suffering, if the proper medical treatment is applied.
Also, there are absolutely stories that people love that have narrative conflict, but zero suffering. The entire iyashikei genre exists to be that. But even beyond that, “I love it when a plan comes together” does not require suffering to be highly enjoyable.
I think you’re hitting on a related topic – for some suffering it’s apparent that there’s “trial and adversity” and some meaning can be made out of it. But other suffering seems meaningless.
If one cannot attribute a why/meaning to the suffering, does it intensify the suffering? Does attribution of meaning really change the nature of the suffering?
Yes. It’s pattern-matching as a form of placebo, or actually allowing the sufferer to see a path towards exit from the suffering, and work towards that.
Suffering is experience, but I disagree that it’s generally affirming of life in a positive way. Some limited suffering for a purpose is, but a lot of suffering really is meaningless or cruel.
The best I can hope to do with serious but meaningless suffering is accept.
“Meaningless” implies a meaning to any experience, beyond experiencing it. When you start treating the experience as the meaning of experience – when you treat experience as its own purpose – this sort of fades away.
Cruel, though, potentially yes
Humans require a narrative, though, which is why stories rather than data are passed down. If you boil suffering down to any physical or emotional pain that negatively affects a person psychologically, suffering itself has “meaning” assigned to it no?
That’s a slightly different version of “meaning”, I think.
Meaning in the sense quanta used it, is, I believe, somewhat closer to “purpose”..
So the pain of giving birth might have a purpose, a joy in it, that is absent from the pain of appendicitis, and thus may feel different to the person experiencing it.
Purpose in all experience makes experience different, subjectively. One might describe this as “Living in the now”, as opposed to the subjective experience of experiencing a thing with anticipation of it ending, which is living in the future, or experiencing a thing reminiscing of your experience prior to that thing, which is living in the past.
I think some of what people experience as suffering is the experience of wishing for things as they are not, in the moment. All experience can be savored, explored, and, in a sense, enjoyed, for the sake of the experience itself.
Suffering does not really exist. One may simply live without it.
So were the Holocaust, Great Leap Forward Famine, and Khmer Rouge all an illusion?
Yes.
Pending listening to the whole 45min talk – there are secular worldviews and then there are secular worldviews. In general, what people generally have isn’t a ‘modern secular worldview,’ but rather the absence of a traditional, religious one. This understandably doesn’t provide a lot of suffering-conceptualization mechanisms, but the problem is very much a solved one if you’re willing to be rigorous about it. Suffering is an opportunity to exercise virtue if it is real (i.e. you’ve just lost your arm to a car accident), but probably it’s an illusion (you’ve lost status you shouldn’t care about in the first place) or could have been easily avoided (what did you think was going to happen when you gambled away all your money?).
Ancient ways of dealing with suffering are lightly addressed – the definition of “modern secular” is more hedonist/the material world is all there is/maximize personal utility…and then the disutility that is suffering is purely a negative thing.
He’s begging the question, and it’s not even an interesting question – sure, ‘people who don’t have a good coping mechanism for suffering’ don’t have a good coping mechanism for suffering, but so what? We knew that already. There are lots of non-religious people who don’t spend all their time bemoaning the unjust world they live in, and there are plenty of religious people who do. I’ll cheerfully agree that religions generally and Christianity specifically are very good at providing coping mechanisms, but they’re not the only game in town, and those mechanisms have problems too.
Is that based on my description or listening?
Listening – I admit the style turned me off a bit so I may have missed something, though. The sermon-y format is unfortunate; to my mind he’s making about 50% each of two separate arguments. I’d love to have a talk with him about this.
I haven’t read it but it looks like he has written a book about it, which I suspect uses the CS Lewis one a lot.
Suffering is bad and I want to avoid it as much as possible. If it occurs, I rely on my friends to get me through it. I assume this is the modern secular worldview that makes me vulnerable, but I don’t really see what’s wrong with it.
I’m not willing to listen to what Tim Keller has to say about it for 50 whole minutes, but I’d read a transcript or summary if it existed.
I can’t think of a rational way to view it as anything but pointless, meaningless, and purely a negative thing. You can make up stories about it “building character” but it seems like BS to me. I guess I tell myself “whining about it means you’re a weakling.”
Well as a simple example, what about negative reinforcement learning for children?
Fall on their bums a bit, skin their knees on gravel, scratch their skin on concrete when falling off a bike. Through these “growing pains” they’ll learn to fall correctly, get used to the immediate pain and recovery, and overall “build character”.
Vs. a lot of super-cushioned playgrounds nowadays supervised by adults leading to more grown kids not knowing how to fall…extend the analogy to other areas of life, and you may have kids that can’t handle failure if they’ve never suffered it. A lot of kids entering college, for instance, get a rude awakening when they realize they really aren’t that special, aren’t the smartest, the strongest, the most attractive, or the most popular anymore.
So suffering is often compared to a flame – it can refine and strengthen something that would otherwise be brittle, or it can also burn up whatever it is that it touches.
Suffering is a pain. Avoid, or endure, as needed to get to the other side in as good shape as possible.
Suffering is indeed pointless, meaningless, and negative. Stoicism is a pretty decent means of dealing with suffering when you can’t avoid or ameliorate it.
FWIW I would say, and I think many secularists would say, that the religious notion that suffering is redemptive and meaningful is one of the worst of the falsehoods that religion spreads: it pointlessly leads people to endure suffering they could and should ameliorate instead, and sometimes even to rationalize seeking out suffering, or worse yet, inflicting it on others.
Would you helicopter parent kids, sparing them from the elements by dressing them up warmly, dodging all potential illness with hand washing and quarantine from sick peers, and catching them every time they’re about to fall?
If so, they have a good chance of developing allergies since their immune systems needs exposure, and grows through sickness, while their reflexes will be quite dull if they are never allowed to fall.
Similarly, would you make sure they never have a sense of failure? Surely you’d say *some* aspects of life that are accompanied by suffering actually helps people grow?
Sure, but these are cases, thankfully less common now than they were in the past, where suffering is an as-yet unavoidable byproduct of a necessary growth process. There’s no reason inherent in the universe why it has to be unavoidable even in these cases. If we could develop a way to produce the right immune system behavior without the sickness, we obviously should, and it’s at least plausible that one day we will.
Do you think growth ends when childhood ends though? What about courtship, heartbreak from break-ups/betrayals, eventual marriage, raising children, balancing career vs. family as an ambitious person, illness within the family etc.?
@DragonMilk If you’ve only experienced break-ups and betrayals that have been mild enough to let you grow as a person, then you aren’t well-calibrated on suffering.
I find that betrayals have made me hard, uncaring, untrusting, and a worse person. I am working on becoming a better person by learning to trust people that are worth it; slowly reaching out, expecting suffering, and not finding it. Funny how that works.
This!
People benefit from having a toolkit that helps them cope with inevitable suffering, but they don’t benefit from a set of memes that encourages them to seek out suffering.
Someone later in the thread asks whether regarding suffering as pointless requires wrapping people up in cotton wool (helicopter parenting etc.). No, that would be caused by regarding all suffering as too terrible to endure. There are plenty of cases where suffering comes along with something else, and the game is worth the candle; a trite example would be a painful but life saving medical treatment.
Religious reasoning produces bad decisions like denying people pain medication because someone believes the deity they worship intended this suffering. Or it denies people the (life saving) medical treatment entirely, because of some supposedly deity-given rule forbidding it.
That’s not all that religion does, and some of what it does is good.
It can be a great commfort to some people trying to cope with suffering and loss. Not all people – one acquaintance left his childhood religion, never to return, because of statements intended to provide comfort when his mother died. (I think – not sure – that he was still a child at the time.) But it’s a good toolkit for many people, even though (as you can see above) I’m pretty much incapable of steelmanning the way it’s used.
Eh. I see the point you are trying to make, but I think you are hyperbolizing. “No pain, no gain” is a pretty gosh darn secular statement, and it doesn’t require a religious mindset to generalize the idea of suffering as a moral good.
“No pain no gain” is a special case, akin to believing that medicine doesn’t really work unless it tastes awful.
Oddly enough, though, I know of a (very minor) religious group that has “to learn you must suffer” in their liturgy. So there is a certain overlap, some of the time. (Personally, I enjoy most learning. If I’d had to suffer notably to learn my professional skills, I’d have tried a different profession. Note that I am *not* in medicine, as an example with lots of needless suffering. I’m also not in any system prone to hazing newbies.)
@Dino Nerd:
I don’t understand what you mean by “special case”.
Pretty much any difficult skill or accomplishment will involve, essentially by definition, difficulty. The ability to push through that difficulty is generally prized.
@HeelBearClub
Difficulty isn’t the same as suffering. If you class “having to do some hard work” as pain, then “no pain no gain” becomes pretty much of a tautology.
If you don’t make that equivalence – you presume people can enjoy studying, or regard work as routine and normal (like breathing or eating), and only sometimes involving things they don’t like (as can both breathing and eating), then that falls apart.
So as someone who enjoys learning, reads non-fiction for fun, and has been known to hike for pleasure, I see 2 different fallacies:
– Unpleasantness is good in itself. If I sit in some mega-boring class going over material I already know, ad nauseum, prevented from looking at anything new, I’m doing something important and virtuous
– The only way to accomplish anything valuable is via unpleasantness. If I sit and read the text book, and enjoy that, I won’t learn what’s in it, etc.
Much the same thing applies in other domains – getting fit by doing exercises I don’t like, in an environment I hate, is not more effective than participating in activities I love.
You may gain faster by tailoring your methods entirely to efficiency and ignoring (un)pleasantness – depending on specifics – but you may also drop out entirely, because the ultra-efficient choice is also highly unpleasant (to you). In many cases, staying out of the actively unpleasant zone works better in the long run.
I was listening to a Sam Harris podcast with guest Andrew Marantz. I generally agree with Sam Harris when it comes to the woke left, and this was an interesting podcast because Marantz is clearly a part of the woke left. Anyhow, at one point they were discussing “deplorables” and the notion of a “white person wanting to live with other white persons”, and both Harris and Marantz agreed that such people were beyond the pale.
Personally, I dont wish to live in a homogeneously white society and I enjoy a good amount of ethnic diversity, except for the wokeness, the race hustlers, and the “diversity is our strength” propaganda, but I dont find it beyond the pale for people of any ethnicity to wish to live in an ethnically homogeneous society.
I even think most woke people would understand a black person wanting to be in a black neighborhood, or a jew to live in a jewish neighborhood (or Israel).
Other than the typical “white people are the oppressor” woke narrative, is there any valid reason why preferring to live in homogeneous societies is morally suspect?
Path dependence, mainly? The choice in the U.S. today isn’t between diversity and homogeneity; those ships have literally already sailed. The choice is among different models of diversity, and a “preference for homogeneity” often cashes out in practice to a preference for more toxic models of diversity, especially when it’s a richer group expressing that preference through practices like redlining.
But also “white” as an identity is…suspect is a great word for it. White isn’t so much a heritage or ethnicity as a majority coalition of ethnicities, and people generally don’t form coalitions except to gain power.
It is. But it’s also how people in the US and Canada are categorized socially. Nobody talks about British-Americans or German-Americans.
Challenge – I hear this frequently said, and it seems like an isolated demand for rigor wrt identities. Look at all the other ethnicity in America and you see the same grouping of related, if previously separate, heritages into more cohesive blocks.
By coincidence, notorious WN Mike Enoch remarked on this very topic recently, taking aim at those who would convince white americans to identify with some fragment of their ancestry instead. I will paraphrase:
He was referencing this specifically, but also punitive race/ethnicity quotas in universities, government programs that serve nonwhites, etc.; all the usual things they bring up. The point is that nobody can possibly believe that a denial of white identity is being made in good faith, when it is the basis of so much of the attack on european americans: it is simply another psychological weapon in the attack.
No one is forming a coalition. No one can tell what ethnicity anyone else is within “white”
It’s possible I’m biased by being Ashkenazi, which is a non-central example of an ethnicity that gets marked as white. With us it’s generally pretty clear that we’re Jewish for the purposes of heritage and ethnic pride, but white for the purpose of being Not A Minority. If you’re a first or second generation immigrant that gets marked as white you’ve probably got a similar situation going. And I think if you’re, say, Appalachian you’re kind of falling for a con if you identify primarily as white–you end up giving much more to the coalition than you’re getting.
Honest question: as a Jewish person, do you enjoy being part of a minority, insofar as you can form groups, and advocate in favor of that minority? I would expect that you would. I think it’s very natural for every person to feel a little bit like that.
You get to be part of society at large, and you also have an ingroup that is bigger than your family but smaller than all of society. I can see that as being immensely useful.
My JDar went off with your initial comment. Your mistake is to assume that other ethnic subgroups see whiteness in the transactional way that you do. Most don’t, not considering their ethnic group as being of any real importance. Many whites don’t even have a predominant ethnicity, they are mixes.
I think you’re mistaken in thinking Appalachians have a meaningful choice to identify as a different racial or ethnic group that would improve their position. A common identity they put down on the census is “American”. It doesn’t get them jack. They could do even worse by identifying as being from Appalachia. I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere where that wouldn’t be a net negative for your social standing (Note: I have not lived in Appalachia which may be the one place it would help).
I’ve felt that I benefit from being able to identify as not just white because I’m a little bit Chinese and Hawaiian. No one gives a shit about my umpteen white ancestral groups, but I’ve deflected an awkward question or two with “I’m not just white, so that doesn’t apply to me or don’t ask me.”
Perhaps you can define them as someone lacking resentment/entitlement for reparation towards White people, perceived or otherwise? If you can make a case for solidarity between “People of Colour” despite those colours and culture being wildly different, you must assume that some people might prefer to be surrounded by people who lack this sense of solidarity against them.
Fantastic point.
honoredbd:
I keep thinking the best possible endpoint for American race relations is for everyone to end up effectively in the “white” category. Maybe we can invent some Martians who are green and Other, and then just put everyone else in the “white” category that amounts to “normal Americans with whom I’m happy living, working, and doing business.”
In Yorkshire, my family is from (specific village); in England, we’re from Yorkshire; in Great Britain, we’re English, in Canada, we’re British, and now that I’m living in the US, I’m Canadian.
Maybe on-point, maybe not: during the immigration wave in the United States of the late-1800s and early 1900s, immigrants would often self-segragate by place-of-origin. People from one area of Italy would find a home near other people from that area of Italy, people from a town in Poland would move in close to other people who had connections to that town in Poland, etc.
This left traces behind. In the metro area that I live, there are still neighborhoods with nicknames like “Poletown”, “Greektown”, “Little Italy”, etc. Reputedly, those neighborhoods were dominated by immigrants of those ethnicities during the immigration-boom years.
Even today, there are neighborhoods and suburbs which are the place to find most people of certain ethnic groups. Most of the European-origin ethnic groups have blended into the generic “white”, though a person’s family name might give away part of their background. The distinctive ethnic groups are now Jewish, Black, and post-1960s immigrants from places outside of Europe. (The most obvious to me: there are present-day neighborhoods where half the billboards are Arabic-plus-English.)
Generally, the thought of a person moving to an all-white neighborhood brings up memories of things like neighborhood covenants against selling to certain racial groups, or other practices. The revulsion against such history probably removes the bare factual assertion that such neighborhoods are mirrors of an all-Black neighborhood, or an all-Jewish neighborhood.
@S_J says:
Not just neighborhoods, trades as well. In San Francisco Carpenters and Cops were mostly Irish, Firemen and Plumbers mostly Italian, across the bay in Oakland Plumbers were mostly Portuguese.
There’s still ethnic social clubs, Berkeley has “Finnish Hall”, Oakland has the “Fratti Lanza” club, San Francisco has Armenian, Croatian, Irish, Italian, et cetera clubs.
I’ve personally had dinners at “The Irish Cultural Center” (an ex-cops, ironically of Filipino descent retirement party), and at the “Italian Athletic Club” in San Francisco (a Christmas party organized by a guy in the Sheet Metal Workers union).
The ethnic links are a bit attenuated (so many mixed descendents and allegiances by trade, i.e. cops not of Irish descent making a big deal about St. Patrick’s Day) but there still there.
It’s true: If centuries of past and ongoing racial oppression didn’t exist, then whites wanting to segregate would be no big deal.
And we’d also probably have a “white history month” and celebrate “white pride”, along with all the other races living in harmony together, with slavery, Jim Crow, racial discrimination, imperialism, and white nationalism never being a thing that happened/is happening.
I honestly dont get this line of thought. If white people are so bad, why is it important to have non-whites living among them?
Or are you saying that because, to quote Ilhan Omar, “some people did something”, white people should be treated differently than all others?
It still doesnt compute. People alive today are not responsible for the sins of their ancestors, and I’m pretty sure everybody’s ancestors did some bad things at some point.
Note that I conspicuously phrased my position to include both the past and present tense. If you want to argue against a strawman, you don’t need me to help you with that.
Because access to land is power. Imagine if California passed a bill to deport all Republicans. Would you say “well, Democrats suck, so I don’t see what the big deal is of not having to live with them anymore…”
No, I was arguing against your position, which includes the past tense. If you are now restating your position to only include the present tense, please advise.
Yes, access to land is power. Everyone all around the world has varying access to land based on many factors, and I dont see why this singles out the white race for unique treatment.
If you’re going to accuse me of straw-manning your position when all I did was attack a part of your position (the part which justifies treating whites differently than everyone else based on the past), please dont straw-man my position by talking about deportation.
Things that happened in the past are a good indicator of things that are happening in the present, absent information to the contrary. If the sun comes up on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, but you haven’t checked to see if the sun came up on Wednesday, do you think the odds are only 50/50?
And note, just for clarities sake, that I believe we have strong information regarding the existence of present day racism and white nationalism, so what happened in the past is just the cherry on top.
Whites are singled out for special treatment in the U.S. because of the (correct) assumption they have more power than blacks.
This is like asking “everyone has different amounts of money based on many factors, so why are we singling out the rich for unique treatment, making them pay a higher tax rate?”
Of course you could contest the assumption that racial power inequality exists. Which was my original point: If you assume a totally separate reading-of-reality than not just the left, but the mainstream, then many things that happen in the left/mainstream seem nonsensical. But the reading-of-reality is where the argument is. If you assume gravity doesn’t exist, then those arguing that apples fall from trees also seem nonsensical.
I dont. I contest that this racial power inequality should be used to justify assigning moral blame to one person for wanting something, and not assigning moral blame to another for wanting the same thing, just because the people are different races.
Let’s say I have two loaves of bread, and a poor person has none. Me and him both want the same thing (loaves of bread).
If I refused to share any of the loaves of bread and he died, would you say it is unjust so assign moral blame to me, since we both wanted the same thing, after all? (loaves of bread)
In this case bread-having is the axis of power, but you could replace it with any power inequality you want (race, nationality, ect).
You didn’t ask me, but yes.
So to be clear: If I do an action that results in someone else being harmed, I am not to blame for that action?
And yes, preventing someone from accessing a piece of bread is an action.
“reading-of-reality than not just the left, but the mainstream,”
Can you explain what the difference between these two are?
Correct.
“And yes, preventing someone from accessing a piece of bread is an action.”
I’m not seeing why this is supposed to be a hypothetical situation. How much do you have to donate to save a life of a poor person in the third world? How much could you donate without starving yourself? How much did you donate?
Amazing.
If I shoot a gun (the action), which kills someone (the result, someone who is harmed) I am not to blame?
In many contexts, but not every single context: if a man is invading your home and you pull the trigger on him, I think you would agree that you would not be blame.
Yes. obviously.
Is preventing someone from having sex with you an action?
@Alexander Turok
I would not. Of course you would be to blame for his death. If you didn’t shoot the gun, he would be alive. Classic causality.
Note that assigning moral blame is an entirely different subject as to whether an action is just.
All decisions are actions. This is what people who say “the trolley driver shouldn’t change lanes” don’t understand.
You’re motte and baileying between “blame” and “moral blame”(your original example) here.
No I’m not.
Like, you can obviously be assigned moral blame for the bad results of an action, and that action still be morally justified by the good results that outweigh it.
If I swerve the trolley and kill a guy, the answer to “who’s fault is it that this guy died?” isn’t “its nobodies”.
There are people all over the world right now who are starving. And you are not feeding them. I’m assuming you could, but instead you’re involved in silly arguments over white people on the Internet.
**SHAME**
Do you understand how thought-killing this line of thinking is?
“Let’s do thing x, it would be good”
“If thing x is good, but you aren’t doing it already, that implies that you are bad. Unless you want to admit that thing x isn’t actually good. Checkmate!”
You didnt say that sharing bread with poor people would be good. If you had, I would have agreed with you.
You said:
I’m just pointing out that this example is not convincing. In fact, I’m pointing out that according to the logic which undergirds your example, you should be assigned moral blame right now.
Do you think I would disagree with this statement?
The way I see it, people bear the moral responsibility for the results of their actions and decisions. So you had better think about what the best decisions to make in throughout your life are, if you care about doing “good” at all.
It’s not like its impossible to think of utilitarian reasons not to donate your life saving to malaria nets in Africa, if that’s what you are worried about.
That you should be assigned moral blame? Yes.
That the logic of your examples suggests you should be assigned moral blame? I dont know. Maybe you dont realize that the example you used was superficially nice sounding but fatally flawed. Nobody has a responsibility to end the suffering of everyone on earth. You dont have to give bread to hungry people, the hot girl doesnt need to sleep with incels, and Jeff Bezos doesnt have to give every poor person in America $10000.
You have a responsibility to support your family, if you have one.
You have a responsibility towards your employer and your co-employees to work diligently and honestly.
You have a responsibility towards your co-citizens that you will follow the law.
Your responsibilities towards others shrink as they are further away from you. Your responsibilities towards citizens of other countries are basically:
1. Dont invade their country
2. Dont destroy the earth
I like Nassim Taleb’s formulation:
Why? What is the moral theory that justifies this?
I’m quite sure that others can do a much better job on this one than I can. But I’ll throw this out there: practicality and effectiveness.
I should add that the “distance” in this theory is not merely physical. Your brother is “close” even if he lives in Australia and you live in the US. But physical distance also matters.
You dont understand the needs of those who are too far away from you well enough to help them. You dont understand how your action might affect anything else within their environment. And you wont know either. You can feel good giving money to some charity for Africa, but maybe that charity really fcked things up, and you’ll never know. And when I say fcked things up, I mean maybe the charity thought it was doing good, but it actually did harmful things. Or maybe not. Maybe the charity was employing sexual predators. Maybe the charity was paying off the local warlord. Maybe the charity did work that put some local entrepreneur out of business. As a white savior giving your $20 after seeing that tear-jerker of a commercial, you dont know, you dont care. You’re a good person because you give to charity. The charity will thank you for your money and assure you that you are a good person.
I realize this falls short of what you requested. But I believe it’s in the right direction. Anyhow, I hope someone else will explain it better than this. It’s not my own, more intelligent people than I have discussed this idea. I should probably read up on it.
You’ve done a good job of answering the question of why, practically speaking, it makes more sense to focus efforts on people closer to you. But that doesn’t absolve you of the moral responsibility for the way your decisions effect people not close to you. To reference an earlier post, moral blame is not the same thing as whether an action is morally justified. If the good of the action outweighs the bad, then the action is morally just. If you swerve the trolley, killing 1 to save 5, you still killed a guy. We would all just understand that the good results outweighed the bad results.
To bring it back though: The counter-point to the “focus at home” strategy, is that we are all human, and want basically the same set of things (food, shelter, love, health, power over their lives). So you have to be really careful before putting the “how could I know what he wants?” blinders on.
For example, if the group making the “how could I know what they want?” claim is actively oppressing the other group (e.g., enforcing political power over them), the “distance argument” starts to look more like a facade. It is reasonable to suspect that a slave owner claiming he can’t possibly know what is best for the slave, so its best to just do what’s best for himself, might not actually be assigning equal moral value to all humans.
Presuming that the guy who is controlling the trolley is not the guy who attached 1 person on a track and 5 on another, I dont think he deserves any moral blame. Not killing anybody was not an option, so he took the least bad option. I would blame the guy who attached the people on the tracks.
I agree 100%.
Oppressing other groups is bad. And governing from far away is very much analogous to charity from far away, it’s bad. World government is evil. Globalists are wrong. The EU and the UN are abominations.
No, probably not. Because he’s a SLAVE OWNER!!!
@Guy in TN, jermo sapiens
It sounds like you two are talking past each other a bit due to different definitions/connotations of the term “moral blame”.
Guy in TN, I think, is using it as follows: “moral blame” is inextricably linked to (identical to?) the negative terms in a global utility function. The sum* may be positive, but the negative terms are still there.
jermo sapiens, by contrast, I think goes: “moral blame” is an emotional judgment of the rank of the sum of said utility function, and does not inherently refer to negative terms in the function.
*Utilitarianism caveat: morality-based arithmetic may or may not conform to Euclidean geometry.
I think there’s a paradox involved here from the perspective of the United States. At least since the Civil Rights era, American culture is supposed to be blind to ethnic origin or skin color. Someone of any ethnic group that comes in and assimilates to US culture* is an American. American society should not shun people who are otherwise culturally American for being of a different racial or ethnic background, and someone who is judging someone’s American-ness based only on ethnic or racial qualifications is essentially un-American. American cultural homogeneity is necessarily counter-indicated by efforts to impose ethnic homogeneity in the guise of American-ness.
* I can only speak as a single individual, one on the right side of the political spectrum. The problem the right has with unchecked immigration is that we’re dealing with immigrants that aren’t assimilating to US culture (as understood by the right; the left obviously has other ideas about what American values are and whether assimilation is necessary or even good), either because they’re here illegally or because they want the advantages of prosperous American society without assuming the values that led to that prosperity (at least according to those of us on the right). The American right wants a (right-wing) American culture; dissing anti-abortion activists because they’re black, gun owners because they’re Korean, or small business owners because they’re south Asian Indian doesn’t promote right wing American values. I admit there’s a catch twenty-two here, as nobody agrees on what American values should be, so someone looking to conceal ethnic prejudice can use values as a cover for why generic members of any particular group are treated with disdain.
As someone who is decidedly non-woke – in fact, I’d consider myself anti-woke – I would say that preferring to live with other people of one’s race is morally suspect for standard liberal reasons. Which is that that’s a preference for being close to and interacting with individuals based purely on the race to which they belong. This goes against what I see as a standard liberal value, which is that individuals should be treated as individuals, completely independently of their race.
This also means that I see black people who prefers to live in a black neighborhood as being no less morally monstrous than a white person who prefers to live in a white neighborhood.
Now, if someone wants to live in a particular culture because they like that culture, and that culture correlates strongly with a certain race, that’s something completely different and something I don’t see as morally suspect or wrong in itself. As long as if, say, God came down and zapped every individual in that culture to become another race or a dozen different races, that person’s preference for living in that culture doesn’t change one whit.
I would think that’s the case almost 100% of the time. And I would add that culture correlates very strongly with race. I cant imagine anyone, even the most racist, disliking a culture but being happy with people from that culture just because of matching skin color.
Consider the schelling model of segregation. The gist is that even with only a moderate preference for living near people like you (e.g., a desire to have 33% of your neighbors look like you), you get a ton of segregation very quickly. This isn’t even “an X person wanting to live in an X neighborhood.” This is “X person not wanting to live in a mostly non-X neighborhood.” Hard to find fault with someone that wants just 1/3 of the people around them to look like them. Unless you have an active desire to live with people that don’t look like you, it’s hard to reverse the resultant segregation.
here’s a fun tester of this:
https://ncase.me/polygons/
Of course, “what race are my neighbors” is usually not the only driver for selecting a place to live.
I like the polygons thing. I would like to test it more though. For example, my hunch tells me there are solutions where everybody is happy, and I’m not sure how this particular algorithm works. Does it count only direct neighbors?
Anyhow, assuming the polygons thing is correct, and the stable equilibrium is segregated societies. Ok fine, it’s disappointing. But is it a catastrophe that requires a massive social engineering scheme? I dont think so. I believe we should seek to create a world which is compatible with human nature, not seek to create a human nature which is compatible with the world we want.
Isn’t this just the “separate but equal” argument? And in theory, “separate but equal” is fine. But, empirically, there is but lip service to the idea, and segregation results in an entrenchment of inequality and a suppression of exit rights.
It’s not even about malice, often. It’s that “separate but equal” can only be maintained through re-distribution, and those that must give understandably don’t want to. (But then it’s all to easy for malice to exploit those feelings.)
The “separate but equal” policies that we learn about in school were actually enforced by law, though. It seems clear that that violates exit rights, and entrenches inequality inasmuch as the dividing lines reflect it; it seems much less clear that stepping back and letting voluntary self-segregation happen would. In fact it can only happen in the presence of a reasonable level of exit rights, can’t it?
