Open Thread 156.25 + Signal Boost For Steve Hsu

[UPDATE: As of 6/19, Professor Hsu resigned as VP of Research. He still encourages interested people to sign the petition as a general gesture of support.]

Normally this would be a hidden thread, but I wanted to signal boost this request for help by Professor Steve Hsu, vice president of research at Michigan State University. Hsu is a friend of the blog and was a guest speaker at one of our recent online meetups – some of you might also have gotten a chance to meet him at a Berkeley meetup last year. He and his blog Information Processing have also been instrumental in helping me and thousands of other people better understand genetics and neuroscience. If you’ve met him, you know he is incredibly kind, patient, and willing to go to great lengths to help improve people’s scientific understanding.

Along with all the support he’s given me personally, he’s had an amazing career. He started as a theoretical physicist publishing work on black holes and quantum information. Then he transitioned into genetics, spent a while as scientific advisor to the Beijing Genomics Institute, and helped discover genetic prediction algorithms for gallstones, melanoma, heart attacks, and other conditions. Along with his academic work, he also sounded the alarm about the coronavirus early and has been helping shape the response.

This week, some students at Michigan State are trying to cancel him. They point an interview he did on an alt-right podcast (he says he didn’t know it was alt-right), to his allowing MSU to conduct research on police shootings (which concluded, like most such research, that they are generally not racially motivated), and to his occasional discussion of the genetics of race (basically just repeating the same “variance between vs. within clusters” distinction everyone else does, see eg here). You can read the case being made against him here, although keep in mind a lot of it is distorted and taken out of context, and you can read his response here.

Professor Hsu will probably land on his feet whatever happens, but it would be a great loss for Michigan and its scientific community if he could no longer work with them; it would also have a chilling effect on other scientists who want to discuss controversial topics or engage with the public. If you support him, you can sign the petition to keep him on here. If you are a professor or other notable person, your voice could be especially helpful, but anyone is welcome to sign regardless of credentials or academic status. See here for more information. He says that time is of the essence since activists are pressuring the college to make a decision right away while everyone is still angry.

This was supposed to be a culture-war free open thread, but I guess the ship has sailed on that one, so, uh, just do your best, and I’ll delete anything that needs deleting.

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2,996 Responses to Open Thread 156.25 + Signal Boost For Steve Hsu

  1. Lambert says:

    Did Molyneux not used to be a crank? Or was he just a Rothbardian rather than all trite one?

    • Matt M says:

      He was always “weird”, even among fellow libertarians. But his primary weirdness used to be his obsession with “peaceful parenting” and his somewhat unorthodox views on children and child abuse, rather than anything particularly right-wing.

      ETA: So if that’s the podcast we’re talking about, and if it was long enough ago, I find the answer of “It wasn’t alt right when I went on it” completely and entirely plausible. Personally, I sympathize with this, because I was a big fan (to the point of having donated to, met in person, and took a photo with) Christopher Cantwell prior to his… uh… conversion… and that’s probably the #1 piece of ammunition someone could use if they were ever sufficiently motivated to get me cancelled…

      • Iago the Yerfdog says:

        You know, I don’t think I ever saw that side of him. Granted I was busy at the time being converted to a virtue ethicist by Roderick T. Long (that part stuck) and was more interested in mutualism a la Kevin Carson.

        My impression of Molyneux (EDIT: or probably Kinsella; see my other comment) at the time was that he was kind of a dick and espoused his political views in part as a justification of his being dick — an impression I’m even more convinced of these days.

      • Evan Þ says:

        From a quick web search, it looks like “peaceful parenting” is, basically, not spanking? Am I missing some other ramifications of the view?

        • Matt M says:

          Yes, but to the extreme. No physical force allowed on your kids at any time, for any reason, ever. I’m pretty sure that even something like “picking them up and carrying them out of the room when they’re throwing a fit” would be considered unacceptable. I think it’s also generally based on the premise that even when they are very young, you need to reason with them rather than just saying “go to your room” or whatever. But I never looked into it too much, so please don’t take my words as the absolute facts of the matter.

        • viVI_IViv says:

          I’ve watched a few videos where Molyneux plays a sort of off-label therapist where people call him and he diagnoses the problem with their life and gives them advice. Invariably, the problem is always that the person has been abused or neglected by their parents. And if they insist that they haven’t Molyneux gets mad at them.

          This conviced me that he’s a nutjob. But when he discusses politics he’s not particularly insane, although he’s a weird mix of libertarianism and ethno-nationalism.

          • No One In Particular says:

            Invariably, the problem is always that the person has been abused or neglected by their parents. And if they insist that they haven’t Molyneux gets mad at them.

            Reminds me of Drew Pinsky. Although without the “getting angry” part.

    • Randy M says:

      What in particular now? I listen to him time to time, but usually just the call in shows lately. I find discussions on podcasts more interesting that the single person monologuing format.

      I don’t always agree with his advice, but it is a useful perspective as a parent.

      edit: Oh, I missed the connection to Hsu. There has been a right-ward shift (edit: or maybe just in focus) since ’16, but not so much that he should be radioactive by association.

      Molyneux was not a controversial figure in 2017, although he has since become one

      Note that this can be true without saying anything about Molyneux.

      • Lambert says:

        I was drawn in till he said along the lines of ‘bitcoin will be great. It’s deflationary. Look at ccomputers, which are getting cheaper. Everything will be like computers once we all use bitcoin.’

        • Matthias says:

          Though funny enough, deflation isn’t actually a problem.

          Economically, you want a stable nominal gdp. Because nominal spending is what wages etc are paid out of.

          If productivity goes up enough to cause deflation while keeping ngdp stable, that’s even better.

          The bad reputation of deflation comes from often being encountered at the same time as a collapsing nominal GDP in the wild.

          George Selgin’s book Less Than Zero (freely available online and recently released with an introduction by Scott Sumner) lays out the case in more detail.

          Though in some sort of cosmic irony, the mechanisms to stabilise nominal GDP on bitcoin or even just a gold standard requires lots and lots of fractional reserve banking. (More details in George Selgin’s book.)

          Good luck finding a bitcoin fanatic in favour of fractional reserve banking.

    • Anonymous Bosch says:

      Molyneux was always a crank, and while he was a straight-up Rothbardian in the 00s, he was definitely well into the alt-right by 2017. I don’t think appearing on a podcast is necessarily grounds for summary cancellation but if that’s what Hsu is selling I’m not buying.

      • albatross11 says:

        “You allowed yourself to be interviewed by a bad person therefore you’re bad” is not a standard anyone on Earth consistently applies to their friends, only to their enemies. Nor the even dumber version, “You allowed yourself to be interviewed by a person who has interviewed bad people, therefore you’re bad.”

        • gleamingecho says:

          “You allowed yourself to be interviewed by a bad person therefore you’re bad” is not a standard anyone on Earth consistently applies to their friends, only to their enemies. Nor the even dumber version, “You allowed yourself to be interviewed by a person who has interviewed bad people, therefore you’re bad.”

          Well said. Like I’ve been saying for a while now, instead of “actions speak louder than words,” the cancel culture’s mantra is “the words of people with whom we want to associate you speak louder (about you) than your own words, which in turn speak louder (about you) than your own actions.”

          • gleamingecho says:

            @ Anonymous Bosch’s “awfully silly of me…” comment and those following:

            My “well said” comment was not aimed at you but at the general sense among many participants in the cancel culture that interacting with people with yucky ideas makes one yucky by association.

            I would echo the sentiments expressed in Albatross’s “First, I was trying to summarize a line of argument I’ve seen, not your comment in particular” comment.

            Cheers.

            June 17, 2020 at 7:18 am ~new~

          • noyann says:

            June 17, 2020 at 7:18 am {tilde}new{tilde}

            Does the server hiccup and include a {start time of writing this comment or something} line into random posts now and then recently?

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            No, it was a poster making a mistake when cut-and-pasting someone else’s comment to respond to. We all make mistakes.

            Maybe the software should disallow people from posting “~ n e w ~”, but people don’t make this mistake often.

        • Anonymous Bosch says:

          “You allowed yourself to be interviewed by a bad person therefore you’re bad” is not a standard anyone on Earth consistently applies to their friends, only to their enemies. Nor the even dumber version, “You allowed yourself to be interviewed by a person who has interviewed bad people, therefore you’re bad.”

          Awfully silly of me for thinking that explicitly saying this isn’t my logic would be enough to stop people from trying to dunk on it.

          My point is simply that it’s not credible to say that Molyneux didn’t become an alt-righty until after 2017. If you’re reading subtext behind this point based on its apperance and context, well, congratulations, you’ve successfully illustrated why it’s a bad idea* for Hsu to be casually commenting about racial differences on Molyneux’s podcast.

          *also a narrower claim than some Manichaean idea of “badness” as intrinsic character

          • AliceToBob says:

            @Anonymous Bosch

            I don’t think appearing on a podcast is necessarily grounds for summary cancellation but…

            Awfully silly of me for thinking that explicitly saying this isn’t my logic would be enough to stop people from trying to dunk on it.

            In my opinion, you’re inviting misunderstanding with that phrasing.

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            In my opinion, you’re inviting misunderstanding with that phrasing.

            To the extent I’m “inviting misunderstanding” by people willing to truncate mid-sentence, I think I’ll live with it.

          • Spookykou says:

            I don’t think they truncated your sentence to try and misrepresent you, the ‘not necessarily’ reads like ‘not always but sometimes this is okay’ which is in contrast to your second quote ‘I explicitly said this is not okay’.

            My reading was that in this instance you did not think that being interviewed by someone was grounds for calling that person a bad person, but that you are open to that idea, and in this instance you don’t buy the “I didn’t know he was bad” defense from Hsu specifically.

            I think the large seabird is objecting to the idea that it is ever okay to call someone bad for being interviewed by someone bad, which is the same misunderstanding I got from reading your post, and apparently a few others.

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            Just about done entertaining Isolated Concerns About How My Comments Might Be Received By Readers Despite Their Literal Content Being Quite Modest from readers of the Slate Star Codex blog. If no one else has anything I think I’m gonna call it a thread.

          • 10240 says:

            @Anonymous Bosch Just a note: while I noticed the ‘not necessarily‘ part of your comment myself, I think the commenters who pounced and assumed that you’d implied that it’d been definitely wrong for Hsu to appear on the interview were off the mark.

          • ManyCookies says:

            Fwiw I thought Bosch’s post was clear, in that he narrowly objects to the “2017 Moly wasn’t alt-righty” claim while punting on the broader question. “Was 2017 Moly alt-righty” is a much quicker post than “Was appearing on 2017 Moly bad form”.

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            To be as explicit as possible:

            I don’t think it’s automatically bad (as in a bad idea) for people to appear on alt-right platforms as long as those platforms are used to explicitly challenge those beliefs in proportion to (1) how shitty the alt-right guy is (2) the topic covering an area of genuine disagreement.

            I think this appearance was a bad idea. The 50 seconds of throat-clearing and asterisking Hsu posted in his defense fails to qualify proportionally to how shitty Molyneux is (and was, I couldn’t stand the guy after 2015 or so) on typical alt-right grossly-weak-man-tier hereditarianism in general. The charitable interpretation at this point is that Hsu wasn’t aware of this. And while I didn’t watch the full podcast, I caught way more than 50 seconds worth of jocular common ground, which would be the primary takeaway of his listeners. “This prestigious scientist mostly agrees with us!”

            That this was a bad idea doesn’t mean I buy into some dumbass theory of whether Hsu is “a bad person” nor am I applying some hypothetical hypocrisy that depends on me divining “good people” from “bad people.” Even someone as odious as Molyneux is right on some issues; by all means go on his show to have a bash at intellectual property!

            I don’t think Hsu pretending that Molyneux only broke bad (in terms of having bad opinions, smart guys) after 2018 speaks well of him, although it’s still consistent with the charitable “ignorant” interpretation.

            On balance I am hesitant (read: genuinely conflicted but biased against) to cancel him solely on this. Most of the rest of the complaints are marginal and overstated. I’d feel as strongly as Scott does if he was admitting partial error instead of fully doubling down. Remember, it’s about degree. The majority of dumb points made by the Twitter thread don’t negate the good ones. (Insert Stannis GIF here.)

          • No One In Particular says:

            Awfully silly of me for thinking that explicitly saying this isn’t my logic would be enough to stop people from trying to dunk on it.

            “One particular person has disavowed this argument, so no criticism of the argument should be presented”. Yes, that is quite silly.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            @No One In Particular
            I would be quite surprised if “you allowed yourself to be interviewed by a bad person therefore you’re bad” is a belief held by any readers of the SSC comments section. Do you disagree? If you don’t, what exactly is the point of criticising it?

          • albatross11 says:

            Anonymous Bosch:

            First, I was trying to summarize a line of argument I’ve seen, not your comment in particular.

            Second, to clarify *my* position: I think having public discussions with people with whom you have profound disagreements is valuable, and I don’t think it should be punished, even if Molynoux is a complete tool[1]. I think it would be okay if Hsu had public conversations with a repesentative from the Nation of Islam or the government of Saudi Arabia or an overt white-nationalist (I’m not sure if Molynoux qualifies or not) or with a genuine modern-day Maoist or Stalinist, or with an antinatalist. It’s not just that I think it’s a forgivable misstep not to have done a background check on the guy whose podcast you’re appearing on, I don’t think there’s something wicked about having conversations with people I think are bad people with bad ideas.

            This seems like some radical statement right now, and yet, mainstream politicians and media personalities have had pleasant and amiable conversations with folks like Henry Kissinger and John Yoo. When the “crime” that besmirches all who speak with you is having yucky ideas, it seems like people somehow take it a lot more seriously than when the “crime” is actual crimes against humanity. This seems nuts to me. But I don’t want to penalize people for talking to those guys, either, I just want to be clear that you’re not tainted for having actual discussions with people with bad ideas.

            [1] I’m not too familiar with Molynoux–what little I’ve seen hasn’t impressed me. But for reasons which should be obvious, this isn’t actually a big deal to me.

          • Lambert says:

            +1 on being allowed to appear alongside bad people.

            If the threat of cancellation means that no moderates can interview with the far right, who’s there to advocate for a moderate viewpoint?

          • zero says:

            If you think no one can be convinced, then all the moderates are doing is making it seem like the extremists are actually within the Overton Window.

            Of course, if you think no one can be convinced, I have no idea what your endgame is. Probably nothing good, no matter what your intentions are.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @Spookykou

            I don’t think they truncated your sentence to try and misrepresent you, the ‘not necessarily’ reads like ‘not always but sometimes this is okay’ which is in contrast to your second quote ‘I explicitly said this is not okay’.

            Yes, that’s what I intended (not attempting to misrepresent).

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          It’s cooties.

      • baconbits9 says:

        I I listened to Molyneux sometime in the 2006-2008 range and at first I was really drawn in, and after a dozen or so of his podcasts (iirc he was recording them daily in his car during a commute) he suddenly seemed like a crank/hack to me. I can’t quite recall what it was but I want to say he kept resting a bunch of his (really strongly held) opinions on anecdotes.

    • Iago the Yerfdog says:

      EDIT: NOPE SORRY THIS WAS STEFAN KINSELLA. MY BAD.

      Most of adecade ago, Molyneux was (EDIT: as far as I could tell at the time) a fairly standard anarcho-capitalist known (by a fairly small group of people) for his passionate anti-intellectual-property views. Around the time Trump got elected he recanted much or all of that and dedicated himself to the culture war.

      • Matt M says:

        for his passionate anti-intellectual-property views

        Are you sure you aren’t confusing him with Stefan Kinsella? It’s a common mistake as they’re both bald and named Stefan… but Kinsella is the main “anti-IP guy” to the extent of having written the book on it, AFAIK…

        • Iago the Yerfdog says:

          You know, I think I am. Dang.

          I still think Molyneux popped by the circles I was in back then from time to time, and I think they left the same impression on me vis being a dick, so I’m sure that didn’t help my confusion.

          EDIT: Remind me: which one ran the C4SS (Center for a Stateless Society)?

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            C4SS is Carson and the mutualist left-libertarians, but they hate IP just as much as the Mises right-libertarians

          • Iago the Yerfdog says:

            @Anonymous Bosch

            Man, my memory sucks.

          • Matt M says:

            For what it’s worth, I travel in a lot of the same circles as both of them, and do find them both to be “kind of a dick.” (Moly has more objectionable views, but Kinsella is more nasty towards people who disagree with his)

          • Martin says:

            @Iago the Yerfdog

            which one ran the C4SS (Center for a Stateless Society)?

            Stephan Kinsella was on the advisory board of the C4SS.

          • Martin says:

            @Anonymous Bosch

            C4SS is Carson and the mutualist left-libertarians, but they hate IP just as much as the Mises right-libertarians

            Not justs mutalists. E.g. Roderick Long and Sheldon Richman are not mutualists, more like ancaps although they don’t like to call themselves that.

        • LadyJane says:

          Molyneux is a laughing stock in modern libertarian circles. Maybe back in 2008 he was still considered a libertarian activist first and foremost, but by 2017, most other libertarians had definitely started distancing themselves from him already due to his support for Trump and his socially conservative/ethno-nationalist views. I don’t know if he ever formally renounced libertarianism like Cantwell did, and he might even still support anarcho-capitalist economic views (or he might have completely changed his stance on that, I have no idea), but very few libertarians would still consider him to be one of them. The only time I even see him mentioned in libertarian groups anymore is when people post egg memes making fun of his bizarre and creepy obsession with women’s fertility.

          Stephan Kinsella is a fairly controversial figure within the liberty movement too, but far less so. A lot of libertarians dislike or disagree with him, but they don’t consider him anathema or claim that he’s not a real libertarian at all like they do with Molyneux. I honestly don’t know enough about him or his views to have a strong opinion on them myself, beyond the fact that 1. he’s associated with the Mises Institute (which I have a generally negative opinion of) and 2. the whole concept of “argumentation ethics” (the bizarre and convoluted meta-ethical system he espouses) seems absolutely nonsensical to me.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            Stephan Kinsella is a fairly controversial figure within the liberty movement too, but far less so. A lot of libertarians dislike or disagree with him, but they don’t consider him anathema or claim that he’s not a real libertarian at all like they do with Molyneux.

            Wait, now I’m confused. Is the state of being a libertarian defined by belief in minimal government/any government at all is incompatible with the terminal value liberty, or by who loves ya?

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            It seemed a fairly straightforward confirmation of Matt M’s post above that Kinsella is “controversial” due to being a kind of a dick, not because people believe he’s no longer libertarian like Molyneux.

          • teageegeepea says:

            Kinsella’s take on argumentation ethics seems to be inspired by Hans Herman Hoppe, who studied under Habermas and used that “continental philosophy” approach as a justification for both libertarianism and things in the vein of ethnonationalism (which is quite a contrast to the cosmopolitan analytic philosophy of Mises). I don’t know of Kinsella actually endorsing the same things as Hoppe though.

          • Martin says:

            @teageegeepea

            Hans Herman Hoppe, who studied under Habermas and used that “continental philosophy” approach as a justification for both libertarianism and things in the vein of ethnonationalism

            Hoppe uses argumentation ethics as a justification of libertarianism, but not, AFAIK, for his “things in the vein of ethnonationalism”, for which he has other arguments.

  2. JohnBuridan says:

    I recommend his podcast with Corey Washington called Manifold. (Are podcasts supposed to be italicized?)