The interesting thing is we blew straight through more voluntary solutions (like not having the government shaft black people constantly and not having it punish anyone who wanted to put white people and black people in the same train car) and went all the way to disparate impact in something like a decade. Voting rights need mandatory protection, and government redistribution is always nonvoluntary so those cases aren’t interesting.
But to me it looks like there mostly aren’t as many disparate impact suits as there could be. Partly because it doesn’t occur to most people how the doctrine ought to apply to so many things, and partly because most people just aren’t going to bother bringing a suit. Even if they are actually discriminated against they usually won’t bother. And it’s really unlikely anyone will bother if everyone seems to accept the status quo, and there’s no clear intentional discrimination even if the disparate impact is clear. For example, many jobs asking for a bachelor’s degree cause disparate impact, and it would be very expensive or difficult to prove that the degree is relevant to the job. In a lot of cases, the degree probably isn’t relevant. A sufficiently dedicated push could potentially flip society on that issue or similar ones.
Not really. As Nornagest points out, enforcing segregation by law is not the same thing as letting segregation happen naturally.
I have never seen a compelling argument why enforcing diversity by law is good and enforcing segregation by law is bad that doesn’t rely on some moral assumptions that I don’t share.
@AG
That is true for self-segregation as well, if cultural differences aren’t just superficial. It seems to me that the ideal of a multicultural society with equality of outcomes is incoherent.
If you truly want equality of outcomes, shouldn’t you support forceful assimilation. Of course, that has a problematic history as well.
And we have a lot of segregation anyways! De jure matters a lot, but a decent number of people want it de facto and get it.
I’m suspicious of the reasons of a significant chunk of people who segregate whether white/black/asian/etc., but I’m suspicious of a lot of reasons people give. I’m not as worried as the articles that seem to believe some people are stealing opportunities from others by not wanting to live next to them. That may be occasionally true, but most of the time the reasoning is nonsense. A lot of bad things happen (or are done) to poor people or black people that have no effect on other people’s live either way.
AG:
I don’t see how substantial voluntary segregation (which we see everywhere) suppresses exit rights. If the black students and white students mostly sit at different tables in the cafeteria, with a few people sitting at the opposite-race table instead, how does that entrench inequality, or require redistribution to keep equal? Seems like everyone gets the same cafeteria lunch but chooses whom to sit with for reasons you don’t like.
@albatross11:
Suppression of exit rights within “voluntary” segregation occurs via social pressures.
I would be less wary of self-segregation’s track record if the environment also had a space where people could voluntarily integrate, and not suffer for it.
My perception is that nerds and jocks will tend towards conflict theory if (self-)segregated, and stick with mistake theory if more people are nerdy jocks and jocky nerds. (…oh god, this is the moral to High School Musical)
In our world, with plenty of voluntary segregation, we also see substantial mixing between groups, including interracial marriages and black families living in mostly-white neighborhoods and whites living in mostly-black neighborhoods and all the rest. People being people, this doesn’t always go perfectly, but it actually seems to be working out pretty well overall. Despite traditional and social media that sometimes seem to be trying to drum up as much black/white racial hatred as possible, race relations in the US mostly go pretty well.
The only way to eliminate voluntary segregation of this kind is to impose some kind of different set of choices on individuals. What government program or law would keep white residents from leaving a neighborhood that had become majority black? Would you forbid them selling their house and moving away? What government program would you propose to address the extensive voluntary segregation by race in dating and marriage, or in friendships, or in choice of TV shows and movies?
If you give people free choice, they will often self-segregate. That’s visible in peoples’ choices of where to live, where to work, whom to sit with in the cafeteria, whom to date, what TV shows and movies to watch, what sports to play, what churches to attend, etc. The only way around that is to override their choices and force someone to do stuff they don’t want to do. Sometimes, they’ll self-segregate on race, sometimes on language, national origin, occupation, social class, education level, interests, political views, religion, gender, etc.
The reason the parable of the polygons is interesting, IMO, is that it shows how you get segregation without any kind of formal discrimination. You don’t need laws banning triangles from living in square neighborhoods, you just need individual preferences to be slightly in favor of more people like me as neighbors, and you get segregation. In practice, I think any way you might try to break that segregation up is going to involve making a fair number of people less happy. And not just in housing–a small preference to date within your own race or religion or social class works the same way.
The interesting question is why we see this as a problem to be solved, rather than an interesting emergent property of people and societies. IMO, the way the segregation really goes away is when the distinction people are segregating on becomes less important to most people. Over time, lots of white ethnic groups went from being seen as a different shape (Irish vs Italians, for example) to being seen as the same shape (generic white Americans). In 2019, I think you will have to search very far to find someone of mostly English descent upset that his daughter is marrying someone of Italian descent, but I think in 1919 it would have been much more common. My equivalent of a hundred years ago might have been uncomfortable working in an office with lots of Asians, whereas it just seems like normal life to me.
There are advantages to living/working around people very similar to yourself (ease of communications, shared values), and also disadvantages (monoculture of ideas and talents). Working out an optimal tradeoff isn’t trivial, and in fact looks very situation dependent and not like something that could be done via law in any sensible way.
Perfectly said.
I get the motivation behind fighting segregation, but it insists that everyone must seek diversity. If that aligns with your values, that’s great, but enforcing that on everyone sounds like orwellian dystopia.
Exactly. This is the best meme to illustrate that point.
That’s a pretty cool simulation. I’m skeptical of how illustrative a model it is, though, since it seems to rely at least somewhat on polygons only being willing to move because they want more segregation, and on there being no coordination among the polygons. In the manual mode, I tried deliberately setting up minimally-segregated equilibria, but was prevented from doing so by the impossibility of moving “happy” or “meh” polygons.
Even in the random case, I think the “more segregated polygons won’t move” criterion is doing a significant portion of the work. For example, try setting the slider to make the polygons 100% segregationist (maximizing the desire for segregation, but also making almost every shape willing to move). I’ve had it running for several minutes and it seems to consistently stay in low single-digit segregation levels (often at 0%).
The fact that they just randomly moved polygons definitely made it break for higher levels of desired segregation. I also agree that it probably isn’t illustrative of the real world, though, if someone’s happiness really was 30% dependent on being near similar people, then this probably does work at some level. I know a lot of people resisted the “white flight” in the 50s and 60s, but at some point they pretty much all moved, so there is obviously some level at which almost anyone will leave if their neighborhood becomes too different.
In my experience, this kind of thing is more closely tied to class than race.
Also, I don’t think that not being able to move a happy polygon was a problem. People rarely move when they are happy with their current situation, and I don’t think there is a lot of opportunities today for people to move en masse in a coordinated way.
90% of drivers of selecting a place to live are proxies for this.
I think it’s closer to the reverse. 90% of the drivers are highly correlated with race (also, economic status).
+1
If next year, your overwhelmingly white suburb has a Chinese engineer, an Indian cardiologist, and a black accountant move in, you probably don’t mind much–they’re unlikely to bring a lot of crime or a drop in quality of the local schools or trash all over the yard with them. If the following year, three lower-class white families move in with their extended families and a car up on blocks in the driveway, you probably care a lot.
Race correlates with the stuff everyone cares about. Some people also care to some greater or lesser extent about race. My not-that-informed guess is that most people care more about the correlates (crime, schools, quality of life in the neighborhood) than they do about the race of their neighbors.
@albatross11
That certainly depends on what changes and how many of them are moving in.
You are correct that at a very low rate, none of those are likely to be disruptive.
But Chinese immigration into San Francisco was so large and disruptive in the late 1800s that it created its own neighborhood where whites weren’t welcome, which kicked off massive protests and resulted in a Federal law restricting Chinese immigration.
Black migration to the North was so disruptive that it created race riots and the collapse of the Northern inner cities.
Lower class whites also have crime rates lower than upper class blacks, so your example the lower class whites would likely not be a problem at all.
@EchoChaos says: “…But Chinese immigration into San Francisco was so large and disruptive in the late 1800s that it created its own neighborhood where whites weren’t welcome, which kicked off massive protests and resulted in a Federal law restricting Chinese immigration…”
As an aside: In what was the lobby of a former post office in San Francisco there’s a series of paintings made in the 1940’s on “The History of San Francisco”, which ends with the founding of the United Nations with the American, British, and Soviet flags most prominent (there was a failed effort in the ’50’s to remove the murals as “Communist propaganda” which given the artist they likely were), and a part of the murals shows a protest by the 19th century mostly Irish California “Working Man’s Party” and a “Chinese Out!” sign is clearly visible.
Most of what had been the post office adjacent to the old lobby are now Chinese restaurants.
@Plumber
That is absolutely hilarious. Thanks.
I don’t think the race of the neighborhood has nearly the influence that the class of the neighborhood does on people deciding where to live. Those two tend to be correlated, but the class is the one that really matters.
The number of people that wouldn’t want to live between two black Hollywood stars in Malibu is vanishingly small, I suspect. Just as the number of people that want to live between two white meth addicts in a trailer park is vanishingly small.
Malibu is 92% white per Wikipedia.
In fact, it may not be possible possible to live between two of the (checks notes) 148 blacks in all of Malibu.
Poor whites are pretty fantastic people, and I’ve worked with plenty of them to know.
You’re dodging the statement by assuming the criminality of them.
Given the choice to live in majority black Prince George’s County, Maryland or majority white Loudoun County, Virginia, to use examples I actually know of similarly wealthy counties, it’s clear from the relative growth rates what people actually prefer.
Those two counties are a terrible comparison. One is an established middle class neighborhood with good growth, the other one is a traditionally rural area that has seen rapid development in the last 30 years, and has the highest median household income of any county with more than 65,000 people.
Obviously the main reason so many people are moving there is that they are building new houses, whereas Prince George is an established area, but even if that wasn’t the case, the fact that Loudoun has a median household income almost $60,000 higher proves my point far stronger than yours, seeing as though Loudoun is an unusually diverse area.
@JayT
They are the richest black and richest white counties in America, both in driving range of DC and filled with professionals. If there were an even richer black county to compare, I would compare it.
There may be a middleground. People will start to leave if class expectations / quality of life expectations are not met, and each person on the margin starts to feel like an alien and moves. And then when they move a new threshold is hit that causes more people to move on the margins etc.
I don’t believe most people consider deviations from of absolute homogeneity a deal-breaker, but they’re being asked to be viscerally indifferent to something resembling the inverse of that.
I think there’s a huge confounder here because race correlates with a bunch of other stuff: income, wealth, culture, crime, school performance, etc. So all else being equal, having your neighborhood change from 100% white to 50% white/50% black is going to come with having poorer neighbors whose kids do worse in school and who have a larger (but still very small, note) fraction of criminals among them.
Consider a recent Chinese immigrant with absolutely no dog in the American black/white racial fight. Will he prefer to move into the 50/50 black/white neighborhood or the 100% white neighborhood? Why? It’s surely not pro-white bigotry.
Not quite sure what is meant by valid reason. For most people, anti-racism is a valid reason in of itself.
For those of us that can’t viscerally feel the the disgust at the idea of any form of white-self-preference, The proximate answer is that it’s a disgust reaction/moral double standard that people were socialized into.
We might ask two related questions:
1. How does the socialization work in the face of the double standard
2. Why would the socialization come about
I think both are just related to historical optics. There aren’t prominent or persistent examples of underdog story where comparatively affluent POC were attempting to keep whites out of their communities or nations and subsequently having another group using violence to keep them out. You do have instances of attempts by whites to gain access to land and resources, and perhaps ‘Markets’ in a commercial sense, but not for access to jobs or access to neighborhoods or access to schools.
So the purges in post-colonial Africa wouldn’t count, because the Africans were poorer than the whites. I highly doubt this “mitigating factor” would apply to, say, Ukrainians running out the Jews. It seems to me like the justifications for the double standard are just ad-hoc rationalizations.
I think the socialization in large part involves what tragedies and atrocities are brought to the fore (what gets featured prominently in education and media) —
Under what circumstances would an individual be socialized into a narrative that those purged in post-colonial africa didn’t have it coming for their past misdeeds? That’s how i tend to think about it. I know what i was taught in school so i have a rough idea of what semi-educated people know about Africa and the Ukraine
I’m not relativistic to the point where i’d claim you can’t conclusively argue that one form of ethnic cleansing was comparatively more justified than another, but I don’t believe the assumptions people generally have about these events is going to fit that mold, necessarily.
The same reason the people who camped around the oasis in the desert and won’t let anyone else move in are worse than the folks who camped in a random spot and won’t let anyone else move in.
Also, wanting to live somewhere else out of reasonable fear of harm is better than unreasonable fear of harm.
Now, none of this is a legal argument and legally, no you can’t make that distinction. Again, nothing I say here is legal advice.
You’ve lost me. Lots of homogeneous populations live in relatively small or rather hostile territories (Iceland is a pretty marginal place to settle). And lots of diverse populations live in very nice territory (like lots of the Mediterranean which has had nice places to live for millennia).
If you’ve camped around the oasis in the desert and won’t let anyone else in, people will die of dehydration in the desert. If you’ve camped around nowhere in random location, then people are far less harmed by your xenophobia (here standing in for racism/segregation).
My actual position is much more like Guy in TN, but the question was for any other valid reason then an unpleasant and misleadingly uncharitable misstatement of my actual position.
So in your analogy the mostly white towns of rural Montana are the oasis? For refugees from the middle east and africa?
I’m sorry but this does not compute for me at all. Feels like a stretched analogy poorly designed to reach a predetermined conclusion. And the question I originally asked was why is it ok to treat whites differently in this regard. If your analogy is that white people themselves are an oasis, that is extremely racist.
@jermo I think you might do well to keep mining this vein. Scratching the surface of a lot of grossly left-wing anti-racist stuff, I often find weapons grade white supremacy (when I don’t just find pure racial hatred finding a convenient avenue of attack). For instance, I see narratives about difference underpinned by the unspoken assertion that the “white” way of doing things is unquestionably the best, and that any respect in which, or any extent to which, people around the world are not mimicking whites, they are failing; and further, the blame for this falls entirely at the feet of whites. Nonwhites are not even afforded the capacity to fail, or be evil, so deprived are they of depth and agency in this disgustingly white-centred-yet-white-hating worldview.
To give some context, I am absolutely a Malcolm X black nationalist and I support the creation of a sovereign african american state within the lower 48 as the only possible permanent solution to the problem that began with the slave trade; and if your visceral reaction to that is to object on the grounds that the nation would have quality of life and GDP and crime figures more like those of Jamaica than those of Europe, you are literally going to hell and I won’t pray for you.
Yes, you are not the first and you wont be the last. I recall Sargon of Akkad debating some progressive and cornering him into saying “if you have a level playing field whites win every time”, and Sargon going in for the kill after that. I cant find the clip, sorry.
The thing is it’s not that these people are actually racist. They are sincere. But their positions are adopted after only a superficial review because it’s popular with the cool kids.
I’d say feel free to create a black or white ethnostate if you can find a place to put it, but don’t be surprised when most people aren’t interested. I’d much rather live in my integrated multiracial society than in an all-white ethnostate.
A lot of the wealthiest areas in the U.S. are less white than many poor rural areas, which is why I was confused. The places inside cities that are super white, I couldn’t afford to live in, and I’m not poor. But if I was LeBron James, I could live in those places. So I think those are segregated based on wealth.
This reason makes sense to me. If your central worry is about a resurgence of white supremacy along the lines of David Duke or the al-trite, I agree David Duke is bad and suspicious and so is much of the al-trite. But I think their politics don’t drive segregation in most of the U.S. Even if they all disappeared tomorrow, I’d expect things to look almost the same. I’d expect some improvement in some less central areas, but literally no change in cities.
EDIT:
@jermo sapiens
One of the interesting things about a lot of U.S. thought about race. It’s like Chinese people never existed! Like all the stories in the NYT about the special gifted high schools. If you skimmed you would’ve thought the proposed changes would’ve mostly transferred schools slots away from white people.
I guess I should be madder about this, but damn! The audacity of it.
quanta:
In general, a lot of discussion about race in the US is based on the models of the world that make sense for black/white relations, but that don’t work very well for Asian/white or Hispanic/white relations.
Nope. But in our society, white people have, historically and modernly, greatly monopolized wealth and authority. I just want to be left alone is a reasonable position. I just want to be left alone, as I stand on someone else’s back, rather less so. And now we shift into, well that was in the past (or slavery wasn’t really beneficial/redlining wasn’t that bad/Jim Crow just proves the state needs to butt out) and we’ve redone the bit with Guy in TN above us.
As for the rest of this discussion chain, I’m an American citizen, what China/Japan/etc. should do/are doing is not really fucking relevant to my life, or my country. If your argument is about whites in Japan, you really should have said that.
All of this reads to me like an attempt at decontextualization and universalization for relatively transparent political purposes. I should have simply registered my disagreement and moved forward.
You’re acting like it’s obvious that this is true today, and many dispute that, particularly if you don’t consider Jews to be white.
Here is the “whites are uniquely bad” trope I was expecting.
Whites have been at the center of the industrial and scientific revolution, thanks to a number of factors, including the great amount of coal found in Great Britain, the rule of law, and the patent system, to name a few.
Yes, there was colonialism and all that stuff, but no amount of colonialism can explain the wealth we have in the west today. Our wealth is mostly due to the industrial and scientific revolution. I’m hoping I wont have to google what percentage of US GDP is from sugar/cotton plantations and what percentage is from technology, to prove it, but I’m ready if I need to.
I’m convinced much of this discussion turns on the question “are whites oppressing blacks?”
If you think the answer is “no”, then basically the whole debate over race the US: the question of segregation, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, must look like madness.
And in libertarian/economic-liberal circles, where government power is seen as the only form of actual power, the inclination is to say “no” for any time after Jim Crow laws were repealed. While for progressives/economic leftists, we place private power on equal footing with government power, so simply removing Jim Crow isn’t enough.
For policy debates, if you believe the answer is “yes”, you can’t even have a discussion over race with someone who believes “no”, since the underlying assumptions are what drive the best policy decisions. But you aren’t going to convince the “no”s to switch to “yes” unless they change their understanding of what power is (e.g., is a factory refusing to hire someone “force”, in the same way that a law banning someone from working there is?), which are the same assumptions which happens to underlie the liberal economic theory they also support. It’s a tough tangle.
Are African-Americans better off than Africans?
This might not answer everything but it’s a good starting point.
No, I say “no” because I don’t think a black person who applies for a job is more likely to be discriminated against on account of his race than a white person. It’s not a matter of (neo)-liberal political ideology, which I don’t really like.
Guy in TN:
It probably would help to specify what kind of oppression you’re thinking of, who’s doing it, whom it’s being done to, etc. “Are whites oppressing blacks?” is a little like “Are blacks victimizing whites?” or “Are women taking advantage of men?” or “Are policemen abusing their power?” The answer to all those questions is “Yes, sometimes.” But the details of who and how often and how much all matter quite a bit.
“Are whites discriminating against blacks in employment decisions?” will surely get the same answer–yes, sometimes. How often, and how big is the effect, and who’s doing it and who’s suffering for it–those are relevant questions for figuring out how to respond.
When people voluntarily segregate–without the power of the law to enforce anything–is this a mechanism by which they’re oppressing others? I don’t think the answer to that is at all obvious. If I consciously try to move to a neighborhood that’s almost all white[1], whom is that oppressing, and how? How about if I consciously date only people of my religion? Is that oppressing someone?
[1] I’m not planning to–I like my very multicultural region just fine.
I think if you move it up from the personal to the business level, so the economic power involved becomes more obvious, it becomes clearer.
For example, if a business said “we are only going to purchase [generic product] from white clients”, that would be classic case of racial discrimination (no different than if a business said they were going to only sell to white customers). Now switch the generic product for real estate: What if the business only bought homes from white customers, in white neighborhoods?
So conceptually, purposefully buying homes only from white people, isn’t much different from, for example, a hotel refusing to book rooms to black customers.
I am sure there are a lot of people who don’t view, say, a factory refusing to hire black workers as a form of oppression. But if you do think that is a form of oppression, I find it hard to square how refusing to buy houses from black sellers is conceptually any different.
At the interpersonal level (dating, ect) the economic power involved goes away, so I think the analogy can stop there.
@guy in TN
I don’t think that quite works. I used to deliberately buy coffee from a supplier who bought it directly from small farmers (almost all indigenous peoples, so racial in a way), and chicken directly from small farmers (much less Hispanic than factory-farm chicken). It doesn’t seem to me that that was in any way oppressive.
Since you have a non-racial reason for buying that certain product, it isn’t racial oppression.
Very different from people saying they are deliberately interested in purchasing products only from white sellers, for reason of them being white.
Guy in TN:
We were discussing voluntary residential segregation earlier. That might range from whites slightly preferring to have mostly white neighbors (thus the parable of the polygons–I think that model originates with Schelling) to whites having a strong preference for mostly white neighbors that dictates where they will buy/rent, all the way to attempts to establish some kind of all-white neighborhoods or buildings or something.
Now, as far as I can see, the first two of those are impossible to forbid by law, whereas any attempt to use zoning or contract law to establish a whites only (or blacks only or Chinese only or whatever) neighborhood or town or apartment building would absolutely violate existing American discrimination law. I think the original question (maybe just where I came in) was whether whites’ preference for white neighbors, without any legal enforcement mechanisms, was evil. That’s where a bunch of people have answered “yes,” whereas I don’t see why it’s evil.
I can see that there are situations where it might lead to bad outcomes, and it seems kind-of dumb and narrow-minded to me, but the preference doesn’t seem evil. It certainly seems no more evil than blacks, hispanics, Chinese, Jews, etc., seeking to live mainly surrounded by people like them. There are benefits as well as costs to that sort of thing.
The argument for why it’s evil seems to turn on whites having a uniquely horrible history of excluding nonwhites. I don’t think that works–I don’t think whites have a uniquely horrible history of such things, and I don’t think our history would inform whether having such a preference is evil now anyway.
In my (strongly anti-nationalist cosmopolitan) view, preferring to live in homogeneous societies is morally suspect because favoring people of one’s own tribe/ethnicity over other human beings is always bigoted and wrong; it places illusory and damaging distinctions above our common humanity. This absolutely applies regardless of ethnicity, not just to white people. It’s also absolutely true that the vast majority of people display some degree of this favoritism and that it may be partially an innate tendency (though it is certainly exacerbated by social conditioning). But it’s something decent people should recognize and try to avoid in themselves and should not encourage in others.
However, the degree of badness of the preference depends highly on the means used to act according to it. Making your own choice without trying to influence anyone else’s choice is not so bad; using social sanctions to try to nudge others to choose homogeneity is much worse; using state power to force homogeneity, and particularly to forcibly exclude “others” from your neighborhood in order to preserve the homogeneity you like, is worst of all. So it’s legitimate to be much *more* condemnatory of white preferences for homogeneity simply because historically white people have much more frequently used force to preserve homogeneity, and arguably continue to do so today through mechanisms ranging from exclusionary zoning to immigration restrictions.
I’m 100% with you until you started using historical “white people were super bad” stuff.
I’m assuming you’re a strong critic of Israel then.
Israel’s level of state enforced homogeneity doesn’t even rise to the historical American South, let alone China/Japan.
Even if you include the non-Israeli occupied Palestinians in that rule, they’re about where historical America overall was relative to say Indian tribes.
And I’ll note that most open borders supporters are also against Israel.
Agreed.
Also agreed. FTR, I am pro-Israel, and I encourage them to live as they wish. People should be able to live in a diverse society if they wish, and should be able to live in a homogeneous society if they wish.
@jermo sapiens
I agree with both of those things, I was just pointing out that I find the “open borders for Israel” talking point to be fairly stupid. There are a small number of hypocrites who want Israel to control their borders but not America, but most people are consistent one way or the other.
Yes and there are a larger number of slightly less hypocritical hypocrites who want diversity in America (short of open borders) and no diversity for Israel. The troll twitter account “Open Borders for Israel” was quite effective at unearthing them.
There is an even greater number of even slightly less hypocritical hypocrites who will virtue signal by calling America racist and never level the same charge against Israel.
From Haaretz:
Afula is a city in Northern Israel, not a West Bank settlement. They may not have segregated drinking fountains, but it really looks like legally sanctioned housing discrimination is a thing. Perhaps a better comparison is the historical American North, with its de facto sundown towns and so on.
@INH5
That is not state enforced at all, otherwise the mayor wouldn’t be joining the protest, he’d just veto the sale.
FWIW your assumption re: Israel is correct. Nations are foul squalid things unworthy of the allegiance of any civilized human being; tribal nations especially so.
Thanks.
Until we evolve to be non-tribal rational beings, I’m afraid we’re stuck with them. Do you consider yourself to be a member of any tribe, whether ethnic, cultural, or ideological?
Oh sure, I’m a member of a bunch of tribes (including Jewish, for whatever that’s worth in this context, and as you may already know I’m drawing on a pretty rich history of anti-nationalist Jewish intellectuals here). I just disapprove of founding political entities for the purposes of aggrandizement of particular tribes. One of the respects in which the USA is less bad than many other nations, for example, is that it isn’t founded on tribal aggrandizement, and indeed its founding principles tend to push against tribal aggrandizement.
I disagree a bit here–nations *can* be terrible things that motivate people to murder their neighbors with the best of motives. But humans are tribal, deep down in our basic nature. Nations can (and at best, do) harness that tribalism in positive directions. It’s a better world when I see the poor guy living down the street from me as “us” rather than “them,” and nationalism is one way that works to help me see him that way.
In very broad terms, I think the societies that function best are the ones that take human nature, even the worst parts of it, and harness them to positive ends. Think capitalism turning greed and obsessiveness into positives that make the world into a huge wealth and well-being engine, social and marital customs that turn lust into a drive to make a stable family, social conventions that turn envy into a drive to work harder and maintain your house better, etc. All those things have plenty of downsides, too, but there’s a reason the most successful societies we know have all of them to some greater or lesser extent. All the most successful societies we know also are nations and have nationalism and party politics of some kind, and I expect that this is a way of harnessing the potentially dark human tendency toward tribalism in a positive direction. If we could just discover aliens, we’d probably manage to turn our tribalism into human-tribalism, but until then, this might be the best we can do.
I agree with your later comment, though–I like very much that the US’ definition of who’s an American is based on ideas and shared culture, rather than on blood-and-soil nationalism.
Asians have far more often used state force to enforce homogeneity.
Communist (really more fascist) China is doing it right now against the Uighurs to a degree that would make the most stalwart supporter of apartheid blanche, and Japan was of course the past master of it and still struggles with the legacy of it.
Attacking whites is special pleading.
Why is humanity as an in-group more noble than a specific group of humans as an in-group?
Are you afraid of being the wrong species?
salvorhardin:
What you’re missing here is that there are advantages to being surrounded with people with similar culture and background and assumptions and social class and such–it’s easier to get along with the neighbors, you’re more likely to share the same goals and concerns, etc. It’s easier to make friends, to organize as a neighborhood to deal with some collective problem, etc. That’s offset by some disadvantages–monocultures in thinking and interests and life situation and such. But it’s a tradeoff, and most of that tradeoff isn’t motivated by any kind of hatred or anything.
As an example, most people marry others of the same race, national origin, language, and approximately the same age. There are a lot of reasons why this is true–there are big advantages in a marriage to having a lot of shared cultural assumptions and references.
As another example, people usually have friends who are a similar age and in a similar part of their life–young parents are often friends with other young parents, for example. That’s segregation by age and life choices, and it makes sense because young parents have similar constraints and experiences and concerns and can sometimes pool resources to do things together–taking their kids to a theme park together, for example, or swapping babysitting for date nights.
First, I don’t think there have been laws to enforce residential segregation in the US for something like two generations (50 years or so) by now, and restrictive covenants haven’t been enforceable for about the same length of time. Exclusionary zoning is absolutely not done by race in the US[1]. So the things you’re talking about as extra bad are forbidden by law in the US, have been for a couple generations, and are widely viewed as evil and unacceptable by whites as well as everyone else. This strikes me as a pretty weak reason to condemn white preferences for homogeneity.
Second, before you tell me that American whites have used force to preserve homogeneity more often than other groups, can you maybe explain whom you’re comparing us with? How do we compare with people in India, Japan, and Nigeria, for example?
[1] Immigration restrictions seem like a complete red herring.
Exclusionary zoning is not explicitly racial anymore, but it has a strong disparate impact which entrenches and perpetuates the consequences of prior explicit segregation. This is unlikely to be coincidental or even unintended, especially e.g. in the case of wealthy communities resisting the construction of affordable housing developments. The book to read on this is Richard Rothstein, _The Color of Law_.
Immigration restrictions are not a red herring at all. They forcibly exclude people based on arbitrary accidents of birth, and often are explicitly motivated (and even more often implicitly motivated) by a desire to preserve the ethnic composition of a state.
It’s certainly true that nonwhites have also used force to preserve homogeneity, and Japanese immigration restrictions are a good example. Japanese state-sponsored racism is also a problem in the global context, but in the North American neighborhood homogeneity dynamics context that is the usual one for discussions of how blameworthy homogeneity preference should be, white state-sponsored racism is the more salient problem.
I think a lot of assumptions are doing a lot of work here. Whats the evidence that Japanese immigration restrictions are a negative for the world? Isn’t there a large positive to having a place like Japan that produces its own quirky things like pokemon and anime? Thinking of diversity only in an intra-territorial way seems backwards.
salvorhardin:
I think you’re moving the goalposts a bit there. As long as there are differences in economic outcomes across racial groups, zoning that serves to make houses more expensive will have disparate impact. But it’s worth noting that the disparate impact here makes it harder for blacks to move into the nicest neighborhoods than whites, but also harder for whites to do so than Asians. It’s a little hard to explain that pattern by white bigotry. If you look at the ethnic makeup of the expensive neighborhoods with the best public schools where I live, you’ll see a disproportionate number of East Asians and South Asians, and a disproportionate fraction of the whites will be Jewish. Again, this isn’t the pattern you’d see if this were white people discriminating via zoning laws to keep the nonwhites and non-WASPS out.
Historically, we had whites doing exactly that, via zoning laws and restrictive covenants, a couple generations ago, so we know exactly what it looks like. You get neighborhoods full of white people who go to mainline Protestant churches–not neighborhoods full of Chinese and Vietnamese and Indian familes living next door to white families with a smattering of black and hispanic families.
Immigration restrictions do indeed exclude people based on arbitrary accidents of birth–that’s actually the point of those restrictions. But given that basically every nation on Earth has them (certainly most every nation you’d actually want to live in), it’s kind-of hard to see this as being some kind of product of the unique bigotry of whites.
Some people would like to run our immigration system to tune the US’ ethnic mix to something more to their liking. Among them, some want a whiter country, but many others want a less-white country. I think it’s not so hard to find quotes from mainstream powerful people noting the benefits of the US changing from a majority-white to a majority-nonwhite country. Now, personally, I don’t think it’s especially important what continent the majority of our ancestors came from, but if it’s bad for people to campaign to set up immigration laws to keep the country white, it’s hard to see why it’s not also bad for others to campaign to set up immigration laws to turn the country browner. Either both groups are bad or neither is.
There is a large difference between “black person wants to live in a black neighborhood” versus “black person wants to live in a homogeneously black society“. Racially homogenous society could be accomplished only by forced racial segregation, which is a bad thing.
Even neighborhood preferences are morally suspect. Certain people can’t openly express a desire for a certain kind of neighborhood.
What is the difference really? It’s only one of scope. In the latter case, our hypothetical african american has expanded his view of the world in which he lives beyond the neighbourhood he physically inhabits, and has begun to think about the institutions he is subject to. I applaud him and I certainly don’t doubt his morals, far from it. And if we want to take the example to its logical conclusion, a sovereign black nation carving a chunk out of the USA, then fine, I am still happy. Were you so upset when Britain lost its possessions in the Caribbean? Are you desperate to take the Bahamas as a part of Florida? If not, why so mad at the prospect of a black on the mainland with analogous ideas?
I don’t believe this, but I also don’t believe this is said in good faith. I am regularly subjected to things which I don’t want and which most people don’t want, and I am told it’s called democracy, and I am told to suck it up, and I am told that I am evil for disagreeing with democracy in any of its particulars. When I hear people on your side of this argument talk about how forced segregation is evil, what I am actually hearing is that you brand anyone evil even for daring to opine that re-organising one’s nation might be a good idea; let alone building enough momentum to change the constitution and get it done. Pity the 49% of people who vote against segregation! They are so wretched that they don’t even love democracy! All in all I detect a lot of post-hoc reasoning back to the axiom of “diversity is our strength”, but more generally the axiom “political engagement within prescribed parameters good, metapolitical thought, leaving the overton window, or even considering who is setting those parameters ENTIRELY FORBIDDEN”.
I do not claim that it would be ok to form some black closed neighborhood with no whites allowed, that would be indeed essentially the same thing as creating racially homogenous society. I think that it is perfectly fine when an individual is moving from one dwelling to the next to make decisions based on what is a current culture of a neighborhood, and “race” is sometimes proxy for culture. If someone prefers to live among Chinese people in predominantly Chinese quarter, I don’t see nothing wrong with that, but it is a very different matter to declare Chinese quarter off limits to whites or blacks.
Difference between people preferring to live in a certain neighborhood and people wanting racially homogenous society is that if racial homogeneity of society or even of neighborhood isn’t enforced by racialized legal restrictions or by some sort of extralegal violence, it will not stay racially pure forever. So, in order to enforce racial purity, you need restrictions on personal freedom.
Of course I do not claim that all restrictions on personal freedom are bad, but those based on racial justifications pretty much always are
https://ncase.me/polygons/
(taken from mitv150’s comment upthread).
That is a cute model, but it does not at all correspond to what is happening in the real world, where countries that want to achieve and maintain racial purity have to resort to pretty drastic measures.
It corresponds very well to what happens when there aren’t restrictions on mixing across groups. Personal preferences mean that there’s still some amount of voluntary segregation, but also that there’s some level of voluntary mixing, and the balance between those shifts over time based on the preferences of the people in the society.
Which countries want to maintain racial purity? And, I understand why this discussion veers off on tangents like this, but I would like to point out that the original point was about individuals wanting to live with people sharing their ethnicity (or at least their culture).
Also, I think it’s interesting that the polygon model was used as a way to argue that if people even had a slight preference for their own group, dramatic segregation would occur rapidly. And now, you’re arguing that dramatic segregation cant occur unless drastic measures are taken. So as arguments in favor of assigning moral blame to those who want to self-segregate, we have 2 contradictory positions. I realize they come from different people, but it’s interesting nonetheless. It supports my view that people start from the premise that segregation is bad and work backwards from there.
@albatross11
Perhaps I was too dismissive of polygon moving exercise… If you don´t interpret its result as several racially homogenous societies, but as partly voluntary mixed, partly voluntary segregated single society, then that is indeed what I think happens in a real life without forced segregation.
@jermo sapiens
Oh, c´mon, surely you could think of some examples, especially from the past.
If I wanted to steelman the “woke” argument here, I’d say that Social Justice advocates believe that racial minorities seek to live with their own kind for protection against bigotry, whereas people in the majority group seek to live with their own kind because they dislike minorities and want to deny them access to material and social resources. In their view, Black people only want to live with other Blacks because they want a “safe space” where they don’t have to worry about being harassed or discriminated against, not because they’re racist against Whites. This is compounded by the fact that White people typically have greater access to land, wealth, education and career opportunities, and so forth; thus, Whites who keep out non-Whites are harming them in a way that non-Whites keeping out Whites are not.
And in fairness, a lot of Social Justice advocates do apply the same logic to non-White majority groups when they’re talking about foreign countries. For instance, many of them are strongly critical of Israel’s cultural/religious homogenity and Japan’s racial/ethnic homogenity. It’s gotten to the point where Japan is frequently held up as an example of what the West should strive not to be, and it’s common to see arguments on the cultural left about how closed borders are the underlying cause of Japan’s economic and social crises.
As for my own personal take, I’m generally opposed to double standards, and I think racial homogenity is something that’s undesirable in general, whether it’s majority or minority groups seeking to isolate themselves. For example, the Hasidic Jewish communities here in NYC are extremely isolated and insular, and that makes me deeply uncomfortable with them. It doesn’t help that I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from people who were raised in those communities and taught from childhood that gentiles were untrustworthy, punished for celebrating Christian or secular holidays, forced into arranged marriages, ostracized for being queer or not conforming to gender standards, and so forth.
Thank you for this answer. I think it’s the best argument so far in favor of making a special case of the majority.
The interesting thing to me is that as a left-leaning person, I thought this was obvious/everyone knew it. Obviously I was wrong. That forces me to re-evaluate arguments from people I thought were simply taking a disingeuous position – i.e. intentionally ignoring this (to me) elephant in the room in order to make their points.
This is the value of discussing in good faith with your political opponents. Thank you.
FTR, though, although I do think LadyJane made a good argument for applying a double standard towards the majority, I dont think it settles the issue. But I’m glad the argument was made as it allows my arguments to address the actual opposing arguments, rather than some strawman.
On LadyJane’s actual point:
So SJ advocates believe an empirical claim about what is going on in the mind of minorities and majorities. I think it’s a fair assumption to believe that, but I also think it’s fair to assume that both minorities and majorities find things easier/simpler and more familiar in homogeneous settings. That is, there is no need to invoke “fear of bigotry” and “dislike of minorities” to explain each group’s behavior.
Obviously, the reality is probably a mix of both, but there is also probably one factor which is dominant over others. I would bet on the simplicity/familiarity factor being the dominant, and I would expect SJ advocates to consider “fear of bigotry” and “dislike of minorities” to being dominant.
Can we probe this some? I agree the West should be striving not to be Japan, but how much of that is down to closed borders? Like, isn’t an extremely low birth rate a problem regardless of your immigration policy?
My understanding is that Japan’s birth rate is not markedly lower than that of natives of other post-industrial countries, but there’s a virtual absence of high fertility replacement migration that obscures the effect of low native TFR.
Migration will affect population growth but not necessarily TFR unless the migrants have a different TFR, which they usually do.
Religious Americans and both religious and secular Israelis are the major exceptions, IIRC.
My point is, isn’t that only putting the problem off? Like, my impression is that after a few generations the immigrant population is going to be below replacement, too. So maybe you stopped your welfare state from collapsing this generation, but you did it by turning above replacement fertility people into below replacement fertility people… you’d better hope that works forever.
@Nick — It depends on the problem you’re trying to solve.
If you’re a post industrial nation trying to fund tax coffers pensions with no other concerns the smart thing might be work visas aimed at high income earning people that aren’t raising kids (who go to public school and therefore cost money)
Some have argued and i don’t have the data to confirm or refute on hand that migration can be a net fiscal drain even in the first generation because the incomes aren’t particularly high and the children need to go to school which can be quite pricey. The US case is muddled because the same household can have very different fiscal impacts at the state/federal/local level.
If you’re only interested in keeping population stable or growing in theory it’s sustainable as long as your own country is small relative to the rest of the world you could just disregard TFR and just focus on migration.
I agree it’s not sustainable if you want the whole world to adopt the kind of economic and social order that generates negative TFRs, but it’s a long-run consideration are few leaders except maybe the chinese are thinking that far ahead. I also doubt any OECD leader is going to complain that, say, Africa might inherit the world b/c they were the last ones to undergo the demographic transition and were therefore were used extensively to replace falling populations elsewhere.
But as *i* said elsewhere i don’t think negative TFR is a permanent phenomenon. Internal social/economic factors will eventually countervale, and using replacement migration to maintain density levels, prevent ‘labor shortages’, etc. will only act to prevent the transition.
If this were applied to white minorities like Afrikaaners by the left, I would find it more believable. But I find they protest places like Orania generally.
@EchoChaos: That’s less because they’re hypocrites and more because they’re ignorant of exactly what’s going on in South Africa. They assume that the racial dynamics in South Africa match those in North America or Western Europe, just with different population ratios. In my experience, the Social Justice advocates who actually have some knowledge about South African politics and culture have more nuanced views.
The Afrikaners are a special case, and it is very unlikely you’ll get sympathy for them, especially among the left. If you are the ethnic minority literally ran the system that made apartheid into an internationally known term, you kinda lose the moral high ground for later claiming that you only live amongst your own.
Why should I presume the an unreasonably charitable interpretation of their outlook when I’ve got pretty good historical evidence pointing me towards, “hmm, they’re probably just racist?”
This is sort of the exact “sins of the fathers” problem that I am concerned about.
Afrikaners are a minority with a government that has specifically used them as a target to rally racial resentment.
The fact that Afrikaner politicians a generation ago did something should have no bearing on that if you’re actually being consistent.
And it’s why a lot of whites think that social justice is anti-white versus anti-racist.
ETA: And note that actual South African racists don’t like Orania, because of its anti-racist insistence on not using black labor, which they view as exploitation.
Adding a second comment: I wouldn’t live on Orania (I’m not Afrikaner) or even an American Orania, because my black family members couldn’t live with me and I care more about them than I do about random white Americans.
But what I am opposed to is the idea that whites have been especially evil historically and therefore are the one people who aren’t allowed to have all-white or white majority towns.
This is true even for groups that have objectively done bad things in the past because that group is “all humans”.
For example, nobody is saying that the British oppressing the Nigerians was fine because the ancestors of those Nigerians sold people into horrific slavery in the Caribbean.
And then gave up power, a decision I’m sure many are starting to regret. But other white groups should still give up power, and you’ll have plenty of sympathy for them when they are minorities, right Aftagley?
No. Regrettably, there are people who do say this. It’s a thing.
I really think you should ease up on the snark here.
@DeWitt
That saddens but fails to surprise me. I should’ve said it’s not mainstream in Social Justice thought, because there is always a group with weird thoughts like that.
@EchoChaos
I was writing a response to this, but I realized that LadyJane said it way better than I could up above. I’m sympathetic to groups like this who want to live in insular communities as a protection against bigotry, less so for those who are doing so as a result of their bigotry.
My opinion then, comes down to one question: do I think the group in question is especially bigoted, or especially fearful of being bigoted against. I’m not South African, I don’t know the specifics here, but the history of that particular group of people (as well as some surface-level research) makes me think they’re bigoted, so they don’t have my support.
As opposed to continuing apartheid and having an increasingly violent resistance movement that likely ended in revolution and mass slaughter of the previous totalitarian government? I’m sure that they can now, in the relatively peaceful and prosperous SA look back on the SA of the 1970s and regret the changes but I’m damn sure none of them would want to live in the hypothetical 2020 SA in which apartheid was never rolled back.
Sympathy is such a weird word to use here. No, I wouldn’t have sympathy for them, but I tend not to be a very sympathetic just kind of in general. I can appreciate that their life is harder now than it was when they benefited from a system of repression and exploitation, but that doesn’t mean I have sympathy for them now.
Not saying this doesn’t happen, but I’ve honestly never heard it. Mind linking towards a source?
This isn’t a gotcha or anything like that, but basing your judgment, even partially, of whether some particular group of people is bigoted based on what their ancestors were like seems quite bigoted. When trying to judge a particular group of people, why not actually judge those specific individuals that make up that group of people? Sure, that takes a lot more work, possibly more work than it’s possible to accomplish, but in that case I would default to agnosticism instead of rounding people off to their ancestors.
Ancestors? I’m not judging them by their ancestors, I’m judging them by the South Africa that existed up until 1994. I have a sweater given to me by my dad that has been around longer than a non apartheid South Africa. If someone was on the younger side of working age when Apartheid ended, they likely wouldn’t have retired yet.
At worst, I’m judging these people based on their parent’s actions, but a surface-level review of the town makes me think it slants a elderly. Should they be judged by their distant ancestors? clearly not. Should they be judged by what they did 30 years ago when they’re now taking action that makes it look like they didn’t learn anything? probably.
@Aftagley
Leaving aside whether these particular Afrikaners are bad, is there any white minority that you believe should be allowed to create their own exclusive towns?
Poles? Germans? English? Scots-Irish?
The Chinese have been every bit as awful to minorities as whites or worse, but Chinatowns aren’t condemned by social justice, so it clearly isn’t related to historical treatment.
It’s not clear to me what the difference between “bigoted” and “prefers to associate with their own kind” is. But it’s hard to believe that the motive of preferring to associate with people of your race is evil when held by whites but laudable when held by anyone else. Personally, I’d say it’s not evil at all, though it’s kind-of narrow minded and limiting.
Wanting to limit your surroundings to people of your own race in a place with a long and bitter history of racial hatred and a lot of violent crime seems like something that could plausibly be done simply for the sake of safety. It’s very hard for me to see taking actions like this to avoid being murdered, raped, or robbed as evil, even if you and your ancestors did some really bad stuff in the past.
I mean, judging people based on their parents’ actions seems no less bigoted than judging them based on the actions of their distant ancestors or even just the actions of complete strangers.
And are you judging them by what they did 30 years ago? As in, those specific individuals that comprise the group that’s under discussion? There tends to be a decent amount of turnover in most societies, if only due to birth and death, in 30 years, and rounding that off to “what they did 30 years ago” without actually rigorously checking the individuals seems, again, bigoted.
EchoChaos:
I don’t know about South African law, but in the US, there’s no way you’re going to get the formal legal ability to do that, for any racial group. What you can and do get is voluntary segregation. Sometimes, that has a threat of violence or ostracism behind it–presumably, some town in Idaho that’s half white supremacists is not a great place for a black family to move into. The law should (but may not in practice) come down hard on anyone using violence to try to force that family out, but on the other hand, it’s not a shock if the family looks around and decides they’d rather not live there even without any threat of violence.
And the overwhelming majority of residential segregation in the US comes out of a mix of personal preferences and economics–where are the jobs, how much do houses cost here, etc. That’s why the really high-end neighborhoods tend to have a lot of Asians.
@albatross11
Orania is legal in South Africa, although unpopular with the current government.
But I’m talking the moral and social justice point, not particularly the legality, which I think you have right. As I’ve said, given that I have black family, this isn’t exactly of critical interest to me in actual life.
It is my experience that Social Justice tends to be white Blue Tribers who are looking for a handle to bash the outgroup, which is why they don’t admit to any group of whites that could justly do this while ignoring Asian atrocities and being accepting of their ethnic enclaves.
albatross11:
“It’s not clear to me what the difference between “bigoted” and “prefers to associate with their own kind” is.”
The former involves injury to the people you’d like to avoid, possibly physical injury, but at least trying to damage their group reputation.
The latter involves spending time with your own kind.
I don’t have any serious sources, blog posts, what have you, to link to. I’m sorry. There’s a brand of colonialism apologia that will make arguments of the kind that slavery wasn’t so bad because these slaves were bought and they were going to be enslaved anyway. It ignores entirely the sheer fact that an increase in demand will in turn cause people to drive up supply, but I find it depressing enough that people could fool themselves into thinking that justifies slavery and I don’t want to bother with it any further.
@EchoChaos says: “…white Blue Tribers who are looking for a handle to bash the outgroup…”
Somehow this statement reminded of Virginia governor Northam’s blackface and Klan robe old yearbook photo revelation, black Virginians were less likely to say he should resign than either white Democrats or Republicans, the Republicans presumably may have just wanted a Democrat to reason, but that white Democrats were less forgiving than black Democrats is interesting.
It may be that since white Democrats are younger on average than black Democrats, and the young are just less forgiving of these things explains this, but in-group social norm policing may be involved, I’m thinking of college students who chastise each other on what are correct words to use (i.e. “Latinx” instead of Latina or Latino) but are less likely to hassle construction workers building on campus, and won’t go across town to evangelize actual Latinos to de-genderize their language.
I’m thinking now of my joining Facebook this year where I occasionally posts links to the songs I loved in the ’80’s, and there’s one band I put on the radio back then, but I fear to post now because some lyrics could be thought of (without context) as “anti-black”, and it’s not my three black “Facebook fiends” I fear offending, one I saw already “liked” the band, one was also a volunteer at the radio station in the ’80’s and knows the context, and the other is so Metal that he wouldn’t care, instead it’s the half dozen non-black ladies who are now school teachers plus two leftist guys that I fear would be most offended (or feel they must be), and I can easily imagine the two conservative leaning “Facebook friends” of mine complaining about the “PC” friends, and a “flame war” would start (in the ’80’s 90% of all of them were “anarchist” punk rockers and this would go differently, also no internet).
Pre-Facebook (six months ago) I didn’t have to think of this stuff.
@DeWitt says: “…will make arguments of the kind that slavery wasn’t so bad because…”
The sea passage alone made the intercontinental slave trade worse, not even counting other New World brutalities, the accounts of the conditions on the ships are truly awful, there’s a reason the British went from slave traders to suppressing the trade in a relatively short period of time, and that the U.S. Constitution listed a year after which no more slaves were to be imported.
Nancy:
That seems like a reasonable definition, but I don’t think it’s the one that everyone else uses. Right now, if someone says “I prefer to live in a neighborhood and work in a job with people of my own race,” they’re likely to be called a bigot regardless of whether they have any animus toward other races or seek to injure them in any way. Indeed, I’d guess that at this point, most racism in the US is more of the “I’d rather avoid you” form than the “I want to kill/beat up/chase away all of you,” though I don’t really have any data about that.
I think there’s a really important distinction you brought up before, between “we like us” and “we hate you” separatists. The polygon game was a demonstration of the idea that you can get de facto segregation out of just “we like us” sentiments, with nobody hating anyone else.
I think the potential social problem here occurs when the “we like us” sentiments create a kind of ingroup that’s very hard to break into, *and* when you have to join that ingroup in order to be successful. So if most of the WASPS prefer their own kind and most of the Irish Catholics prefer their own kind, but it’s still possible for the Irish Catholics to become partners in law firms, then it’s probably not such a big problem. But if the “we like us” tendency means that only WASPs get offered jobs in the top law firms, while only Irishmen can get a job on the police force, then that creates some problems.
This is IMO the strong argument for why sometimes, voluntary segregation makes trouble in the world. It’s not a problem if wealthy old white men want to have a private club where only their kind can join…unless access to that club is the main way you get access to the best jobs and business deals and such. The thing is, that can be a problem even if not a single member of that club has any particular animus toward outsiders.
On the other hand, there’s a genuine dilemma here. Personal freedom includes the freedom of whom you want to spend your time with. Private clubs ought to be free to include or exclude whomever they choose, for any reason or none. There are substantial benefits to having places where you can let your hair down and be with people very much like yourself. It’s not obvious how to trade off the benefits of allowing that personal choice and freedom against the benefits of breaking down barriers to letting outsiders succeed.
And in practice, it seems like one way those barriers have been broken down in the past was that the US had a lot of different paths to success. Plenty of people who were excluded from those clubs a few generations back because they were the wrong kind (Jews, Irishmen, Italians, blacks, etc.) were eventually so successful that the clubs wanted them to join or didn’t dare tell them no. Plenty of utter nobodies made fortunes over the years, plenty of “not one of us” groups prospered, and then they became the people you wanted *inside* your club.
Another example of non-bigotry related segregation is what I have termed, “the Costco problem”. In our nieghborhood’s Costco, the traffic never flows properly, contra the Costco by my parent’s house. And this is because a high % of the immigrant community don’t queue or move through aisles in the same way as you normally see. This makes a Costco trip marginally more frustrating that it should be and you waste an extra 3-5 minutes compared to if it was all people descended from pre 1900 immigrants.
@jermo sapiens says:
Put in that anodyne way, that doesn’t sound bad, and hardly different than how people already chose neighborhoods based on affinity, but as a practical and historical matter efforts to make societies more homogeneous (Khmer Rouge, Nazis, et cetera) have created the worst Hellscape known to humanity, and what efforts there are made towards greater ‘diversity’ hardly near at all in being oppressive.
I may bother to respond to some of the follow up issues in this thread, but especially compared to 40 years ago where I live “race” and “culture” hardly correlate at all anymore, chances are that a “fellow white” I encounter will be foreign born and I share more culturally with the non-whites I encounter are pretty common, multiple tines have I brought my sons to local playgrounds and the only other folks there with American accents are non-white, besides I think a lot of so-called “racial cultural differences” in the U.S.A. are regional cultural differences in disguise – which if I get to it will likely be a very long post, suffice it to say some centuries old “Negro” ballads share far too many lyrics with British folksongs written down in the 18th century, and musical instruments with African antecedents are used in overwhelmingly white hamlets in Appalachia, the culture is far too shared across the color line, with links of language, religion, and (when you dig eally deep) even bloodlines, despite centuries of a legal racial caste system make me think further racial separatist projects are absurd.
Right. Which is why I asked that question and not the question of whether societies should be reshaped to become homogeneous. I’m thinking of the guy who decides to live in an area which is predominantly white and who opposes refugee settlement in his area, not genocidal maniacs.
Still, you can’t blame people for noticing all the skulls.
I’m in favor of noticing skulls wherever there are skulls to be noticed. That shouldnt preclude asking questions in fact quite the opposite.
The reason I ask these types of loaded questions with a high CW aspect to them is in fact because these questions need to be settled by discussion rather than by accumulating skulls. To paraphrase Sam Harris, the alt-right may be despicable, but their popularity stems from the fact that their claim contains a kernel of truth to them. Specifically, the conventional wisdom will have inconsistencies in it, and the people challenging conventional wisdom will exploit this inconsistency to push their agenda, which in the case of the alt-right will be very harmful.
The proper defense against this is to have good people acknowledge the inconsistencies and address them honestly and in good faith. Unfortunately this is not happening right now. When a troll puts up a “It’s OK to be white” poster, helpful responses could include ignoring them, or to reply with the message of “Obviously it’s OK to be white, why do you feel the need to express that.” The absolute worst response, the response that plays right into what the troll wants, is to go ballistic and to vow to hunt down whoever put that super hateful poster.
@jermo sapiens >
Since I’m on record as finding college graduates incredibly disruptive, and college students as incredibly annoying and wish so many wouldn’t move here (unfortunately I can’t suss out a way to do that that also isn’t disruptive dagnabbit!) I can’t throw many stones here, but as to ‘morally justified’, I suppose the Christian/Humanitarian/Tikkun Olam thing would be total charity of all to all (“Is the leper or the cripple worse off today?”), but most people aren’t Mother Teresa (nor are they Pol Pot!) so it’s scale of need vs. scale of sacrifice compared to most, plus relative kinship of those in need (Billionaires in cities that are swamped with homelessness sending more aid to fight malaria overseas than here at home kind of bugs me, even if the overseas need is greater, the Zuckerberg’s spent some of their fortune helping San Francisco General Hospital so I cut them more slack than others).
So let’s take a somewhat imaginary example: Iraqi translators for U.S. soldiers have been threatened with death and wish to flee to the U.S.A., in that case objecting to one (or even five) families moving within the square mile you live seems a jerk move, on the other hand, objecting to 3/4’s of the Levant moving to your small city in Michigan seems reasonable, but you get situations like the ship full of Jewish refugees trying to escape the slaughter house that Europe was about to become who went from port to port unable to disembark.
Anecdotall, a guy in my apprenticeship class objected to more immigrants coming here, bur he and his wife also adopted foreign born orphans, and a guy I worked with this last year said he voted for Trump ’cause of “too much immigration” and his wife is foreign born, so talk sorta says one thing but walk says another (though adoption and marriage kinda encourage assimilation if that’s the concern).
I feel far from qualified to pass moral judgements on them (or on much of this stuff).
I have a lot of faith in assimilation, the melting pot, and the resilience of “American culture”, but I recognize that scale matters, a million extra Mexicans in all of California would be relatively easy to absorb (but not if they all move to say the City of San Leandro at once! Yes I’m aware that I picked a city with a Spanish name, it’s still a most anglophone town now).
In contrast to a million extra Mexicans in California, 100 million extra Indians in California would be harder (scale and cultural differences matter).
What are the moral minimums and maximums?
Yeah, talk to your pastor, ’cause I just don’t know!
Among other things, we’ve established by experiment that Mexicans who come to the US assimilate pretty well. Their grandkids still don’t do as well in school as we’d like, but the cultures are quite compatible and third-generation Mexicans are basically generic Americans with Spanish-sounding last names.
@Plumber/albatross11
Yeah, Mexican immigration is by far the immigration I have the least problem with, other than the quantity and the illegality.
Although I would prefer no Spanish language education or services, in order to assimilate them faster.
@albatross11,
True enough, even of a lot of the second generation that I’ve encountered.
Being competition of the “low-skilled” that are already here has some resonance, as does a lot of the first generation coming to an area changing it’s character Richmond, California went from “Louisiana style fried fish” places to tacos fast), but fears that their kids won’t assimilate?
They do, and pretty quickly.
Also, sometimes not fully assimilating seems advantageous, many second generation east Asians seem on average more likely to get into the professional class better than the third and up generations.
@EchoChaos,
No disagreement, scale and legality matter, and judging by my experiences working construction in the earlier 2000’s the language barrier can be a real jobsite safety hazard.
What comment about a piece of media completely changed your desire to experience it?
Context: over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen just posted a teaser of his conversation with Ted Gioia, a jazz musician/historian.
I was initially interested – I like jazz and would like to learn more about it.