    • Well... says:

      The names of TV shows are supposed to be put in quotes but not italics. I’m not sure how you format the titles of individual episodes. But if I were going to guess I’d say whatever format they use for TV is what you’re supposed to use for podcasts.

  3. samboy says:

    You know, this is the second time this week I am seeing the cancel culture mob (which I refuse to call “leftist”, being left-of-center myself) trying to cancel someone for pointing out legitimate peer-reviewed scientific research. They were able to get David Shor cancelled for linking to peer-reviewed research on Twitter just last week: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-tom-cotton-new-york-times-james-bennet.html

    • Aftagley says:

      I think we all already had this fight in the last fractional thread, but that one was more understandable.

    • ChelOfTheSea says:

      Cancel culture aside, he seems to be just wrong, because Biden is absolutely trouncing Trump at the moment, and approval of BLM is up somewhere between five and ten points in recent weeks depending on the poll. Note that I say that as someone whose prior was that violence would probably damage the movement after George Floyd’s death and who has been very surprised by the overwhelming success of the protests/riots.

      • samboy says:

        I think the people who were able to get David Shor fired would had made a much more compelling argument if they argued what you just argued.

        David Shor did not advocate for anything that Martin Luther King would not had supported under the same circumstances. Indeed, he made the same point MLK’s daughter made in response to the George Floyd riots: “The only way to get constructive change Is through nonviolent means”

        The protesters agreed with Shor, because they calmed down pretty quickly after the initial looting and riots (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/us/george-floyd-video-autopsy-protests.html )

        • Simon_Jester says:

          Hypothesis: Much of the looting was done by unrelated opportunists taking advantage of the confusion.

          Consider. If I were a thief, I know I’d be interested in doing my break-ins of local stores at a time when just about every cop in a thirty mile radius was eyeball-to-eyeball with big distracting crowds holding “FUCK THE POLICE” signs.

          On the other hand, once my immediate needs for cash and luxury goods were satisfied, I’d probably STOP looting stores, because the heat has been turned up on the protestors and nobody likes the smell of tear gas.

          If a small population of opportunistic criminals took the first days of the protests as a chance to loot local stores, but then relaxed after having enriched themselves and not wanting to take further risk, it would help to explain the pattern we’ve seen with respect to the looting correlated with the protests.

          • albatross11 says:

            This is my model of things, too. I’m sure there’s *some* overlap, but realistically, most of the people looting were thinking “Say, the whole police department is engaged in facing off with the protesters downtown. So who’s watching this store full of TVs over here?”

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            I’m highly confident that the protestors are nearly completely distinct from the looters and violent rioters.

            But lots of people get angry with that, and want to defend the violent rioters, and say that wanting anything done with the violent people means you want the peaceful protestors beaten by cops.

            I still think they are separate groups, but a lot of liberal institutions are trying to shake my confidence in that, and I can’t think of any charitable reasons.

          • Matt M says:

            So, in this model, the answer to the question “Why is there never any looting or arson at right-wing protests?” would be “Because right-wing protests have simply never been large/popular to reach a critical mass required to sufficiently distract the police to enable looting and arson to take place without fear of consequence?”

            Like, if right-wingers could turn out a large enough crowd, the same element of presumably non-partisan looters and arsonists would then turn out and behave similarly as to how they are behaving in these protests?

          • Aftagley says:

            @Matt M

            That seems entirely correct to me.

          • Matt M says:

            I’m not sure I agree, but the logic is sound and the explanation is at least plausible, which is more than I can say for a lot of other arguments I’ve been hearing lately…

          • Jaskologist says:

            I don’t have numbers, but the Tea Party protests and the yearly March for Life are plenty big. For that matter, so was the Million Man March. DC gets lots of large gatherings.

          • ana53294 says:

            Wouldn’t the guys with guns who don’t want to be associated with looters stop looters from using them as cover?

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            In many cases the looting took place in a different part of town from the bulk of the protests, which probably has just as much to do with the shift in police presence.

          • gbdub says:

            Looters and protesters do seem to be distinct. Protesters and rioters are much harder to distinguish, and there are a lot more who might be one today and the other tomorrow.

          • albatross11 says:

            Matt M:

            I suspect this is partly correct. But I also think rioting and looting are largely a co-ordination game (in the game theory sense). You want to loot and burn, I want to loot and burn, so does Conrad and Simon. But each of us knows that if we just go out and loot and burn things alone, the police will surely catch us and put us in jail. So we want to wait until some social signal that tells us that lots of people are going out to do some looting and burning. Once each of us knows that lots of others are doing that, we’re pretty safe from the police.

            Locusts use prime-number-of-years gestation periods to accomplish this goal, but looters can use TV coverage of protests/riots/looting and even of events that often precipitate such things.

          • Simon_Jester says:

            @Edward Scizorhands

            There are a considerable number of people using “I disapprove of the rioters and looters” as a convenient code phrase for “and this is why I oppose the protests, even though I would look really stupid coming out in favor of police brutality.”

            This is a recurring pattern: because these protests are always accompanied by at least SOME looters, every protest can then be dismissed using the argument “but there were looters,” regardless of the actual beliefs of the supermajority of protestors who are not looters.

            The perception arises that the attempt to shift the discussion to being primarily about the looters is in some ways a deliberate attempt to draw attention away from the subject of police brutality- that it is, in short, a kind of rhetorical trap.

            And one way out of the trap is to say “I don’t specifically approve of the looters but I refuse to condemn them anymore, because this has become a weird ritual I perform as part of you delegitimizing my last several protests.

            More generally, democratic institutions exist to make revolution superfluous by permitting the general public to change institutions they don’t like. The ability of democracy to restrain police abuses has been unreliable and shaky in recent years. As a result, you start seeing a more revolutionary sort of protestor.

            In general, when there exists a problem that hurts the masses more than the elite, if the elite doesn’t want riots or other destruction, they have to at least throw the masses a bone here and there. American policing has neglected to do this, and now we’re seeing the predictable results.

            @Jaskologist

            National protests converging on Washington D.C. tend not to lead to rioting and looting, regardless of whether they are left-wing or right-wing. This is because they tend to be more carefully planned events and the security is handled in a practiced, orderly manner.

            Furthermore, the various local and federal police in D.C. usually don’t try to brutally crack down on the protest march because then they literally piss off the entire nation at the same time- see for reference what happened to Hoover’s reputation after the crushing of the Bonus Army.

            Most of the recent protests were at least semi-local: those who lived in New York and wished to protest police brutality did so in New York, and those in Seattle did so in Seattle. But there was no mass organized movement of protestors descending on any one city in America, and indeed there was no prior event planning of any kind for obvious reasons.

            You get a lot more looting opportunists in an unregistered, unorganized, spontaneous upwelling of protest sentiment than you do in a carefully policed, heavily organized, tightly synchronized demonstration planned months in advance.

          • Matt M says:

            This is a recurring pattern: because these protests are always accompanied by at least SOME looters

            To my point above… these protests are always accompanied by looters, but not all protests are.

            Specifically, I’m not aware of any right-wing protest within the last 20 years that was accompanied by looting. Not one. Not the tea party. Not the anti-lockdown protests. Not even Charlottesville (and that’s hard to even count, because I’m quite sure that in terms of boots on the ground, the left ended up significantly outnumbering the right there).

          • J Mann says:

            @Simon

            There are a considerable number of people using “I disapprove of the rioters and looters” as a convenient code phrase for “and this is why I oppose the protests, even though I would look really stupid coming out in favor of police brutality.”

            That’s pretty uncharitable, although I guess it depends on what you understand a “considerable number” to be.

            My reading of the protests and violence is that the first few nights, there was considerable violence – cars and buildings set on fire, mobbed, bricks and molotov cocktails thrown at cops, etc.

            My guess on why the violence occurred was a combination of (a) some people were really mad about police brutality and (b) some people thought that in a lawless environment, they could get away with it. (With some overlap, of course.)

            There were certainly people on the left affirmatively defending violent protest in those first few days, as well as some denying the protests were violent.

            Then after a few days, the protests got more organized, and (IMHO) the perception that violence was discrediting the movement encouraged protestors to self-police when someone started throwing bricks or smashing windows. IMHO, that was a good result, and now I support the protests much more than I did when there was more violence.

          • rumham says:

            @Edward Scizorhands

            I’m highly confident that the protestors are nearly completely distinct from the looters and violent rioters.

            Not so sure about the rioters. I’ve seen too many videos of people shouting “Get him” and directing assaults seconds after chanting. I’ll give you looters, as those often occur away from the protests.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            “Not to pile on,” he says, piling on, but:

            This is a recurring pattern: because these protests are always accompanied by at least SOME looters, every protest can then be dismissed using the argument “but there were looters,” regardless of the actual beliefs of the supermajority of protestors who are not looters.

            If there were looters around a right-wing protest, the right-wingers would not only not make excuses for the looters, but would stop and ask the cops, “y’all need any help with this?”

            ETA: I have seen videos of peaceful BLM protestors attempting to stop looters, though, and I commend them.

          • Dan L says:

            @ Matt M:

            To my point above… these protests are always accompanied by looters, but not all protests are.

            Specifically, I’m not aware of any right-wing protest within the last 20 years that was accompanied by looting. Not one. Not the tea party. Not the anti-lockdown protests. Not even Charlottesville (and that’s hard to even count, because I’m quite sure that in terms of boots on the ground, the left ended up significantly outnumbering the right there).

            Are you looking to understand looting on an individual level, as a phenomenon that accompanies mass actions like protests or riots, or are you looking to dunk on the outgroup?

            It’s trivial to find individual looters that are right-wing on a personal level. Likewise for looting at movements that might be considered right-wing outside the US. Likewise for events more than 20 years ago.

            Don’t be coy – what question are you really asking?

          • SamChevre says:

            I would agree that most of the looting was done by people only vaguely if at all connected to the protests.

            But I don’t think that’s true for the “violent protestors” AKA rioters – the people who set a city bus on fire, vandalized the statues on Monument Avenue, and set the UDC building on fire were so far as I can see part of the protest group, not opportunistic unrelated criminals.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            And one way out of the trap is to say “I don’t specifically approve of the looters but I refuse to condemn them anymore, because this has become a weird ritual I perform as part of you delegitimizing my last several protests.

            See, this is where your shell game totally breaks down.

            We’re not talking about people who merely declined to condemn looters.

            We are talking about people who (a) actively approved of the looters (nearly always white liberals who aren’t living in the areas being looted) and (b) decided that anyone talking bad about the looters was doing bad things.

            This isn’t merely deciding the game is unfair and sitting it out.

          • Aftagley says:

            We are talking about people who (a) actively approved of the looters (nearly always white liberals who aren’t living in the areas being looted) and (b) decided that anyone talking bad about the looters was doing bad things.

            Being charitable, I think your biases are blinding you here. Basically no one is pro-looting. What people were against was the right-wing push to completely define the protests as being orgies of rioting and looting.

            I’m sure you can find some examples of weirdos saying unfortunately positive things about it, but they’re an irrelevantly small minority and don’t really have any bearing on the larger conversational picture.

            Yes, they’ll stand out as being particularly egregious… but they just don’t matter.

          • AG says:

            The police don’t show up in nearly as much force for right wing protests, which means more of them are available to the usual patrols deterring looters.

          • INH5 says:

            So, in this model, the answer to the question “Why is there never any looting or arson at right-wing protests?” would be “Because right-wing protests have simply never been large/popular to reach a critical mass required to sufficiently distract the police to enable looting and arson to take place without fear of consequence?”

            I would expand on this that the reason why this tends to be the case is because right-wingers disproportionately live in places with a low population density. Short-notice protests usually can’t draw large crowds because there just aren’t enough activist types concentrated in any one place, and if they want to bring a lot of people to protest in a particular area they have to plan it in advance, which gives the police time to prepare.

          • Dan L says:

            @ INH5:

            Addressing the causes of looting, I’d borrow from D’Arcy’s terminology and describe this kind of mass looting as an acquisitive riot, as opposed to a populist riot or an authoritarian riot. Riots of all kind essentially require both population density and a coordinated awareness of the breakdown of law and order, and once the basic prerequisites are met the riot can take on and shift between forms.

          • SamChevre says:

            @Aftagley
            What people were against was the right-wing push to completely define the protests as being orgies of rioting and looting.

            I’m sure you can find some examples of weirdos saying unfortunately positive things about it…

            That’s not what I’m seeing on my social media (which is admittedly a bubble)–I’m seeing this kind of picture all over the place, with no condemnation. I’m seeing lots of governments granting the demands of the rioting vandals.

          • Matt M says:

            Short-notice protests usually can’t draw large crowds because there just aren’t enough activist types concentrated in any one place, and if they want to bring a lot of people to protest in a particular area they have to plan it in advance, which gives the police time to prepare.

            Indeed. And this is what happened in Charlottesville. It was organized so far in advance that there was sufficient time for:

            Very far right groups to announce they were attending.
            Not as far right groups to announce that they disavowed and weren’t attending (to avoid being associated with the very far right groups)
            Far left protest types to organize an (even larger) counter demonstration
            Not as far left government types to attempt to have the whole thing declared unlawful and shut down (this was not initially successful, but they just waited until the day of and then did it anyway)

            Ironically enough, some of the most culturally memorable stuff to occur in Charlottesville actually happened the night before the protest was scheduled… at a time when there was in fact a critical mass of right-wingers present such that they could pull off an impromptu demonstration and their opponents (both the police and counter-demonstrators) were unprepared to immediately respond. This is what produced the tiki torch march, the “you will not replace us” chant, and the infamous photo of Chris Cantwell pepper spraying some dude in the face.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            Being charitable, I think your biases are blinding you here. Basically no one is pro-looting. What people were against was the right-wing push to completely define the protests as being orgies of rioting and looting.

            Then they should have done that. If you want to fight against the conservatives muddling the two groups, fight against that by making sure the two groups are distinct.

            And I saw lots of people — including me — pointing out the distinction. I’m pretty sure I linked videos here of protestors turning on (often white) people grabbing shit and defacing property. Because whatever else is going on, black people, like everyone else, don’t want to destroy their home towns. That’s been my hypothesis from the start and it’s worked out pretty well.

            But lots of the liberal defense was “no, no, looting is okay.”

            https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/blm-looting-protest-vandalism/

            https://time.com/5851111/protests-looting/

            https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/06/why-property-destruction-isnt-violence

            https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/05/9842857/minneapolis-riots-protests-looting-media-reaction

            https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/looting-protest-punishment-care-and-feeding.html

            Can you at least notice the motte-and-bailey SJ is doing? The motte is “we are just done answering for the looters,” which is of course acceptable to me: you aren’t responsible for others’ behavior. But his bailey is “it’s okay to burn the people who are accurately reporting scholarly research that violent protest doesn’t work.” That’s the bullshit.

          • Aftagley says:

            @Matt M

            I agree with you. It’s totally possible to prepare for a large protest if given enough time and warning, it’s more difficult to do so on the fly. That being said,

            “you will not replace us”

            I remember that chant slightly differently.

            @Edward Scizorhands

            Of the five articles you linked, only one is an affirmative defense of looting (Come on The Nation, that’s a bad take). The rest are primarily analysis and commentaries of the meta narrative and the left’s frustration with having the entire movement framed the worst actions of a small minority that stopped happening pretty quickly. That last one from Slate seemed somewhat unrelated: I don’t think anyone should support trying to get their kids arrested.

            But his bailey is “it’s okay to burn the people who are accurately reporting scholarly research that violent protest doesn’t work.” That’s the bullshit.

            I honestly don’t see the motte/bailey. I see that people who support the protests don’t want the surrounding narrative of them to focus on an uncontrollable minority but of the overwhelmingly peaceful majority. I see them expressing their anger when people on the right make this claim and I see them expressing their anger when people on the left make this claim.

            @Sam Chevre

            That’s not what I’m seeing on my social media (which is admittedly a bubble)–I’m seeing this kind of picture all over the place, with no condemnation.

            I’m really conflicted about this. I don’t see that kind of grafitti as violence or anything deserving of condemnation; my personal opinion is that if people are imposing that statue on the populace, the populace can impose their opinions on the statue.

            That being said, I can model your point of view and understand why it would upset someone. I don’t really know of a good way forward here. If those kinds of images upset you, I’m legitimately sorry.

          • SamChevre says:

            @Aftagley

            It’s not (primarily) that the images upset me–it’s that I perceive a huge double standard.

            If several thousand people marched to the historic synagogue near me, graffitied it with swastikas, and set it on fire, I cannot imagine that the news coverage would describe this as a peaceful protest. I’d like the same tone in the reporting on these protests to the extent that they are doing similar things. (I don’t expect it–I perceive the media to be extraordinarily partisan–but I’d like it.)

            And if there was a picture of identifiable people in front of the destruction the next day, wearing brown armbands and posing for pictures, I would expect that they’d be charged with a crime of some sort.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            Aftagley,

            My bad: I got the subthreads confused. Over in another thread I brought up Current Affairs Nathan Robinson has been saying that academically rigorous research was bad because Republicans might misuse it, and that got compared to a geocentrist professor.

          • Aftagley says:

            Hmm, I might be tired of being asked to condemn the protests, but I don’t think I’ll ever run out of energy to condemn Nathan Robinson.

          • B_Epstein says:

            Ummm so, like, the current peaceful protests totally vandalized synagogues. This is not a hypothetical.

            I still wait for all the right-minded folk to explain how no decent person would seriously talk about this as connected to the protests – and how bringing it up has to be disingenuous. Also, these are of course right-wing extremists trying to stir up provocations.

          • albatross11 says:

            B Epstein:

            Well, since I’ve spent the whole rest of the thread arguing against guilt by association, I’ll just say: no guilt by association. Catch the idiots who vandalized/burned the synogogue and put them into jail if you can, but don’t blame the grandma out there singing hymns with her “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt for the actions of those idiots.

          • samboy says:

            “I’m sure you can find some examples of weirdos saying unfortunately positive things about [the riots]”

            Ironically, or maybe not, the guy who appears to be leading the cancel culture mob to demote/fire Stephen Hsu has said positive things about the riots and fires. He tweeted “Seeing banks and monuments to white supremacy burn is the proudest I’ve been of America in a long time” over at https://twitter.com/itsbirdemic/status/1266972132401205250

            I read a lot of his tweets to dig that whopper up, and it’s a lot of low on the horseshoe stuff like Biden’s far too moderate, we should completely abolish the police, etc.

          • J Mann says:

            @Aftagley

            FWIW, I am not at all confident in how violent the protests are, with the exception of your reports, and the caveat that you aren’t everywhere.

            Once it became a firing offence to suggest that the protests are violent, the value of any additional information drops significantly, IMHO.

            CHAZ/CHOP is an example – Fox and a few of the local media are reporting that local businesses and residents are being hit by protection shakedowns but are afraid to complaint publicly for fear of cancellation or violence, and Vox and the national media are reporting that that’s absurd and its mostly drum circles, community gardens, and humorous tales of good natured folks happily trying to organize a just society. Who’s right? I honestly have no idea, but in a world where a twitter mob will come after any person who (a) lives or works near Broadway and (b) suggests CHAZ is maybe not great, I tend to suspect that the news is slanted in the direction the mob wants, and that people aren’t getting accurate information.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            I initially bought into “the businesses are being extorted” line, but found out there was nobody willing to say so, either on-the-record or off-the-record.

            Now, it’s perfectly conceivable that those businesses remain afraid to speak, and don’t trust the media (for very good reasons) to keep off-the-record things off-the-record. And it might take until this whole thing is over to get that and get an affirmative report. But, until we get someone saying so, I’m going to remain a skeptic, having already been fooled once.