However, in the teaser, this snippet was shared:
As a 27-year-old, it is truly mindblowing that these guys would think that any 27-year-old would be seduced by the music of Frank Sinatra. In my generation, Frank Sinatra is uniformly known as “old people’s music” and has all the sex appeal of a nursing home bingo night; by “old people”, we don’t mean our parents, we mean our grandparents. I know, I know, Principle of Charity and all that — but I can’t take Gioia seriously, and will not listen to the podcast or buy his book as a result. His misreading of the sex appeal of Sinatra to young people makes me think that his other points about the music industry will amount to “old man yells at cloud”.
EDITED: to fix link and correct typo
Key question: are you a young straight woman? They will have the best opinions on this.
There’s a common phenomenon where parents are totally lame but grandparents are cool. As a 60-year-old straight man I don’t know if this applies here.
Completely unrelated side-note, but this reminds me of what I saw in my social circles when Dos Equis changed their Most Interesting Man in the World marketing campaign character a few years ago, from someone who was clearly in his 60s/70s (it seems the actor was 68 when the campaign launched in 2006) to someone who looked to be middle/late-middle age. All the women in my social circles (mostly in their mid-late 20s) seemed to agree that the new character was much less sexy and charismatic, primarily because he was obviously so much younger than the previous character.
As a straight man, I found this a little bit unexpected, but not terribly so.
It’s also such a weird cultural window into the minds of people who have no clue what dating is like in 2019 for 27 year-olds. I also happen to be that age/dating demographic, and I literally can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d be relying on music after someone has already come back to my place. The phrase is “netflix and chill”, not “Sinatra and slam” for a reason.
Do boomers really think the kids still sit around listening to music together? Is that what dating used to be like?
Gen X-er here, but yes, music used to be a big deal. A playlist was like a bookshelf – it showed something about the selector’s taste, and if offered a low investment way to complement that person’s taste. It wasn’t uncommon to play music and then talk with the music as background.
Does your generation actually put on videos prior to messing around, and if so, which are the most seductive? (Is it Property Brothers?).
My understanding is that the new generation doesn’t even watch Netflix as much as they share Youtube shorts and memes, so maybe that will be next.
Wait, I thought “Netflix and chill” was just a euphemism for “come to my place so we can have sex”? Are people going to their date’s place to actually watch Netflix and chill?
There may be actual Netflix involved, yes. Many people appear to enjoy a background noise during the experience.
People also don’t necessarily just start going at it the second they walk in the door (I mean, they do sometimes, I suppose). Come over, start some movie/show for background noise/initial distraction, then start making moves.
Consider also that sometimes people do things like drink/smoke/etc. prior to…engaging, and having something on TV can help get through that initial phase before the good stuff starts. Again, people do sometimes just come over and immediately go at it, but a typical case is going to involve at least a minimal amount of normal or flirty-normal interaction before the sexy stuff starts.
I mean, it is obviously a euphemism, but you don’t just show up and commence with the sex (or at least, in my experience and that of my friend circle, that doesn’t happen). Watching a show or whatever together gives you an opportunity to cuddle for a little bit without too much pressure on either side.
What? No. You turn that shit off.
My ex-gf used to insist we put on things like podcasts and TV shows during sexytimes because she was so concerned with my roommates (as in, housemates) overhearing us. I kept telling her that there was no secret, that they knew exactly what was going on every time she came over, but it was still really important to her.
I certainly don’t need background noise, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to turn it off either. If things start happening halfway through a movie, I’m not going to stop to turn the movie off, I’m just not going to be paying attention to the movie.
I can see music enhancing the mood, but podcasts strikes me a really funny here.
1. No one has discrete music collections anymore, we all just use spotify. On the rare cases where someone’s a traditionalist, they might have an itunes library, but browsing that kind of interface isn’t really a group activity.
2. Sure, playlists are still a thing and I guess meticulously crafting one would be the kind of thing I’d appreciate if someone pointed it out to me, but music recommendation algorithms being what they are, if I hear a playlist I just assume it’s being picked by spotify’s invisible hand.
3. Yeah. It’s a coy way of getting onto a couch/bed/whatever with someone w/out having to be too blunt with your intentions (mind you – by this point everyone knows what’s going on). You start by devoting around 75% of your attention to the video and 25% of it to your partner and start steadily realigning those percentages until fun times ensue.
4.Honest to god, It has once been Property Brothers for me, but mostly it’s less about seduction material than it is just content that requires a low mental investment; think shows like the office or Friends or golden girls. Anything where you can follow along while still being periodically distracted.
5. Yeah, Youtube’s ok, and I’ve had a quite pleasant evening that began with watching some talks given by Robert Sapolsky, but ads are kind of a mood killer. You want to ensure you stick to non-monetized content; and hopefully stuff that will last long enough to not require constant interaction.
FWIW, when I think about listening to music with other people, it is either something like “new album from [our favorite band] was just released, lets hang out and listen to it” or hanging out and taking turns playing music the think/hope the other person likes.
Doesn’t a person’s Spotify list tell you something about them, possibly more than a selected playlist?* I imagine it would be like swiping right on someone’s Android to see what Google thinks they’re interested in.
* I wish I could get the Luke Cage soundtrack out of my Google Play music list, FWIW. It was insult to injury – first I got tricked into thinking the soundtrack would have the musical numbers, but it was mostly atmospherics, and now I can’t get rid of it.
Man, I’d be happy if I could keep that damned U2 album off my iPhone. I’ve deleted it like five times now, supposedly from all my devices, but it keeps coming back. I’d even be happy if it didn’t auto-play when I plug it into my car; I don’t use Apple Music for anything.
Okay, this beats podcasts.
It’s not as if “let’s go to my/your place and watch a video” was unknown in the VCR era. (“The Seven Samurai” will always hold a special place in my heart, even if I didn’t get around to watching the end till many years later.)
(Though as a GenXer, I also remember the long period that Sinatra was uncool before he became cool again.)
I’m going to dissent here (as someone also in that general age group). There are definitely people who still get together and just sit around listening to music. Not Frank Sinatra, granted, but dating is still very much like that for plenty of people.
Interesting – I have the opposite case; my friends and I will often put some Sinatra or similar-era music on as background for conversation or a game or whatever.
Yeah, I should clarify, I’m not alleging people don’t listen to music anymore only that (at least in my experience) 27 year olds aren’t thinking “I’m having a date come over, I need to meticulously select which music I’ll be playing.”
@Aftagley
I’m early Gen-X instead of a Boomer, but my wife who’s only a couple of years older than me is just over thr line into boomer-ness (though you still totally look like you could be a Zoomer or young Millennial though honey!), as I recall it in the ’80’s and early ’90’s listening to mixed tapes and vinyl records, or “jamming” with guitars were things done on dates, as were drinking, inhaling, motorcycle rides, restaurant meals, picnics, going to art galleries, theaters, concerts, readings, and renting Betamax or VHS tapes.
…Those were different times.
And the poets studied rules of verse,
And all the ladies rolled their eyes
Sittin’ by the fire…
Radio just played a little classical music for you kids,
The march of the wooden soldiers
And you can hear Jack say…
…Sweet Jane
I’ve no real idea what dating is like for youngsters now, except that it’s my understanding that you don’t ask each other out after meeting face-to-face nearly as much, and you “date” a lot less overall.
Sounds sad.
Do boomers really think the kids still sit around listening to music together?
I don’t know the jazz guy, but Tyler Cowen is a Gen-Xer.
Is that what dating used to be like?
I’m a decade or so older than you, but music was definitely a major concern of mine when dating in college. (I then got married shortly after graduating, and every time I read a thread about dating I remember what a great idea that was.)
@achenx,
Thanks for that link!
I’m about ten to fifteen years older than you, and your link led to “see also”: “Cusper” and “Generation Jones
While only a couple years seperate us, my wife is usually classed as a latter Boomer, and I’m usually classed as a early Gen-Xer, but we don’t feel as much cultural affinity for earlier Boomers or late X’ers and younger than we do those just over the Boomer/X divide, but except for “an interest in video games” (I played some in the ’80’s, and only when my son has begged my to afterwards, my wife never had the habit), this description is pretty spot on!:
Until the 2008 crash, I almost felt more affinity for my grandparents generation than the other generations not in my age cohort, as we were too young to rise with the economic plenty of the earlier Boomers, and too old to come of age with the “Tech boom”, and it seemed we’d always be financially behind both those older and those younger, but then Lehman Brothers went under, and the cohort that graduated during that recession got pushed even further behind my “Cusper” generational cohort.
@Plumber
The “cusper” idea made a lot of sense to me when I became aware of it. Apparently “Generation Jones” is a relatively old concept, though it didn’t seem to make it into popular understanding so much, at least not where I was paying attention. The “Xennial”/”Oregon Trail” thing seems to have picked up steam in the past 5 years or so, probably as more and more media is devoted to the “Millennial” concept and those of us around my age realize how different people even just a couple years younger are.
I never identified with “Generation X” — those were the people older than me. I was initially fine with the “Generation Y” idea in the 90s, but after I became an adult, and everyone else younger than me then became adults (and “Generation Y” became “Millennials”) the differences became more and more stark.
I’m going to object to the “Oregon Trail Generation” designation , as Oregon Trail was made publicly available in 1974, early enough that most Xers, not merely those born at “the tail end of the 70s and the start of the 80s” are of an age to be familiar with it. Pushing things like this later in time seems to be a fairly common error; I remember a Washington Post column singing the praises of the Millennials, the first generation to grow up with video games… this after the Post had spent a number of column-inches over the past years denigrating the Xers for growing up playing video games.
Nah; a good derriere will almost never be a turn off.
You say it doesn’t work; I’m only a little older than you and it can work. Maybe half of the songs I played at my wedding were 50s or older, and that’s not because I was catering to older relatives. Although I always aimed to dance to old music on a date, not sit around listening.
I didn’t date many women, but despite me spending no effort looking for it, most of the women I dated enjoyed dancing. It’s not like my wife even took dancing lessons before we danced together.
At least one of the female coworkers I’ve had also really liked male singers like Michael Buble who’s done some covers of “old” music.
I’m a musician, and had already requested the book “Music: A Subversive History” from the library when I read that interview on-line today. I agree both Cowen and Gioia are showing their age in that exchange, but, as others have pointed out, putting on music for a date was a thing once upon a time. The “generational” thing is also something I’ve seen – my experience is that your parents tastes are not hip, but your grandparents can be OK. Don’t let this prevent you from reading the book – from what I read in the rest of that interview he seems to know a lot and has interesting things to say.
If anyone believes Epstein killed himself, please make your case below. Alternatively, regardless of what you believe, if you just want to make a case for it, please do so.
I dont believe he killed himself but this is just based on Alex-Jonesy conspiracy theories than hard evidence.
I hope this more starts discussion than dissuades it: a similar thread I posted about a month ago. Interesting, but there’s a lot of room for more detailed opinions.
Thanks I’ll check that out.
The chief medical examiner of the jurisdiction in which he died, says it was suicide. The only positive evidence that says otherwise is that the hyoid bone was broken in a way that is more common in homicide than suicide, but not not even close to uniquely associated with homicide. And suicide in the face of a lengthy prison sentence for anything that the general population will round off to “raping children”, is not exactly rare – I was just recently made aware of a case involving the stepson of a prominent webcomic artist, and nobody is claiming that was really a conspiratorial murder.
The arguments against suicide are extremely weak. “A hypothetical conspiracy would obviously have benefited from X”, has never been good evidence that a conspiracy existed and did X. Also, the alleged obviousness is not obvious. Conspiratorially murdering a person to stop them from talking, replaces the risk of the victim talking with the combined risk of the victim’s lawyer talking, the victim’s co-conspirators talking, and any of the various people approached to carry out or cover up the murder talking. Finally, being in jail does not really make suicide all that difficult; jailers don’t much mind people they think of as kiddie-rapists killing themselves, and “suicide watch” is a thing for making sure the jailers don’t get blamed rather than for making the suicides not happen.
All good points.
But did he have the means to carry it out? If he hanged himself, what did he use? I heard his bedsheets were made of paper, and there was no support structure that could have been used.
Also, the camera malfunction just sounds like a really hacky plot twist from a B-movie.
He must have had the means; he is dead, after all.
wait, what? The camera was malfunctioning?
okay, this changes what data I want to look at, if not my current assessment.
How long were those cameras malfunctioning? Why were they malfunctioning? How were they malfunctioning? Was this a “huh, these cameras stop working at the same time for no reason, and fifteen minutes later, Epstein is dead! Weird.”
How frequent are camera malfunctions of any kind? How long do they go undetected?
Where were these camera’s located? Were they on the opposite side of the prison? Could the blind spot be exploited for an opportunity?
How many cells in the prison had malfunctioning camera’s near them? Is it possible that the vulnerability of this cell was known, and that is why he was put in this cell?
Yes
I wish I had answers to all your other questions.
On the camera malfunction: Hanlon’s Razor.
Considering stupidity is always a good heuristic, but Hanlon’s Razor isn’t infinitely sharp.
Consider the absurd case where these two cameras were the only cameras between the cell and the door, and they fail at the same time literally 15 minutes before Epstein dies, and that the chance of any camera failing within a 15 minute period is 1 in 100,000.
Now, “infinitely sharp” is a stupid bar. What if two is a pretty reasonable number of cameras to be malfunctioning at any given point, and they were described as “near the cell” because this prison really isn’t that big?
You are probably overestimating the quality of camera equipment in prisons (product quality, installation quality, proper upkeep, and proper/competent usage) by orders of magnitude.
Almost certainly. The case was labeled “absurd” after all. But one in 100,000 for fifteen minutes means that a given camera should fail once every couple of months. Note that this isn’t five nines of uptime, its the chance of it going from working to failing within a fifteen minute period. The reasonable case allows for them to have failed at some point in the past, and simply haven’t been fixed yet.
What’s the source on the cameras having failed at the same time fifteen minutes earlier, as opposed to having failed separately many years earlier and never being repaired because nobody really cared?
Also, from what I remember, it wasn’t that they both failed, it’s that for unspecified reasons the footage wasn’t usable. There are plenty of non-conspiracy related reasons why some footage would end up not being useful for a certain investigation.
There is no source at all. It almost certainly failed in the past and wasn’t repaired yet. I was constructing an absurd hypothetical where Hanlon’s Razor wouldn’t convince me.
I would like to know which cameras failed, why, and when, because I’m curious and I think my beliefs will change based on the answers.
I listened to a video (sorry not handy) which claimed that the ligature wasn’t checked for DNA.
Right, but is there any reason it should have been?
If someone else made or handled the ligature, it would make murder more plausible.
Right, but presumably if they had any indication someone else had made in ligature, they would have checked for DNA, right?
Because given the allegations against Epstein, it is important that you do everything you can to make sure that nothing untoward happened. Failure to do so is what’s driving the conspiracy theories. The only American case I can think of off hand where the government has a bigger stake in investigating and demonstrating to the public what went wrong is the death in custody of Lee Harvey Oswald.
If I were a betting man (and there was a way to get absolute proof), my money would be on ‘Epstein took advantage of government incompetence to commit suicide’, and ‘someone in the prison system deliberately made it easier for Epstein to commit suicide’ is far more likely to me than ‘Epstein was murdered in a way as to look like a suicide’. However, something definitely went wrong, and the public has a major stake in knowing what went wrong and making sure it never happens again. Further, if the prison is not culpable, they have a major reason to want to rule out some sort of foul play. A lizardman quotient of the population will always believe this was murder even with an open investigation, however there are a lot of people that would be persuaded by an open, transparent and bipartisan look at identifying what happened.
If the government wanted to demonstrate that this wasn’t a coverup, they would have gotten an outside investigator to publicly acknowledge the facts immediately, and a week later we’d have a congressional committee getting a list of details like:
“Yes, the cameras outside the cell were not functional. Here’s the maintenance report that was submitted when they went down. Here’s a summary of why the cameras were not fixed: half the cameras in the system are down regularly, and it takes weeks to get a replacement, and this isn’t discussed because it’s policy to let prisoners believe all cameras are working. Here’s who signed off on that policy, months before Epstein was incarcerated. Here’s a note from the duty officer noting that the cameras outside the cell Epstein was going in were down, and a note from his superior telling him there’s no other available cell. Here’s a plan for the system to improve the camera system so this doesn’t happen again.” Yes, in this example the superior officer that said “I know the cameras are down, put him in there anyways” is going to be in some sort of trouble, deserved or otherwise, but it’s better than half the country convinced that this was a government sanctioned hit job.
I don’t totally disagree with you in theory, but that’s not how the government works. There isn’t one guy who can flip a switch from “normal operating behavior” to “maximum accountability mode.”
Like, take the medical investigator. They’ve probably seen dozens to hundreds of suicides by strangulation. Who’s the guy in the room who says “Yes, these marks are obvious and you clearly know what happened, but run a bunch of probably useless tests anyway because otherwise conspiracy theory weirdos are going to foam at the mouth?”
I understand this, but there’s obviously some point at which maximum accountability mode gets flipped, and you only need that switch flipped if none of the switches leading up to it flipped. Epstein’s connections are enough that I could see the Maximum Accountability Congressional Inquiry switch flipped, but at the very least one of the other switches should have flipped.
It could be the fault is with whichever level of government had control of Epstein isn’t exercising responsibility. Part of the problem with this is that despite the public outcry, no level of government responded by publicly flipping the ‘what the hell did you do?’ switch. The prison lost a very prominent prisoner, so it should at least do an internal investigation. The DA (or whoever was prosecuting) lost a major suspect, one that would almost certainly be a resume-booster for prosecuting (in normal circumstances), so they should be angry at the prison and want an investigation. This makes New York’s prisons look bad, so either the Mayor or the Governor or both should want an investigation. His death was certainly newsworthy, so the media should be salivating at blaming someone (rightly or wrongly), so they should be trying to get someone to leak the details. And if all those decided ‘well, even if I’m not guilty of the pedo stuff, I was still too close to him, so he’s better off dead and forgotten’, the public obviously doesn’t think that’s the case.
I mean, we’ve seen the opposite, where a switch got flipped with Jusse Smollett, where a dubious assault case seemingly got more police attention than most local murders because the victim was a minor celebrity. And then we watched the switch get flipped back (or, at least, almost) when the investigation started to go a completely different direction. When and how switches get flipped is a matter of public interest.
Do you have any numbers? I’m pretty suspicious of this mix of an inside-view rational actor model and an outside-view empirical claim.
Beyond the basic number of the incarcerated suicide rate, all I have heard is the widely publicized claim that jails have 10x the suicide rate of prisons. This is usually explained in a very irrational manner, shock of first incarceration, which did not apply to Epstein. Is this actually true: is the high rate of jail suicide entirely explained by people in jail for the first time? Are prison suicides predicted by sentence length? Are jail suicides predicted by potential sentence length? These seem like the very first numbers that would be produced by someone studying this subject. I’m less optimistic about learning whether sex crime charges predict suicide or homicide.
(I also worry that the jail/prison comparison may be misleading. It’s probably per inmate-year, while we probably want rates per inmate.)
Overall suicide rate is 46 per 100,000 per year in US jails, compared to 15 per 100,000 in prisons and 13 per 100,000 for the general public. Of these, roughly 1/3 are in the first week of incarceration – and for the minority placed on “suicide watch”, that probably translates to the first week after their lawyer finally gets them out of restraints and prolonged sleep deprivation.
Federal jails have a lower rate of suicide than state, probably due to the preponderance of white-collar offenses, but beyond that there doesn’t seem to be good quantitative data on suicide rate vs. offense charged. But Epstein was clearly at a very enhanced suicide risk in that period.
By comparison, the homicide rate for jail inmates is 3 per 100,000 per year. Also, jail homicides are disproportionately by stabbing, cutting, or bunt force trauma.
If someone dies by strangulation in their first (unrestrained) week in jail, the prior should be about 98% that they committed suicide even without knowing what they were in for and what their future was likely to hold.
Thanks, that looks like a good paper. It says that lifers are overrepresented among prison suicides, which answers one question.
Yes, 1/3 is pretty high. But, again, this wasn’t Epstein’s first week in jail. Maybe the first week resets, but I doubt it. The paper is ambivalent.
Why do you mention the homicide rate? This wasn’t an apparent homicide, so I can’t see any possible reason that the rate of apparent homicide is relevant.
The primary competing theory to “it was suicide” was “it was murder disguised as suicide”, so the base rates of suicide and murder seem relevant.
Epstein had an extremely plausible motive for suicide.
It was very clear from the political/media context that Epstein was never getting out of prison. The previous sweetheart deal he’d gotten had ended the career of the guy who gave it to him in a very visible way, even though that guy was a cabinet secretary. Whatever friends he was able to call on to put him back in his life of luxury were no longer taking his calls.
He was a man in his sixties who had just gone from being an extremely wealthy and powerful person living in luxury with all the girls he wanted and with many very important people willing to take his calls, to locked in a cage surrounded by people who wanted to do horrible things to him and told him so. The rest of his life was going to be prison cells, either in general population with a high risk of being beaten or raped or killed, or in protective custody that would amount to being locked in a tiny cage most of the day and being in near-solitary confinement. He was surrounded by prison guards who surely were eager to let him know what they thought of him and how he could expect to be treated, and who knows what kind of treatment he’d had at their hands already.
That doesn’t guarantee that it was a suicide, but at least it makes suicide entirely plausible. He was in about as despair-inducing situation as you can imagine, with absolutely no prospects for things to get better.
It’s a cliche that people announce that if they die by apparent suicide, it was really murder. How often do people who said that people were trying to kill them proceed to die by apparent suicide? It must be super common among schizophrenics, but other than cases dismissed as schizophrenic, are there any other high profile examples?
I have a thorough understanding of the concept which was recently described as ‘enlightenment’ here and am willing to answer questions posed. Please be patient as I may not be especially attentive. I am not associated with any formal organisation and have no particular motivations for doing this other than a pathological sense of honesty.
Please be advised that, if you also think you have a thorough understanding of enlightenment, I will probably tell you you’re doing it wrong.
Are you at all related to a certain Luna co-founder?
To my knowledge, not any more than any other living thing is.
I don’t even know who you mean, honestly.
It’s an inside joke on these threads. The follow up question is “do you also happen to be an MMA fighter?”
Fundamentally, what is enlightenment?
In this context, let it suffice to say: a particular psychological state coupling more or less extreme depersonalisation with a sensation of fundamental awareness of nonexistence. Variously central examples are known.
However, this definition has been selected for brevity and may not cause the correct associations to form in your personal brain. More specific questions may help.
Strictly speaking, the most accurate response I could make would be ‘there is no enlightenment’, but this is liable to be misperceived. It is not the case that ‘enlightenment’ is indistinguishable from its absence, nor that everyone (indeed, anyone) is already enlightened and unaware, etc.
Alternatively: Enlightenment is the state of recognising the identicality of ‘is’ and ‘is-not’.
This post might seem impolite, but reductio ad absurdum is one of the ways I deal with misunderstanding things. I make the absurd statement, someone who actually understands shows me where I went wrong, and I thank them for helping me.
That being said:
If ‘is’ and ‘is not’ are identical
My brother is 900 ft tall
My brother is not 900 ft tall
are the same proposition, which seems wrong.
Is this what you are trying to say instead?
“Whether you model any part of the universe as a distinct entity or not, the universe stays the same. This includes the part of the universe that is ‘you’.”
No.
With enlightenment, your brother is 900ft tall, your brother is not 900ft tall, you have no brother, you do not exist, there is no such thing as ‘tall’, and all of these things are true and obvious at the same time without contradiction. This state is not pathological, even though it may seem to be from the outside, because you also understand it. While not existing.
You will probably think this IS pathological, because you don’t understand it, but that’s okay, because you don’t exist.
Loosely speaking, enlightenment is a schizotypal state and it is, in fact, true that schizotypy and autism are incompatible opposites; I like to characterise this through the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator classifications of ‘S’ and ‘N’, though this is easily misperceived by people who, being Ses, mistake the symbol for the content. Point is, your characterisation is cognitively the opposite of enlightenment, so it’s not surprising that the two don’t make sense together.
Please understand this is not intended to be pejorative. I am at pains to be terse and some politeness may be lost in the process.
No offense is taken; thank you for trying to help me.
I have one final question, which is that you say “because you also understand it. While not existing.”
Do you believe that “I think, therefore I am” is false? I suppose I should have realized that people who think the self didn’t exist might make that claim, it just hadn’t occurred to me before.
Yes, “I think, therefore I am” is false. First of all, I remain unconvinced that ‘I think’. There seems to be an I which perceives thought, but does thought even require a subject? I mean, just because ‘thought’, does that imply ‘something thinking’? This is not obvious to me. If thought, perception, can happen on its own, without the need for anything else, then every experience “I” have can be explained equally well.
Well, to me, the most accurate statement is “the labels, brother, foot, etc.” are merely labels that only somewhat precisely represent the things that they are trying to represent. I recognize that the statement is somewhat vacuous and greatly overgeneralizes the external reality, which is what is REALLY real, but that simultaneously any label can map more or less well to the reality that is out there. i.e. ‘my brother is 900 feet tall’ is farther from describing existence than ‘my brother is not 900 feet tall'”
Is this compatible or incompatible with what you consider enlightenment?
I have had instances of this, but always managed to re-collpase my psychological state back into it’s baseline state. From by (admittedly brief) experience, it would be very difficult to navigate life in that state. Do you find this to be the case, or did you just end up adapting?
It’s hard to say. This is my baseline state. I will not claim to have an especially easy time navigating life, but I am also able to compartmentalise.
I suddenly feel like expanding on this a little.
I continue to act as if there is an objective reality, not because I believe there is one, but because there’s no way to act as if there isn’t. “Acting as if” doesn’t make sense in an acausal context, so there’s no point trying. Thus, I act as if there is an objective reality so that I have something to do with my time.
Thank you. I found your first answer less than compelling, but your second-one was somewhat illuminating.
I remain open for further questioning if you would like expansion. I have been variously obliged to simplify or leave avenues underspecified due to time constraints.
I will grant you that I managed to find the time to effuse about acid/base chemistry at length, but chemistry is much less complex and easier to explain.
Does this look like “My senses aren’t caused by any external reality. Therefore, there probably isn’t an external reality, or any reality at all”
Or “The nature of my mental content is incompatible with reality. No objective reality could contain mental content like this, therefore, there is no objective reality.”
EDIT: third option:
Or is it more like “an objective reality is like a square circle, utterly nonsensical”. Come to think of it, has your philosophy of math changed before and after enlightenment? Does 2 + 2 still equal 4?
In either case, how do you know that Descarte’s demon isn’t batting for both teams? That is, shouldn’t it be possible for an extremely powerful being in an objective reality to exhaustively generate brains and spoof its senses until it created one that believed there could not be an objective reality?
Or does meditation lead to an insight or shift so powerful and certain that you can’t doubt it? An anti-divine light, or a cogito ergo nihilus? (the demon could probably still create a brain that couldn’t doubt a false statement, but knowing that doesn’t help the brain in question.)
Which can be done rather efficiently with ketamine and with LSD, and probably with less risk of being sexually assaulted by your dealer.
What does “enlightenment” buy me that a k-hole doesnt?
It can’t. Drug-induced psychosis has similarities to, but is ultimately distinct from, enlightenment-induced psychosis. This is, unfortunately, just a qualia fact about which I can only say ‘if you had experienced both, you would recognise the difference.’ I realise this is unsatisfying and apologise.
It sounds you are saying that becoming enlightened makes one an extreme reductionist, very aware of the fact that there are no humans or chairs as such, just various arrangements of atoms.
No, no, there are no atoms either.
This is a common misconception.
Of course you are aware that there are just various arrangements of atoms, but you are also aware that the atoms are also maya.
There is nothing. None of it.
I roughly get the Hindu take on this: once you figure out that nothing outside your mind exists, you must conclude that you’re the only existing entity, namely Brahman.
But the Buddhist take doesn’t make any sense to me. A mind that doesn’t even exist can’t possibly know that atoms don’t exist. Thus every brain that claims that nothing exists – including my own brain if it would claim such a thing – is inherently untrustworthy.
The brain doesn’t know that atoms don’t exist. It doesn’t claim anything. There isn’t even a brain, or a mind, or knowledge, or trust, or ‘can’ or ‘is’.
I’m sorry, I’m being unnecessarily cruel here by repeating this. It is, of course, a fundamental difference in outlook. I cannot explain it to you in terms you would accept, which is of course why the entire study of Zen (Chan, Tsien, etc.) came about to attempt to convey it without explaining it, with minimal success.
I am not at this immediate moment particularly interested in promoting enlightenment (though I am in general), but simply answering questions out of a perverse sense of totally pointless honesty, so I am trying to explain things (to the limits of my communication facility) instead of attempting to backdoor your brain. However, because I don’t want to turn people off the idea completely, please do consider the, hypothetical, possibility of a universe in which you perceive (which is to say, the perception exists and includes a perception of a ‘you’ doing the perceiving) that a brain that doesn’t exist perceives that atoms exist and also that they don’t exist, at the same time, and this is okay, because it’s correct. Of course it’s difficult to conceptualise, that’s practically the point, but try to imagine that it ISN’T inherently untrustworthy, just because.
Sure, atoms are not a fully meaningful label either, nor is the wavefunction, or maybe even the unified field. But there is none of it is objectively false. While we do not know what the onltological basis of reality ultimately is, it is self-evidently clear that there exist distinctions and correlations in some general sense, and that those add up to what we ultimately experience. Distinctions and correlations are quite distinct from ‘nothing’.
@delta sigma pi
I’m fine with a nonexistent brain believing all sorts of contradictory things, just as I’m fine with a nonexistent unicorn believing the same things.
But if I did a lot of vipassana meditation and would derive some sort of evidence from it that nothing exists (myself included), then there are two possibilities: (1) indeed nothing exists and (2) I exist and my evidence about nothing existing is wrong. What I’m saying is that (2) will always remain a possibility. You can’t say “but I know that I’m not wrong on this!” because you already said that there’s no you and no knowing.
So how do you deal with the off case that you got it all wrong and you actually do exist?
Why bother trying to become enlightened?
It depends on what you want. I don’t experience the sensation of suffering; rather, I perceive complete control of my own affect and can feel what our host might describe as ‘transcendental bliss’ at will. This is the primary thing that I estimate others would consider a benefit. If you are wracked with anxiety, guilt, sorrow, you may find value in experiencing these sensations as illusive.
However, I am not convinced that enlightenment can be approached for its value, and not for its own sake.
But can we get the same bliss from something like samatha jhana without any of this nonexistence stuff?
Could you name an instance where you did not suffer but an unenlightened being would have?
if you also think you have a thorough understanding of enlightenment, I will probably tell you you’re doing it wrong.
In case somebody else claims a thorough understanding of enlightenment and you both tell each other “you’re doing it wrong”, how can innocent onlookers (such as me) determine who is right?
Also history:
You cannot. This is unfortunate but unavoidable. You will just have to achieve your own particular enlightenment, at which point you understand they were both wrong.
Does it happen that somebody claims to achieve enlightenment but later claims that he was wrong before and only now he has achieved enlightenment?
Here’s the same problem from another angle: what if I’m already enlightened, I just don’t know it? You might say that that’s not how it works and I’m totally not enlightened yet. But why would I listen to that if you’re going to say that anyway whether I achieved my own particular enlightenment or not?
You wouldn’t. If you are enlightened, you don’t care, because you don’t exist, and neither do I. What difference could it possibly make?
It may be helpful if I further say, there are no enlightened people. There are no unenlightened people. It is not possible to achieve enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a state in which an entity can ‘be’ or ‘not be’. It is not possible to know that you are enlightened. If you are enlightened (and you may be), you will know it. There is no such thing as choice. None of this is real. You make all your own choices freely.
Enlightenment is knowing and accepting all of these things, simultaneously, as equipotent facts.
It is also not that, but there is a limit to the number of levels I like to go at once with people who aren’t there yet, you know?
Indeed, I find that since enlightenment can’t be measured at all neither in self nor in others, I don’t care about it, just as I don’t care about cromulence or vorpalness.
I recall there is a similar problem with sanyasa initiation ceremony. The problem is that a sanyasi is supposed to not care about bullshit such as ceremonies, so if someone comes up and says “hey I’m ready to be a sanyasi, please initiate me” it means he’s not ready. I don’t know why do they even have such a ceremony.
To your additional explanation I have to say that it sounds like being stoned with an extreme I-dont-give-a-fuck attitude. No offense intended by that (although you’d probably say that neither of us exist anyway).
This is, of course, fine.
I think that the idea of a thorough understanding of enlightenment is… somewhat incoherent. Like saying you have a thorough understanding of “red”.
Yes, I have that too.
It is incoherent. It has to be incoherent to work.
I think you’re doing it wrong.
🙂
I have also become detachedly curious to find out, now that some people have read some of what I have to say, how crazy those people think I am on a scale of one to canasta sunflowers.
Eh. 4? 3?
My glib model of DSP: Reality is a lie, nothing is real. Independently, I have delusions of a reality that looks and behaves exactly like the reality that isn’t there.
Honestly, it sounds like berkeleyan idealism, only without that whole god business.
You seem to be able to form beliefs about the structure of the lie-reality that function much the same as my beliefs about regular reality. That is, my brother is and is not 900ft tall, but we both call him to ask what size pants he wears before buying him jeans.
You are probably about as sane as anyone else.
Approximately “Enlightenment is opening one’s mind so wide that one’s brain falls out”. Progressed past solipsism but not to the level of hippie stoner
I’ll be honest, I was leaning pretty far towards “canasta sunflowers” until I realized you were the same person who explained acid-base blood chemistry better than I could despite literally just studying it for an upcoming exam. Your statements that e.g.
are blatantly self-contradictory; I’m inclined to parse them as either: “hey you know words aren’t intrinsically tied to reality, right?” or “I’m gonna sound deep by contradicting myself!”. I’ll grant a small possibility of “thinking about these contradictions will break you out of your contradictory thoughts”, but I’m skeptical that there’s truly something to break out into.
What separates enlightenment from seriously practiced Stoicism?
I consider stoicism to be a philosophical component of the mindset I have been describing. In fact I have previously described my philosophy as a ‘stoic-Zen hybrid’.
However, it’s important for me to emphasise that ‘enlightenment’ as defined here also entails certain specific qualia. It’s one thing to disregard your suffering as irrelevant and another (I assume, having never really been in the position of not doing so) to viscerally feel that there is none. Similarly, stoicism does not necessarily imply the perception of nonexistence or of the perfectly comfortable conjunction of contradictories. ‘Enlightenment’ as I’m describing it is a philosophical attitude and a perception or series of perceptions. You haven’t felt it unless you can truthfully attest that even your own cognition is false. It is not enough merely to think some things in a particular order.
Interesting. Internally negating the cogito is, indeed, tricky to conceptualize.
Can you tell whether other people are enlightened?
Would you publically judge famous teachers?
A thorough conversation should rule out the majority of people who are not actively faking it, simply by whether they display instinctive understanding of certain things which are particularly bizarre to most people. However, I would never be willing to make a claim on a specific degree of accuracy.
As a class, sure, “probably all frauds”. Individually, I would prefer not to.
Related to this, how confident are you that there is only one accurate understanding of enlightenment? If that level is high or some equivalent thereof, from what do you draw your confidence?
I would say I’m reasonably confident that the kind of ‘enlightenment’ which was recently featured here in the context of PNSE and which I’ve been defining and discussing so far is one thing with one accurate understanding, and that that accurate understanding heavily depends on understanding schizotypy and dissociation, based on personal experience and observation. I cannot present evidence to convince another person of this reliably, which is why this conversation is rated for entertainment purposes only. However, I hope to at least encourage people to think about the things I’ve said and hopefully draw conclusions of their own.
I am willing to stipulate that there may be other definitions of ‘enlightenment’ which mean other things. I was not consulted by any committee to decide the terminology. 😛
(I was also, mostly, joking in the quoted segment.)
Thanks.
Could your expound further on your having no motivation for this other than honesty?
Sure. I like to answer questions and explain things. I want people to know things, generally. It’s sort of like a moral position. I don’t expect to gain from this in any way. I don’t even expect to convince anyone of anything, since this is all very subjective. I just want to answer questions and give people things to think about if they want to do so.
“I want people to know things, generally.”
Why?
Because, if existence is an illusion, but I’m stuck perceiving it anyway, I have to find something to do with my time, and this is aesthetically appealing to me.
“Because, if existence is an illusion, but I’m stuck perceiving it anyway, I have to find something to do with my time, and this is aesthetically appealing to me.”
Correct answer. You should have just said this in the first place
@delta sigma pi
Doesn’t your inability to stop perceiving existence make it real in a way? What is keeping you from being able to stop perceiving existence? Is that thing real?
Could the existence of aesthetic preferences mean that you aren’t really enlightened, but in a state of delusion?
Also, why would you have to do anything with your time if everything is an illusion? Why not spend all your time in ‘transcendental bliss’? Or at least, the time you have until you die of thirst (assuming that thirst and hunger are also an illusion in your eyes, but not in ours, so we see you die).
I think the word “real” may be causing some confusion here.
Take a brick. If you happen to have one handy, look at it. Or any object in your sight.
What does it mean for the brick to be real? That you experience it?
You don’t experience the brick.
You don’t experience seeing the brick.
You experience an illusion that you call a brick. This isn’t controversial, I don’t think, you know this already.
Where is the brick real? What does it mean for something to be real? What does “real” mean?
You don’t experience an objective reality, and a subjective reality isn’t real.
(What are you? Are you real?)
All… sort of. This is a misleading description, but it is the closest I can get to trying to describe something in a way I think other people might sort of understand. Just keep in mind that it is wrong.
The thing that the word “brick” refers to is plenty real, in the sense that it relates to other things with specific names in fairly predictable ways.
For example, if I slam the brick in your face, you will probably exhibit behavior that is consistent with “suffering.” Others will notice this and will probably put me in jail and charge me with causing “suffering.”
My perception may be partially subjective, but it is sufficiently related to something objective to allow me to act with some level of agency. This objective part is “real” and something I simply have to deal with it (fortunately, I don’t have a particular desire to smash bricks in your face or the face of other people).
You argue that your model predicts reality, not that it is reality. And if you think about it, it doesn’t predict reality either, it predicts what your model will describe reality as.
Yes and this “reality” is what I care about, which is why I call it reality.
It’s also reasonably objective (although the perception of this reality is often subjective).
This is a state I’ve been trying to understand for a long time, to determine if it is worthwhile to practice towards.
First of all, I’m very curious about the qualia of enlightenment (I’m already quite familiar with the noetic and ontological changes the state brings about). Would you say that your experience is overall an increase of the valence of positive qualia (when compared to typical dualistic experience), a reduction in the valence of negative qualia, an overall flattening of both valences, or some combination of the above?
I understand that in states typically referred to as enlightenment, many emotions can be seen from a different perspective (from the “outside,” perhaps?) and thus lose their qualitative power or are dissipated completely. But in every case with which I’m familiar, there is always some state of qualia left behind. What’s it like and is it worthwhile?
My concern is that if I seek to achieve this state, I’ll miss out on a lot of other positive and/or interesting qualia experiences (romantic love and sex, for example, or the feeling of closeness from friendship, or the joy of building things, or the feeling of awe, or wabi-sabi type emotions that combine sadness with beauty). If these things are diminished or disposed of, is it worthwhile just for the sake of realizing nonexistence and getting rid of a little anxiety?
Second, what “location” would you say you’re at in the PNSE context, and how did you get there?
If you are able to avoid suffering, would you undergo surgery without anesthetic?
Consider a 30 year old person who is working in the IT industry. They then become enlightened. Does that make their everyday job harder? Does it make them less likely to become a very successful tech industry leader?
Consider a 30 year old person who is married and has two infant children. They then become enlightened. Will it be more difficult to them to raise children? Do they become a worse parent? Does this make their relationship with their spouse worse? Will the spouse wish that they hadn’t become enlightened?
In August the USMC sent out a new directive, listing the enlistment bonuses they will offer for the coming year.
As far as I can tell, neither the job categories eligible for bonuses nor the bonus sums offered have changed since last year.
I guess no one wants to make the comms work in the Corps.
People who really want to make comms work generally don’t join the Marine Corps. They pick one of the other services, where they’re more likely to spend their time in an air-conditioned operations center instead of rolling around in the mud getting shot at.
Nowadays you’re lucky even to get shot at!
Those bonus numbers are also relatively low — the Army and Navy are both offering well into five digits for similar jobs.
Yeah, no kidding. $25K extra for four years of service. And they’re even offering it for infantry, 11X.
You know, I do believe the youth of American have heard something about this place called Afghanistan.
That may be the first enlistment, actually. I’m not quite sure what that table is. But yes, the Marines have historically been pretty stingy with the bonuses.
Yes, both tables I pointed to are for initial enlistments. There are other tables of bonuses for people who are re-enlisting. Those bonuses tend to be much higher.
This makes the MC more attractive, in my opinion. Marines are more likely to be intrinsically motivated and care about their jobs.
Is there a biochemist in the house? I’m a respiratory therapy student who doesn’t understand the mechanism for respiratory acidosis; this is not strictly necessary for me to become an RT, but the book’s explanation is annoyingly incomplete and I don’t like not knowing why it happens. It’s no good asking the prof either, long story. I have a very basic (har) understanding of chemistry half-remembered from high school.
So, CO2 in the blood meets H20, resulting in H2CO3, carbonic acid. Seems straightforward, because carbonic acid wants to give up an H+ ion, and that’s the definition of an acid, yes? Except that, once it’s gotten rid of that H+, you’re left with HCO3-, aka bicarb, aka that stuff your kidneys dump into the blood to counter acidosis. So it seems like CO2 should produce a problem that fixes itself. My understanding here is not helped by the book’s vagueness; it also says that dissolved CO2 functions as an acid by itself (it doesn’t have an H to give up) and seems to treat bicarb and the loose H as interchangeable with the carbonic acid itself, because of the way it dissociates in solution. My best guess is that bicarb is a weaker base than carbonic acid is an acid (I don’t really get what makes something a “strong” versus “weak” acid). What am I missing?
Okay, basically, acids are substances that, in water, tend to increase the concentration of solvated protons (H+). Strong versus weak acids are defined more or less arbitrarily by the degree to which they do so, and isn’t really relevant here.
So, if you put CO2 in water, it can combine with H2O to produce carbonic acid and dissociate into H+ and bicarb, or it can claim OH- from the water to form bicarb leaving H+ behind, which are, formally, exactly the same thing. So CO2 is an acid because it increases the amount of H+ in water, not because it has any to release, but because it takes up the part that ISN’T H+, leaving that behind.
So, if you have a solution with a lot of solvated protons and solvated bicarbonate ions, that’s ‘acid’. If you have a solution with a lot of undissociated H2CO3, and an excess of OH- ions from water that has lost protons, that’s ‘alkali’ (aqueous base). The bicarbonate floating around after CO2 dissociates doesn’t ‘fix the problem’ because it is in equilibrium with the H+, and its equilibrium is slanted toward dissociation. Adding MORE bicarbonate ions, on the other hand, moves the equilibrium toward combining them, because, loosely speaking, there are more anions around to soak up the H+ than there is to soak up, so at any given time more of them will be H2CO3 than H+ and HCO3-. Similarly, this surfeit of protons is made up from the protons that are always running loose in water (which dissociates into H+ and OH- at a certain concentration naturally ), so there will be more OH- around.
HCO3- is also called the “conjugate base” of carbonic acid, because it is the base that is produced when the acid loses a proton. Acids always produce bases when losing a proton and vice versa. (HCO3- is also amphoteric and has its own conjugate base, carbonate, CO3(2-), when it acts as an acid.
The confusing part here is probably that, when solvated, the chemical species which are formally present in solution are basically the opposite of how they are described; in ‘acid’, a potentially acidic chemical is present in base form, and vice versa.
Okay, so (rephrasing in layman’s terms to make sure I understand correctly) the problem here is the presence of the loose proton/H+. The bicarb may be there in equal amounts, but at any given moment it will not be bonded with the H+ in carbonic acid form, so the H+ will be free to wreak whatever havoc it accomplishes in the body when its concentration gets too high. I’m not super-concerned with the mechanism of that havoc right now. Increasing the bicarb will increase the probability that those H+ ions latch onto one to form carbonic acid, and you get compensated acidosis, neutral pH, not a problem. Is this correct?
Thanks for responding so quickly and thoroughly!
Essentially yes.
You are freely welcome. Chemistry is the most fun a person can have without taking off his or her clothes, but it’s better if you do.
That’s how you get chemical burns…
Also how you prevent them, if you need to access the safety shower.
Can’t say that was terribly fun, leastwise not for me.
Despite the claims of many reputable sources, the kidney cannot dump an ion into your blood, because this would result in buildup of static charge. It must move some positive ion along with the bicarb, probably Na⁺, that is, it’s really moving NaHCO₃.
Yes, also technically true, but since these are solvated at physiological pH — and trust me, you should be glad they are, because you probably don’t want your blood full of precipitated baking soda — this is equivalent to moving bicarbonate ions and also, separately, moving sodium ions.
The sodium ions can be formally regarded as forming NaOH with the hydroxide ions left over from the self-dissociating water, if you care about that sort of thing.
There are also pumps which can move one anion out and another anion in to equalise charge, incidentally, which is not particularly relevant at this juncture.
The Deffeyes diagram is helpful for understanding carbonate chemistry. It graphs pH on axes of alkalinity vs total dissolved carbonate. Adding an acid or base affects alkalinity but not dissolved carbonate so it causes a vertical movement on the graph; adding CO2 increases dissolved carbonate but doesn’t affect alkalinity so it causes a horizontal movement; sodium bicarbonate (or other chemical species where carbonate or bicarbonate are charge-balanced with cations) will yield a diagonal movement. The change in pH depends on how the pH curves are spaced and sloped in that region of the graph.
I don’t doubt that global warming is a real phenomenon, I have relatively little doubt that it’s mostly (>50%) due to humans, but how dangerous is it really?
David Friedman’s arguments sound pretty convincing to me, but I admit the possibility that this might be due to my ignorance of the subject, that I may have not heard yet the best contra-arguments.
You can read David Friedman’s position and arguments here:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-is-wrong-with-global-warming.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=global+warming+site%3Adaviddfriedman.blogspot.com%2F&oq=global+warming+site%3Adaviddfriedman.blogspot.com
If I understood correctly, David Friedman thinks that the global warming is real, I don’t remember exactly what he thinks about its cause, but he claims that not only it will be not catastrophic for humanity, but it is uncertain that it will be a net negative, because:
1. It will also have some positive effects:
– increased agriculture productivity due to more CO2 and more land for agriculture in the North (Canada, Siberia)
– less deaths due to cold (he says more people die due to cold than due to heat)
2. The negative effects won’t actually be that bad: won’t be that much change, won’t mean American big cities under water, and a century would be enough time to adapt to those changes:
– if the Dutch managed centuries ago to live safely under sea level, by making dikes, Bangladesh and other more exposed countries and regions can do the same
So, people who think global warming will be catastrophic, what are the best contra-arguments to all this?
(Sorry for my lacunar English)
I am unconvinced about global warming because of the execrable quality of available data, but, presuming that it does happen as described: It won’t really be bad for America or even Europe, but it will mean mass death and economic collapse in the third world. ‘Bangladesh and other more exposed countries and regions can do the same’ is probably mostly false and, in any case, would take a lot of money and time which, respectively, invite opportunity costs and mass death in the interim. Many people think this is a bad thing.
However, it is also my opinion that mass death on more or less the same scale is currently unavoidable regardless.
“mean mass death and economic collapse in the third world”
Why?
“‘Bangladesh and other more exposed countries and regions can do the same’”
Outside some really backwards areas in Africa, farming is scientific everywhere, they can switch crops in response to gradually shifting weather conditions, and by gradual I mean they will take decades. As to protecting certain areas below sea level, they only need to be as wealthy in 2100 as the Netherlands was in 1950.
I assume similar claims were made about overpopulation. Sure, we in the first world can farm more intensely, but can the third world? Be real.
Because asking them to do anything different will cause marginal deaths, and the population projections for pretty much the entire developing world define the size range of those margins.
Is there data on the number of deaths among those who failed to adapt to the Green Revolution?
“Because asking them to do anything different will cause marginal deaths,”
Maybe, but that would include anything necessary to avert global warming. Although per capita carbon emissions are well below developed country standards, oil increasing in price by 10% will still be quite the pinch.
Right, I did say, ‘unavoidable regardless’. Won’t hear a complaint from me there, totally on the same page.
I think that warming will happen to the tune of something like 1-4 C by 2100 or whatever and think the data is probably good enough to determine whatever estimate they are giving although that’s predicated on no technological breakthroughs in energy or geoengineering.
I agree with delta sigma pi that if it is bad, it pretty much has to be in the third world. I’d make an even stronger statement and say the economic effect on the Americas and Europe won’t even be noticeable.
I think the third world probably won’t be that badly affected overall, but while most regions probably won’t be very affected either way, a few may be hurt very badly. But the overall hurt of excessive decarbonization in most economies would be even worse, so I’d say it’s best to just ride it out.
There may be some places where mitigation aid would be a better bang for the buck than other forms of aid, but there’s a ton of uncertainty here.
I think the most at risk are not the low lying coastal areas that people talk about—projected sea level rise is pretty tiny from a geographical point of view. It’s the places, such as some parts of India, where temperatures are already pushing against human limits.
I’ve been warned that global warming will be a disaster in 5 years, every year of my life since the 80s. There’s alot of money and power to be gained by warning about disaster.
Were these warnings coming from people you intellectually respect? If yes, is there something unusual about this topic that is driving their irrationality? If no, then is there something unusual about this topic that is driving your acknowledgement of what ought to be dismissed?
Teachers, environmentalists, leftwing politicians, so no.
No, I dont think so. Just typical jumping on a “let’s save the world” bandwagon.
The cure is 1000x worse than the disease. Warming of a few degrees (assuming it’s going to happen) would be disruptive, in a good way for some, in a bad way for others. Taxing combustion out of existence will be catastrophic, specially for the poor. When (if) we figure out nuclear fusion and really good battery technology, we can get rid of fossil fuels.
Curious then, for you to be repeating their words.
This is a very bad explanation for any audience that isn’t already in agreement with you. It’s missing most of the terms needed for a naive expected value calculation that takes everything offered at face value!
I dont think so. I’m repeating their words to discredit them.
Perhaps. I dont have the resources to show this, although I believe Bjorn Lomborg has done a pretty good job. I dont have the resources to double-check everything Lomborg has done, but he’s advancing an argument that the elite doesnt like, so that gives him some credibility that others lack.
Also, it just seems like common sense. You can choose to wake up tomorrow morning in one of two worlds. In world 1, the earth is 2 degrees warmer than today. In world 2, the price of fossil fuels is 10x what it is today. Which world would you like to live in?
A dangerous tactic, to be sure – not only is it the primary vector for rhetorical toxoplasma, but one risks a host of pitfalls ranging from the dry Bayesian multiple update to the juicy outgroup-booing.
Luckily, we have techniques like direct attribution and ideological Turing tests that it can be used with to keep the level of discourse high.
Cheap rhetoric, dubious summary of the evidence, and an unobjectionably-milquetoast recommendation carefully devoid of numbers. But he includes reference links, several of which aren’t paywalled. I give it ★★★✩✩.
This heuristic fails catastrophically in groups above Dunbar’s number.
The obvious question – from where are you picking these two as the possibilities? I have no idea what it looks like for fossil fuels to increase in price by an order of magnitude, over the long term, in isolation (or as a primary cause). Likewise, based on my reading of the current projections a 2⁰F increase is the minimum rather than something we can plausibly opt out of. Apples to gravity isn’t quite a matter for common sense, imo.
In terms of how much one should trust the source of such warnings, it’s worth looking at the previous round, the overpopulation hysteria of the late sixties and seventies. As best I recall it, you had a similar level of “all the experts say” rhetoric. And in that case we have another fifty years of data to demonstrate that the conventional view was wildly wrong.
In that vein…
Earth Needs Fewer People to Beat the Climate Crisis, Scientists Say
People have been pushing population control as a means of fighting climate change for a while. I’ve encountered an alarming (IMO) number of people who have actually said “I plan not to have children” or “I feel guilty about having children” because of expected climate change. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it here at SSC.
It’s a shame people don’t feel so guilty about the burden caused by governments’ massive unfunded entitlement liabilities.
Also related to population control:
Review: One Child Nation
“And the Mormons shall inherit the Earth….”
@sentientbeings >
I remember in the ’90’s watching a documentary called something like “China beyond thr clouds”, which followed the lives of different folks in a Chinese rural village, it didn’t depict anything as horrible as some of the stuff in your link – but I’d be surprised if the Chinese state would allow the filmmakers to show those things!
Still it wasn’t exactly flattering, the main family followed was of the villages school teacher who had illegal children, and difficulties of that situation were mentioned, but my main memory of the film was the part where a lady Communist party official from outside the village was speaking to a old local woman on the “importantance of birth control”, since neither women could speak the same dialect a local man translated, and I remember the befuddled look of the old woman (who was clearly pass child bearing age) as she was being lectured by the really fat CCP agent about preventing births that would be miraculous if they happened, and I thought: “Well she’s filling her quota, bureaucracy is the same the world over!”
The odd thing about not having kids because of climate change is that you could offset all the carbon emissions of a child for a couple hundred bucks a year (and this will probably decrease in the coming decades for adults).
People pay tens of thousands for fertility treatments or adoption, but are put off by potential carbon emissions from having a kid? I don’t think many people actually know that carbon offsetting is so cheap. Why doesn’t Greta Thurnburg shame regular people into buying carbon credits?
I am skeptical that there are more than a handful of people actually refraining from having kids because of climate change.
Probably more than a few who don’t want kids for some other inadequately examined reason and have settled on climate change as an adequately pious justification, though.
I’ve met quite a few people whose stated reason for not having more/any children, was the environment. I am skeptical of this, though. The same people would complain about the difficulties of parenthood, etc.
Because having children is bad for the environment, or because they don’t want their children to suffer under the effects of climate change (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen both, but I’m not sure which people are referring to here)?
@ana53294
Basic cognitive dissonance minimizing behavior is to fortify a conflicted decision by focusing on all the downsides and ignoring the upsides.
It doesn’t mean that their stated main reason isn’t the true main reason. In fact, a person who makes a decision primarily for ideological reasons (or to fit into their social group), but would act differently in the absence of that ideology, is probably much more likely to need anti-cognitive dissonance coping techniques.
I have never seen anyone claim that climate change will lead to disaster in the next 5 years. If that is a common behavior in the States, it would explain to me why people doubt it.
Enjoy.
Did you see AOC claim the world would end in 12?
There are two different claims that are easily confused if you don’t pay attention:
1: If we don’t do anything very large about global warming, catastrophe will occur in X years.
2: If we don’t do anything very large about global warming in the next X years, catastrophe will eventually occur.
The former, with X of five or even twenty, is uncommon. The latter, with X usually ten to twenty, is common.
One can’t prove that the latter is false, since eventually may not have arrived yet. But one can be suspicious when, after X years have passed, the same people are making a similar statement with a new deadline.
Yes indeed. And this view should be informed by the simple fact that power and money will flow to those who can identify a serious threat, and therefore there is always a very important bias towards over-hyping a problem. Scientists are not all immune to this bias despite being scientists.
How contradictory opinions and findings are treated is also telling. Sean Carroll recently had Michael Mann on his podcast, and Carroll made the point that in science, glory awaits those who can disprove your theory, and therefore there is no reason to fear this bias. This is somewhat true in non-politicized fields. But not true in climatology today. If you dont toe the party line you get labeled a shill for big oil and you get ostracized.
I’m not an expert, but I understand that there are concerns about climate change that are not strictly tied to warming and/or rising water levels. For example, there will be weird weather patterns in the interim, and it’s hard to say what the finished picture will look like because the inputs keep changing. Europe is warmer than it should be given its latitude because of a current running up the east coast of America, and that current could be shut down by melting glaciers, paradoxically making Europe colder. And more CO2 dissolving in the ocean will drive down its pH (due to a process I happen to have asked about in the post below this one), which will mess up fisheries. I’m told we’re going to have a lot more jellyfish in the future, since they tolerate changes in pH much more readily than other fish.
So, there are two things you haven’t mentioned. There are likely others. I have no firm opinion on GW/CC since I don’t really understand it that well.
Probably in large part anthropogenic, although climate is a sufficiently complicated system to make that only probably. There is a lot of uncertainty about climate sensitivity to CO2, and if the true value is at the low end of estimates, something else may be adding a substantial amount to the human causation.
The old journal article on the subject estimated almost twenty times as many deaths from cold than from heat. I’m posting this from a laptop in an airplane in flight (!), but when I get back to my desktop I can provide a link. I haven’t seen any estimate of how sensitive either death rate is to temperature, but it’s relevant that warming tends to be greater in cold times and places than in warm, due to the interaction with water vapor.
Quotation marks!
I tried to edit my post when I noticed I had failed to mark the first quotation. Unfortunately the connection to the airplane server—Jet Blue now has free wifi—went down, and by the time I was able to get back on it was too late to edit.