          • J Mann says:

            I’m not sure they’re being extorted, but I am pretty sure they’d be boycotted and called out for saying they’re being extorted, so that’s why I’m stuck.

            Agreed that if they won’t say they’re being extorted off the record to a trustworthy reporter, that’s evidence that they’re not, but as a consumer of news, I’d be happier in a world where it would be safe for people to say so.

  4. DS says:

    Hsu doesn’t acknowledge why “biology of race and sex difference” research makes people nervous? That’s evidence he shouldn’t be in charge of reviewing discrimination complaints. But it’s not evidence against his being a research director!

    “If bad guys might abuse it, we shouldn’t study it” – I hate that argument.

    I hate it when it’s an argument from the right wing against STD vaccines or gun violence research. I hate it when it’s from the left against precision weapons or sex biology research.

    It’s selfish and self-defeating and destructive, all three.

    • Anonymous Bosch says:

      Hsu doesn’t acknowledge why “biology of race and sex difference” research makes people nervous? That’s evidence he shouldn’t be in charge of reviewing discrimination complaints. But it’s not evidence against his being a research director!

      Yeah, perusing the bill of particulars and taking some random skims from his blog, this is probably my take too. There’s a few things that make me raise my eyebrow and a lot of things that make me roll my eyes, and I think he’s definitely laying it on a little thick with the “I’m just a scientist laying down uncontroversial science y u mad tho” (which probably explains his popularity around these parts).

      But the complaint is larded with way more dumb shit like “believes in biological differences between populations” or confusing his description of something with advocacy of it in multiple links. Directing research money to a guy who reached an unpopular conclusion isn’t evidence of anything! So unless there’s something further here, like testimony that he casually drops hot racial takes in class and asks his black students if they’re triggered (which was the case with that Chicago econ prof), I’m gonna go ahead and register a “nah bro” on this cancellation.

      EDIT: I didn’t notice until after this post that Hsu is a professor of *theoretical physics*. That, uh, definitely makes me look more askance at his blog’s focus and his willingness to opine on population genetics to Molymeme.

      • albatross11 says:

        He’s also done research in genetics.

      • scienceofdoom says:

        Maybe you’d like to critique his paper, “Determination of Nonlinear Genetic Architecture
        using Compressed Sensing”.
        What are the main weaknesses there do you think?

        How about, “Applying compressed sensing to genome-wide association studies”

        Or where the predictions were then applied successfully, “Accurate Genomic Prediction Of Human Height”

        Seeing as you understand what subjects people can and can’t understand I’m fascinated to hear your opinions.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          Please don’t direct sarcasm at fellow commenters.

          Based on the limited selection of papers you cited I’m curious as to Hsu’s knowledgebase on population evolution (a part of population genetics), especially with regard to embryonic selection for particular polygenetic traits (which is what his company purports to do). As a non-geneticist in the biological sciences my concern here is with loss of allele diversity, especially of alleles which have phenotypic expression in non-selected traits, but may genetically correlate with (i.e. be chromosomally near) alleles involved with the selected poly-genetic trait.

          I’m concerned not only with this loss of allelic diversity, but with the second-order effects such a loss of diversity would have on inbreeding coefficients. If there is less allelic diversity, then genetically speaking marrying your 7th cousin a century from now might be equivalent to marrying your 5th cousin today.

          Has Hsu considered these questions? If so, what are his answers to them?

          • Murphy says:

            but may genetically correlate with (i.e. be chromosomally near) alleles involved with the selected poly-genetic trait.

            From a quick scan of the height paper they talk about running the data through the Haplotype Reference Consortium so I’d guess that it was taking that into account.

            In “Determination of Nonlinear Genetic Architecture using Compressed Sensing” they explicitly talk about this and blocks of loci.

            Linkage disequilibrium is something you’d routinely need to take into account in an analysis like that.

            I strongly suspect that you’d need a very large fraction of the population selecting embryos before it would be too much of an issue and there’s already plenty of small towns where marrying your 7th cousin is arelady equivalent to marrying your 5th cousin… actually I think I came across a paper quantifying that in various populations a while back so we could probably quantify it while it’s happening if it was a problem.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Thanks Murphy.

        • Anonymous Bosch says:

          Seeing as you understand what subjects people can and can’t understand

          This has been a banner night for folks reading things that aren’t there.

          • scienceofdoom says:

            Ok, let’s say it plainly. Bosch states:

            EDIT: I didn’t notice until after this post that Hsu is a professor of *theoretical physics*. That, uh, definitely makes me look more askance at his blog’s focus and his willingness to opine on population genetics to Molymeme.

            What is the relevance given he has a track record of published papers in genetics?

            I guessed Bosch didn’t bother to find that out. But of course I won’t assume seeing as “This has been a banner night for folks reading things that aren’t there.

            So explain why being a professor of physics precludes people from being an expert in genetics?

            Or you could say, “oh, I realize now that he has a solid record of research in this field, my earlier comment was in error.” That’s an approach. I’m not trying to be prescriptive.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            So explain why being a professor of physics precludes people from being an expert in genetics?

            I assume that people who transition fields at a high-level (post-PhD), without taking the classes necessary to get a degree in the new field, do not become familiar with some of the basic concepts in the new field. Exactly which concepts they are not familiar with I cannot know.

            I assume that in their new field they are the equivalent of savant syndrome- unless I see them demonstrate their breadth of understanding.

          • B_Epstein says:

            “unless I see them demonstrate their breadth of understanding.” – ummm and you don’t even bother addressing the obvious reply of “does publishing a number of important papers, participating in major technological breakthroughs in the field and running a company which you criticize on moral rather than professional grounds count as such a demonstration”?

            Also, the list of people branching out at a late stage includes many a noble name. Turing, Alvarez, von Neumann (already mentioned elsewhere), Bill Phillips – all should be considered suspicious until meeting your (unclear, see above) standards?

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @B_Epstein

            “does publishing a number of important papers, participating in major technological breakthroughs in the field and running a company which you criticize on moral rather than professional grounds count as such a demonstration”?

            Sub-field, not field. So no, it doesn’t. All of the papers cited by scienceofdoom are in a very narrow sub-field of population genetics. This is typical for even people with Ph.D.s in something, but at least I have good reason to believe that a person with a degree in a field has been exposed to a broad base of concepts considered core to that field. (see my prior comment in this thread – June 16, 2020 at 8:06 pm)

            Also, the list of people branching out at a late stage includes many a noble name. Turing, Alvarez, von Neumann (already mentioned elsewhere), Bill Phillips – all should be considered suspicious until meeting your (unclear, see above) standards?

            No, but I would consider them savant syndrome (I’m trying to avoid the term “idiot-savant”) in the field until they demonstrate otherwise.

          • B_Epstein says:

            Sub-field, not field. So no, it doesn’t. All of the papers cited by scienceofdoom are in a very narrow sub-field of population genetics. This is typical for even people with Ph.D.s in something, but at least I have good reason to believe that a person with a degree in a field has been exposed to a broad base of concepts considered core to that field.

            It seems you greatly overestimate the inter-connectedness of sub-fields. In a diverse set of sub-fields, the dependence on “external imports” is limited. That is, one can make major contributions without, in fact, being an expert in the entire field. In fact, in mathematics, say, there simply aren’t any global experts. None. But there are many experts in other fields (as distant as linguistics) contributing to some local sub-sub-field.

            Therefore, the default position should be that if someone (particularly an accomplished researcher) has a number of widely acclaimed results, the burden of proof should be on the skeptics. Until proven otherwise, “you’re an expert in something else” shouldn’t be used as a general counter-argument. First prove Hsu to be wrong, then explain how it is because he’s clueless about the basics.

            No, but I would consider them savant syndrome (I’m trying to avoid the term “idiot-savant”) in the field until they demonstrate otherwise

            What implications would this label have? Are they or are they not trustworthy? Just to re-emphasize – I’m talking about the stage after they’ve made high-impact contributions. As an aside, as Scott Aaronson put it, “if Marie Curie sent me something about biology and said I could publish it on Shtetl-Optimized, then even though she’s not a biologist, I would.” – that is, at a certain level, you get to be listened to even before demonstrating domain-specific achievements. No idea whether Hsu qualifies.

          • John Schilling says:

            I assume that people who transition fields at a high-level (post-PhD), without taking the classes necessary to get a degree in the new field, do not become familiar with some of the basic concepts in the new field.

            You seem to assume that “taking classes” is the way people become familiar with the basic concepts of a field. That’s true only of the dull sort of person who will never transition between fields at the post-Ph.D. level, so I think you’re way off base here.

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            What is the relevance given he has a track record of published papers in genetics?

            I guessed Bosch didn’t bother to find that out. But of course I won’t assume seeing as “This has been a banner night for folks reading things that aren’t there.”

            So explain why being a professor of physics precludes people from being an expert in genetics?

            Christopher Monckton has published papers on climate modeling. Perhaps you’re more willing to assume this is a proxy for reliability than I am.

            Fortunately, while I’m not much of an atmospheric physicist, I do dabble in molecular biology, so I will check out the papers you cited later, when I’m not procrastinating on patent drafting.

            And if I find them compelling, I’ll update my view, which is really just exactly what it says, “looking askance.” A Bayesian prior, not a deductive rule. Economists are not logically precluded from expertise in epidemiology; yet it still sets off a Yellow Alert in my hindbrain. So it goes.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @B_Epstein

            That is, one can make major contributions without, in fact, being an expert in the entire field.

            No duh.

            First prove Hsu to be wrong, then explain how it is because he’s clueless about the basics.

            Here I have (and I do this as a person with a B.S. Biology and a bit over 10 years as a tech and research associate; i.e. not a PhD): https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/#comment-916278
            https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/#comment-916234

            Are they or are they not trustworthy? Just to re-emphasize – I’m talking about the stage after they’ve made high-impact contributions.

            I trust a mathematical savant to perform a calculation correctly, I don’t trust them to know whether the calculation is scientifically (or morally) appropriate to the circumstances, until they demonstrate to me that they can make these determinations. And I certainly do not trust them to know the appropriate “inter-connectedness of sub-fields”.

            that is, at a certain level, you get to be listened to even before demonstrating domain-specific achievements.

            I intellectually understand why other people fetishize social greatness and allow it to transcend categories. I just think this is: 1) Stupid, and 2) Saying a lot about the personality traits of the person so fetishizing.
            (In my own broad field Jennifer Doudna is considered a potential Nobel prize winner. Does she deserve it for her discovery? More and more I’m thinking yes. Is she the best of her kind of scientist in the field? Odds are, no. Great scientists do great science. Sometimes they also get lucky compared to their equivalent peers. They then get allowed by certain others to “get listened to even before demonstrating domain-specific achievements” in other fields. But their equals who weren’t so lucky do not get this social permissiveness [at least not to the same degree].)

            @John Schilling

            You seem to assume that “taking classes” is the way people become familiar with the basic concepts of a field.

            I phrased that wrong. I know that a person with degrees in a field *has* (all but guaranteed) been exposed to a diversity of background and topics broadly pertaining to the field. I don’t know this of those who transition to a field post degree. In fact given the opportunity costs of becoming broadly exposed to the basics of a field I’d assume they’d avoid this, unless they demonstrate otherwise.

            The time has long since passed when people could be masters of all trades, or even masters of multiple trades. Those who transition disciplines these days are heavily incentivized to do so as specialists.

          • B_Epstein says:

            No duh.

            Hey, you’re the one harping about this distinction. My point is that a “field” doesn’t really exist, for the sake of this discussion.

            Here I have (and I do this as a person with a B.S. Biology and a bit over 10 years as a tech and research associate; i.e. not a PhD): https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/#comment-916278
            https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/#comment-916234

            First comment raises a question. Second raises a moral issue. That’s your proof of wrongness?

            I trust a mathematical idiot-savant to perform a calculation correctly, I don’t trust them to know whether the calculation is scientifically (or morally) appropriate to the circumstances, until they demonstrate to me that they can make these determinations. And I certainly do not trust them to know the appropriate “inter-connectedness of sub-fields”.

            But in this hypothetical, they already have, and I repeat, “made high-impact contributions”. They have already done more than mere calculations, in your analogy.

            I intellectually understand why other people fetishize social greatness and allow it to transcend categories. I just think this is: 1) Stupid, and 2) Saying a lot about the personality traits of the person so fetishizing.
            (In my own broad field Jennifer Doudna is considered a potential Nobel prize winner. Does she deserve it for her discovery? More and more I’m thinking yes. Is she the best of her kind of scientist in the field? Odds are, no. Great scientists do great science. Sometimes they also get lucky compared to their equivalent peers. They then get allowed by certain others to “get listened to even before demonstrating domain-specific achievements” in other fields. But their equals who weren’t so lucky do not get this social permissiveness [at least not to the same degree].)

            I think you’ve got distracted by the Nobel-priziness of Curie. That’s not the point at all. Substitute Shannon if you wish. Who, as it happens, also made contributions to genetics. And also without formal training in genetics. As TomMustang said, “Smart people gonna smart”. I definitely would hear Shannon out on biological topics – though of course not uncritically.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            My point is that a “field” doesn’t really exist, for the sake of this discussion.

            Yes. It. Does. Population genetics is the field, and if you’re tinkering with a small part of that you’d best be cognizant of your tinkering vis-a-vis the rest of the field.

            First comment raises a question. Second raises a moral issue. That’s your proof of wrongness?

            The fact that I do not see any comment by him on these issues that are evident to a person with a mere B.S. in Biology who doesn’t even specialize in genetics is my tentative proof of his disciplinary tunnel vision.

            But in this hypothetical, they already have, and I repeat, “made high-impact contributions”. They have already done more than mere calculations, in your analogy.

            Yes, he identified parameters of the calculation too. That’s not much more. It’s certainly not what I would expect an expert in population genetics with a knowledge of math to do (though obviously many “experts” don’t think much about the implications of their research agendas toward the broader field).

            You are entitled to your attitude toward socially preeminent smart people intellectuals. I do not agree with it, though based solely on the amplification factor from people such as you and popular culture in general I too am likely to hear what they say more than those of equal or greater merit who aren’t socially preeminent.

          • I assume that people who transition fields at a high-level (post-PhD), without taking the classes necessary to get a degree in the new field, do not become familiar with some of the basic concepts in the new field.

            Should I feel insulted?

            Is teaching a wide range of classes an adequate substitute for taking them?

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            You’re writing introductory level texts on the topic David. That’s proof enough for me. 🙂

    • No One In Particular says:

      But it’s not evidence against his being a research director!

      First, my understanding is that it’s quite settled that he’s a research director. You seem to mean “reason for him to not be”. Second, sensitivity to the effects of research should be a job qualification.

      “If bad guys might abuse it, we shouldn’t study it” – I hate that argument.

      You don’t think one should consider the effects of one’s actions?

      • mtl1882 says:

        You don’t think one should consider the effects of one’s actions?

        I’m not the person you asked, but I think this is important to address. I generally am not persuaded by the argument that “If bad guys might abuse it, we shouldn’t study it,” but that’s *because* I consider the effects. I don’t think this sort of suppression of ideas works as intended, and avoiding the issue can make it even harder to deal with them, especially if you cede the field to only bad faith actors. People can obviously disagree with this, but they shouldn’t assume this attitude indicates thoughtlessness.

        However, my assessment of consequences when dealing with things like deadly virus research sometimes leads me to different conclusions. There are some things I’m not sure people should try their hand at mastering–it just seems nearly guaranteed to go wrong eventually. Of course, if we don’t research it, some other country will probably do so, and I’m suspicious of mutual agreements to desist.

      • Deiseach says:

        You don’t think one should consider the effects of one’s actions?

        As a Catholic and so one of the people included in the “how can these crazy science-deniers possibly think they have any say or right to an opinion on embryonic stem-cell research” back when SCIENCE! was demanding the right to SCIENCE! without let or hindrance (and the only capacity of government in this whole debate was to pony up the research grants), I am smiling grimly at this.

        I don’t know what Professor Hsu’s particular opinons are, but I’m willing to guess that he comes out of that tradition of “Science is not moral or immoral, it just is, and it’s the best way to explain reality, so let people Do The Science and stop interjecting irrational emotional objections”.

        I am firmly on the ground of “you do have to consider the consequences, science like every other human endeavour is not done in a vacuum” but I am also enjoying the sharp tart taste of “well well well the phone call is coming from inside the house this time, eh?” where it is science, not religious, people calling for Correct Opinions and Moral Weight about what he clearly considers “a plain matter of science which deals with facts, no matter where those lead, not opinions or feelings or moral qualms or the likes”.

        • Simon_Jester says:

          May I just say that I think you are well entitled to enjoy that taste.

          I may not agree with “embryonic stem cell research is immoral,” but I definitely agree that if you think it is then you have good grounds to complain that someone else is doing it without thinking about the moral implications.

    • rumham says:

      I hate it when it’s an argument from the right wing against STD vaccines or gun violence research.

      I believe that the actual argument was against the CDC doing gun studies because they had shown clear bias with studies of shoddily methodology, in an area far outside of both their expertise and the reasons that they were being funded by taxpayers. Recent failures of the CDC in their core mission would seem to make this complaint all the more reasonable.

      • Matt M says:

        Agreed. I know a lot of people on the right who have made a lot of arguments as to why they don’t like the CDC gun violence research, but “Even if they tell the truth, it’s bad because the truth might justify gun bans” is not one I’ve heard. Not once. Ever.

        The argument is nearly always that their research is either biased, faulty, unnecessary, or outside of their proper jurisdiction, or actually vindicates gun enthusiasts (but is always framed the other way).

  5. JohnBuridan says:

    WANTED: Signs of hope. Any news related to positive trends in American culture or politics wanted.

    • zero says:

      Pollution is down!

    • Freddie deBoer says:

      My book is coming out.

    • SamChevre says:

      Violent crime is WAY down. Homicides per capita (excluding abortions) are lower than they’ve been since 1960.

      • Matthias says:

        Per capita income is also way up since the 1960s. And that includes are big population increase, too. (And the common inflation measures are likely overstated.)

        Smoking is down.

        Obesity might have stopped it’s advance?

      • keaswaran says:

        Do you have statistics on homicides in the last three years? Some people were alleging some kind of “Ferguson effect”, whereby anti-police protests were making homicides go up. In 2016, several major cities did have their first noticeable turnaround in the declines they had all been having for the previous decades, but it was noisy, and I couldn’t find information showing whether the decline had restarted or if the Ferguson effect had been real.

        • SamChevre says:

          I do not have that handy–but the change from the 1990’s is really large. I’m fairly certain that the Ferguson effect is noise around a very different base levle.

          • keaswaran says:

            That’s been my guess as well, but I’d really like to know whether we have more good news in the past three years, or if this source of good news was shut down, the way that traffic fatalities seem to have stopped decreasing around that time as well.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          Is it controversial that cops have the power to slow-roll their duties and this can cause murders to go up?

          • keaswaran says:

            It’s not controversial that they *can*. The question is whether there has been any significant effect.

    • No One In Particular says:

      Trump’s approval ratings are in the low forties.

      Cops’ political capital has plummeted.

      The Supreme Court has decided that making decisions that have a person’s sex as factor violate anti-discrimination laws. No news on whether “Is water wet?” has been granted cert.

      • keaswaran says:

        To be fair, “Trump’s approval ratings are in the low forties” has been true for basically his entire presidency (there might have been a moment where it passed 45.0%, and a moment where it dropped below 40.0%, but they were brief).

    • ChelOfTheSea says:

      The Supreme Court ruled this week 6-3 to ban LGBT employment discrimination nationwide.

      • gbdub says:

        The Supreme Court dealt another blow to separation of powers and representative democracy by adopting a convoluted interpretation of plain words in order to deliver a desired result, all because Congress continues to be too damn dysfunctional to do its damn job, and I can’t even complain about it without sounding like a dick because fundamentally I agree with the ultimate outcome? It’s hope, but a bittersweet one.

        EDIT: also they decided not to examine qualified immunity.

        • No One In Particular says:

          There was a dispute about what a law meant. The judicial branch issued a ruling on the dispute. I don’t see how that’s a violation of separation of powers. That’s exactly what the judicial branch is for. And there was already a rather strong precedence for this interpretation. And I’m skeptical that this was the “desired result” for Roberts and Gorsuch.

          The interpretation seems like the plain reading to me, and the opposing view the tortured reading based on “Well, clearly they didn’t intend to say that”. It’s impossible to discriminate (barring an expansive meaning of “discriminate”, such as disparate impact) against trans people without basing your actions on their biological (or perceived biological) sex. I guess you could argue that it still leaves discrimination against nonbinary people uncovered.

          Which of the following would be allowed under what you think the plain reading is?

          -Men can’t wear dresses.
          -Men can’t have hair more than 3 inches long.
          -Men can’t wear make-up
          -Men can’t have “female” names
          -Men can’t talk in a “girly” voice
          -Women can’t wear pants.
          -Women must have hair at least three inches long.
          -Women must wear make-up.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            He could well be talking about the sexual orientation part rather than the trans part. I’ve just started reading the decisions, but so far I think I agree with Brett Kavanaugh. They’re doing a “plain reading,” sure, but there are other more obvious “plain readings,” and choosing the less obvious one over the more obvious one is ideologically motivated.

            In the majority decision the plain reading is, paraphrasing, “if you’d fire a man for being attracted to a man but you wouldn’t fire a woman for being attracted to a man, that’s obvious sexual discrimination.” Plain reading.

            Except nobody’s bothered about people being attracted to men. It’s the homosexuality they’re bothered by. So the obvious retort would be “I’d fire a homosexual woman and I’d fire a homosexual man, so there’s no sexual discrimination.” Plain reading.

            I would say the second plain reading is more obvious, since the crux of the issue is the homosexuality, rather than being attracted to X sex.

            That said, I believe firing someone for their sexual orientation is immoral, with a few special carveouts for certain specialized cases like religious institutions.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Homosexual is just a term to describe a man attracted to men or a woman attracted to women.

            So they would fire people based on both their sex and their attraction to a particular sex.

            You can’t parse “sex” from this discrimination via the intermediary of a word.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I know that. I’m saying the other way “would fire homosexual man just as well as homosexual woman” is also a valid reading. Picking one valid reading over the other is just an expression of one’s own bias.

          • 10240 says:

            This makes sense if we take a very literal reading of the law: discrimination against trans people necessarily involves discriminating between two people who are the same in all respects except their sex. Curiously, however, this reading makes it impossible to rule against certain forms of discrimination that the law probably does intend to ban, except perhaps on disparate impact grounds (which are not part of the literal reading):

            If we take ‘sex’ in anti-discrimination laws to mean biological sex, then it’s legal for a company to allow only people presenting as men (or as women), basically allowing only cis-men and FtM transsexuals and crossdressers.

            If we take ‘sex’ to mean self-presentation (I’m not sure which interpretation the courts take nowadays), it’s legal for a company to only allow biological males (or biological females), however they present, allowing only cis-men and MtF transsexuals.

            In order to not get this weird situation, the word ‘sex’ in the law would have to be in some sort of quantum superposition, meaning both biological sex and presentation until a case goes to court.

          • 10240 says:

            Protection for sexual orientation is also justified by a very literal reading, but it leads to a similar conundrum as transsexuality:

            In the literal reading it’s legal to (say) only employ people who have a female partner (regardless of their own sex), i.e. heterosexual men and lesbians and bisexuals with a female partner. This is sex discrimination, but regarding the employee’s partner rather than the employee, which, I presume, is not covered by the law.

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            If we take ‘sex’ in anti-discrimination laws to mean biological sex, then it’s legal for a company to allow only people presenting as men (or as women), basically allowing only cis-men and FtM transsexuals and crossdressers.

            The opinion takes “sex” as biological (as per textualism’s more formal name of “original public meaning”) but this doesn’t take presentation out of bounds. It’s already covered by Price Waterhouse, which I don’t think either dissent argues should be overturned. You could, I suppose, mandate a unisex dress code of pants and short hair. But you’d run afoul of even biological sex discrimination far short of “FtM” levels. I doubt a requirement for AFABs to wear binders would pass muster.

            Also, disparate impact is definitely part of the literal text of the Title VII statute; it’s not a judicial invention. You can find the burden-shifting procedure defined here.

          • gbdub says:

            1) Sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity are entirely distinct concepts, and under basically any other circumstance, LGBTQ+ activists would be the first to tell you this. A trans woman is not just a man that wears dresses and wants you to call her “ma’am”. A gay man is not just a het man who likes to sleep with dudes. “Transphobia” and “homophobia” are distinct from “sexism”. This makes the whole thing seem a bit disingenuous.

            If you’re going to complain about “tortured readings” I don’t think you can just accept “I know you say you’re discriminating against this trans woman based on gender identity, but clearly what you are actually doing is discriminating against a man for wearing a dress”. Likewise anti-gay discrimination is not just “having a sexist policy about who is allowed to sleep with men”.

            2) That the 1964 CRA was not intended to cover sexual orientation and gender identity is hardly a tortured reading. It seems plain as day that if you were to teleport back and ask Congress and the Supremes whether it did they would think you’re nuts. If we want that law changed, it is the job of Congress, not the Court, to pass an updated law.

            It’s the job of the Supreme Court to interpret laws, sure. But this looks much more like “creating a new law out of whole cloth because Congress can’t get their crap together”. When we wanted to ban slavery, we passed a Constitutional Amendment, dammit. We didn’t send the Supremes on a hunt for penumbral mass ejections. This does not seem like a positive development for representative democracy.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            Under this interpretation, wouldn’t you conclude that a (cis) man who insists on using the women’s bathroom can’t be denied without discriminating against him on the basis of sex? And as gbdub says, It seems implausible that this reading was the original intention.

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            It’s absolutely not the original intent of the statute and Gorsuch’s opinion doesn’t pretend that it is. It’s a textual opinion, not an original intent one. The CRA is far from unique in having text that, when applied literally, dictates conclusions the drafters would not have anticipated.

          • L (Zero) says:

            @10240: I’m just doing a simple reading like you but apparently “Title VII also prohibits discrimination against an individual because of his or her association with another individual of a particular race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, such as by an interracial marriage.”

          • 10240 says:

            @Anonymous Bosch It seems to me that Price Waterhouse covers requiring different presentation based on sex, e.g. requiring male employees to act or dress in a masculine way, and female employees to act or dress in a masculine way. This is similar to the way the court ruled in the recent cases. This doesn’t seem to prohibit an employer from requiring all employees (male or female) to present in a masculine way. Or, from requiring all employees (male or female) to wear binders. It only prohibits requiring biological females, but not biological males, to wear binders.

            Disparate impact may do the trick.

            I still find it weird to interpret a law that only talks about two groups (men, women) to require the equal treatment of four groups (cis-men, MtF, FtM, cis-women).

          • 10240 says:

            @10240: I’m just doing a simple reading like you but apparently “Title VII also prohibits discrimination against an individual because of his or her association with another individual of a particular race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, such as by an interracial marriage.”

            @L (Zero) This is from Wikipedia, not the law. The law doesn’t actually seem to say this explicitly. Wikipedia’s citation is Parr v Woodmen, where (in the circuit court) it was held that Title VII prohibits discrimination because of interracial marriage. In the lower court ruling, it is said that “Courts that have considered the issue have gone both ways.” In the previous cases where discrimination because of interracial marriage was held prohibited, the argument was that such discrimination considers the race of the employee as well as their partner: a white person with a black partner is not hired, where a black person with a black partner would be.

            In Parr, from the circuit court:

            Parr contends that the district court erred because Title VII is to be broadly construed, and a party need not specifically allege that he was discriminated against because of his race, but only show that adverse actions taken against him involved racial considerations.
            […]
            Woodmen argues that if Parr’s allegations are true, had Parr been black, he still would not have been hired. Consequently, in Woodmen’s view, Parr’s race was of no significance in the hiring decision, and thus his claim should not be cognizable. Woodmen’s contentions are not persuasive. Had Parr been black, he would not have been hired, but that is a lawsuit for another day. Parr alleged that he was discriminated against because of his interracial marriage. Title VII proscribes race-conscious discriminatory practices. It would be folly for this court to hold that a plaintiff cannot state a claim under Title VII for discrimination based on an interracial marriage because, had the plaintiff been a member of the spouse’s race, the plaintiff would still not have been hired.

            Several factors make us resolute in our determination that Parr’s complaint stated a claim under Title VII. First, we are obliged to give Title VII a liberal construction.

            This was a broad construction of Title VII. In plain reading, Title VII doesn’t prohibit discrimination purely based on ones’s partner.

            ——

            It looks like courts took a two-step process:
            (1) Based on an ultra-literal reading of the law, they established hat it prohibits discrimination because of interracial marriage.
            (2) Then, from this, based on a liberal, non-literal reading, they ruled that discrimination against someone in an interracial marriage should be prohibited even if they would have been discriminated against even if they had been a member of their spouse’s race.

            This way, they got from a law that prohibits discrimination based on the employee’s race, but says nothing about their spouse, to an interpretation where discrimination based on one’s spouse’s race is prohibited, even if the employee’s race is not considered. IMO either one step or the other is justified; but the combination is definitely unjustified. The courts will probably repeat the same for sex discrimination.

        • Jaskologist says:

          Lessons conservatives are learning this week:

          1. Voting is useless.
          2. On the other hand, mostly peaceful rioting might get you what you want.

      • Controls Freak says:

        The Supreme Court ruled this week 6-3 to ban LGT employment discrimination nationwide.

        FTFY. As usual in legal discussion of LGBT concerns, the Bs get left out in the cold in favor of the LGTs.

        • L (Zero) says:

          Edited this comment to phrase the same basic inquiry in an entirely different more sensitive way.

          Are there any examples of times that after “LGT” protection was already in place, an actual example of discrimination against the “Bs” was written off by a court as acceptable?

        • No One In Particular says:

          I guess technically, if there is an employer who is cool with their employees being exclusively homosexual, and is okay with straight people, but wants to fire someone for having sex with both men and women, they could argue that this case’s logic doesn’t apply to them. But I am highly skeptical that this is a serious issue, and I don’t think that it justify characterizing this as leaving bisexual people in out in the cold.

    • TracingWoodgrains says:

      You might be referring to Gwern’s Improvements list.

    • noyann says:

      This is very recent, but at least you can search for “America”.

  6. Purplehermann says:

    there is an accusation of not being upfront about COI against the professor, but I didn’t understand it. Can anyone explain it?

  7. Scott Alexander says:

    I deleted several of them that seemed unhelpful.

    • Purplehermann says:

      That’s fair, could you leave the ones asking about the COI accusation? [Edit: this one, or if you delete this then the next one i put up]

  8. Aapje says:

    The clinical effectivess of Dutch fixed expressions is almost as high as SSRIs

    ‘Buiten de waard rekenen’ = Calculating without the innkeeper

    Making a wrong prediction, in particular when making assumptions about what other people want. For example, when making a decision that your partner disagrees with and makes you walk back on.

    ‘Buiten kijf’ = without ‘kijf’

    Everyone agrees it is true. ‘Kijven’ is an obsolete word for swearing or fighting, so it literally means that no one is going to fight over it. Related to the obsolescent ‘kiften,’ which means arguing.

    ‘Buiten westen zijn’ = Being outside the west

    Having fainted or being unconscious. A 16th century nautical term. The North sea is largely to the west of The Netherlands, and many ships hugged the coast. However, during bad weather, they would go further west to avoid the shoals. If they went too far out, they could get lost.

    ‘Buiten zijn boekje gaan’ = Going outside their book

    Violating the rules, in particular when someone exceeds their authority.

    ‘Buitenbeentje’ = Outside leg

    Misfit. Comes from people who walk/stand at an angle, their upper body not being above their legs. Originally referred to a bastard, but now has the more logical meaning of misfit.

    ‘Schuinmarcheren’ = Oblique marching

    Someone who commonly breaks the rules, often used specifically for those who cheat on a partner.

    ‘He has a steekje los’ = ‘He has a stitch loose’

    He is a weirdo. This used to be specifically used for women who had sex before marriage, but later became unisex and lost its association with loose morals.

    • AlphaGamma says:

      ‘Buiten westen zijn’ = Being outside the west

      In English, to ”go west” means to die. Some people have suggested that this refers to the westward journey taken by condemned criminals in London from Newgate Prison to the gallows at Tyburn.

      This is unlikely to be true- the last hanging at Tyburn was in 1783, but the term is not attested before the 19th century. It seems to originally have been a Scottish or Irish usage, that became more generally popular during the First World War.

      • John Schilling says:

        It’s a racial memory of the journey to the Halls of Mandos, which has been part of English mythology since long before 1783.

      • gbdub says:

        But in American English, “Go West, young man” means something quite different. (Although it would indeed be funny if it had a double meaning if “fuck off and die”).

      • Simon_Jester says:

        Large numbers of Scots and especially Irish emigrated to America in the early to mid-1800s. They were mostly not dead, but they sure weren’t coming back.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csNlKTRJiS0

        Probably not the connection there, but it’s not out of the question IMO.

  9. Hamiltonicity says:

    Anyone doing scientific work on race has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their media appearances, for much the same reason that anyone working on smallpox samples has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their containment procedures.

    Also, part of the reason that anyone in a senior role in a large organisation gets paid large multiples of everyone else’s salary is that they’re being paid to effectively represent that organisation to would-be partners and donors, and that drastically reduces their freedom to present anything other than an aggressively bland and centrist front to the world. If they piss people off whose goodwill their organisation is depending on, then they have failed at a major part of their job, and it is perfectly appropriate to fire them. (Of course, if they’re taking a stand for something valuable then it could still be morally wrong to fire them, but to make that argument you need to go beyond catch-all counter-arguments like freedom of expression and start digging into the weeds of what was actually being expressed.)

    Against that backdrop, while acting as senior VP of research and graduate studies for the whole of his university, Hsu chose to appear on an alt-right podcast in order to talk about connections between race and intelligence. Even at the start of 2017, Molyneux’s guest list reads like a who’s who of the alt-right – Jared Taylor, Vox Day, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Dinesh D’Souza, to name a few – and Hsu would have known this if he had so much as checked Molyneux’ Wikipedia page at the time.

    Oh, and the people leading the charge appear to be Michigan’s graduate students. You know, the ones he’s in charge of. The ones he’s meant to keep happy, as part of that high-paying job. Knowing graduate students as I do, they probably wouldn’t be doing this if he’d been treating them well for the last few years.

    So all things considered, even ignoring all the other accusations, and even assuming it was all negligence rather than malice, I still can’t muster much in the way of sympathy.

    • albatross11 says:

      Anyone doing scientific work on race has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their media appearances, for much the same reason that anyone working on smallpox samples has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their containment procedures.

      First, I think this is a fairly silly statement. People discussing ideas about genes, race, IQ scores, crime rates, etc., may or may not have some social danger, but it is nowhere in the same universe as working on smallpox samples. This kind of hyperbole sounds convincing until you think about it for a minute.

      Second, people discuss race recklessly and carelessly all the time–in private, online, and in various kinds of media. For most mainstream media, only a specific subset of careless discussions of race are commonly aired–ones that express broadly mainstream acceptable views.

      As an example, how many times have you seen people talking about how every encounter of a black man with the police is a super dangerous life-and-death affair, or that even calling the police on a black man was endangering his life? That’s reckless, careless, inaccurate talk about race, but pretty-much nobody cares, because it’s on-message. By contrast, someone like Charles Murray has been pretty careful to make cautious and defensible statements about race and IQ over the last several decades. He may be right or wrong, but he’s not tossing around made-up numbers or hyperbole. That has not prevented him being called every name in the book and getting mobbed when he has tried to speak in public. So as best I can tell, the issue with Hsu is not actually that he was careless or reckless in his discussion of race, but rather that he expressed the wrong views. It probably wouldn’t matter how carefully he expressed those views.

      There’s a more fundamental issue here, though. Hsu is a very smart guy, exactly the kind of guy we want thinking hard about our biggest social issues. To the extent that there are large areas of the intellectual world that nobody (not even someone with Hsu’s stature and place in the world) is allowed to discuss, those are areas where the public discussion is going to be a lot poorer. A lot of major social problems in the US involve issues of race, education, crime, culture, etc. Making sure that smart people know that discussing those issues (at least if you’re not mouthing exactly the current platitudes on them) is a career-ender is an *excellent* way to ensure that most of those smart people will avoid those issues, and so our chances of actually coming to any useful solutions will go way down.

      If it were 1920 instead of 2020, people would be saying exactly the things you’re saying about Hsu about someone who irresponsibly discussed atheism and Darwinism in public, with all the offense given to good Godfearing Christians and all the risk of undermining the very moral foundations of Western civilization. And indeed, people did get shut down and run out of town for that sort of thing back then. This didn’t make the world a better place. Nor will attempts to silence Hsu.

      • Paul Zrimsek says:

        People discussing ideas about genes, race, IQ scores, crime rates, etc., may or may not have some social danger, but it is nowhere in the same universe as working on smallpox samples.

        I blame Dawkins.

        • albatross11 says:

          I read a ton of Dawkins’ and Gould’s popularizations of evolution as a kid. I am very grateful that the cancel-culture of my childhood (fundamentalists who were offended by references to evolution) weren’t powerful enough to prevent them writing books that a clever 10-year-old kid could read.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            To be sure. I just wish Dawkins hadn’t gone on to popularize the idea of thinking of (other people’s) ideas as infectious diseases.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        Hsu is a very smart guy, exactly the kind of guy we want thinking hard about our biggest social issues.

        I disagree. Not because of his intelligence, but because he’s socially successful.

        Too much “white man’s burden”, when the people with the motivation and insight to both recognize and try to solve our biggest social issues are those who aren’t socially successful.

        People discussing ideas about genes, race, IQ scores, crime rates, etc., may or may not have some social danger, but it is nowhere in the same universe as working on smallpox samples

        I believe Hamiltonicity was pointing out the risk to innocent bystanders should negative implications on race or a smallpox aerosol slip out, not to the researchers themselves.

        • Purplehermann says:

          People who are socially successful probably understand social things netter in general than those who aren’t, no?

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            But do they see the actual problems that the socially unsuccessful people encounter, or do they merely think that the socially unsuccessful people terminated on the very same problems that they had but overcame? (Potentially worse: Do they think that the socially unsuccessful’s problems are that the unsuccessful are not like them? And that the solution is thus to make the unsuccessful more like them? https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/#comment-916126 )

      • ChelOfTheSea says:

        > People discussing ideas about genes, race, IQ scores, crime rates, etc., may or may not have some social danger, but it is nowhere in the same universe as working on smallpox samples. This kind of hyperbole sounds convincing until you think about it for a minute.

        I mean…I actually think it understates the problem.