Here is an account of the Lancet article on death rates from cold vs from heat.
I’ve spent a lot of time engaged with David Friedman’s thoughts about climate change, and I think the important relevant quip you need is, “reversed stupidity is not intelligence.” David Friedman is absolutely right about the low-quality of thinking–stupidity!–generally present in many expressions of mainstream and ‘consensus’ views. I don’t think you can do much better for a persuasive proof that there are lots of low-quality perspectives, many toting themselves as the ‘consensus’ or ‘only’ perspective, arguing that climate change is doom-level-bad than by spending time with David Friedman’s blog posts on that subject. Some figures on the alarmist side remain, I think, completely borne out as honest and careful… I’m thinking in particular of James Hansen, who I remember thinking David Friedman would be inclined to agree is a careful thinker. If you form an opinion without reading anything Hansen has written, then in my opinion you are short-changing yourself.
Perhaps you are of the mind that even the most careful of specialists cannot be trusted to accurately report the estimations of their specialty, because the all-too-human instinct to view oneself–and one’s profession–as important will skew every specialist to thinking the problem their specialty perceives as having outsize importance. So naturally all climate scientists will overstate the scale of the problems climate science perceives, and underestimate our adaptability.
Even if you think so, there has been highly motivated (the good kind of motivation–the kind that wants to get the *true* answer, not the popular or virtuous-looking or this-will-make-my-life-meaningful or this-will-make-my-tribe-look-smart-and-my-profession-high-status answer)… I’m talking, of course, about hedge funds.
There are limits to what you’ll learn if you look for how people with serious money are looking to try and make more of it by knowing more about climate change than other people. Bonus if it’s their own money they are investing. There are short-comings to this perspective, e.g. it is not particularly easy to short coastal real estate, so a lot of land ends up in the hands of the most optimistic rather than the person with the clearest eyes about large downside risks/trends. If you have WSJ access, this link may be helpful to you: https://www.wsj.com/articles/funds-say-climate-change-is-now-part-of-their-investing-equation-11560218940. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund is not, to my mind, a bunch of hippies.
You can also read the table-of-contents/intro/first chapter of “Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming” on Amazon’s search-inside feature. Or let me recommend that you do some of your own searching around Google for investment firms and what they are spending money assuming is likely to happen… https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hedge-funds-millions-europe-killer-heat-waves-climate-change/ is another good link.
Alternately, you can look at the expense that some cities are planning to undertake to adapt to the impacts they know to expect. E.g. it’s easy to find details on Boston’s planned-and-abandoned seawall.
These things won’t tell you that much about how to value the marginal effort to reduce emissions to mitigate overall climate change globally. That’s a hard problem. I think an analysis will be incomplete if it doesn’t think a bit about 10% chances of very bad things. If 90% of the time, in a world where scientists were as alarmed by something as they are by climate change now, it would turn out to be as much a technology-will-solve-that non-issue as the population bomb turned out to be… is 90% a good enough risk with climate change? Some additional search terms: “ocean acidification” “clathrate gun” “albedo feedback.” There have been times where scientists or others who had done the work to know if something was bad, said “it’s bad!!” and were ignored, with terrible consequences. E.g. if I know the story right, in the Irish Potato famine, lots of people, including British ones, on the ground in Ireland were saying “it’s bad!!” but the English in England weren’t possessed of the political will to collectively look at the scale of the problem.
Another thing you can do, that is about as good as deciding to try and know the right answer about climate change, is to decide to *not* know, and to award your time to being respectful and facilitating challenging in-depth conversation between experts by keeping your non-expert opinion out of the way. That’s been my approach lately. Ask again in a couple weeks, if you’re still interested, and I’ll chime in with more thoughts.
Yes.
Nordhaus, if I correctly understand him, gets something like half his estimate of the costs of warming out of very bad things with probabilities much less than 10%.
But if one does that, one should also allow for low probability high cost cases in the other direction. To take the most obvious one, we are currently in an interglacial that has been running for longer than average. Its end would leave every port in the world high and dry and could easily put half a mile of ice over the present locations of London and Chicago. I don’t think it is likely that AGW is what is holding back the end of the interglacial, but it isn’t impossible.
As best I can tell, Nordhaus does not do that, because he isn’t looking for evidence in the opposite of the currently orthodox direction.
Do I need to hedge against downside risk?
If your answer to that questions is, “No, there is also a chance of upside gain”, you aren’t doing it correctly.
I don’t think you are following my argument.
Unlikely catastrophe A: If we permit global warming, something terrible will happen that would not happen if we prevented it.
Unlikely catastrophe B: If we prevent global warming, something terrible will happen that would not otherwise happen.
Does your criticism apply to B, which is what I was suggesting?
The solution to falling global temperatures is already apparent and readily available. In the event that we start to experience that, we already know the hedge.
Are you imagining “we” as a person? If temperatures start to fall, it will take a fair while before people who had been warning of the dangers of AGW decide they were wrong and reverse their position. Consider, as an analogous case, how the fears of population catastrophe managed to continue for decades after the predictions they were based on had been falsified–Ehrlich still hasn’t conceded he was wrong, despite the failure of the predicted mass famines to occur in the 197o’s.
Once scientific opinions start shifting, it will take a still longer time for relevant behavior to change, because lots of people will have taken actions committing themselves to the solution of what was believed to be the problem.
> But if one does that, one should also allow for low probability high cost cases in the other direction. To take the most obvious one, we are currently in an interglacial that has been running for longer than average.
There is a 2016 paper that includes the argument that we skipped the next glaciation period as a result of human activity [deforestation and land-use] *prior* to industrialization. That is the difference between a CO2 ppm of 240 (projected based on non-AGW forcing) and 280 (actual) I think you’ll find that glaciation has been factored into most widely used climate models. I wouldn’t discount Nordhaus because he doesn’t look at something (glaciation) that is nowhere near a risk at the moment.
https://www.nature.com/articles/529162a
Does “nowhere near a risk” mean probability below .00001 or probability below one percent? I haven’t gone over Nordhaus’ list of low probability/high cost effects of AGW, but I’m pretty sure he includes things there is less than a one percent chance of happening.
This would be wise whether or not global warming was real, so long as investors expected these industries to be subsidized and their competitors to be taxed.
I suspect that a lot of these failures come out of uncertainty over the relationship between variables. This results in phrases which start with “if this trend continues” and lead to some catastrophic result, frequently due to linear extrapolation. It’s very difficult to determine if a trend with a few noisy data points is linear, sinusoidal, logarithmic, exponential or multiple sigmoid curves, etc.
So the conditional of “if this trend continues” followed by extrapolation may be true, the overall presentation, especially in the media, results in hyperbole.
Somewhat tangential – I think that looking only at the effects in the US (or Europe, or both) will lead to bad predictions, because of the globalized economy.
Yes, the US can probably afford to handle direct sea level rise effects, and direct heat effects, though they might not bother in places like Puerto Rico, regardless of the local impact.
But my (American) employer depends on people in poor countries to produce the actual goods they ship. This isn’t going to work too well if those poor countries can’t afford to protect their population, or if the country collapses into anarchy because of climate-change related conflicts. My employer’s costs could go up a lot, either because they take on this responsibility themselves, or because they move their manufacturing somewhere a lot more expensive.
And my cheap-in-the-US goods mostly come from low income countries. When the prices of those goods go up, my standard of living will presumably go down.
FWIW, I’m also not so sure life in the US won’t be directly affected (negatively) by climate change. But I am not a meteorologist, and most of the info available is insanely partisan. So I hesitate to make any specific predictions.
On the other hand, things would look up for American working class if they don’t have to compete with overseas labour. Look at the bright side.
Not an expert, but in my opinion the word “catastrophic” sometimes causes confusion.
I think an ice-free Arctic ocean would be a catastrophe, I think glacier-free Alps would be a catastrophe, I think the mass extinction that is already underway is a catastrophe, not to mention the smaller catastrophes of more severe storms and droughts in many parts of the world.
I do not believe global heating will wipe out human civilisation, but there are a lot of catastrophes short of that.
And the positive feedback loops are a terrifying unknown. Melting ice lowers albedo and raises heat absorption from the sun, melting permafrost releases methane, higher temperatures promote forest fires, changes to rainfall (in either direction) can cause problems for vegetation. The truth is we don’t really know how serious these feedback loops are, but my understanding is that they’re considered serious enough that we should be very, very cautious of them.
And the other scary thing is how delayed all the effects are. Long-term climate forecasts are useful for this stuff, but I think the general public (and politicians and journalists) look at the *present* rapid heating, and they look at the *present* emissions and compare the two. But when you actually look at the long-term forecasts (or just climate science more generally) you see that there’s a big delay. The rapid heating going on right now is a consequence of the emissions of the past. The emissions of the present will lead to even worse heating. Even if we halted our emissions right now the world would keep getting hotter.
This one leaps out to me because I don’t understand it at all. An ice-free route between Asian and European markets would be amazing for humanity and lower carbon emissions by ships.
What makes you think it is catastrophic?
Re: increased agricultural productivity from more CO2:
Agricultural output is a result of a range of inputs. While one input has been improving (CO2 availability) several others are diminishing (depending on regional context).
Heat and water stress are the obvious concerns. There are biological limits to how much heat and how little water crops can survive in, let alone thrive. Technology can tweak these on the edges but there are diminishing returns as we reach the outer limits. One could switch to indoor farming then but those operations are incredibly expensive, error-prone and at the moment they fail pretty regularly (AFAIK indoor cannabis is the only successful at-scale agri industry, for a range of political/legal reasons).
Water stress is a contemporary fear in much of the American West, Australia, and India (as a sample of agricultural systems with a global footprint that I’m more familiar with). Each of these regions share a similar pattern of relying on large scale extraction of ground water, from huge reservoirs that are slowly but surely emptying out. When folks champion the green-revolution or scientific agriculture, this is one of the reasons I am concerned that the productivity we have gained will be ‘temporary’ and that we are wildly spending millennia of water savings in a century. Climate change is just an accelerant to this wider over-consumption.
If contemporary agricultural lands start becoming non-viable en masse, can we just pivot north/south? At least in the south, there isn’t anywhere substantial to go. In the north, we have swaths of low-density land in Canada, Russia and other friends of the arctic circle. Won’t increasing agriculture in these regions just: 1) Lower albedo for land that was previously snow-pact 2) increase deforestation for land that was previously forest 3) break up even more permafrost, unlocking some carbon/methane stock that has been previously locked into the soil? Thus speeding up climate change.
Also, has Friedman updated his views since 2011? (I am not taking the time right now to personally check)
The modeling has updated since then and many specific facets of climate related system have had deeper study. Unfortunately, most of the time I hear that these facets are looking worse than anticipated. Some examples that spring to mind:
“We find that observed maximum thaw depths at all sites are already regularly exceeding modeled future thaw depths for 2090 under IPCC RCP 4.5.”
Permafrost study site thaw depths in 2003-2016 match what was anticipated for melt rates in 2090. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2019GL082187
For a glacier study site that terminates in the ocean “…observed melt rates up to a hundred times larger than those predicted” https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6451/369
These kinds of observations are updating the parameters and inputs that go into the larger climate models. And that leads to statements such as these:
“Early results suggest ECS values from some of the new CMIP6 climate models are higher than previous estimates, with early numbers being reported between 2.8C (pdf) and 5.8C. This compares with the previous coupled model intercomparison project (CMIP5), which reported values between 2.1C to 4.7C.”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-results-from-the-next-generation-of-climate-models-matter
Important to note here that when these global mean temps are listed as 3C, that the *vast* majority of the earth’s surface will be below that average: the ocean, the incredible heat-sink that we are trying to break. And the rest of the surface, the land, where the humans are, will be higher, between 4-6C. Don’t base your back-of-the-envelope thinking and projects on just the global average.
All that to say: do we really have a full century? I get that we are essentially pitting the ‘innovation’ rate against entropy-in-the-global-system but the sheer rate and scale of change is concerning.
Talking about updating one’s views… . The IPCC claimed AGW was increasing drought in the fourth report, retracted that claim in the fifth. What is your evidence that AGW is leading to more severe storms and droughts, beyond the fact that some people predicted it would?
Fortunately, one of the effects of increased CO2 concentration is to reduce water requirements for plants, since they don’t have to pass as much air through the leaves to get the carbon they need.
My post on IPCC predictions vs what happened was done in 2014. I have mostly taken the latest IPCC report as at least a first approximation to the science, although somewhat biased in a catastrophist direction.
I haven’t tried to follow all claims in either side about things that make the problem worse (or better), since disentangling the true from the false from the results of selective filtering is hard. You can find a few examples of claims that I think are at least moderately dishonest, and heavily reported, on the blog, such as this.
Important to note, and generally ignored, is that warming is greater in cold places and times than in hot. So if global mean is 3°C, that means that winters are four degrees milder, summers two degrees hotter, that average temperatures in warm climates are up two degrees, in the arctic up four degrees (invented numbers, like, I presume, yours, to make the qualitative point).
In other words, the pattern of warming is biased in our favor, due to the interaction of water vapor and CO2, both greenhouse gases. Milder winters are usually a good thing, just as hotter summers are a bad thing, and warmer temperatures are usually a good thing in cold places, bad in hot.
> “I think the mass extinction that is already underway is a catastrophe, not to mention the smaller catastrophes of more severe storms and droughts in many parts of the world”
David, you’ve grabbed someone else’s quote there, from further up in the thread.
I assume you are not suggesting that the increased CO2 uptake is sufficient to offset the reduction in environmental water flows and the increased water-loss from warmer temperatures?
Yes, it is a shit-show, in part because there are strong vested interests in the energy sector that have been sowing FUD for decades, and because any issue of sufficient size will attract the passion/energy of folks that either don’t have time or the analytical/communication skills to add signal and not noise, or bring their own agendas. As a group’s size increases linearly, the opportunity for us to find ‘low-quality thinking’ will increase super-linearly. For me, that there are dumb arguments out there made “on the behalf of” AGW does not invalidate AGW as a pressing concern.
Yes. The coldest places, places with significant ice and snow, are warming ‘faster’ or take on a higher burden of the global mean temp increase. Considering the degradation of albedo that comes as a result, the increase rate of sea level rise that one assumes will follow, and the disruption to ecologies that have adapted to a specific range of snow/glacier melt, I would not read that as a “biased in our favor”
If there were a parallel universe earth:
– that was baseline hotter by 2 degrees C
– had arrived at that baseline over the progression of hundreds of thousands of years
– with ecologies that had been shaped by that progression
– and with a human civilization that was also established during that ‘glacial’ change in climate (nice word play, don’t you think)
Then there could be a lot of things about it that are ‘biased in our favor’ and it could be positively delightful. Much much better on balance than the same scenario but trading +2 for -10 celsius. Ice ages suck in many many ways for us.
Unfortunately we are seemingly arriving at +2 (and perhaps more warming) in the space of a few hundred years. Yes, the increased heat is problematic but also the current rate of change is disrupting ecologies and climate systems, potentially faster than they can adapt.
Australia is an example of an ecological system that has adapted to being dry and hot over the process of millennia. Bush fires and drought have long been a part of the history of the place. But it is currently in the grip of ‘unprecedented’ waves of fires. The perspective of someone that has been managing fire risks in Australia for 47 years: https://amp.smh.com.au/national/this-is-not-normal-what-s-different-about-the-nsw-mega-fires-20191110-p5395e.html this is what ‘milder winters’ means in some parts of the world: a longer fire season, greater risk of ‘natural’ disaster and greater instability. Australian and West coast USA are some of the ecological canaries-in-the-coal-mine; if things are this bad now, what will they look like in 20 years? In 50?
“… the pattern of warming is biased in our favor…” California and Australia are examples of ecologies/climate regions that are trending negatively as things warm. Are there tangible examples of places were AGW is actually making things better? Not just a generic “plants grow faster because more CO2, yay” but actually looking at specific systems that seem to be ‘benefitting’?
Impeachment Roundup:
This community leans right much further than I encounter in my meat-space social circles, so I’d like y’alls perspective on the ongoing impeachment hearings. Some questions to consider:
1. Was there a conspiracy on the part of the administration to tie aid/support for Ukraine to their influencing the 2020 election? (Y/N)
2. If so, was the president aware of and/or orchestrating said conspiracy? (Y/N)
3. If such a conspiracy did occur would it be improper? (Y/N)
4. If it is improper, does it rise to the level of impeachment? (Y/N)
1. No. Trump was looking for dirt on Biden though, and that’s at least as legal as initiating a 2 year investigation into the POTUS based on some sleazy opposition research.
2. N/A
3. Not more improper than the Mueller investigation.
4. N/A
Agreed.
1. Y
2. ~Y
3. ~N
4. N
Pretty clearly President Trump et. al. were trying to get Ukraine to provide dirt. The President himself literally asked them to do this, so it’s similarly clear he knew about it, although I don’t know if I’d want to dignify this whole ridiculous mess by claiming anybody orchestrated anything. I can’t come up with a coherent democratic philosophy which has a serious problem with this but not with super-PACs, and I think all forms of obvious political grandstanding are bad, which given the Senate this absolutely is at the moment unless the House knows a whole lot of things I don’t.
I don’t think the other party having control of the Senate is a reason to hold off on impeachment – it’s pretty much par for the course. Since you need a 2/3rds majority to remove, you’ll almost always need the cooperation of the other party no matter who controls it. You just have to hope that whatever you uncover is explosive enough that it can push the other party into supporting it.
Libertarian, if that counts as “right” to you.
1. Probably Yes for a definition of “influencing” that amounts to the Ukranian government making an official proclamation that Biden is a Crook without regard for whether or not that was true (and without regard to whether people on his own side were engaged in equally corrupt dealings).
2. If #1 is a Yes, #2 is definitely a Yes
3. See #2. If true, the bit where Trump threatened to withhold aid over this, constitutes redirecting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for his private political ends.
4. Same as #3, plus if we allow this power to fall into the hands of a competent president, then that president’s party will be effectively impossible to remove from power.
Note that the next competent politician to sit in the Oval Office, will probably be a Democrat.
For 4) we already know what it looks like when a competent administration has this power, it’s called Obama’s investigation of the Trump campaign that dragged on for two years into the Mueller report.
What the heck do you call the whole Russia investigation other than a fishing expedition primarily for political gain? Or the Steele dossier, literally paying foreigners for dubious dirt on a political candidate? Yeah, they laundered that through a Brit and the DNC, but when it gets introduced as evidence in a secret federal court…
Yes there was some actual dirt uncovered in that investigation, although the scale was much lower than originally advertised. In any case I doubt any of that gets pursued with nearly so much vigor if it didn’t directly serve the Dems’ political interests.
So basically like so many Trump crises this is all about optics and process crimes. If you’ve got enough allied bureaucrats and a friendly press to publish the right leaks, and you know the magic words for plausible deniability, feel free to use the power of government to attack the results of the democratic process and the power of foreign aid to extort allied governments.
If you’re Trump and you clumsily try to get your buddy Rudy to do it, you’re a Traitor etc.
I get that we have the process for a reason, but I also totally get why Trump supporters or even non-Trumpist Republicans are having a hard time drawing a moral distinction that makes Trump uniquely evil here.
I think if the RNC or Trump wants to spend campaign money to fund oppo research on Biden from Ukrainians or anyone else its totally fine. Leveraging hundreds of millions of dollars of military support approved by Congress is not okay.
Biden used a billion dollars in aid to get a Ukrainian political appointee fired, who just might have turned some unpleasant light on his son’s activities that look an awful lot like accepting attempted influence peddling.
Biden’s bribe went through the right channels and Hunter has enough plausible deniability that he probably isn’t technically a criminal, but the optics would have been bad.
Either way the Obama administration openly extorted a political action out of Ukraine, via threat of withheld, taxpayer funded aid.
I’m not arguing the technicalities here. It’s possible, even likely, that Trump’s maneuver violates some law that Biden did not.
But where is the moral distinction? It requires begging the question and assuming that getting some Ukrainian prosecutor canned was critical to American interests, but investigating possible Ukrainian influence peddling is ONLY of interest to Trump’s political interests.
On your actual point (sorry for the digression) why is okay to pay foreigners for oppo research, but not accept it from them? Since the latter was what got the whole “Trump colluded with Russia” thing started.
Your arguments seem totally unrelated to mine?
I have reason to doubt your narrative about Joe Biden but even so it doesn’t concern me if that was illegal or not since it’s irrelevant.
I also don’t care about whether accepting information about Hillary Clinton was illegal or not.
Why is it irrelevant? If we’re basing an impeachment proceeding on a double standard, held for purely political reasons, that seems highly relevant.
The Democrats want me to believe that Trump did a highly improper, unprecedentedly bad thing, literally betraying America for the sake of naked political ambition, so serious that we must implement impeachment to defend the Constitution.
But if Trump’s actions are just clumsy, bull in a china shop, damn the process versions of stuff more adept politicos do all the time, and the difference is fundamentally procedural rather than moral, that’s a tougher case to make.
Legally, a political campaign can employ a foreign national, while they cannot accept any kind of donation (either cash or a “thing of value”) from a foreign national. Opposition research is a “thing of value”.
Citation on campaigns not being allowed to accept donations from foreign nationals.
Citation on opposition research counting as a “thing of value”.
Additionally, Trump’s decision to try to get valuable opposition research from Ukraine isn’t just a violation of campaign finance law, it’s also probably felony extortion and possibly bribery.
I guess I don’t think “double standard” is a persuasive argument. Like if one murderer gets let go, then from now on all murderers must be released to avoid a double standard?
If murder happened all the time, but it was only prosecuted when committed by the political opponents of the majority government, then yeah, that would be relevant.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but a double standard applied only when advantageous to you is no standard at all.
@broblawsky – It seems there are 3 things:
1) Alice is offered dirt on her opponent Bob by a Clipistani official. It is illegal for her to accept.
2) Alice offers something of value to a Clipistani official to get dirt on Bob. This is also illegal.
3) Alice hears that the Clipistanis might have some dirt on Bob. So she hires Daria, from Foolandia, to travel to Clipistan and get the dirt. Daria, while in Clipistan, gathers up freely offered dirt and pays for dirt when it helps grease the wheels, then writes it up in a nice report and delivers it to Alice. This is totally fine.
I’m with you till you get to 3? To me these all have the same outcome and treating them as clearly distinct is problematic.
Thank you for the links. I think the Daily Beast one is, however, yet another example of question begging here. Trump was not asking the Ukrainians for “oppo research”. He was asking them to investigate a potential crime. Opinions may differ on whether there was any sort of justification for such an investigation, but calling it oppo research off the bat is assuming away that key question.
I believe that while that is the official position of the FEC, but it’s pretty controversial and hasn’t been legally tested.
In particular, if it were true, it would be illegal for a US Citizen to donate opposition research that was valued at more than campaign donation limits, and politicians would need to declare the value of information received from US Citizens along with their identities, right?
I don’t see how investigation of a single crime is opposition research.
If Trump said “Give me all your files on Biden”, that’s probably opposition research, although the points made about whether or not that is really a donation is relevant here.
But the idea that it is not allowable to request foreign investigation into a specific investigation of someone because he may one day run against Trump (as far as I know, Biden is still not the Democrat nominee) is fairly silly.
The difference between A+B and C is the possibility of a corrupt exchange. In the case of A, Alice owes the Clipistani government something. Obviously, we want to avoid situations where our politicians are in hock to foreign governments. In the case of B, we have the same problems as A, along with questions of bribery. In the case of C, the only person Alice owes is Daria, and because she hired Daria legally as part of her campaign, the extent of that obligation is limited to a normal exchange of goods and services.
He was asking them to investigate his foremost political rival. It’s valuable to his political campaign, which makes it opposition research. As a legal analogy: imagine a President asking a foreign government to donate to a charitable foundation in their name, which could then be leveraged to support a reelection campaign as well. If Trump had let Barr push for this without getting personally involved, he’d have some protection. By directly pressing Zelensky to assist Barr, he compromised himself.
Beyond the legal complexities of the situation, here’s the core question: do you really want the already-dysfunctional American political environment to degenerate into a bidding war for the support of foreign intelligence agencies? Because that’s where we end up headed if Trump doesn’t get punished for this.
It’s illegal for Trump to request the investigation. If Barr had pushed for it by himself, this wouldn’t be illegal, or at least Trump wouldn’t be implicated. Trump isn’t the US’s chief law enforcement official; Barr is. It isn’t Trump’s job to investigate people.
Edit: to preempt anyone claiming Trump is the US’s chief law enforcement officer, I’d like to cite the White House’s own website, which lists the AG as “chief law enforcement officer of the federal government”. Also, Trump can’t have a law enforcement role: he’s commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and Posse Comitatus bars the armed forces from a law enforcement role outside of special circumstances.
@broblawsky
Presidents have foreign governments contribute to their charitable foundations all the time. I believe the saudis have contributed to all of the recent ones. There are also the myriad donations to the clinton foundation from foreign governments.
As I’ve said elsewhere, presidents have fought entire wars they didn’t believe in for domestic political advantage. reagan spent billions on bombers he knew were obsolete because it was good politics, and Kennedy spent a fortune closing a non-existent missile gap for the same reason. Getting someone investigated is small change compared to that, and I cannot get outraged over a president requesting an investigation of someone who seems to have been corrupt.
“to preempt anyone claiming Trump is the US’s chief law enforcement officer, I’d like to cite the White House’s own website, which lists the AG as “chief law enforcement officer of the federal government”.”
This reflects a common pattern of the deep state treating its “traditions” as if they were the law of the land. We wrote it on a website, so there! The constitution establishes that the President is the head of the executive branch. If the executive branch has the power to do something according to the constitution, then the President has the same power unless specifically stated otherwise.
At no point did a sitting President directly request those donations, however. That’s a critical factor. Trump didn’t do anything (obviously) illegal when the Russian government cyberattacked the DNC, even though they were able to provide valuable opposition research for his campaign. And I’m going to head off any discussions about the Clinton Foundation: the Trump administration has had 3 years to investigate the Clinton’s and they’ve never tried to bring charges against them. There’s nothing there.
Then I hope you’ll be equally non-outraged when, under the next Democratic administration, conservative political leaders and donors are “investigated” into terrified compliance. The wall of separation between law enforcement and the Executive is perhaps the single most important factor separating liberal and illiberal democracies. Once it’s breached, all hell breaks loose.
I would amend it to say politically-motivated investigations are the most important factor separating liberal and illiberal democracies. Whether they are launched by political officials directly or politically-motivated
deep state officials“civil servants” doesn’t make any difference. The deep state fired the first shot with the Mueller investigation. Alternatively, there is “no proof” it was politically motivated. And there’s “no proof” Trump wanted Biden investigated for political reasons.We already tried to be outraged. We were told it was mere public servants doing their sworn duty to investigate a serious crime.
This alleged crime has more evidence for its existence now, without an investigation, than that one had after a multi year investigation by the FBI, IC, and then a special prosecutor.
Its the President’s duty to ensure that Ukraine’s 2016 is not repeated. Its also his duty to investigate corruption by American governmental officials. That those things sometimes will benefit his campaign is unavoidable.
@broblawsky says:
Please. their might not have been a record of the request, but tens of millions do not just appear.
that they didn’t try is not evidence that there’s nothing there, but that’s besides the point. There’s no way, for example, that trump is violating the emoluments clause but Clinton wasn’t raking in huge donations while secretary of state. But one of these things is considered perfectly normal and the other is impeachable. the double standard is appalling.
You mean like the Mueller investigation? Because I wasn’t outraged by it. I didn’t like the spectacle, and you could probably convince me that some of the people caught up in it got worse than they deserved (e.g. I don’t like Mike Flynn, and I’m glad he’s not in the white house, but I don’t think he deserved to have his whole life destroyed), but from what I’ve gathered it looks like some tax cheats went to jail, which I’m entirely in favor of.
The Mueller investigation wasn’t conducted by a Democratic administration. It was commissioned by the Trump administration, directed by former AG Jeff Sessions (until his recusal) and current AG Barr, and all of its investigative procedures were considered acceptable by the Trump administration. Mueller himself is a lifelong Republican. If you thought that was bad, then you should be doubly invested in making sure that Trump is punished for this violation of the law, because if he isn’t, politicized investigations will become the norm, and this power may be wielded far more competently in the future.
@EchoChaos says: “…as far as I know, Biden is still not the Democrat nominee…
And for what it’s worth I’m increasingly doubtful he will be, large amount donors are going for Buttigieg (who I also don’t think will be the nominee), the activist wing and small donors are going for Warren (and to a lesser extent Sanders), on the Left wing Sanders has been previously too independent to get institutional support within the Party so Warren will be the Left candidate, Biden’s support is broad but not deep, and frankly he seems doddering and isn’t a good debater, his supporters tend to be (there’s a lot of overlap in these categories) older, non-white, more conservative (relative to other Democrats), and/or more likely to live in “red states”, which is great base of support for a candidate to win the general election, but a terrible one for winning the Party.
At this point it looks to me like Warren has it in the bag to be nominee, and she’ll lose in the electoral college.
Sanders won’t be the nominee, but if he somehow is his almost Trump-like cantankerousness may appeal to enough non-voters to do better than Warren would, but I have a hard time imagining a self-described “socialist” wins unless a deep recession starts very soon and lasts until next year.
If Biden is the nominee and loses the Democratic Party will go further Left, which will also happen if Warren or Sanders wins the general election.
Whichever Party wins the Presidency won’t have a majority of the House of Representatives in 2022, and they’ll be stalemate and snipping.
FWLIW, they’re niche things, but I think any Democrat would have good picks for Labor Secretary and the NLRB, otherwise Biden has a slim chance to actually win, Gabbard and Harris are easy on the eyes, and Sanders is just immensely entertaining, but nobody (either Democrat or Republican) will get even a tenth of their promised agenda passed except for maybe some court appointments if the Senate is with them, and I predict the Senate will stay Republican at least until 2024 (so yes, I basically just predicted five more years of the status quo).
By the “deep state” you mean the Trump administration, right? Because they’re the people who commissioned the special counsel investigation.
If you seriously believe that the idea that investigating Biden wouldn’t be politically useful didn’t cross Trump’s mind, I have to doubt whether there’s any point to continuing this conversation.
@broblawsky says:
Oh, please, the accusations began during the obama administration, and mueller was largely independent, and clearly more closely aligned with congressional democrats than anyone in the trump administration.
I said it wasn’t so bad. and the best way to encourage politicized investigations is for them to be seen as useful for reversing election results.
Not even half true. The genesis is an Obama administration investigation that violated regulations and lacked probable cause without representing unsubstantiated political material as corroborated.
A motto that not only makes little sense, but has little substantiation, particularly based on his staffing choices. Plus, there is little evidence he actually managed the probe, rather it was Weissman, a Democrat to the core (and both are well known as rabid dogs, both have caused the US DOJ to settle massive cases for prosecutorial misconduct).
That makes little sense. One was a massive breaking of norms with no credible evidence. This is a following of the Obama admin norms (one cannot break a norm that is already broken, more or less), with much greater evidence to support a launch of the investigation for legitimate reasons.
What you are demanding is that Trump be better than his predecessor by a significant margin. Which he already has been by tolerating the Mueller probe, and tolerating this whistleblower. Obama would have fired Comey day 1, Rosenstein and the SC immediately (as if Holder would have ever recused himself, ROFL), and put this whistleblower in jail, simply based on his documented actions.
When you put it like that…is there any reason a president needs to run a charitable foundation? I mean, there is obviously some PR value in using other people’s money for more or less altruistic purposes, but if the effect is mainly to whitewash the purchase of influence, why is it acceptable? Can’t philanthropists at least pretend to give their money to non-political causes?
@Ketil says:
What’s the point fame and influence if you can’t monetize it? Speaking fees require you to actually, you know, speak. Much easier just to let people just mail you money.
I missed the part where Mueller used hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and the power of the State Department to lean on foreign intelligence and law-enforcement services to publicly defame a US politician’s family in support of the political ambitions of a different US politician.
The claim is NOT, NOT NOT NOT NOT FUCKING NOT, that opposition research is or ought to be illegal, or even that opposition research conducted in foreign countries is or ought to be illegal. And the slightest hint of charity and reading comprehension on your part would have at least lead to your asking a clarifying question on that point rather than unleashing your canned and irrelevant rant.
You don’t like what Mueller did, fine. That doesn’t make what Trump did, either A: the same as what Mueller did, or B: OK.
Well, there was nothing foreign about it, but otherwise it’s pretty much what Mueller did. “Hey, I see you cheated on your taxes, be a shame if you went to prison, if only there was something you could say to make me sympathize with your situation….”
There’s “no proof” of any quid pro quo just as there’s “no proof” of any quid pro quo in Ukraine.
Apologies for coming off as uncharitable, I’m doing two things here:
1) being intentionally a bit of a devils advocate for the “the Swamp is just pissed their own tactics are being used on them” position, much more strongly than I actually hold such a position
2) the last time we talked about this, your position seemed to be that the primary provably bad thing that Trump did was refer the Ukrainians to Rudy instead of the proper State Department hack. Biden’s boast about a quid pro quo with Ukraine was fine because it went through the right channels and, in your mind, the benefit to America rather than just Biden was more clear.
Anyway, Mueller didn’t spend “hundreds of millions” but he (and the related investigations) did turn the power of the state and intelligence services on an investigation of domestic and foreign individuals. It is undeniable that that investigation was likely to politically benefit Democrats, and pretending it was just for the good of America requires a lot of charity that Trump is not being extended.
If “amount of taxpayer dollars” is the issue, Biden DID use hundreds of millions of dollars to meddle in the internal politics of a foreign state.
I’m honestly struggling to find the moral distinction here that doesn’t require question begging, and if you’d extend me an ounce of charity perhaps you could help me there rather than dismiss it as a canned rant.
EDIT: there’s also the letter from Senators leaning on the Ukrainians to cooperate with the Mueller investigation in a “nice alliance we have here, shame if something changed that” sort of way. Again, smart enough not to be explicit, but the intent seems similar.
None of this is relevant to whether Trump technically violated a law, but I think it is very relevant to how I ought to feel about it.
Unless I’m confused, you’re mixing two things.
1) Loan guarantees which the executive branch can enter into, or not, which was Vice President Biden’s lever to get the result the US wanted (interference in a foreign government).
2) Foreign Aid, which congress had decided would be provided, which was President Trump’s lever to get a foreign government to investigate a US citizen and the son of his main election opponent.
So, we’ve got different things, over which different branches of government have authority, being used for different purposes.
None of the above is legal advice and is based on my very minimal review of this situation.
First off, “State Department hack” is being gratuitously uncharitable. If you’re going to apologize for being uncharitable, you kind of have to make an effort to stop doing that.
Second, basically yes. Private gain and public gain are two different things even if they are sometimes hard to distinguish.
Fair enough. It is absolutely wrong for an elected official to use the state’s money or resources to pursue his private gain, and pursuing private political gain is exceptionally bad. The right and duty of an elected official is to use the state’s money and resources to pursue public gains, and if he wants he may privately (or publicly) hope that this will inspire the public to vote for him or his partisan allies. These are, at least in principle, two things as different as selling goods for money and picking pockets. Demanding that, because Alice was allowed to do the thing that resulted in money moving from Bob’s pocket to hers, we have to allow your guy to do the other thing that has that effect, doesn’t cut it.
Are the borders fuzzier in politics than in commerce? Yes, of course. Do politicians frequently lie about which side of that fuzzy border they are on, in ways that we find hard to prove? They’re politicians and their lips are moving, so you do the math on that one. None of that means that the clumsy oaf of a politician who leaves his muddy footprints all over the pitch-black region should have a get-out-of-jail-free card.
And if you’re genuinely confused as to figure out how to distinguish the two, a few pointers.
If the “public good” you are pursuing starts with harm to your political enemies, or even more so their families, then you just might be a crook. This alone is not proof, but it is suggestive
If the “public good” requires that public money allocated by congress for one purpose be allocated or withheld for another, then you just might be a crook. This alone is not proof, but it is suggestive.
If the “public good” requires the cooperation of a government you yourself have condemned as corrupt, and you make no apparent effort to ensure that they stay honest this time, then you just might be a crook. This alone is not proof, and please take this disclaimer as applying to all the rest even as I decline to repeat it.
If the “public good” involves the vigorous public prosecution or even investigation of crimes that would normally be ignored or quietly handled, then you just might be a crook.
If the “public good” involves the direct intervention of your elected self in matters that would normally be handled by professional civil servants two levels below, you just might be a crook
If the “public good” involves matters that would normally be handled by professional civil servants being instead handed over to your personal hirelings, you just might be a crook.
If the “public good” is conducted without the usual level of public transparency or with more than the usual level of secrecy, then you just might be a crook.
If, when word of the “public good” leaks out anyway, you denounce the whistleblower as a traitor and suggest he ought to be executed, you just might be a crook.
Just off the top of my head.
And if all of these things are true, then we’re past suggesting criminality. At that point, claiming that you are being misunderstood in your selfless pursuit of the “public good” is like Henry II claiming that he only meant for someone to talk to Becket and maybe convince him to be less turbulent. The law is not required to believe transparent lies or take blatant weasel-wording at face value. Nor is Congress, nor am I.
I honestly meant “hack” in the sense of “basically anonymous/interchangeable bureaucrat tasked with executing rather than setting policy” and not anything more nefarious, but the term can be loaded so sorry.
To be clear here, I’m trying to say something a bit more nuanced than “Obama/Biden/Clinton got away with it so Trump should get away with it too”. A double standard is no standard at all, particularly if it is only hauled out when convenient to take out your political opponents. Since that is the very thing Trump is ultimately being accused of, wielding his power for personal political ends, it is a very relevant question whether the standards being applied to Trump are sufficiently inline with the standards as they’ve been applied to less orange presidents. I agree that it would be very damaging to allow presidents to use publicly allocated funds to bribe foreign officials into helping their campaigns. But I also believe that it is very damaging to normalize investigating / impeaching sitting presidents because you’ve got control of the House and you’re pissed about how the election went down. So we should make damn sure we aren’t doing that either – if Trump is pursuing the same crooked ends with basically the same means that everyone else in his position does, just more clumsily and without the often thin veneer of “proper channels”, I’m not sure that’s worth making him the first convicted president over.
I generally agree with your “pointers”, but most of them can be applied to the people going after Trump as well:
Definitely applies to the Mueller and related investigation, which was ostensibly about protecting America from foreign meddling but was mostly about finding enough dirt on Trump to justify impeaching him. As for “more so their families”, if you are referring to Hunter Biden, he’s a grown ass man who has leveraged his dad’s name into way more privilege and wealth than 99% of Americans will ever have access to who took an obvious “appearance of impropriety” gig with a foreign company, so using the “have you no decency?” defense is uncompelling. We’re not bullying a child here.
This is probably the best argument against Trump’s actions, but even here, dangling carrots in front of foreign governments to get them to do things America wants is extremely common. This is after all what the Obama administration did to force Ukraine to make a personnel change – the differences here seem to be about intent (is it a public good?) and the technical details of where the money was allocated (executive loan guarantees vs. “foreign aid”). The former is what I mean by “begging the question”, the latter is what I mean by “I see the technical difference but not the moral one”.
This is particularly uncompelling. We have to deal with corrupt foreign (and domestic) governments all the time, including ones we have called out as corrupt.
The Mueller investigation. Lots of people written up on tangential or process crimes that would have gone ignored except they were useful as leverage to go after Trump. Clearly had insiders leaking selectively to gin up maximum public outrage throughout the process. May apply to this whole impeachment investigation (that’s exactly what we are debating).
Can you really blame Trump for not trusting career civil servants to faithfully execute his policies? Calling them “professional” gives the implication that they are non-partisan, which I’m not sure they’ve earned (particularly when it comes to Trump). This standard heavily privileges insiders from the same party as the career bureaucrats.
See above. Also, again, the technical case here is much easier to make than the moral one, and the latter is what I’m more interested in.
Are conversations between Presidents and foreign officials typically public? Are proposed investigations?
Is it “the usual level of public transparency” to use the secret FISA court to open investigations into your political opponents, using biased oppo research bought and paid for by your own political party as part of the justification?
Not going to defend the language of Trump here, although it looks pretty self-serving when it is denounced by people who’ve spent the last three years calling Trump traitor, crook, Nazi, and worse (not you of course, but plenty of others including some in official positions).
This is also another place where the question is being begged. Is the whistleblower leaking this privileged information because they genuinely believe a serious crime that will harm American interests has been committed, or are they doing it because they’ve had it out for Trump for political reasons and saw this as an opportunity to take him down? Both the whistleblower and the President are attempting to turn the power of the government toward an end that would undeniably politically benefit one or the other party. So is either end also enough of a public good that it trumps that? I wish I could share your certainty, but to my mind impeaching a President is also a nearly unprecedented power that needs to be wielded carefully, and I’m not convinced the Dems have crossed that bar.
Part of the issue, well really most of the issue, for me is that I can’t say with certainty that investigating Hunter Biden’s business relationships in Ukraine is unreasonable. Like, it seems really naive to assume that he was worth $50k a month unless you were trying to influence peddle. It seems like preventing foreign interests from buying off our officials via their families is very much something that serves the public good. Obviously taking out Joe Biden’s candidacy would also help Donald Trump, but was it unreasonable for Trump to think it would serve the public good as well? And if Trump could reasonably think he was serving the public good, but violated proper procedures in doing so, that’s not good but I feel quite differently about that vs. something that did not have a justifiable end goal. You’ve already granted that this is fuzzy – is Trump’s move truly that fuzz-free?
I trust that you’re being honest when you say you’ve considered that and made an honest determination that no, there was no way Trump had anything but his own interests in mind, and that plus the clumsy and inappropriate way he went about pursuing the goal are impeachment worthy.
But I have zero reason to believe that the Democratic majority and the media are pursuing this in good faith. They’ve spent far too long exerting maximum outrage and minimum charity over every Trumpian offense, real or imagined, to earn that benefit of the doubt. Let’s move on (.org) from impeachment and just have the damn election.
Isn’t that what every president, and every congressperson so far as he can, does? When a politician supports biofuels, not because he mistakenly believes they reduce AGW but because he wants farm votes, isn’t he redirecting money for his private political ends? Similarly for Trump’s tariffs, and building a wall, and lot of things done by other politicians.
Insofar as there is a plausible theory of democracy, it isn’t that politicians are philosopher kings making decisions for the good of the country, it’s that their private political ends mesh tolerably well with the good of the country.
Sort of. But there are legitimate and illegitimate ends. So, would it also be your position that this was politics as usual if he’d said, ‘Pay me a million dollars, or no aid for you’?
ETA: John Schilling makes this point much more eloquently above us, with the public vs private gain point.
I find david friedman’s point a good response to John Schilling’s comment, actually. the line between public and private good gets crossed way more often than he admits. Presidents have fought entire wars that they didn’t believe in for domestic political gain, on more than one occasion. It would be one thing if Trump were trying to lean on people to fabricate evidence or do something otherwise illegal, but I just can’t get up in arms about him wanting to invest what seems very like to be a corrupt bargain.
What’s the difference between carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide? I mean, they are both just carbon and oxygen.
“influencing the 2020 election” requires a better definition.
Otherwise all of the responses will be based on what someone’s definition of “influencing the 2020 election.”
If Trump promises North Korea aid for a unilateral disarmament, that can easily be defined as “predicating aid on influencing the 2020 election,” as unilateral No Ko disarmament would surely influence the election.
If “influencing the 2020 election” means “faithfully conducting an investigation into various circumstances at Trump’s request” then my answers are:
Y, Y, N, N.
If “influencing the 2020 election” means “pretending to conduct an investigation into various circumstances at Trump’s request, where the outcome of the fake investigation is pre-ordained,” then my answers are:
N, Y, Y, Y
More specifically, “investigate Burisma and assist Barr for aid” is not impeachable, but “investigate Burisma, assist Barr, and find Hunter Biden guilty in some fashion for aid” is impeachable.
mitv150 above is moderately close to my view.
In #1, there are at least three contestable definitions baked into the statement “Was there a conspiracy on the part of the administration to tie aid/support for Ukraine to their influencing the 2020 election?” The first is “conspiracy,” which (in legal terms) requires agreement to accomplish an unlawful purpose, which rather begs the question. The second is “tie aid/support for Ukraine,” which is vague on two levels – “tie” can mean “if not this, then not that” or it can mean “we’re all working together here on mutual common goals.” It’s sort of like when you read clickbait “science” articles breathlessly announcing that X behavior is “tied to” Y outcome, and inevitably doesn’t get into the messy details of the correlation. Moreover, “aid” is presumably the held-up military aid, but “support for Ukraine” could mean anything from geopolitical cover, to a visit to the White House (which I think has also been bandied about at some level) to “getting on Trump’s good side” with no specified current benefit. Finally, “their influencing the 2020 election” is (as mitv150 notes) a really non-specific statement, and is going to bring in a lot of hidden assumptions about what it means to “influence the election”, whether such influence is wrongful, and whether (if solicited) such solicitation is wrongful.
Given all that, I think the questions become difficult to answer. I think that there was an attempt, on the part of the administration, to persuade Ukraine to act on both stemming corruption in Ukraine, as well as assistance in ongoing investigations into 2016 election, both of which the administration probably thought genuinely reflected bad behavior by the preceding administration and deserved to be investigated. In that sense, if there’s anything “wrongful” about it, it seems more like an “isolated demand for rigor” rather than an improper ask – Trump is more interested in [he thinks real] corruption that shows he was, in fact, the victim of a poorly predicated witch hunt by Mueller / Dems (the 2016 server thing plus Ukrainian connections with the prior administration) than he is in potential corruption that would reflect badly on not-Dems. Obviously if true, it might have some impact on 2020 – but the same would be true if Ukraine had genuine video [for the sake of argument] of Joe Biden accepting a giant suitcase full of money, rubbing his hands and cackling like a supervillain that “I’ve succeeded in being bribed, hooray!” Trump asking for an investigation into that [purely hypothetical] video would not, in my opinion, be wrongful. The transcript does not, in my reading, support that Trump said “and get me some dirt, real or fake, or else we’ll cut you off at the knees.” It’s basically a muddle of Trump thinking that the Dems were corruptly cozy with Ukraine in 2016, and wanting to have the new Ukrainian administration commit to being less corrupt and to disavow any such former corruption.
So does that count as a “Y” or “N” for #1? I’m not sure. Probably a “N.”
2 is a Y if applicable at all, since the transcript / call is at issue and Trump’s on the phone.
3 is probably an “N”, again with reference to the definitions involved.
4 again depends on the definitions, but it’s fair to say that based on what I’ve read so far, I’m an “N” on impeachment.
Anti-Trump Republican with Libertarian leanings. Currently registered as “No Party Preference”. Voted for Johnson in the 2016 general election after voting for Clinton in the Democratic primary.
1. Y-ish. “Conspiracy” isn’t the word I would use, but it definitely looks like the administration was using military aid to the Ukraine as a carrot to get them to dig up dirt on Biden. And influencing the 2020 election strikes me as by far the most likely motive for that.
2. Y. The published minutes of Trump’s call to Zelensky show Trump asking Zelensky to investigate Biden in a context that strongly implies a quid pro quo for military aid.
3. Y. It’s at the very least tacky to ask another country to involve themselves in our elections. I also think it’s improper to condition military aid on this. Military aid should be considered on its own merits: if it’s in our strategic interests to support Ukraine, we should support them. Attaching petty conditions unrelated to our strategic interests shows very poor judgement on Trump’s part.
4. Not sure. I’ve read a fairly persuasive argument that Trump’s quid pro quo violated federal election laws by offering government funds in exchange for material support to an election campaign, which would certainly be illegal, but I don’t think it’s necessarily impeachable unless either 1) Trump’s conduct here is at least a standard deviation worse on this front than routine political backscratching, or 2) there’s a bipartisan consensus that it’s time to start seriously enforcing this aspect of federal election laws. 1 is plausible to me but I don’t know enough to say with confidence. 2 strikes me as very unlikely.
As a resident right winger my perspective is that I simply don’t care about the details because:
A. Democrats have cried wolf so badly since before Trump got elected that they’ve lost any remnant of credibility they might have had as good-faith protectors of “our constitutional system,” etc. (not that I’m claiming Republicans are much better on this score). Anything less than him caught on camera shooting somebody and right wingers will assume it’s just a partisan witch hunt.
B. You’re not going to get Trump supporters to abandon him over it/support impeachment because they’ve got no alternatives (including Pence, I’d think) with remotely similar policy positions or chances of being POTUS in the near future. And this may be precisely why Democrats want so badly to get rid of Trump in particular.
Related to B: a heuristic I’ve proposed a few times: don’t be surprised if people don’t abandon politician X over scandal Y if you wouldn’t abandon a politician with all your favorite policy positions over the same thing.
For example, I didn’t think Bill Clinton’s behavior with an intern was appropriate, but I don’t think he should have been impeached over it and thought it was a big, partisan waste of time at the time.
For another: I really disapprove of Elizabeth Warren’s deception (deceptions?) related to her academic career but they aren’t bad enough I wouldn’t vote for her if I strongly agreed with her policy positions, especially if the alternative were someone as far off from those positions as e.g. Trump.
So for me I can simply ask myself whether, were he still running for something, I would abandon Ron Paul over scandal Y because A. Ron Paul is pretty close to holding my ideal policy positions and B. There are very few other politicians holding his positions so I don’t have a lot of good alternatives waiting in the wings. If the answer is “no, I wouldn’t stop supporting Ron Paul over this scandal” then I shouldn’t be surprised when others won’t abandon whomever over the same thing.
I feel like politics could be a lot more “serious” if there were a general agreement to abide by this heuristic. Not going to happen, of course, because scandals are super effective.
Note that I’m not saying I’m certain the Trump Ukraine thing is the sort of scandal one should never care about because nobody would abandon his preferred policy position candidate over it. However, the ability to distinguish these is currently severely hampered by the ultra-partisan, bad faith climate.
Even then plenty of people’s trust in the media is so low that there’d be a lot of “Well, we need to wait for all the facts to come out,” “That shooting was taken out of context,” and “the videos were deceptively edited.”
Hell, I might even agree with some of those takes!
Lot of hyperbole here that I think deserves elaboration. This latest scandal is noticeably different from prior cases in that a statistically significant chunk of the population that had previously disliked Trump but also disapproved of impeachment changed their minds on the latter – similar shifts can been seen in the House, be it from personal conviction or as representation of constituents. Does this shift matter to you? How large would this group need to be to factor into your opinion?
I genuinely don’t intend to be all that hyperbolic, though of course I don’t speak for every right winger. Maybe I am also different in having very little respect for most of the Republican party as well as most of the Democratic party as there are too many bad things most members of both parties agree on, especially (imo overly interventionist) foreign policy.
So if you tell me a lot of Republicans agree that “it’s different this time,” then my first question would be “which Republicans, specifically, think that?” As per the guideline I suggest above it would be most convincing if prominent conservatives whose policy preferences align with Trump’s to some degree, such as Pat Buchanan, came out in favor of impeachment.
I’m an independent, not a Republican, but my opinion shifted from “don’t like the guy, but this is obviously a witch hunt” to “yeah, he probably deserves impeachment” after these allegations came out. A politically inexperienced candidate shooting his mouth off is one thing; a sitting President actively exercising actual power, who’s had two or three years to learn better, is another.
Not that I think he’ll actually be removed, and I don’t even blame the Senate much for that: from a Senate Republican perspective, in the current political environment, even Trump waving his executive powers around like a six-year-old with a whiffle bat can’t do as much damage as a Democratic President could in four to eight years, and kicking Trump out is basically ceding the election to whoever the Dems want to nominate. This of course sets us up for another round of constitutional hardball, partisan brinksmanship, poisonous rhetoric and erosion of whatever political norms we’ve got left, but what else is new?
This is a key point: if the system were such that Democrats could say “unfortunately the guy voters picked to represent them is unfit for office but we also need to respect the policy preferences of the voters implied by his election” then it would be a lot easier to judge the possible removal of Trump based on his personal fitness for office.
But of course the system is nothing like that. Policy platforms come pre-packaged with individual politicians and all their personal foibles and failings, so any time the opponent screws up on a procedural or ethical level, as opposed to a policy level, it’s rightly seen as a great opportunity to push one’s own policy agenda. Accusations of politicians’ ethical impropriety or unfitness from anyone who doesn’t share their policy preferences are therefore prima facie highly suspect.
This is true and well said, though on the other hand, I don’t blame the Democrats for this state of affairs. Game theory, subjectivity/bias, the impossibility of knowing exactly what another person would do, the perceived importance of the stakes, etc. create the incentives.
It’s a nice that we have an eight year limit before switching brands of insanity/corruption.
I would recommend avoiding collective nouns then, unless you are willing to dive into the statistics. Blanket statements regarding one hundred million people are rarely nuanced.
That would certainly be a signal strong enough to knock down most mottes, but I think we can make do with less; I would prefer if you answered my question before posing a counterfactual:
I think there is much to be learned from movement at the margins, and I am very specifically not dividing along party lines.
I don’t think its hyperbolic at all.
It’s principally different in that this accusation is about an event that actually took place!
I do think it’s hurting trump, but as part of an accumulation of accusations, not because there’s much merit to this particular attack.
Credit for your consistency on Clinton vs Trump. FWIW I take the opposite horn of that dilemma: I thought at the time in opposition to most of my social circle, and still think, that Clinton should have been removed from office. Moreover, I think the failure to hold him accountable for his corrupt behavior was damaging to institutional quality generally and a significant contributor specifically to someone as corrupt as Trump becoming electable.
Briefly, this is because they both blatantly abused the power of their office for personal gain, and then they both tried to hide the fact they’d done so from the proper mechanisms of oversight. That’s exactly the sort of thing that impeachment is supposed to prevent, whether or not it is done in a technically legal way (thus the fact that impeachable offenses need not be criminal violations). There should be zero tolerance for that sort of behavior in any elected official, indeed in anyone with any high degree of institutional power, but especially in one entrusted with the power of the Presidency– and it is a terrible idea to entrust anyone with anywhere near that much individual discretionary power, I agree 100% with quanta413 on this point. Arguably what Trump did is even more consistent with the original intent of impeachment because it involved foreign powers, and Presidents colluding with foreign powers for their own interest against the interests of the US was a major concern of the Framers. But in any case Presidential power is so dangerous that the only way to guard against self-dealing Presidents with sufficient reliability is to strictly enforce extremely high standards against it.
1. Yes, with something like 95% probability.
2. If (1) then 99% probability of this.
3. Yes.
4. Yes, and it’d be sort of nice if they did impeach Trump. But even if they impeach they’re not going to spend any effort fixing the obvious problem of too much power having accumulated to Presidents. Congress should have reined in the executive branch decades ago. Congress will continue to wimp out, and let Presidents do crazy shit with executive branch powers as long as he is a member of their own party or its foreign policy that doesn’t affect domestic policy (putting troops in another few countries or funding every militia who might somehow theoretically benefit us in some irrelevant conflict halfway across the globe will continue to receive approximately 0 scrutiny). But most Presidents won’t be stupid enough to be so freaking obvious about their immoral use of executive branch powers.
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. About 95% confidence on #1, and 90% confidence on #2.
You put a lower number on confidence than me on 2. I’m surprised. Not that our numbers are precise, but still surprised.
I couldn’t figure out how (1) could be true without (2) short of Trump being much more senile than he appears which I figured was much less than 10% likely.
Trump’s control of his campaign and subordinates is obviously pretty poor. It doesn’t require cognitive loss for him to badly screw up holding Giuliani in check.
1. N
2. N/A
3. Y
4. N
1. “influencing the 2020 election” != “investigating corruption”. It’s telling that almost all of the “reports” which are anti-Trump choose to use language which imputes motives and additional actions rather than simply reporting a charitable description of the actual Trump actions/words involved supposedly behind the accusation.
2. Obviously if it didn’t exist…
3. If all true (a big if), then “improper” in the sense of not something I’d want a President doing.
4. No President has ever been removed from office via Impeachment. Making the first a completely partisan effort based on a non-crime wouldn’t be a good precedent. It turns impeachment into just yet another partisan weapon, to be deployed as frequently as the Party opposed to the President gains power in Congress. The opposition should go convince people to vote for their ideas instead. This is similar to losing at the ballot box and then running to a sympathetic court who overrules the people’s passed Constitutional amendment.
No. We have absolutely no indication that Ukraine was made aware of a tie of aid for investigation. The transcript we have doesn’t support this reading without motivated reasoning, IMHO. If there were backchannel discussions other than the one call, we don’t have evidence of that yet.
No, because it didn’t exist.
It would be improper if he was requesting a specific result regardless of the facts on the ground. Tying state aid to a legitimate corruption investigation is completely not problematic, regardless of who benefits from that investigation.
A legitimate corruption investigation that completely clears Biden would actually help Biden, I think we can agree. So if Trump isn’t dictating the outcome and just asking for a fair investigation, this only benefits Trump if Biden actually is corrupt. And if he is, America deserves to know.
No.