        Typical death rates from smallpox in the mid-1800s were on the order of 1 per few thousand per year in the West, or ballpark a lifetime risk of death from smallpox of ~1 in 100 or so depending on the exact year you look at. (https://ourworldindata.org/smallpox#all-charts-preview) Smallpox had about a 1-in-3 risk of death even with modern medicine, so setting the effective cost of smallpox to be double its actual deaths is probably aggressive (since there were at most ~3x many infections). So the West was losing something on the order of ~1% of utils even if we assume deaths were evenly distributed by age (which they presumably were not).

        I don’t know what the util-equivalent cost of slavery is, but it’s gotta be really dang high. Let’s say being a chattel slave is half as bad as being dead – this seems pretty conservative, given that many slaves risked their lives for even the vastly reduced status of free blacks. At this time in history, 14% of Americans were black; about 90% of those 14% were slaves. This means that the US was, through slavery alone, losing 6% of its total utils even by a very conservative estimate.

        In other words, even with really favorable assumptions, abolishing slavery was 6x better than eradicating smallpox, at least in the US. Antinatalists should presumably think the case is far worse – if being a free modern person is worse than nonexistence, surely being a horrifically abused slave was!

        But let’s take a modern estimate, shall we? Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the differential in income in America is racist. Black Americans average an income of $33,000 a year, white Americans average $68,000. Most studies show quality of life is roughly proportional to log(income), so let’s assume black Americans suffer from racism to the tune of the log of their income loss. Then a black life-year is about .93-as-good as a white life-year. In other words, we’re losing 7% of black utils today to racism under this assumptions.

        Blacks currently constitute about 13% of the US population. 7% of that 13%’s utils comes out to just shy of 1% of total American utils. Under the very worst assumptions possible, COVID if left totally unchecked would kill something on the order of 2-3% of Americans, skewed heavily towards the already sick and elderly, and thus cost well under 1% of total utils over the lifetimes of everyone involved.

        In other words, unless you think the income differential doesn’t come from racism – which seems difficult to believe, given that it dates to an era no one doubts was hilariously racist – racism in modern America is worse than a completely uncontrolled COVID epidemic. You know, the epidemic we shut down literally the entire country, plunged the nation into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, spent literal trillions to contain, and all sat inside for months being miserable for.

        Or indeed, which this blog has taken months of posts to discuss without a word on race issues.

        I’m really disappointed to see Scott defending this guy.

        > There’s a more fundamental issue here, though. Hsu is a very smart guy, exactly the kind of guy we want thinking hard about our biggest social issues.

        Plenty of smart guys devote their talents to terribly damaging ideologies. Conditional on the belief that these views are not only wrong but dangerous-to-the-point-of-being-worse-than-covid wrong, you want him as far away from promoting those ideologies as humanly possible. Conditional on him being smart + his ideology being bad, he represents a threat on the order of 4-5 logs of the entire population’s utils if he’s successful in promoting that ideology.

        • JayT says:

          Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the differential in income in America is racist. Black Americans average an income of $33,000 a year, white Americans average $68,000.

          This isn’t quite right, because this is household income. There are fairly major differences in the makeup of households between white and black Americans. The difference in median income per worker is much closer, $40K vs $29. So, for your numbers to work, you would need to explain the household makeup differences with racism, which I doubt is the main confounder, unless racism causes people to have more children.

          • ChelOfTheSea says:

            Fair enough, though I’ll point out that household size is somewhat confounded by income (living alone is expensive, as anyone in the Bay Area can attest). Using individual income gets a loss of 3%, or about half the value I quoted. nevertheless, “half as bad as worst-case COVID” is still very very very bad.

        • zero says:

          What is Steve Hsu’s ideology?

          • ChelOfTheSea says:

            In the minds of the people attacking him? Presumably they believe he is in support of the status quo re: racism, either implicitly (by supporting the idea that it’s caused by difference in ability as opposed to discrimination) or explicitly (they think he’s lying about more direct underlying racism).

            Me personally? I certainly think the first is true, and Hsu doesn’t seem to particularly deny it, either. And someone hanging out with Stefan Molyneux (who is absolutely undoubtedly racist in the second sense) in 2017 and promoting the notion that racism either doesn’t exist or isn’t the dominant factor in achievement gaps is under a hell of a lot of suspicion of the latter, too.

          • 10240 says:

            @ChelOfTheSea In his posts I’ve seen, he made it pretty clear that we don’t know whether there are significant “deep” differences between races. He didn’t assert that there are.

        • Gerry Quinn says:

          I must have missed the bit where Hsu promotes slavery.

          • ChelOfTheSea says:

            The comparison in the post to which I replied was to smallpox, which also no longer exists, and that post claimed the two weren’t comparable. So I wanted to address that first. If you want a modern comparison, you could scroll two paragraphs down.

          • Clutzy says:

            The comparison in the post to which I replied was to smallpox, which also no longer exists, and that post claimed the two weren’t comparable. So I wanted to address that first. If you want a modern comparison, you could scroll two paragraphs down.

            I don’t see anywhere people making a claim that smallpox and slavery are not comparable social ills that it is good to have eliminated in the USA. The claim is that comparing smallpox research and IQ research is not a good comparison. Firstly, the emergent risks are totally different. Smallpox had low death rates during early America because people were mostly already infected, or were cowpox infected, or the weak had died from another disease already. Smallpox today would be being released into a population with several generations of unvaccinated, never infected, people with wonky immune systems (see, peanut allergies). Its a possible pandemic that would make Covid-19 look like a blip if it got rolling.

            OTOH, these dangerous IQ ideas are already known to the super racists, they can’t do anything, and they have plenty of studies to cite. Here are some mild policy goals that they have basically 0 chance of implementing even with 100 respected professors on their side:

            Eliminating Affirmative Action
            Reducing 3rd World Immigration
            Increasing Domestic Immigration Enforcement
            Reducing Welfare
            Reducing Foreign Aid

            These things are all several overton windows away from an outbreak of slavery or reformatting the US into a white ethnostate.

        • Cliff says:

          In other words, unless you think the income differential doesn’t come from racism – which seems difficult to believe

          Curious what you think of this post I ran into recently. It asserts that blacks, hispanics and whites all have essentially the same income conditional on IQ.

          • ChelOfTheSea says:

            At a minimum, it needs to explain why the income gap has been relatively stable since a time everyone agrees was racist to the point of grossly denying blacks economic opportunity. Claiming that denial of access to well-connected institutions, investment capital, and the halls of power had literally no effect in the 1960s seems prima facie indefensible.

            But this step, for example:

            > There are reports of income from a number of different sources in the NLSY79. Only two of these — salaries, wages, and tips and net business and farm income — were used in the calculation of my permanent income measure; the rest, such as unemployment compensation and capital gains, were excluded. Both of the variables used are top-coded so that all values above a cutoff — which was $100,000 in 1989-1993 and the top 2% ever since — have been replaced with the average of the values above the cut-off. If a respondent didn’t have reported income from either source for at least five of nine possible years, he or she was excluded from the analysis. Respondents reporting a permanent income of zero were also dropped. This led to a sample size of 4615.

            …seems hard to defend right out the gate. In a discussion in which access to capital is a critically important factor (given that no one contests that blacks certainly did not start with much capital!), he discards capital gains? This methodology sticks Jeff Bezos close to median white household income.

          • albatross11 says:

            ChelOfTheSea:

            I am not sure if his methodology is the right one (this is pretty far from my expertise!), but I think this is an important question to research. And I think this quote is wrong:

            At a minimum, it needs to explain why the income gap has been relatively stable since a time everyone agrees was racist to the point of grossly denying blacks economic opportunity. Claiming that denial of access to well-connected institutions, investment capital, and the halls of power had literally no effect in the 1960s seems prima facie indefensible.

            Let’s suppose we somehow do this study really carefully, and discover that blacks and whites have the same income conditioned on their IQ. I think we all agree that this is an outcome that *could* come from this kind of study, right?

            Now, if we had that finding, I think it would be *surprising* that overt discrimination in living memory hadn’t had more of an impact, but I don’t see that it would contradict the finding.

            The fact that relative income for blacks relative to whites hasn’t changed much over time seems like it’s a separate surprising fact that would be interesting to explore, but I don’t think it tells us much about how much of the income gap at any given time is based on the IQ gap. After all, the IQ gap has probably not changed all that much over that span of time. What has changed is that we eliminated a ton of overt discrimination and probably even more covert discrimination, because I’m pretty sure white Americans are much less prejudiced against blacks now than in 1970, we adopted affirmative action programs, etc. It’s interesting to ask why that didn’t close that gap.

            And by contrast, suppose we ran this kind of study very carefully and found that blacks made a lot less money than whites of the same IQ. That would also be a big result. It would poke some pretty big holes in the argument that the average income difference is just a reflection of the average IQ difference.

            So, I favor seeing many people do this kind of study, using whatever data they can, and publishing the results widely. I favor people discussing those results in public, whichever way they go, without threat of getting fired for doing so. I think making this a radioactive area to study unless you are very careful to ensure that you get politically acceptable results means that we don’t get reliable answers to these questions. This is why I think the attempt to cancel people like Hsu is a big mistake.

        • salvorhardin says:

          This is an apples-to-aircraft-carriers comparison wrt degrees of agency.

          If you run a smallpox research lab, you can plausibly be the sole but-for cause of a hugely deadly smallpox epidemic that would not have happened without your individual actions.

          If you are a researcher commenting on your views on the causes of group outcome disparities, you cannot plausibly be the but-for cause of the persistence of a whole hugely deadly system of social oppression that would not have persisted without your individual actions.

          • Kaitian says:

            Unless you make an effort to personally infect people everywhere you go, other people still have to spread the smallpox released by your “individual actions”. So the real question is whether racist opinions are a mind virus (some people honestly believe this) or a legitimate part of the societal conversation (some people honestly believe that).

          • 10240 says:

            @Kaitian Right now, only very few people have access to smallpox virus. If one of them makes a mistake and releases it, it may cause a deadly epidemic. If none of them makes a mistake, there is no smallpox epidemic.

            It’s unlikely that a single person can come up with such a convincing argument for racism that it will, through being spread by others, make society make massively more racist than if he stays silent. There are quite a few people discussing race and genetics already, a few of them using it to justify racism. One person (who is not arguing for racism, albeit he can presumably be misinterpreted) can’t make as much of a difference as the smallpox analogy suggests. If we want to make an epidemic analogy, it’s more like, say, a COVID superspreader going to a concert: he may be responsible for a few thousand extra infections down the line, but not for the whole epidemic.

        • teageegeepea says:

          In other words, unless you think the income differential doesn’t come from racism – which seems difficult to believe, given that it dates to an era no one doubts was hilariously racist

          That doesn’t follow. Let’s say we all agree that the past was hilariously racist, and there was an income differential then. Does it follow that if there’s an income differential now it must be due to racism? No, because you need to establish that racism is the only thing that can contribute to income differentials. And since Nigerian-Americans have one of the highest incomes, it suggests we should have a more complex explanation for differences in income between groups.

          • gallowstree says:

            So what you’re saying is: “The persistent wealth gap between white and black Americans, which I acknowledge was established due to incredibly racist practices, is now actively maintained at similar levels by something that is not racism. As evidence, I present the fact that new black immigrants arrived in the interim, and their property wasn’t immediately confiscated.”

            To be more charitable, I think the steel-manned version of your argument would be something like “Racist policies in the early and mid-20th century created a wealth gap that passively self-perpetuates without any active racism.” I would dispute that characterization but think it’s a reasonable position.

          • davidoj says:

            You are putting words in teageegeepea’s mouth (“property wasn’t immediately confiscated”, “passively self-perpetuates”) and ignoring key points they made (“Nigerian-Americans have one of the highest incomes”). I think your summary of their argument is highly unsatisfactory.

          • Clutzy says:

            So what you’re saying is: “The persistent wealth gap between white and black Americans, which I acknowledge was established due to incredibly racist practices, is now actively maintained at similar levels by something that is not racism. As evidence, I present the fact that new black immigrants arrived in the interim, and their property wasn’t immediately confiscated.”

            You yourself try to prove too much. There is no evidence the wealth gap was established due to racist practices. It could, and probably did, predate them.

          • B_Epstein says:

            @gallowstree What happened to all values between 0 and 1? Surely we might contemplate an explanation that blamed some of the initial disparity on hilarious racism, some of which is being passively perpetuated but some of which is reinforced by current-day racism. But unless we’re willing to consider alternatives to “all that has happened and is still happening is pure racism”, we’ll never be able to get there.

          • teageegeepea says:

            I attempted to post a reply but the inclusion of links seems to have caught it in the spam filter. In the event that’s recovered, this comment can be deleted.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            But unless we’re willing to consider alternatives to “all that has happened and is still happening is pure racism”, we’ll never be able to get there.

            And if we’re going to insist that it’s been nothing but racism all along, then what is it that we’re supposed to be worrying about, again? That people like Hsu will persuade us to abandon the anti-racist policies which, by this very hypothesis, haven’t made a damned bit of difference?

        • textor says:

          Plenty of smart guys devote their talents to terribly damaging ideologies.

          Surely a claim like this is best not preceded by over a page of making the most contrived argument imaginable for “talking about IQ etc. is [quantifiably] as bad as subjecting the entire African American population to racism, and {handwave handwave} morally no different from enforcing chattel slavery”. This calculus is an attempt at Eulering if I’ve ever seen one.

          But more importantly, your utilitarian standard ought to apply to every side.
          Hsu is very interested in embryo selection for intelligence, but most of actual work his company was doing is about screening for congenital disabilities. Some have already brought up Kevin Bird, who seems to play a major role in this movement (he certainly endorses it, and leads the Grad Union behind it). Kevin Bird, unlike you, is not a utilitarian. So, among other things, he has to say, look it up on Twitter if you wish (I’ll quote at length, despite redundancy, to make it clear there’s no misrepresentation or spur-of-the-moment rthetoric going on):

          No [using violence against the disabled group of people] isn’t what makes [eliminating disabilities] bad, what makes it bad is accepting a hierarchy of value and using it to decide who makes the cut

          Deafness isn’t a disease or a thing that needs to be removed from the population… There’s simply no reason to decide deafness is an undesirable condition that ought not be allowed to exist in the world. That’s an identical position and way of thinking to eugenics… Deafness doesn’t need “correction”. People shouldn’t desire to eliminate disabilities they should desire to make a world that accommodates disabilities. The former is deeply immoral … I don’t think not hearing is inherently worse than hearing, though I imagine some people would decide to hear for their own reasons. Certainly not all deaf people would … It’s a morally charged issue and I won’t stop framing in the proper light …

          That whole judgement is conditional on what kind of society we live in though. You’re acting as if disabilities are inherently and objectively worse off, I think that’s a deeply troubled perspective.

          And so on and so forth. It should be obvious, but this is the mindset leading to this cancellation attempt. In fact, the union acknowledges as much in their list of accusations:

          Eugenics is dangerous and harmful, especially to individuals with disabilities. Their lived experiences are not aberrations to be removed from the population. Hsu advocates for embryo selection specifically to remove embryos with the possibility of developing an illness/disease/disability:

          Note also that Bird, being a geneticist, is aware that embryo selection is a viable solution, while hoping for future “adequate treatment” for congenital conditions is less grounded:

          In a more realistic sense too it’s also not as common a solution. Pretty much everything could be largely (though not completely) eliminated by genetic screening but magic pills will be few and far between

          The core problem isn’t that eugenics forcibly removes people, it’s the imposition of a hierarchy of human value. It’s a bit appalling you don’t understand that… Deciding to screen out embryos that are identified as high risk of being deaf implicitly puts them at lower moral worth.

          I think it’s more moral to treat and care for people than keep them from ever existing. These aren’t exclusively genetic problems, there are social treatments and causes. I have a heart defect I want affordable care, not CRISPRing or screening me out of exist as an embryo

          He has also clearly stated that he’s not just fuming, but thinks all parents ought to be denied a choice in the matter:

          Q. not sure what the nature of your condition is, but you’re telling me… you’d rather undergo potentially invasive surgery or take medicine every day or whatever than simply not have the condition in the first place, because the latter sounds too “eugenics”-y for you?
          A. Yup, and I will need open heart surgery and constant medication and that’s much more preferable and ethical to me
          Q. You’re entitled to that preference. do you think most people with your condition have that preference? do you think it’s fair to force that preference onto other people? because by denying parents the ability to remove it from their children, that’s basically what you’re doing.
          A. Yes, and the goal of society should be that it creates a world where all kinds of people are supported and accommodated and don’t face undue hardship by virtue of failing to fit an ideal

          I see Nature claim that Every year, an estimated 7.9 million infants (6% of worldwide births) are born with serious birth defects. Although some congenital defects can be controlled and treated, an estimated 3.2 million of these children are disabled for life. I would like to implore you to, in the spirit of sportsmanship, calculate the loss of utils which follows from projects like Dr. Hsu’s being successfully canceled in perpetuity, due to the ideology of smart guys like Bird prevailing. You would do well to consider: quality of life with disorders ranging from congenital deafness, schizophrenia and Down’s syndrome (he specifically opposes screening for Down’s) to Harlequin ichthyosis; the length of lives of the affected; monetary expenditure (and money, as we know, is the unit of caring) on lifetimes of palliative care and treatments, which could have been allocated elsewhere; chilling effect on adjacent fields; and some other things. It would also be nice of you to acknowledge that, while Hsu has never said or did anything remotely close to promoting racial discrimination, and the movement which could be at all plausibly described as “racist” is in shambles, as Kevin aptly describes (“Instead of Nobel Laureates and respected tenure track faculty, the new generation of race scientists on the Pioneer Fund dole are untrained post-graduates”), and making racism worse would be to push against the status quo, Kevin and Michigan Graduate Employee Union are very unequivocal in their ideas, represent the chic mainstream of current US politics and promote the continuation of the status quo (no increase in embryo selection); so a priori there’s a much, much, much higher chance of them realizing the vision of no embryo selection ever, compared to Hsu, who by your assessment is “a threat on the order of 4-5 logs of the entire population’s utils”.

          One caveat: I am not sure how you would account for the loss in utils due to hypothetical disabled embryos “being screened out of existence”; in my opinion this is an issue on par with the trolley problem. But not only is Bird a non-utilitarian, he’s very vocally pro-choice and doesn’t care much for embryos in general:

          I’m not pro-life but deciding to have an abortion because you don’t want any child is very different than having an abortion because you don’t want a particular kind of child. The decision made wrt the embryo has implications for how we view human life and human value at large… No, I’m pro-choice but abortion and contraception are not decisions based on value ranking, it’s uniformly applied to any possible embryo. They don’t want any kid, not THAT particular kid. The ranking and selecting of “better” embryos is what is dangerous and morally bankrupt.

          So I reckon you can assume it to be irrelevant.

          I’m honestly curious as to what the figure would be.

          • Purplehermann says:

            What are his views on abortion?

          • textor says:

            @Purplehermann See the last quote block; it’s pretty clear IMO. He’s pro-choice, and abortion is morally okay, UNLESS it’s to prevent a disability, or really impose any other value-laden selection on the outcome of pregnancy. Because that would have “implications for how we view human life and human value at large”, and constitute “accepting a hierarchy of value and using it to decide who makes the cut”.

            He magnanimously allows exceptions, though:

            I think the best line is at fatal or extremely debilitating conditions with no present treatment. Otherwise it’s a conscious choice to choose eliminating a problem over treatment and acceptance

            (So maybe – maybe – if the cancellation of Hsu’s project stays precisely on the straight and narrow course Kevin approves of, Harlequin ichthyosis would still be allowed to screen for. I still urge @ChelOfTheSea to consider the alternative scenario – after all, “no selection against disabilities, eugenics is wrong” is a much more stable state, politically, than “ugh fine, in this case eugenics is okay, but no further”).

            Would be fascinating material for Scott’2014, with a sprinkle of 2018 – Tails coming apart, and all that. But alas.

            In fact I digged most of this by grifting off Reddit doing a Twitter search of the form abortion (from:itsbirdemic) and exploring different subthreads (Twitter is… a suboptimal platform for discussion). You can do the same.

            I also have to say in case he lurks here (and odds are, he does) on the off-chance he considers it inconvenient that I’ve archived it and so erasure will achieve little.

          • Purplehermann says:

            Ah, yup.

            I wonder how he reacted to feminists aborting because they don’t want boys

          • gbdub says:

            I mean, basically all abortion is “choosing to eliminate a problem over treatment and acceptance”. Shouldn’t we keep lots of unwanted children with impoverished mothers around so that we can all benefit from their authentic lived experiences?

            Of course not.

            Fundamentally I find this point of view just as disgusting as the bad version of eugenics. Disabled people are not zoo animals to be kept around so the rest of us can read intriguing books by Temple Grandin, or see plays about Helen Keller, or give Oscars to Daniel Day Lewis. Is it a shame that polio is eradicated since it makes it less likely that we’ll get another president in a wheelchair? Of course not.

            Part of the issue here is that the “anti-eugenic because disabilities are interesting” conversation is almost tautologically dominated by people with interesting disabilities. The autistic people saying they wouldn’t trade their life for a neurotypical one aren’t the severe cases who can’t communicate or who have debilitating or injurious compulsive behaviors. The stories we hear about blind or deaf people are largely the ones who overcame this disability in a notable way and now it’s a positive defining trait for them. They aren’t the average disabled person who is just like anyone else, except life is harder.

            Generally more choice is better than less choice. If we eliminate congenital blindness, or Type 1 diabetes, or what have you, anybody is perfectly welcome to stab their own eyes out or poison themselves such that they require a daily injection to not die, if they feel that that will give them some sort of unique lived experience. The people born with those conditions (and the people who must care for them) don’t have a choice, and I’m guessing most would really prefer to have one.

            From a purely utilitarian perspective, accommodations are expensive. As long as basically any other problem exists, resources we spend accommodating/treating congenital disabilities are resources that can’t be spent on those other problems.

            The only good steel man I can think of is something like “we need a critical mass of disabled people to make sure they are accommodated rather than treated as freaks”. Ignoring the IMHO horrible implications of forcing people unnecessarily into disability to make the unavoidably disabled better off, I think even that falls flat. Whether we accommodate disabilities has as much to do with how rich and compassionate the society is. And besides, a smaller disabled population means we could apply more resources to the remaining individuals – with a million paraplegics, maybe society can only afford ramps and wheelchairs, but with a thousand they all get a pair of kickass bionic legs or whatever.

          • blumenko says:

            gbdub: It basically depends on what the economies of scale are. If bionic legs are individualized and handmade then you are correct. If bionic legs requires many years of intense research to be cheaply produced on an assembly line, then reducing the number of paralyzed people won’t reduce costs, and will probably reduce impetus to develop them.

          • etaphy says:

            The most horrifying thing here is that all manners of disabilities seem to exist for Kevin as scarce goods to signal his compassion at, rather than something detrimental to those unfortunate to have them.
            “Ahhh, what if everybody is perfectly healthy, then there’s no further room for moral competition over treating the disadvantaged the best one could, better that we have diseases than that spine-chilling scenario”.

            But it goes further: valuable traits do exist as is, no matter the societal preferences, they’re simply irrelevant to anybody’s moral worth. Their presence, however, does impact how much an individual can affect the world around them – including the pursuit of such a basic outcome as diminishing overall suffering, whatever it may be caused by – akrasia, a lack of empathy, non-existent know-how or poor modelling or whatever it may be.
            For Kevin with his openly communist outlook, what matters the most appears to be the zero sum, a priori unwinnable game of social status and equal participation in that “perpetual revolution”, even if it takes batting on the side of “natural suffering” rather than basic humanism, as it’s likely that to him the ups and downs of his personal status feel far more real than the experiences of people who had to overcome their crippling inborn health defects without succumbing to a victim mentality and who still arrive at the idea that it’d been better to have been born healthy than having spent a good amount of their already limited lifespan on finding ways and reasons to keep going on.

            As to me, the perfect world for human beings would be one where one could gradually add or subtract traits to oneself so they could face the world on their own terms, effectively a posthuman reality rather than a perpetuation of the biological status quo.

          • Lillian says:

            Q. not sure what the nature of your condition is, but you’re telling me… you’d rather undergo potentially invasive surgery or take medicine every day or whatever than simply not have the condition in the first place, because the latter sounds too “eugenics”-y for you?
            A. Yup, and I will need open heart surgery and constant medication and that’s much more preferable and ethical to me
            Q. You’re entitled to that preference. do you think most people with your condition have that preference? do you think it’s fair to force that preference onto other people? because by denying parents the ability to remove it from their children, that’s basically what you’re doing.
            A. Yes, and the goal of society should be that it creates a world where all kinds of people are supported and accommodated and don’t face undue hardship by virtue of failing to fit an ideal

            Good God, this is some staggeringly absurd nonsense. I want to ask Kevin Bird if he opposes putting safety features on chainsaws on the grounds that preventing chainsaw maimings establishes a value hierarchy that explicitly values the existence of people who haven’t been mutilated by high speed metal teeth over the existence of people who have been. If he is in favour of safety features, I then want to know what’s the bloody difference? In both cases you are choosing to prevent a lived experience from existing in favour of another one because you deem that other one as being higher value. I assume he would have an answer, it is likely I will find it unsatisfactory, but I still wonder what it is.

          • Monkey See says:

            That was a read, to put it mildly.

        • Ketil says:

          Then a black life-year is about .93-as-good as a white life-year. In other words, we’re losing 7% of black utils today to racism under this assumptions.

          I don’t think this is quite correct. If utils ~ log(income), then a doubling of income would add a constant number of utils, and not a percentage. (Otherwise, you would get a smaller percentage loss if you convert the income to cents)

        • albatross11 says:

          Problem #1: What is the net effect of a prominent person discussing racial IQ differences and potential causes in public, vs being prevented from doing so? I find it very difficult to believe that the net effect is in any way comparable to just back-of-the-envelope summing up the impact of all current-day racism. In fact, people discuss racial issues all the time, and people being people, often they’re careless or just wrong about everything. Racial IQ differences are mainstream known things in intelligence research, and more and more of the papers and conference presentations are available online. _The Bell Curve_ sold a lot of copies, Steve Sailer’s blog is probably going to continue operation, and much of the public has a fuzzy and not-always-accurate notion of some kind of racial hierarchy of intelligence that puts blacks at the bottom and Asians and Jews at the top. Also, a huge amount of racism has nothing to do with IQ–plenty of people hate Asians and Jews, for example, and that’s certainly not because of thinking them inferior due to their average IQ scores[1].

          By contrast, if you want to work with a very dangerous pathogen, you have to go to great measures to prevent it escaping because that pathogen widespread isn’t in the world right now, so its introduction to the community could kill a bunch of people.

          Even assuming these ideas are toxic and dangerous, Hsu working on them is a lot more like a virologist working on seasonal flu (if it escapes, it will just be one more strain of flu circulating) than like a virologist working on smallpox or ebola or something.

          Those are just not very similar situations.

          Problem #2:

          Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the differential in income in America is racist.

          This is one of the things that is specifically being questioned in discussions about racial differences in IQ and behavior, right? How much, if any, of the racial IQ difference is due to racism? How about the racial difference in crime rate, or unwed births?

          Those are all relevant to a discussion about differences in income. It’s surely not a shock that women who have children without a man around are poorer than women who avoid that, or that your employment prospects are not improved by a stint in prison. It’s *really* not a surprise that many high-paying jobs like being an engineer or accountant or doctor are intellectually demanding enough that people with a below-average IQ just can’t do them.

          To untangle the question of how much of that income difference can be ascribed to (say) IQ differences, we’d need to dig into exactly the topics that you seem not to want discussed openly. Similarly to untangle whether IQ differences are somehow driven by racism (the normal kind or the structural kind that involves lousy schools or bad role models or maybe chipping lead paint in cheap urban housing), you’d need to dig into those topics that you don’t seem to want discussed.

          I’m not sure how you can address that without allowing those discussions. And if those discussions are going to happen (and they are, assuming we don’t repeal the first amendment, no matter how many media and academic people get canceled for expressing the wrong views about them), then it seems like we have a choice mainly about whether to try to dissuade the smartest, most informed people from taking part in them. I do not think that’s going to improve the quality of those discussions.

          [1] Note that your back-of-the-envelope calculation of the impact of racism on blacks would have a different sign if you did the same calculation for Asians or Jews.

        • No One In Particular says:

          Let’s say being a chattel slave is half as bad as being dead – this seems pretty conservative, given that many slaves risked their lives for even the vastly reduced status of free blacks.

          That just shows that slavery was terrible for some slaves. Life for people in general 200 years ago was really shitty. Furthermore, it’s not like slaves’ lives were being made shitty for the lolz. Their lives were being made shitty so that other people’s lives would be less shitty. You can’t look at the slaves’ loss of utility and treat all of that as net loss.

          Then a black life-year is about .93-as-good as a white life-year. In other words, we’re losing 7% of black utils today to racism under this assumptions.

          Utils don’t work that way. Utility space is an affine space, not a vector space. You can’t take percentages. If you take black people’s income as 33,000 dollars and white income as 68,000 dollars, then log(33,000)/log(68,000) = 93.5%. But if you take black income as 3,300,000 cents and white as 6,800,000 cents, then log(3,300,000)/log(6,800,000) = 95.3%. If the results of your calculation depends on your units, that’s problematic.

          Also, treating these utils as net loss is slightly more justified than in the case of slavery, but it’s still questionable. Does racism cause inequality, or is there a certain amount of inequality, and racism simply alters how that inequality is distributed?

          7% of that 13%’s utils comes out to just shy of 1% of total American utils.

          Taking your income numbers and percentage of population to be correct, and pretending that every American is either black or white, and ignoring the issue of dividing utlits by each other, we can do the following calculation:

          log(13%*33,000+87%*68,000) = 4.802
          13%log(33,000)+87%*log(68,000) = 4.792

          (4.802-4.792)/4.802 = 0.2%

          So that gives a number that is one-fifth yours.

          Under the very worst assumptions possible, COVID if left totally unchecked would kill something on the order of 2-3% of Americans, skewed heavily towards the already sick and elderly, and thus cost well under 1% of total utils over the lifetimes of everyone involved.

          Utility isn’t just about loss of life. There’s also the loss of utility on the part of people who get sick, those who lose people they care about, those who take care of them, etc.

          I’m really disappointed to see Scott defending this guy.

          That’s quite a non sequitur. What proceeds it does not support it, nor does it support your original claim that “it understates the problem”. Sure, you have an argument that racism is worse than smallpox, but you don’t have an argument that talking about racism is worse than smallpox.

          Conditional on him being smart + his ideology being bad, he represents a threat on the order of 4-5 logs of the entire population’s utils

          “order of 4-5 logs” is word salad. That’s not a meaningful phrase.

      • Simon_Jester says:

        First, I think this is a fairly silly statement. People discussing ideas about genes, race, IQ scores, crime rates, etc., may or may not have some social danger, but it is nowhere in the same universe as working on smallpox samples.

        Yes.

        I’m pretty sure that if you mishandle your smallpox samples, you lose your job right the hell now. No second chances, because nobody wants their lab to be the one to blame for the next smallpox epidemic.

        You can mishandle your statements on race and genetics for years before anyone even starts to seriously push for you to get demoted.

        This is no different than any number of other hyperbolic analogies. There is an exaggeration in everything, that’s how the meaning gets in.

    • TracingWoodgrains says:

      My reply got eaten last time, possibly due to the links I included, so I’ll try again without links. Googling should get anyone curious most of the way there. The person leading the charge appears to be leader/founder of the grad student union Kevin Bird (Twitter @itsbirdemic, reddit /u/stairway-to-kevin — I only mention names because he’s open about his identity on both), someone with a long-standing personal animus against this community who also seems to have made it his career mission to oppose any research suggesting any genetic basis for group differences, particularly around intelligence.

      “The student union opposes Hsu”, then, shouldn’t be taken as evidence that he’s treating the grad students poorly, only that he’s gone against the crusade of one particularly influential grad student.

      • Lambert says:

        +1 My SU officially supports/opposes a bunch of things that i’ve never paid much attention to. You just need to convince a majority of the sort of people who bother to vote on SU motions.

        • gbdub says:

          What stinks is how much of a vicious cycle this ends up being. I ignored our student government because their activities mostly consisted of drama between parties that changed every couple years (because the “parties” were really just cliques centered around a couple of particular people) and arguing about resolutions about Palestine and affirmative action.

          Which of course meant that only the sort of people interested in that and willing to devote stupid amounts of time to it ever really participated. Grad student unions have a little bit more actual pull, but largely the same dynamic seems to dominate.

          The transient membership doesn’t help either. No real incentive for long term thinking, and even the leadership is still pretty wet-behind-the-ears.

        • No One In Particular says:

          Actually, all you have to do is convince whoever has the login credentials for the entity’s Twitter account.

      • No One In Particular says:

        someone with a long-standing personal animus against this community

        What is “this community”?

        The person leading the charge appears to be leader/founder of the grad student union Kevin Bird

        Not to be confused with the bird Kevin: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Kevin

        BTW, he’s the leader of the Graduate Employee Union, which is a bit different from the student union. My understanding is that it’s a labor union for graduate students employed by the university, not a student body type organiation.

    • Jade North says:

      Oh, and the people leading the charge appear to be Michigan’s graduate students. You know, the ones he’s in charge of. The ones he’s meant to keep happy, as part of that high-paying job. Knowing graduate students as I do, they probably wouldn’t be doing this if he’d been treating them well for the last few years.

      His job his to conduct research. The grad students are upset with the conclusions of his research. The whole reason we have a principle of academic freedom is so researchers are free to discover things that upset important constituents.

      • keaswaran says:

        The job of an ordinary professor or grad student is to conduct research. The job of the VPR is *not* to conduct research, but to do the public relations work and organizational work that enables *others* to conduct research. I don’t know whether his work has in fact been helpful to the research of the graduate students, but his research really shouldn’t enter into this, because the job we are talking about is not a research job. (Though obviously it helps if the person in this job is someone who has done research in the past, and possibly does some now.)

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          would Hsu stepping down as VPR and remaining a full MSU Professor be an acceptable outcome to you? If so, do you think it would be an acceptable outcome to the cancel campaign? I doubt that.

          This is literally what they’re asking for in their tweet and their petition. Maybe they’re lying and would push even further if he gave them this inch? Maybe they aren’t lying but ignoring the likelihood that the extended cancel campaign would push for more, and would be unwilling to then turn on the campaign and say enough is enough?

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          I’m not in a position to guess any probability.

        • keaswaran says:

          > What probability would you assign to the event “Hsu retains his professorship at Michigan State” given “Hsu is dismissed from his position at Michigan State”?

          I’ll give something <10% as the probability that Michigan State fires Hsu from the faculty, conditional on Michigan State replaces Hsu as VPR.

          Universities fire provosts and deans all the time, often for severe incompatibilities with some of the other administrators or faculty they oversee. They usually either stick around as senior faculty (I've been in departments with these people) or get a similar administrative position at another university.

          Can you point to any cases where any university has fully terminated someone who is in an administrative position, where the person wasn't accused of a criminal act? Even the USC medical school dean that was found with an ODed 21-year-old in his hotel room seems to have left to be head of a pharma company, and resigned before they could demote him.

    • mitigatedchaos2 says:

      1.) Were any of his statements on race actually any more reckless than statements that Left-wing academics (or, if you like, the institutions between us and left-wing academics) make frequently? Concepts of collective racial moral liability actually strike me as far more reckless – whether populations differ, regardless of whether it’s true, does not bundle an ‘ought’ in the way that ‘silence is violence’ or ‘this land is stolen’ does (to boil down what often uses more complicated jargon about things like ‘being complicit in systems of colonial imperialism’).

      2.) How is opposition to the research necessary for the distribution of genes between not only human individuals but also human populations anything other than ethnonationalist supremacism?

      I can buy that it’s not ethnonationalistic from the #trads who oppose all genetic research, but from people who insist on tearing down traditions on the basis of progress, putting up barriers to allowing people to modify their kid based on genes from outside their race, even if it’s just appearance, is creating collective ethnic intellectual property.

    • Pablo says:

      This comment seems intended to portray Hsu in the worst possible light and doesn’t strike me as a good-faith attempt to analyze the current situation. I will note several problems with it:

      1. To my knowledge, Hsu does not “d[o] scientific work on race”. His work on cognitive genomics isn’t focused on group differences in intelligence or any other behavioral trait.

      2. The comparison between “doing scientific work on race” and “working on smallpox samples” is hyperbolic, as another commenter noted.

      3. Hsu has not “piss[ed] off” “would-be partners and donors”. On the contrary, during his tenure annual research expenditures rose from $500 million to $700 million.

      4. Molyneux had recorded and released over 3,000 podcast episodes, with a correspondingly large number of guests, by the time Hsu agreed to participate in his show. To cherry-pick a very small sample and characterize it as a “who’s who of the alt-right” is intellectually dishonest. Perfectly reasonable people, like James Flynn (from the Flynn Effect, and who was once the chairperson for a civil rights organisation in the US South), had been past guests. And Molyneux himself had participated as a guest in mainstream podcasts, including not one but several times in the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the world’s post popular podcasts.

    • grothor says:

      Knowing graduate students as I do, they probably wouldn’t be doing this if he’d been treating them well for the last few years.

      Nah, my experience with grad students (after spending roughly 8 years being one) is that the one thing that gets them more excited than free food is politics. I’ve never seen a group of people that had such a limited supply of free time and energy and chose to spend so much of it on political fights. The likelihood that some subset (even a large subset) of grad students would initiate something like this has almost no relation to whether he had been working in their best interest over the years.

      • Soy Lecithin says:

        I want to second this.

        It’s hard to picture any of the grad students I know caring who the university-wide VP for research is. The vast majority probably have no idea. On the other hand, many grad students are going to know who Molyneaux is, and those who do probably have strong, negative opinions of him. “Professor So-and-so appeared on Molyneaux’s podcast” is absolutely something you could get politically active ones to care about.

    • Aftagley says:

      Anyone doing scientific work on race has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their media appearances, for much the same reason that anyone working on smallpox samples has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their containment procedures.

      That’s what gets me. I understand this is perhaps the intellectual equivalent of asking a rape victim what they were wearing, but what benefit did Hsu think he would get out of appearing on Molyneux’ show? It probably wasn’t money, it certainly wasn’t increased academic prestige, what possible benefit would he get from it? If he had no clue who Molyneux was at the time… why would he do an interview? If he knew who Molyneux was… why would he do an interview?

      I get that we shouldn’t judge people by dumb stuff they do online, but it would be really helpful if people would stop doing dumb stuff online.

      • SamChevre says:

        In my observation, professors appear on random radio shows all the time–I always assumed that if you thought you understood the world, helping others understand it too was the key attraction of being a professor.