I recommend reading Ambassador Sondland’s updated testimony on this point. Especially points 5-6, where he discusses what he told Mr. Yermak, a senior advisor of the Ukrainian president. He tap dances pretty hard, but I think its very hard to read that as anything but having told him aid was conditioned on investigation.
A fair investigation into whether President Trump is raping his daughter can only actually help President Trump. If I’m not dictating the outcome and just asking for a fair investigation, this only benefits me if President Trump is actually a rapist. And if he is, America deserves to know.
I’ll also direct you on this point to the large number of folks upthread arguing extensively about how inappropriate the Mueller investigation was (which I disagree with, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.
ETA: Striking a needlessly provocative counter-example. A better point would be that I believe I’ve seen you complaining about the IRS scandal. Under this model, why exactly would that sequence of events (even accepting, as I wouldn’t, my recollection of your position on that) be wrong?
I have read that statement. It supports the reading I have above.
Given that the Democrats are currently investigating Trump on many charges, some substantially before his Presidency, in virtually every jurisdiction where they have investigative control, this is pretty much their argument, yes.
Do you think that it is appropriate for Democrats in New York to investigate Donald Trump with state resources? If it is (and I think it is, to be clear), then what differences would exist between that and the Attorney General investigating Joe Biden?
My argument isn’t that investigations can’t be appropriate, or inappropriate, but that ‘the innocent have nothing to fear’ which is certainly my reading of your statement, is clearly nonsense.
The reason this is inappropriate, while investigating the president in New York isn’t, is that:
1) Despite your interpretation, it seems extremely clear to me that the President was withholding aid, authorized by congress, in order to coerce this investigation.
2) Given (1) an investigation was never going to be ‘fair.’
3) Using congressionally ordered aid for personal political gain is immoral and impeachable, in my view.
Under the model you’re proposing, assuming Vice President Biden’s actions had been about his son’s job, would there have been anything wrong with them? Why?
We know 100% for certain that Hunter Biden cashed in on his father’s political position. We are less certain of the extent that his father participated in it, but there is sufficient basis for an investigation. Your disgusting hypothetical has absolutely zero basis for an investigation.
Let me see if I get this correctly. Investigating Hunter Biden’s various crooked schemes in Ukraine, China, Romania, etc,… is inappropriate, but using the state apparatus to tar a sitting president with completely made up nonsense is appropriate. Got it.
Because it’s a violation of American law. The IRS admitted wrongdoing and settled, so I think I can say that I have a pretty strong case there. I haven’t particularly complained about that one, but it actually does violate the law.
… as does what Trump has done.
@HeelBearCub
What law is violating by withholding foreign aid until anti-corruption investigations are completed?
What law is broken by withholding foreign aid until Trump receives personal gain, you mean?
Rudy Giuliani: (my emphasis)
@HBC, that may be technically correct — that Trump asking Ukraine to co-operate with Rudy Giuliani in order to help his defense against (politically motivated and false) charges being levied against him is “using his office for personal gain”. But it’s a far cry from “Trump asking Ukraine to co-operate with Rudy Giuliani in order to harm his political opponents”, and a charge based on it isn’t going anywhere in the Senate or the court of public opinion.
“You can’t use your official power to investigate defenses against charges made by other people, some of which are using their official power to attack you” is so clearly unjust that they’d probably end up engendering sympathy for Trump if they tried it.
Rudy Giuliani last May said he wanted Ukraine to investigate the Bidens because it would be “very, very helpful to [his] client”.
1. It sure looks like it to me.
2. The president was definitely involved in whatever was going on.
3. Having the president use the threat of withholding aid to benefit himself politically this way seems like a very bad thing, and one that, if Obama had done it, would have most Republicans crying foul. (Unfortunately, it would also have most Democrats explaining that it was totally normal. Tribalism is bad for intellectual integrity.)
4. What rises to the level of impeachment is a political question, and isn’t objective. In practice, I don’t think the current allegations will get enough votes to remove Trump from office, and I think both parties’ leadership knows this. That makes a lot of the impeachment process look to me like political theater, sort-of like was done with Bill Clinton. I suspect the goal is to influence the 2020 election.
+1
Right, that’s why I asked for your perspective. Irrespective of the current situation, if hypothetical president X did what is being alleged, would you think that impeachment is warranted?
If my standards were followed, Trump would be impeached and removed from office. And before him, Obama, for murdering US citizens and violating the war powers act. And before him, Bush, for war crimes and violating the written laws w.r.t. surveillance.
@Aftagley says:
Sure, I lean a bit more Left than most men I know face-to-face and I lean a bit more Right than most women I know face-to-face, I favor Affirmative Action job set asides for residents of poor neighborhoods, dislike the idea of completely open borders, think the legality of abortion should be a local issue as should the legality of guns, strongly pro-union, pro-nuclear, pro-wind, pro-solar, but also appreciate natural gas, feel pity for ‘coal country’ and want those there to have a better fate, think a better education system would mostly mean a lot more welding classes in Richmond, California.
A Pew research quiz has me as a “Disaffected Democrat”, so use that to place me on a Left/Right spectrum.
I don’t know, my guess is maybe the President and a couple of yes men, but I really don’t know.
See #1
Maybe?
I don’t know what the rules are.
Probably anything that Congress decides is a reason (i.e. getting ‘encouragement’ from an intern) is an impeachable offense if there’s enough votes.
Frankly I don’t live in The Ukraine and I just can’t will myself to care beyond what it means for who’ll administer the Federal government and when.
1. For what it’s worth, I don’t think there was a conspiracy. My best guess is that Trump and Guiliani made a lot of noise about wanting to investigate Burisma and Crowdstrike (Giuliani publicly, which reduces conspiracy), and Trump put a hold on funds and high level connections, but that no one was sure (a) if that was a deliberate effort by Trump to leverage cooperation or (b) whether it was just Trump not liking Ukraine and suspecting they were his enemies based on pro-Russian conspiracy theories. The principal support for this is that even Sondland seems unsure in his texts whether cooperation with Trump’s goals will cause Trump to unfreeze the aid.
So I vote a bunch of people (a) not telling Ukraine the money was held until it broke publicly and (b) trying to find a way to unfreeze the money, but probably not conspiring as I understand the term.
2. If there was a conspiracy, then I’d look to what Giulani was told by Trump and what he told Trump to assess whether the conspiracy reaches Trump. It’s *possible* that Trump just told Sondland or Volker that he wanted them to use the money as a lever to get a Burisma announcement, but I’m not sure.
FWIW, the announcement demand strikes me as a particular weak point in the Trump defense. IIRC, some of the witnesses said that the White House wanted an announcement to “lock in” Ukraine anti-corruption commitments, but an announcement that the Bidens are under investigation also has an obvious political value even if they aren’t guilty.
3. I think yes, improper, but some of that depends on situationally knowing that it’s Trump. IIRC, Obama tried to stay away from the detail decisions around investigating Trump specifically because it looks bad for the Chief Executive to be making decisions with an obvious political impact.
That isn’t to say that politicians don’t do lots of stuff with political effects, from giving money to projects in a particular state to picking speaking opportunities that have a clear political impact to Susan Rice deciding to unmask a great deal of the Trump investigation. But since this is the President and he’s being exceptionally Trump-ish, it looks more improper than every day incumbent decisions.
4. I wouldn’t vote to impeach based on what I know. I think “you made this decision within your discretion because it helps you politically” is a slippery slope.
Pre-registration: I’ve never voted a Republican for President, but I have for various lower offices, and I find it hard to imagine the Democrats producing a popular candidate for high office that I would vote for due given the party’s internal landscape at this time. That said, I’d be happy to be wrong about that. I tend to look at races on an individual candidate basis. All answers are based on me having kept only casual track of the current developments because the effort required to filter out the bullshit enough to get a coherent picture of what’s probably going on exceeded the amount of time and effort I was willing to dedicate to the task sometime in 2017-18 and I’ve been disengaging from the news cycle since.
1) Uncertain, but looks at least plausible.
2) IF 1 is yes, almost certainly.
3) In my opinion, yes, mostly due to threatening to withold previously voted-upon aid.
4) Uncertain. On the one hand, I suspect this is actually normal, everyday behavior that is becoming visible and remarked upon only because of the overt clumsiness of the actors and the hostility of others, and thus is something of a case of selective outrage. On the other hand, see 3, and I figure if this starts a trend of being more willing to use impeachment, that’s probably a good thing on balance. I default to my prior, which is to follow the process: So, investigate (currently in progress), push for a vote, see where it falls out.
The extent to which the Democrats attempt to milk this for political capital and/or play games rather than simply pushing for a vote will affect my opinion on 4.
Summary Time –
Thanks everyone for responding to this.
My hypothesis going into this discussion would be that after all the testimony that has been released, nearly everyone, both left and right, would be Yes on point 1 and it would drop off from there in a manner corresponding to tribal identity. This ended up not being the case – for the vast majority of respondents, if you picked Yes for question one, you were very likely to either go Yes across the board (or Yes until question four whereupon you’d say “the senate will never vote to convict.”). At the same time, if you were right leaning, you were pretty much No down the line (with the possible exception of question 3).
I was honestly surprised by these results; I expected the largest difference to be around values/culpability of whether or not the actions taken thus far amounted to an impeachable offense, not a question of whether or not the events in question had transpired. Looking back, this might have been a result of how I asked the question; if this whole situation drags on long enough for me to want to do another survey like this, I’ll likely try and as question 1 in a way that doesn’t presume guilt. Maybe something like “If you were a Ukrainian official, would you have come to the conclusion that US aid would be restricted unless you conducted an investigation into Burisma?”
I got stuck on “conspiracy,” which I interpret as an overt and secret agreement to carry out a course of action. I’m not at all sure that any two people in this farce agreed (especially secretly) to do anything, with the likely exception of Trump and Giuliani, who presumably agreed that Guiliani should do his (largely public) investigation.
If it was did Trump intend or even attempt to pressure Ukraine to announce they were investigating Burisma, I’d say probably yes.
A criminal conspiracy doesn’t require secrecy, just an agreement to break the law in the future. Although the dictionary definition of conspiracy does involve secrecy, it’s not particularly relevant. Certainly the reason for the withheld aid was kept secret from Congress.
Trump and Giuliani agreeing, and Trump then ordering (and remaining consistent in that) is all that is required. The aid was withheld, the desired Ukrainian action was communicated. Whether any of the intermediaries was in agreement with Trump’s decision is essentially irrelevant.
Yeah, I assumed the use of the word was as I defined it above, although quite possibly incorrectly.
If Aftagley has specified a criminal conspiracy under US federal law, I would have spent more time thinking about whether the agreement was to commit a crime.
Again, Giuliani is on record last May as saying he wanted Ukraine to specifically investigate the Bidens because it would be helpful to Trump. Trump then specifically urged the Ukrainian President to investigate Biden, while indicating that withheld forthcoming aid was linked to favors.
How much clearer do you need it to be?
This is the part that is distinctly unproven, and given the timeline of the critical call was before Ukraine even knew aid was withheld, pretty suspect.
The memo released by the White House:
Plenty more in the same vein from a variety of sources, including Mulvaney.
@HeelBearCub
That is not about the Biden investigation and it is disingenuous to suggest it is.
Literally one response later:
That’s all part of the same conversation where Trump is asking for a favor, Zelensky indicates that he is amenable to this, and Trump asks him to work with Barr and Giuliani and says he is going to have both Barr and Giuliani call him.
According to Vindman (the military expert on Ukraine who heard the call) there were discussions about Biden and Burisma in that section that were withheld from the white houses reconstruction of the call. In light of that, it’s not particularly disingenuous to claim that the favor Trump wanted also involved Biden.
@HeelBearCub
I am not denying they talked about Biden. But you are obscuring the actual conversation that occurred to imply the favor was investigating Biden.
It was not, it was supporting Barr’s investigation, and implying that it was talking about Biden is dishonest.
@Aftagley
Sure, if the transcript is inaccurate then there could be explicit quid pro quo not contained there, but since we don’t have such a transcript, it is fair to continue to call that “unproven”.
@EchoChaos:
It’s a segment of the conversation consisting entirely of [Here are things I would like you to do with my people] immediately after the request for a favor. This isn’t some isolated out of context snippet. It’s immediately after he asks him to talk to Rudy.
C’mon, man. This is the kind of stuff I was talking about. No sense in trying to post here when people go full ostrich.
@HeelBearCub
Don’t “c’mon man” me, please. You are the one selectively reading this.
I assume you can clearly see the part where he says “If you don’t do this then I won’t do this”?
Because that doesn’t exist in the transcript and is the only part that would be even conceivably problematic legally.
We’re both looking at the exact same transcript. You’re the one adding a “I won’t do X unless you Y” that doesn’t exist, mostly by your selective quote and assumptions.
For additional context, the Ukrainians didn’t even know that foreign aid had been suspended at this time, so they couldn’t have understood it as contingent on the investigation unless you assume facts not in evidence later.
Now, it’s possible that Trump said to some staffer “make sure the Ukrainians get the message that they don’t get aid unless they investigate Biden”. But the transcript does not support that without additional assumptions.
It looks like I may be in Paris for a week to 10 days around Christmas this year (18th-28th) What should I do while I’m there? Where should I stay? I’ve never been to France.
I’m totally fine and actually interested in taking some side trips rather than staying in Paris the whole time. E.g. taking the train to Strasbourg and spending a couple days there for the Christmas market, maybe attending a Christmas mass at the cathedral, looks nice.
I assume it’s the “off season” for tourism to a degree – how much stuff is going to be closed? Am I going to have a hard time finding food / something to do on the 25th or 26th?
What interests you?
As for Christmas, you might be able to find some places open but I’d buy food for myself. There’s a significant Muslim minority who should still be in operation, at least relatively. Some landmarks might be open, particularly parks that don’t require attendants. I’d attend mass. Mass at a Cathedral is a wonderful thing. You can also drive out into the countryside and see the picturesque farms covered in snow or something romantic.
Alternatively, you can go to Strasbourg. German Christmas traditions are a bit more communal. However, they’re also not strongly related to French ones.
For interests, I’d say primarily architectural and cultural. I’m into military and techie stuff but my girlfriend, who I will be traveling with, is less so (but she loves old buildings and interacting with other cultures).
Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean about German vs. French traditions? One of the appeals of Strasbourg to me was to get a little German flavor (literally) and the compact medieval part of the city looks really neat. The idea of a big public/communal event around Christmas is also appealing, I’ve never gone to a big foreign holiday.
Go to Straßburg. the Weinachtsmaerkte of The Germanies are wonderful things.
French tradition: distinct lack of wuerst, prezels and beer.
Medieval cities: great. (unless you’re on a road bike).
I’d visiting Paris without at least going into the Louvre once would be a huge missed opportunity. I’m one of those low-brow people who finds fine art and all that stuff terribly boring and snooty, and I still came out of my couple-hour visit there wishing I could have a whole week to spend in there.
Also, the view from Arc de Triomphe was easily up there with anything I saw in the Louvre. Highly recommended.
I preferred the Musee D’Orsay to the Louvre, but it comes down to personal taste. The Louvre cuts off at around 1820, while the Orsay resumes with the academic painters of the 19th century, the Impressionists, and so on.
I endorse both of these. I did these two things on my one day in Paris (from a week trip to London–so BTW, you can also go to London for a day trip) and also wished I had more time in the Louvre.
For leaving the Paris area, you could consider spending a day or two at Mont St. Michel. But it might be really annoying to break up your hotel stay.
For a day trip, I highly recommend doing a combination Vaux Le Vicomte/Fontainebleau bus tour. The former inspired the king to use the same designer for Versailles, while imho the latter is way better than Versailles. That said, also hit up Versailles. It may be a bit of a shadow of itself, but you should go at least once.
I highly, highly recommend getting the Paris Museum Pass. It more than pays for itself, and often allows you to skip lines. It also covers most of the important tourist sites. Things that won’t be covered that I still recommend: Sacre Coeur dome, a Paris Opera House tour, Eiffel Tower.
For public transport, consider the Navigo pass.
Look up the weekly organ concerts! People online have even put together maps where you can catch like 3-4 consecutive organ concerts on Sunday, if you hustle a bit.
Honestly, there are like a million great museums, parks, and churches you can check out, free or covered by the above pass. For my week-long trip, I had a massive spreadsheet of options, and saw a little over half of them?
Mont St Michel definitely looks awesome, though it seems like an overnight trip. I’m not super worried about switching hotels, but two or three times in one trip might be a bit much.
Part of my interests in side trips is that my girlfriend is actually staying for a couple weeks after me, as part of a university study abroad thing, and they will be doing a few of the typical Paris touristy things as part of their program. So I wanted to not make her double up too much.
Go to the Musee d’Orsay. Go to some other museums, too. Pay for the skip-the-line or timed-entry passes instead of the general “go to a bunch of museums” pass, unless you need to really economize.
+1 for the Musée d’Orsay: their art collection is sublime. Another museum I really appreciated was Arts & Métiers, with its original scientific artifacts.
Outside of Paris you could visit some WW1 or WW2 battlefields (maybe ones that saw fighting in the winter like the Ardennes for a more complete experience) if you’re into military history.
Co-sign for Arts and Metiers. It’s better than the “official” big science museum of Paris, which is more for the kids.
OH! The Musée de la musique is an absolute must. Admission comes with a free English-language audio tour.
I just returned home from visiting Paris, using it for a couple of days on each side as staging going to/from Lyon for the Open Source Summit EU.
Both times passing through I spent an entire day doing *only* “late morning to mid afternoon in Musée d’Orsay, then mid afternoon to closing at Musée de l’Orangerie, then have dinner at some tiny out of the way 5 star restaurant where the owner / waiter / host / headchef is one person and doesn’t speak any English”. This was my 3rd time and 4th time in Paris, and if possible I will make a day of repeating every time I go to Paris.
The Musée du Louvre is overwhelming, but 1) overwhelming, and 2) old, and 3) not enough of it is moving.
d’Orsay is moving. Two hours in, and your brain and eyes start getting that “running out of brain juice” feeling one gets from watching a movie marathon. But you dont want to stop.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157199580414064&set=a.437178244063&type=3&theater
It’s worth noting that for much of this artwork, photographs don’t capture the colors well enough at all. You will recognize a painting from the pictures you’ve seen of it, but looking at an image on your computer is nothing like looking at the painting under the museum lights.
Side note about Lyon: The food there is exquisite, better even than Paris (where it’s merely “amazingly good”.) Some of the people visiting Lyon on this trip reported sitting down at one of the more famous restaurants, eating until they were full, and then CONTINUING TO EAT, unable to stop until all the platters on the table were empty, because the food was just that good.
How do you find the tiny excellent places?
I know how to find well-known fancy restaurants, which are still in fact good, and I’m price-insensitive enough that I’d still like that, but I don’t know how to find the odd stuff.
I have done it with a mix of “ask my social graph for recommendations” and “looking on google map and minmaxing on walking distance and ratings, and then look for keywords”. I’ve been very lucky so far, but it does seem to work. I’ve paid just under €100 per seat, including the wine.
Agreed, Musée des Arts et Métiers is worth going to. Less so about returning to again and again, but yes for at least once.
My suggestion is to hunt down a tiny sandwich shop by the name of Chez Alain Miam Miam. It used to be in the Marche does Enfants-Rouge but I think he’s moved since I lived there to somewhere nearby in the temple/Marais. It’s a quirky delight of a man preparing (very slowly) the best sandwich I’ve ever had. Among the few things on earth I’ll happily stand in line for.
The Louvre is a nightmare, truly, but also unmissable culturally. I felt something like wabi-sabi turning the corner after seeing so much stuff in a day just to see the Hammurabi stele. I was buzzing with bliss for days. The Petite Palais feels much more intimate and hosted all my favorite exhibitions. I second everyone on the Orsay and the Arts et Metiers.
Saint-Chapelle is my must see church, and if you can get there on a sunny day it’s incomparable. My favorite place in the world is in Pere Lachaise cemetery but I have a somewhat gothic disposition.
If you like military stuff, Napoleon’s tomb at the Invalides is surrounded by the military museum.
Otherwise to me the chief pleasure of Paris is just walking the streets. And dozens of food places, but the walking keeps the calories in check.
For outside, I can recommend Chantilly, Bruges, Versailles, and Fontainebleau as outings, but I never went in winter, and I did very perfunctory “go see the pretty thing eat there and leave” trips which were all, frankly, wonderful because vacation.
The Invalides compound is great. An interesting cathedral and an extensive museum.
I studied in France for a year, so these are “student-budget” friendly. Do you speak French? I’ll note the items where this is important.
Walk; Paris is very pretty and safe. I particularly recommend going to the Eiffel Tower by walking from the opposite end of the Champ de Mars.
Go to the Comedie Francaise; a last-minute poor-seat ticket is 5 euro. See a Moliere play if possible–that was his company and his theater. Read the play beforehand unless you’re absolutely fluent in French.
Go to the 19th near Buttes-Chaumont and get couscous.
Go to Chartres; that’s an all-day trip, but well worth it.
If you have any interest in history, go to Brugge and take the Quasimodo Flanders Fields tour. It won’t be cheap, but is incredible.
Isn’t Flanders Fields Ieper/Ypres? They have a nice WWI museum as well.
Parc des Buttes Chaumont is honestly itself a good place to explore. It was my favorite of the parks, even better than the Luxembourg Gardens.
Thank you all for the suggestions!
This study claims around $76 billion of illegal activity per year is financed through payments in bitcoin:
https://freepolicybriefs.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/freepolicybrief_jan212019.pdf
This seems to me to be wrong by an order of magnitude considering:
1. The U.S. illegal drug trade is only 100 billion a year.
2. Most darknet market activity involves drugs.
3. (More speculatively) I thought darknet drug deals were only a small proportion of American drug deals, and foreign markets should be similar and not valuable enough to provide enough transactions to get anywhere near 76 billion.
I don’t know much about bitcoin so cannot comment on the methods they used to estimate the number.
In PPP terms, world GDP is about $138 trillion. US GDP is about $20 trillion. That puts the world illegal drug trade, assuming it’s evenly distributed over the global economy (it probably isn’t, but I don’t know what side of the curve the US falls on), at about $690 billion. Eleven percent of that sounds high for the fraction denominated in Bitcoin, but not absurd, and there’s Bitcoin deals in weapons, gambling, extortion, prostitution etc. to account for too.
Extortion’s probably a big piece: a lot of ransomware asks for payment in Bitcoin.
I can believe Tajik peasants smoke opium at similar rates that Americans do opiates in various forms.
It’s not at all believable that they’re using bitcoin to do it.
Tajik peasants aren’t a very big chunk of the global economy, even if we’re counting in PPP.
Is it possible that bitcoin is used for larger transactions (wholesale purchases) and then the end users pay the dealers with regular cash?
How does it count reselling?
Drugs might only have a total value of $100 billion, but if they pass through several middlemen, the total value of the transactions could be much higher. On the other hand, prices are lower at wholesale.
My impression is that a huge proportion of American drugs, at least 10%, pass through bitcoin wholesalers.
The real paper is here.
What caused the post-WWII baby boom, and where might it recur?
It ought to be one of the biggest mysteries in social science. The standard story that it was due to “the economy” ignores that the correlation between the economy and birthrates is almost always the opposite. If it’s something specific to economic growth at that particular development stage, why don’t we see it in developing countries going through a similar stage today? If it is a result of war, why wasn’t there a similar boom after World War I? There was an uptick in the fertility rate in the years after the war, but it immediately went back on its long term decline trend.
We know that, outside France and Austria, the baby boom was due to an increase in marriage, with more people marrying and them marrying at younger ages, rather than an increase in births within married couples at a given age.(See https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol38/40/38-40.pdf) Looking for areas where conditions would mimic those in the West in 1945, we should look for:
1. The economic conditions are most comparable to The U.S./Europe in the 1930s.
2. The age at first marriage is relatively high and can come down, and this, not widespread use of contraception, is the reason fertility rates are relatively low. Once couples marry they have relatively more children than married couples in the West.
3. Out-of wedlock births are low.
4. Fertility rates have been stagnant for a while.
Do these conditions apply to parts of the Arab world?
In the context of the baby boom in the United States specifically, the US was involved in WW2 for 4-5 years (declared war in Dec 1941, demobilized from large scale occupation/garrison deployments over the course of Oct 1945-Sept 1946). About 16 million Americans were in uniformed military service during WW2, about half of whom were deployed overseas when the war ended.
WW1, by comparison, was much shorter and less intense from the American point of view. The US declared war in April 1917 and demobilized between Nov 1918 and July 1919, and never mobilized to the extent we did in WW2: about 4 million men in uniform and about 2 million deployed overseas. The overall population was lower in 1917 than in 1941, but not by a factor of two (106M vs 133M, respectively).
So in the US, four times as many men were mobilized for WW2, and were mobilized for 2-3x as long, so it’s not surprising for a post-war fertility boost resulting from demobilized soldiers returning home would be something like 8-12x larger for WW2 than for WW1.
I know less about demographic trends in countries that were more heavily involved in WW1 than the US, though, so I’m not sure if there’s a gap to explain there and how to explain it if there is one.
Also: Financial stability.
There were a ton of guys in their prime returning to an under-served female population with a ton of accrued money and great job prospects.
“a ton of accrued money and great job prospects”
A lot less money and a lot worse job prospects than their children and grandchildren would enjoy.
In addition to what eric rall say, you also had several years of baby bust preceding ww2 due to the depression, so there was a lot of pent up demand for fertility.
There was a baby bust all over Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. There was no baby boom to compensate for it.
Communist governments had policies aimed at increasing fertility, which were largely discontinued after 1990.
I suppose it’s that people in Eastern Europe started having kids later. Not necessarily fewer kids… it’s just that when everyone used to have kids at 25, and then everyone switches to having kids at 35, there will be ten years without kids.
Why that change? In socialism your career options were limited, and some opportunities were decided based on “need”. Having kids as soon as possible made economical sense, because no business opportunity was lost, and being classified as having more needs was a good thing.
For example, “first I need my own place to live, then I will have kids, this is the responsible thing to do” simply didn’t make sense in socialism. Not having kids put you in the back of the queue. You had kids first; that put you in the queue before all the childless people; and then after a few years of waiting you had your own place to live.
If you were 18 in 1991 and decided to delay having kids, you are 46 now. It’s safe to say that almost everyone who decided to delay kids in 1991 already had them now, but fertility rates never recovered.
Really? Citation needed.
Randomly pick any decade in any country between 1900 and 2000.
Did the economy improve during that decade? Probably yes. Did the fertility rate fall during that decade? Also probably yes.
This is complicated because “strong economy” is an ambiguous concept. You are referring to general improvement in living standards, which is indeed mostly associated with decreasing birthrate up to a point. But those who claim that “baby boom” was due to strong economy mean something different than an increase in living standards. For example, was US economy stronger or weaker during the Great Recession than in the 60s? Living standards as measured by e.g. real median income were clearly vastly higher in 2010. But when people speak about “the economy” being strong or weak, they often actually refer to a rate of involuntary unemployment, which has a large effect on a sense of financial security of workers in general.
The flood of returning soldiers, a.k.a. available men with perceived higher-than-average social status? Contrast to today’s well-educated women and the choice of incels, deplorables, and a handful of serial monogamists.
(Tongue firmly in cheek)
Recently Trump suggested sending the military in to Mexico to help the government fight the cartels in response to the killing of 9 US citizens who were residents of Mexico. The Mexican government declined, saying they will handle it themselves and citing issues of sovereignty. Setting those aside, could sending in the US Army against the cartels actually help the situation, or is it likely to make it worse?
Going in and killing the heck out of whichever group killed those people would probably make the remaining ones more careful of their targets in the future; it wouldn’t matter if Mexico or the US did it.
But I don’t think the US can do anything against the cartels that will last unless it actually takes the territory or somehow does it in combination with making a Mexican government not corrupted by the cartels hold the territory, and I don’t see either of those as possible in the near term.
What Nybbler says. With Mexico’s permission, we could make things better for Americans in the vicinity of the border, but we can’t plausibly make things better for the Mexicans. And so Mexico isn’t going to give permission, so now either we leave it be or we recreate Libya on the American border and that doesn’t even make things better for the Americans.
I had thought that our efforts in Afghanistan resulted in a major step forward for our intelligence capacity to model and track groups and individuals.
Assuming that the Mexicans let us do it, could we identify and track the cartels through electronic eavesdropping, satellite and drone observation, etc.?
I guess that leaves the question of what you do once you know who the cartel leadership is and where they are…
They are terrorists, as bad as the likes of ISIS, and need to be removed. If the local government can’t take care of it, but the US can, then to be honest, sovereignty be damned. So many people, mostly Mexicans, are suffering because of them, and if it is pos