        • gbdub says:

          Plus ego. It’s nice to be recognized as somebody who is worth talking to. Especially if it’s somebody with an audience. Especially if it’s an audience you didn’t even realize you were reaching.

          Digging much beyond that feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth.

      • Clutzy says:

        Isn’t this just a super-duper double standard though? People recklessly talk about race and science all the time. The current riots are the result of people yelling from the rooftops about how their studies have proven systemic racism, etc exist. And all their science is less than 5% as rigorous as the stuff Hsu does.

      • Talexander Urok says:

        Suppose an Orthodox Jew were to say to someone in the process of leaving the Orthodox religion, “I’m not a fan of shunning non-practicing Jews, but why do you got to eat your pork sandwich in public? Why not just hide it, eat it at home, so other people don’t get angry?” You’d probably see that as supremely missing the point. To us, eating pork is not a morally gray issue, it’s black and white, there’s nothing wrong with it.

        We don’t see anything morally wrong with appearing on Molyneux’ show. If you have something issue with Molyneux, you take it up with him.

    • 10240 says:

      Part of your argument seems to be “Even if there is nothing wrong with his views, many people oppose them, so his views make him disreputable, which makes him the wrong person for vice president of research; so people who ask MSU to fire him are right, and people who support him and ask MSU to keep him are wrong”.

      However, he hasn’t been disreputable so far, as far as we can tell from the fact that, as another commenter said, he has had no problem attracting donors. The people currently attacking him might have a chance to tarnish his reputation, but the very people who are trying to tarnish his reputation can’t justify their demand that he be fired by him having a bad reputation. His supporters, at the same time, are not only asking MSU to keep him, but also try to defend his reputation; if they succeed, then MSU won’t need to fire him for reputational reasons. Assuming Hsu hasn’t done something inherently wrong that would justify firing him even outside of reputational concerns, I see no reason to oppose that effort.

      This is a general argument I tend to make against justifying actions of organizations on PR grounds (assuming the actions would otherwise be unjustified): We, the public decide what is good or bad PR. Those who demand an organization to make an action are the people who make it bad PR not to do it. Those who demand the organization not to make the action are trying to reverse the incentives, making it worse PR to do the action and better PR not to do it. Assuming the action is not inherently justified (except possibly on PR grounds), their efforts shouldn’t be opposed on the grounds of “but the organization has to do it for PR reasons”.

    • metacelsus says:

      The grad student union is generally far to the left of the general grad student population. (This is true at Harvard where I am a grad student.)

      So the union wanting to cancel him doesn’t mean he’s been mistreating grad students.

      • Deiseach says:

        All student unions are to the left of the student population; from the things I’ve heard 90% of the students don’t care one way or the other (save when the union organises a protest which is treated as a great excuse to skip classes and head for the pub for day drinking) and internally it’s all internal politics to gain office (and hence influence with the administration) and build up experience for careers in actual politics, be that as advisers, campaign members or trying for elected office themselves.

        When I read that it was the student union calling for his head, I just nodded and said to myself “yeah of course”.

      • Statismagician says:

        +1. Everyone less than maximally political hasn’t got the energy for extracurriculars.

    • Talexander Urok says:

      Oh, and the people leading the charge appear to be Michigan’s graduate students. You know, the ones he’s in charge of. The ones he’s meant to keep happy, as part of that high-paying job. Knowing graduate students as I do, they probably wouldn’t be doing this if he’d been treating them well for the last few years.

      “Many of the actual accusations they’ve publicly made against him are provably false, but I’m sure that there is more wrongdoing that they aren’t sharing with us for some reason!”

    • gbdub says:

      Michigan and Michigan State (Hsu’s employer) are two different universities.

    • A Definite Beta Guy says:

      Anyone doing scientific work on race has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their media appearances, for much the same reason that anyone working on smallpox samples has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their containment procedures.

      Is this some new meme I need to be aware of? If so, who is advancing this new meme?

      This meme looks extremely dangerous and has universal applicability. I can’t really think of anything else that can stifle debate faster than assuming all non-conformist thoughts are equivalent to weaponizable infectious diseases. I suspect, like in this domain, it will be applied in every other in an asymmetrical fashion: to use an example in economics, advocating austerity is now dangerous and costs lives, while advocating QE infinity is right-and-just and it’s bastard step-child MMT is simply allowed to propagate without check (and any rebuttal to it needs to be phrased in the most careful terms, lest it be confused with “austerity” which is as bad as smallpox).

      • Lambert says:

        What if the public finds out about the idea of comparing memes to smallpox and it starts spreading exponentially?

        • albatross11 says:

          Then we will need to find a less destructive but similar meme and spread it to protect people from the much more dangerous one. Maybe check out what milkmaids are tweeting….

          • Lambert says:

            But then people would argue about which was the dangerous version of the meme. Each side would get outraged by the other’s suggestion that their meme was the smallpox meme. You’d get a vicious cycle of two memes self-reinforcing in a way that makes it look like two morphologies of the same memeplex.

    • gbdub says:

      The thing about smallpox or Ebola research is that, despite the obvious and direct dangers involved in studying the pathogen we still do it. Because there are obvious good things that can come from this research.

      Much of the anti-Hsu crowd (and this opinion has even been expressed here) doesn’t believe that these things should be studied carefully, they pretty clearly believe they shouldn’t be studied at all (or I guess studied but never talked about, but for the purposes of advancing science that amounts to the same thing).

      This throws the baby out with the bath water. It’s hard to treat disease if you don’t study the pathogen, and it is hard to treat racial disparity if you don’t study all aspects of it.

  10. Dan L says:

    Is there a seriously buried lede, or am I missing something? Genomic Prediction is a real extant company that appears to be selling genetic screening kits right now for the express purpose of embryo selection. Its co-founder is appropriately cagey in an interview about what the technology might be capable of a decade from now, but the company is IME unusually forward about how it can be applied to polygenic traits. I think there’s a legitimate defense of that stance, but it’s pretty much the opposite of pure academic work.

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      The company projects that once high-quality genetic and academic achievement data from a million individuals becomes available

      Seriously problematic that (what the Guardian says) their IQ trait correlate will be is academic achievement in lieu of g itself (which we only have proxies for measuring, and I don’t doubt that many of these proxies are biased in favor of particular sub-intelligences). I don’t doubt that many of the genetic studies used as inputs to this embryo selection process will indeed look for genetic elements correlating to academic achievement, but given that we know for an absolute fact that IQ and academic achievement are not perfectly correlated, this would be f*ed up to the extreme.

      People like me would be sorted against in favor of those with lower IQs but whose temperaments and psychological complexes are pro-academic achievement.

      Gorillas selecting for a bunch of stronger gorillas, too. What is potentially lost by selecting for higher IQ? Anything? Most likely, at least statistically speaking, given that they aren’t building embryos de novo, but merely selecting for ones highest in a singular phenotype.

      What a Brave New World you bring us Mr. Hsu. The inmates not only run the asylum (doctors running the academy), but soon they will turn their hand to making us non-inmates in their images.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        Adding: I was generally supportive of Hsu until seeing this. Now I’m genuinely anxious as to what his company is planning on doing.

        I’d far, far rather medical and precision genome editing cures for diseases than embryo selection (barring serious lethality).

      • Incurian says:

        I think you’ll still be allowed to make your own kids however you want.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          All things considered it’s likely my parents (especially my father) would have chosen a different kid.

          Given how often I’ve seen parents express desires that their children be a chip off the old block I expect that this is not unusual.

          Also: If you give people particular options to choose, enough of them will make choices based on those options simply because they’ve been given the power to make a particular choice. However this does not negate the fact that you are the one choosing which options, and which order, they are presented with to choose from.

      • Murphy says:

        but given that we know for an absolute fact that IQ and academic achievement are not perfectly correlated, this would be f*ed up to the extreme.

        Things don’t have to be perfectly correlated to be informative.

        If I’m doing a disease study and I have 2 groups, cases and controls where cases are people diagnosed to have the condition of interest, lets say parkinsons…

        There is not a 100% correlation between a diagnosis of parkinsons and whether that person actually has parkinsons.

        Because doctors aren’t great at giving consistent diagnosis’s.

        Sometimes some of your cases turn out to look like they have some other kinda similar movement disorder that’s on the differential diagnosis chart for parkinsons.

        Sometimes some of your controls show as having mutations known to have a super-strong link to the disease in question and when you look at their details they have a bunch of symptoms but the doctor just never diagnosed them.

        Academic achievement doesn’t have a 100% correlation with intelligence. But it has a reasonably strong correlation which is good enough to be informative.

        Just like, height can be strongly affected by diet, someone can have every height allele but if their parents starved them then they could end up 4-foot-2. There’s not a perfect correlation. But it’s good enough.

        Genetic studies can cope with correlations not being perfect and it’s not a slight against you.

        Parents might want children like themselves…. but they already have access to one of the most powerful ways of doing this already.

        Choosing partners who are similar to themselves.

        People already mate assortatively on height, IQ and various other features. You have a trillion possible alternative siblings who could have been who don’t exist because your dad didn’t like the eye colour of that other woman or your mom gravitated to familiar facial shapes.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          Yeah, sure. But given the social dynamics inherent in various of the world’s educational systems it is known that IQ can actually interfere with academic achievement (see: Miraca Gross, Terman).

          This is of serious concern. Modifying a populace to fit a system is equivalent to a government selecting its electors.

          And just because parents generally choose their partners (same goes for arranged marriages) does not currently mean their children will be identical, or even a blend, of the parents (except externally phenotypically), or at least not a particular blend. This is easily seen in any family that has multiple children: most of the children will not share anything other than incidental personality characteristics with their parents (they certainly won’t be all of the same personality type, at least).

          If personality traits start being selectable features, then even if parents are diverse enough to select the whole diversity of human personality there is still a likelihood that you start getting personality-based sub-populations who are raised by parents of their own personality. It is important that constitutionally liberal people be raised by conservatives. That ESFJs be raised by INTPs (and vice-versa). (Yes, this happens to an extent with current mating, but embryo eugenics is likely to accelerate it.)

          (As an aside: as a person who looks at efficiency and sustainability I’d rather have people who are shorter than average, all else held equal. You can have more of them for the same resource expenditure. If human IQ is important to Hsu, then wouldn’t the number of high-IQ people also be important?)

        • No One In Particular says:

          The plural of “diagnosis” is “diagnoses”.

    • Randy M says:

      Interesting, thanks for bringing that up.

    • Ketil says:

      Genomic Prediction is a real extant company that appears to be selling genetic screening kits right now for the express purpose of embryo selection.

      Oh noes! What if white supremacists use this to ensure they don’t have black kids?

      • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

        I mean, I think “eugenics” (as in germinal choice, not racist early 20th century stuff) is good akshually, but you still have to acknowledge that most people disagree and engage with something resembling the stronger arguments against it.

        • B_Epstein says:

          Is it obvious, or even true, that most people who are capable of separating the two disagree with the non-early-20-century version? The typical stance I’ve encountered, across the political spectrum, was “obviously great on paper but requires a great deal of caution”. If this is at least a fairly well-represented position here in this commentariat, then it is the opponents of (non…-) eugenics who need to begin justifying their position before they can just shoot down companies by pointing and saying ‘eugenics eww’. Of course, Dan L wasn’t doing that – he explicitly wrote ” I think there’s a legitimate defense of that stance”.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            I was considering people in general, not sensible people. I agree that saying “eugenics eww” would be bad; luckily no-one is doing that.

        • LudwigNagasena says:

          People are doing “eugenics” every day by selecting their partners. You can go to a sperm bank and choose a donor (demand for short guys is so low many sperm banks don’t even accept their sperm). What is more, government and lots of other entities in some way affect parenthood decisions. Yet no one bats an eye.

          Most people’s argument against “eugenics” can probably be summarized as “nazism bad”, I think even anti-abortion activists have more reasonable arguments.

  11. meh says:

    what is the best way to chronologically watch the videos of a youtube channel?

    • Machin Shin says:

      You can sort by date (oldest->newest) on a channel’s video page…

      • meh says:

        that will show videos ive viewed already though. (assume i am not watching it all in one sitting)

        • fwipsy says:

          Maybe do the sort, then go through and add the ones you haven’t seen to your queue? I don’t think there’s a way to avoid manually filtering out videos you’ve already seen.

    • Lambert says:

      The hard part is when it’s a channel about history and you want to watch it the other kind of chronologically.

    • Pazzaz says:

      If it isn’t too many videos, you could download all videos with youtube-dl and then (re)move videos when you’ve watched them. This can be done using something like (command not actually tested)
      youtube-dl -f best -o "%(timestamp)s-%(title)s.%(ext)s"

    • Rinrin says:

      Use youtube-dl to easily download everything to your computer.

    • chrisminor0008 says:

      youtube-dl the entire channel to your hard drive. Delete each video upon watching.

  12. Purplehermann says:

    There is an accusation against the professor in the twitter thread about conflicts of interest not being properly declared, I didn’t understand exactly what is being claimed. Could someone explain what he’s being accused of exactly, and if it is or isn’t a serious issue?

    • caethan says:

      He wrote a paper (published October 2019) involving work at his company Genomic Prediction, and didn’t initially divulge in the paper that he was on the board. A month later (November 2019), he submitted a correction divulging the conflict of interest. I don’t see anything about it in his response. It’s the only, IMO, legitimate complaint against him.

      It’s not great, but it’s been corrected. I’d say a sharp word from the higher ups not to let it happen again is enough.

  13. ranttila1 says:

    I’m looking for authors (nonfiction) who make big grand statements about big grand topics. Hopefully this thread will allow us to look at the bigger picture in a time so focused on short term anger.

    Most nonfiction authors like making big statements about little subjects, or small statements about big subjects. I’m looking for those that make big statements about huge topics, and change your whole viewpoint on life.

    A few examples to make my point clearer: Rene Girard, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth), Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens), Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan), Robert Greene, Michel Foucault, Matt Ridley, Jared Diamond, Freidrich Nietzsche, David Graeber (Debt: A 5,000 Year History), and Julian Jaynes (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind).

    These people have totally flipped my worldview, and I want to be amazed again. Do you have any recommendations for authors that make huge statements about grand topics?

    • slipperypig says:

      Interested as well. Martin Gurri’s “Revolt of the Public,” several of Tyler Cowen’s books like “Average is Over.”

    • Tenacious D says:

      Vaclav Smil has some pretty big-picture books.

      • ranttila1 says:

        What books of his are your favorites?

        • salvorhardin says:

          Not the OP but I learned a lot from Creating the Twentieth Century.

        • Tenacious D says:

          So far I’ve only read Harvesting the Biosphere. I believe there’s a fair bit of thematic overlap with Energy and Civilization. The one I want to read next is Growth—I was actually thinking of reviewing it for Scott’s contest, but I don’t think I’ll have it read in time.

    • SamChevre says:

      Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism: from de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse (page with free pdf).

      I found it in a dumpster when I was 15, and it is one of the 10 most influential books I ever read. It’s definitions are precise enough to be helpful even if you disagree–thinking about how and why you disagree is enlightening. And its Central-European focus in the discussion fo the First World War is enlightening if your education, like that of most Americans, focuses on the western front.

      ETA: I’d recommend reading it alongside Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind

      Also, I’ll link the discussion on this a couple weeks ago.

      • ranttila1 says:

        Thanks for linking my previous discussion! It’ll be interesting to check out the descent of both the Left and the Right. Are the two books written from people who are on the political side which they are writing about or are they opposed to the political leaning they are writing about?

    • romeostevens says:

      Invariances by Nozick is kind of dry unless you pick up on what he is doing which is to flip the is-ought problem on its head in an interesting way. The inversion is difficult enough to conceptualize that he takes most of a book to do it.

      Elevator pitch: Nozick extends extensionalism using extensionalism, which is even more Quinean than Quine.

      • ranttila1 says:

        Is Quine worth a read? What book of his is a good introduction to him? I know that the rationalist community mentions him a lot, but I have not yet delved into why that is.

        • Doug S. says:

          Quine did a lot of work on formal logic. You don’t need to read him any more than you do Einstein – you read textbooks on the subject.

    • Rinrin says:

      http://www.paulgraham.com/sun.html

      May I tentatively suggest that you’re taking these people too seriously? I myself used to do this. (I believe I still do if I don’t concentrate.) Then I noticed how little evidence they present for their views, and how UNHELPFUL their “insights” are for achieving anything concrete.

  14. johan_larson says:

    You are invited to submit the latest headlines from June 16, 2050.

    ENGLAND ACCEPTED AS 53RD STATE OF US

    103 PRIVATE CARS WITH INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES REGISTERED IN CANADA

    CHINESE-IRANIAN BORDER DISPUTES CONTINUE INTO FIFTH YEAR

    • John Schilling says:

      These are not “headlines”, these are entire news articles. In 2050, all journalism is done on Twitter.

    • Biater says:

      TROUBLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

    • Matthias says:

      You think Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland would no longer be with England?

      Scotland and perhaps Noether Ireland would probably be out of the UK by then. But Wales?

      • John Schilling says:

        Wales and Northern Ireland were the 51st and 52nd states. Scotland’s application for admission was rejected on the grounds that the United States already had all the Scotsmen it could handle. Same goes for Ireland.

        • salvorhardin says:

          The Scottish vote to join the US was also complicated by loud nationalist allegations that “join” voters were not true Scotsmen.

          • Evan Þ says:

            The allegators were then summarily Canceled for assuming the “join” voters’ gender.

          • johan_larson says:

            Won’t Scotland break off and rejoin the EU in 2028 or so?

          • John Schilling says:

            On the original point:

            RIOTS IN BRUSSELS MARK 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DISSOLUTION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

    • Randy M says:

      Whistleblowers allege US no longer has capabilities to land on Mars. (cheating, that should probably be 2080 or so).
      Midterm primary elections still in manual recount as voting machines found to have voted for themselves.

    • fibio says:

      YOU WONT BELIEVE THESE WEIRD CELEBRITY BABY NAMES. JEAN?!? THATS JUST THE START

    • Statismagician says:

      NUMBER OF DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY CANDIDATES NOW UNDER 100

    • Eric T says:

      X Æ A-12 MUSK WORLD’S FIRST PERSON TO BE WORTH 100 TRILLION DOLLARS

    • noyann says:

      GREAT PLAINS STEPPE CLOSED FOR TOURISM

  15. littskad says:

    Apparently bread-and-butter pickles may possibly be called that because they were commonly eaten on buttered bread during the Great Depression, but actual contemporaneous evidence for this is hard to find. Anyone out there who eats pickle and butter sandwiches?

    • broblawsky says:

      Seems like a similar flavor profile to vegemite sandwiches.

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      Never have, and I find it hard to imagine because pickles are just a bit too watery for a bread and butter sandwich. But then again, I often eat bread and butter sandwiches with salted slices of tomato. So if you like the rather more acidic flavour, perhaps pickle sandwiches would work.

    • Pazzaz says:

      Eating bread-and-butter pickles on bread is pretty common in Sweden (where it is called Ättiksgurka or Smörgåsgurka). It is often combined with liver pâté (leverpastej). A typical person would eat it like this.

      • SamChevre says:

        That’s a typical use of pickles in the US also–on bread with some other sandwich ingredients. Would it be unusual in Sweden if someone had only the buttered bread and the pickles–nothing else?

        • MilesM says:

          Not quite the same thing, but bread with bacon lard and pickles is definitely a thing in Polish “cuisine.” Wouldn’t surprise me if people substituted butter in a pinch, but it’s not the same thing – the lard is saltier, has little bits of crackling… I think I need to go put together some lunch.

          (I don’t really have a good feel for how popular it is at the moment – IIRC it enjoyed a resurgence as restaurants serving “country food” became a thing, and Polish places in NYC serve it still. It’s also one of the “classic” accompaniments when drinking shots of vodka.)

        • Pazzaz says:

          It would be a little unusual but I know people who always eat it with only butter. I think I’ve done it too.

  16. Tenacious D says:

    Last year, samples of Ebola virus were shipped from the only BSL-4 lab in Canada to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Several months later, the main researcher involved (Dr. Qiu) was escorted out of the lab on national-security grounds that still haven’t been disclosed. The story has stayed in the news partly because of its links to Covid19 conspiracy theories (which don’t seem plausible as Ebola isn’t a coronavirus), but apart from that, how big a deal is it? Routine scientific collaboration, or pretty irregular?

    • Aftagley says:

      I mean, if they expelled her, her husband and all her students like your article says it was almost certainly some kind of industrial/academic espionage.

      • Tarpitz says:

        My impression is that the scale of essentially amateur* industrial espionage of this kind carried out by the PRC is enormous. MSS intelligence officers seem to pretty much try to recruit any nationally or ethnically Chinese person they can find who even might have access to anything useful at all, provide them with minimal if any training, throw them at the problem and not really worry if they get caught because their activities don’t tend to meet Western standards for criminal prosecution and the agents know almost nothing that would be of interest to Western intelligence agencies.

        *amateur with respect to espionage/tradecraft – they may well be experts in the field they’re trying to acquire industrial intelligence in.

        • Tenacious D says:

          Up til now, there’s been little risk, but the US is starting to crack down on researchers with undisclosed funding from China (link). I wonder if Dr. Qiu’s case was linked to that effort, or perhaps as part of the tit-for-tat following the Meng Wanzhou arrest.

      • Aftagley says:

        My understanding from reading the news is that it’s twofold – they’ll both send people into places that have information they want and that if they identify someone with ties to China who’s currently got access to their wanted information, they’ll start turning the screws.

        not really worry if they get caught because their activities don’t tend to meet Western standards for criminal prosecution and the agents know almost nothing that would be of interest to Western intelligence agencies.

        Also because at this point, there’s basically no risk to China. From what I read, they don’t risk actual intelligence assets running these guys – it’s almost always handled by civilian intermediaries and whatever reputation hit could fall on China’s already happened. Everyone knows they’re thieves, it’s not like the world’s opinion of them can drop more in this regard.

  17. acertainidiot says:

    This was supposed to be a culture-war free open thread, but I guess the ship has sailed on that one

    To be fair, the link you provided us is filled with comments to get rid of the current university system rather than showing any support for Dr. Hsu, so it’s not like you had much of a chance.

    • DBDr says:

      Oof. I went to the defense link; half of the people commenting on the blog take the reasonable “That sucks bro” stance, the rest is split between the modern equivalent of weirdo NWO types, people who are really worried (like, they aren’t making analogies, they’re just talking about china) about the PRC for some reason, and general deplorability.

      Even if you are a normal god damn human, getting tarred with this particular brush attracts defenders you probably would rather just support you silently.

      • Anonymous` says:

        The hey? You’re just going to drive-by-smear people who are worried about Chinese influence on American universities as deplorables with no reason for their beliefs? Have you not been paying attention?

        Check out these links first at least.

    • Talexander Urok says:

      comments to get rid of the current university system rather than showing any support for Dr. Hsu

      The two are not mutually exclusive.

      I have a real question for Scott about how far we should take the being charitable rule.

      I just do not believe that the commenter named “acertainidiot” is, on this issue, anything other than a concern troll. Now, if evidence were to be provided that he has spoken out in defense of Hsu in a different context, something as simple as single tweet from a Twitter account that wasn’t created in the past month, I would change my view. But he has no blog, no twitter account, no paper trail, his very username…

      So how should I respond to this? Should I, in the future, just keep the suspicions above to myself because sharing them would not be charitable? How do you think a church is going to respond to someone who comes in from nowhere, no record of attending the church or any church in the town as far as anyone is aware, and says “oh, the people in these pews are good Christians, the people in these pews are sinners, they need to repent change their ways, and they’re harming the credibility of our church by not doing so?” You don’t want this to become reddit where people feel free to say “well, I believe you’re supporting policy A because you hate group X, and no amount of evidence will change my mind.” The difference is that all I’m asking for is a single tweet from a Twitter account that wasn’t created in the past month. I don’t think that’s very unreasonable.

      • Scott Alexander says:

        If you see posts of his you’re worried about, report them. Nothing I see here seems concerning to me, but if I see enough to notice a pattern, I’ll take it into account.

      • MilesM says:

        I think your post is far more damaging to the tone and quality of discussion here than the one you complain about.

        The idea that someone needs to have “proof” (as defined by you) of their intentions before stating an opinion is uncharitable. And unreasonable.

        You say “you don’t want this to become reddit”, but scrutinizing people’s posting history to validate their arguments is the most Reddit thing ever.

        • Talexander Urok says:

          The idea that someone needs to have “proof” (as defined by you) of their intentions before stating an opinion is uncharitable.

          This is not just any opinion. acertainidiot’s opnion is what you call a wedge argument, trying to divide a group of people. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, I’ve made many wedge arguments on the Unz comment section in the past few months as part of my personal jihad against the corona deniers. But when people say “as an advocate of X, I think this subgroup of people who are also advocates of X are bad or at least strongly misguided,” it’s not unreasonable to ask them what they’ve actually done for X. Suppose you went to an IRL meeting about X, whether it’s world hunger, police brutality, tea party, etc., and opened with that kind of argument, what do you think you’re going to be asked? It’ll be, what have you done, why are you only showing up here now? Is that unreasonable? What would you do, if you were the leader of the meeting?

          Yes, this is not a quest to solve world hunger, but the general principle is the same. You can search for “acertainidiot” slatestarcodex.com on google and you’ll get 3 results.* If he were to make an argument advocating for Hsu, and he had this lack of a paper trail, I’d say we should be charitable about his intentions. If he were to make an argument against Hsu, I’d say the same thing, be charitable about his intentions. But if he’s saying exactly what a concern troll would say, and he has this total lack of a paper trail, what should be the null hypothesis? Think about what that figure means. Has he never expressed an internet opinion on anything other than in three SSC threads? Almost certainly not. Like most commenters, he presumably has expressed opinions elsewhere and hasn’t correlated his identities together. He might say it’s because he has a life unlike us blogger NEETs. What would we lose if we tell people we’re not going to accept wedge arguments unless the commenter is one who chooses to leave a paper trail, whether that’s an extensive comment history here, a blog, a twitter account, etc?

          *I, btw, have 414, and Hsu has been in my blogroll for years, so I have the paper trail.

      • No One In Particular says:

        I could read your comment several more times trying to piece together what your argument is, but maybe you could just say what it is?

        • Talexander Urok says:

          maybe you could just say what it is?

          Have you stopped beating your wife? I made myself quite clear, and I’m going to respond to your passive aggressive comment by stating clearly that I don’t have much respect for you and feel under no obligation to “explain myself” further.

  18. Dan Elton says:

    Twitter user @GradEmpUnion kickstarted the Twitter mob which eventually led to a petition to get him fired. In a very misleading and disingenuous series of tweets, @GradEmpUnion points to an interview Hsu did with Stephan Molyneux. Molyneux is an alt-right character, but that shouldn’t matter. We should encourage discourse, even with those on the alt-right. Talking with someone should never hurt someone or be socially stigmatized. I watched some of the interview, and Hsu is just talking about the basic science of IQ and the g factor. The only time he brings up race, it is to downplay its importance. Of course, the twitter mob used a clip where he was downplaying race to try to say he thought race was important – classic twitter mob tactics. (see https://twitter.com/GradEmpUnion/status/1270829018208706562). The only factual complaints I’ve found so far are that he “hosted X on his podcast, who holds controversial opinion Y”. That’s hardly a reason to fire someone in any case, let alone from a university where academic freedom is supposed to be a core value!

    • ChelOfTheSea says:

      > The only time he brings up race, it is to downplay its importance.

      Given that he appears, elsewhere, to attribute the achievement gaps between blacks and whites to the same forces, it seems like he’s “downplaying its importance” only to say the equivalent of “no, they’re not underperforming because they’re black, they’re underperforming because they’re stupid”.

      That is a claim you can make, but it’s a claim that should come under extreme suspicion at a minimum – much less if you’re doing it on the show of someone who is known to be really, really racist!

      • albatross11 says:

        ChelOfTheSea:

        IQ tests are basically intended to predict academic ability. It would be utterly shocking if groups with very different average IQs did not have very different average levels of academic success.

        IIRC, IQ scores predict black and white academic and workplace achievement equally well.

        • Dan Elton says:

          I listened to the full interview. My comment was really rushed.. so I didn’t get it quite right. More specifically what he was saying in the clip was that conditioned on IQ, race doesn’t play much of a role on achievement. Elsewhere he downplays the possibility of racial differences in IQ somewhat but acknowledges it’s possible.

    • No One In Particular says:

      Stefan, not Stephan.

      Molyneux is an alt-right character, but that shouldn’t matter. We should encourage discourse, even with those on the alt-right. Talking with someone should never hurt someone or be socially stigmatized.

      The only factual complaints I’ve found so far are that he “hosted X on his podcast, who holds controversial opinion Y”. That’s hardly a reason to fire someone in any case, let alone from a university where academic freedom is supposed to be a core value!

      Academic freedom doesn’t mean that we should give everyone an equal platform. Whether to ignore or confront people with terrible views is a difficult question, and the former has strong arguments for it. Sanctioning those who disagree is quite problematic, but when someone is interacting with someone with terrible views, it is legitimate to look at whether they think the other person’s views are in fact terrible.

  19. SamChevre says:

    And now for something completely different: Andrew Flicker recommended cocktails as something to make on the last OT, and I agree. I bartended in college, got really into cocktail-making a decade ago, and love cocktails.

    So for fellow cocktail lovers: what’s one favorite cocktail, and if you make it yourself exactly how do you make it?

    One cocktail I love is a good bourbon and ginger ale: chill Canada Dry ginger ale thoroughly, fill a glass with ice cubes, pour Evan Williams until it’s 1/3rd full, stir till the glass starts to sweat, pour the ginger ale gently down the side and carefully lift the spoon out to just combine it. My grandfather used to drink these (with Early Times vs EW), and once I
    d graduated from college he’d offer me one.

    Any highball made with that technique will be 100% better than in a standard bar.

    • Matthias says:

      I like Negroni and Boulevardier. Made the standard ways, but with better ingredients than your average bar uses.

      • SamChevre says:

        Can you expand? What gin/bourbon and vermouth do you find ideal? (I love both drinks).

        Sometime, try a half-teaspoon of Jamaican rum (ideally Smith and Cross) floated on a Boulevardier.

        • J.R. says:

          Not Matthias, but the Negroni is my favorite drink. My build dries out the drink a little.

          1.5 oz gin (Beefeater)
          1 oz sweet vermouth (Cocchi vermouth di Torino)
          0.75 oz Campari
          Stir and strain over a big rock, garnish with an orange peel.

          Boulevardier build for kicks:
          1.5 oz rye (Rittenhouse is my standard)
          0.75 oz sweet vermouth (Cocchi)
          0.75 oz Campari

          And finally, my latest cocktail revelation is I really like martinis, BUT I don’t love dry vermouth, so I go very heavy on the gin. And use both orange and lemon peel as a garnish – a trick I use in my Old Fashioned’s that I like here.

          2.5 oz gin (Tanqueray No 10 preferred, but Beefeater is still great here)
          0.5 oz dry vermouth (Dolin Dry)
          Stir and strain into stemmed glasses (coupes are better than the V-shapes martini glass). Squeeze lemon and orange peel over glass. Add to drink or throw away if desired.

    • JayT says:

      I love Manhattans. I make a pretty good one, but the best bars I’ve been to are still better. I suspect it’s mostly due to the cherries, or possibly the vermouth.
      3 parts rye, I like Michters.
      1 part sweet vermouth. Of the easily accessible ones, stay away from Martini, Rivata is better, but if you have a specialty liquor store nearby, try something nicer, like Carpano Antica.
      A few dashes of Angostura bitters. You can play around with other bitters, but I always come back to Angostura.
      A maraschino/brandied cherry for garnish. You can add a drop of cherry juice of you want a sweeter Manhattan, but I don’t usually do that. Find some decent cherries though, stay away from the neon red ones. If you can’t find any good ones, put some dried sour cherries in a mason jar and cover with brandy. Let them sit for a few days, and you’re set. Make sure they are sour cherries.

    • ltowel says:

      The Daquiri (not to be confused with one out of a blender) is a stupendous drink.
      3 parts white rum
      2 parts lime juice
      1 part simple syrup

      Shake, strain, server up or in an old fashioned glass.

      My preferred way to prepare it for a beach weekend with friends is to take a growler (the stainless steel one’s with large mouths are best), one 750 of the bacardi dragonberry rum, 6 juiced limes, 250 ml (or 8 oz) of simple, add a dash of salt, top with water or ice if it fits in the growler, shake it or chill. This gives you 16 or so portable and delicious servings.

      Really any 3 booze/2 parts sour/1 part simple drink is great – just make sure you have the right sour for the booze.

    • thesilv3r says:

      If we’re allowed to talk simple mixers (e.g. bourbon+ginger ale) and not complex things, I’m going to go with Vanilla Galliano, Lemonade and a slice of lime – it is delightfully refreshing and it was pure chance that someone ordered this for me once. I do enjoy cinnamon vodka mixed with my family classic fruit punch (pineapple juice, lemonade, fresh mint and soda water to taste). If I’m at a catered event I do love an espresso martini (and I don’t think they’re that hard to make from the one time I did it at a party).

      Also, because drinking calories is something I usually try to avoid, I’m always surprised at how much more the liquor flavor shines through when mixing with Diet Cola (any brand) vs normally sweetened drinks.

      • SamChevre says:

        When you say lemonade do you mean American lemonade (tap water, lemon juice, and lots of sugar) or European lemonade (carbonated, lightly sweetened and citrus-y)?

        • thesilv3r says:

          Great point! I mean European lemonade.

        • No One In Particular says:

          I think “still water” is a better term to distinguish between carbonated and non-carbonated. One can make American lemonade with bottled water.

    • Aftagley says:

      Hot toddy with a bit of ginger muddled in for some spiciness. Absolutely delicious, tastes almost like a tea and is the perfect nightcap.

    • GearRatio says:

      The sidecar, made simply, is great; if you used to like screwdrivers, you now like sidecars. Wikipedia says 2 oz Cognac, 3/4 oz Lemon juice, 3/4 oz Triple sec; I say 2/1/1, experiment a bit. Sidecars do not mind cheap components.

      If you try to order it at a nice bar, the bartender is going to do a bunch of unforgivable stuff to it; he’s going to burn orange rinds over it and put in a bunch of extra sugar and salt the rim and it’s going to be terrible. Bartenders think you are trying to be impressed when you order a sidecar and will, in their enthusiasm, ruin your entire life if they can.

      • andrewflicker says:

        I agree entirely about the greatness of the simple sidecar, and that many bars destroy it. I do use a different ratio, slightly, though- usually 2oz cognac, juice of half a lemon (roughly the 3/4oz), but only 0.5oz triple sec. I prefer the brandy to shine through more, and not get overly sweetened by lots of triple.

        The stereotypical sugared rim is both unnecessary and (in my opinion) a detriment to the drink. If I do feel like getting fancy with it, I’ll express a bit of lemon oil and toss a twist in. Sometimes I’ll serve it on the rocks (with one single giant cube), and tap out a little bitters (of whatever I’m feeling like) onto the cube- basically no flavor change, but you get some nice aromatics.

        My wife enjoys rum sidecars as well, as a variation.

      • SamChevre says:

        I make a sidecar variant which I prefer to the original sidecar: mix orange marmalade with an equal amount boiling water, strain, and use the syrup instead of at least half the triple sec. The pectin gives it a very rich mouthfeel, which I enjoy.

        I also prefer my sidecars on the sweet side–one of the very few drinks where I use less lemon and more sweetener than the typical recipe.

    • gbdub says:

      The Last Word – equal parts gin, green chartreuse, lime juice, and maraschino.

    • sfoil says:

      The Aviation
      – 2 parts gin
      – 1 part lemon juice
      – 1 part maraschino
      -.25 parts creme de violette
      shake/strain

      Unfortunately the creme de violette can be rather difficult to find and is absolutely vital, though an inferior version can be made by simply omitting it. Recently I’ve seen a brand called “Rothmann’s” appear with reasonable regularity however — at least one store in a large town will have it. Usually.

      • Lambert says:

        > creme de violette can be rather difficult to find

        Viola odorata can be grown in hanging baskets or pots, as well as in the ground and is hardy to -10 °C or so. Pick newly opened flowers (morning’s usually the best time to pick flowers for culinary use) and steep in everclear (vodka is an acceptable substitute). Steeping in brandy is also an option. Wait a week or so then strain out the flowers and sweeten/dilute to taste.

        African violets are unrelated to violets and pansies, and they are not edible. Do not use them.

      • andrewflicker says:

        Probably our house favorite! What gins do you prefer? If I’m drinking it at home myself, I usually just use a london dry of some kind. If I have guests over, I’ll use Empress sometimes, just for the enhanced color.

        This is a drink where the extra-herbal gins aren’t well-suited, in my opinion.

        • sfoil says:

          This is a drink where the extra-herbal gins aren’t well-suited, in my opinion.

          Mine as well — I usually use Tanqueray though any London dry works.

          (I’ve never liked “American” gins to the point that I have a conspiracy theory that they’re just failed experiments by American distillers).

    • psmith says:

      I’ll throw in a good word for the margarita, in summers. Espolon Reposado, Cointreau, key lime juice, rocks, salt on the glass. I’ve had some at a Mexican restaurant that had a very nice smoky note to them, but I’m not sure if they were using mezcal or just a different tequila.

      Trader Joe’s lemon-ginger seltzer is also worth a mention as my preferred low-calorie mixer for most things. Now I think about it, a dash of ginger might be pretty good in a margarita, too.

      • andrewflicker says:

        They’re probably using mezcal or an anejo tequila. If we do a stirred margarita on the rocks like that at my house, we’re usually using a smoky mezcal. Try it with rangpur lime juice, if you get the chance sometime- it’s a nice variation.

    • salvorhardin says:

      Vieux Carre. My usual mix:

      1 part cognac (Camus or Marnier or if feeling fancy Dudognon)
      1 part rye (Sazerac or Lost Republic or if feeling fancy Hudson Manhattan Rye)
      1 part Carpano Antico sweet vermouth (Dolin is probably more authentic but I like the bolder Italian flavor better)
      Orange bitters to taste

    • Simulated Knave says:

      The Simulated Knave:

      Two parts grapefruit soda
      One part gin
      One part lime juice

      I worried I was an alcoholic after I invented that, until I realized I stopped drinking them if I ran out of lime juice.

    • WoollyAI says:

      Grog. Like the pirates drank. 4 parts hot water, 1 part rum.

      Advantages:
      #1 Delicious, especially before bed
      #2 Comically simple
      #3 Pirates

      • Lambert says:

        I raise you a gunfire: 4 parts black tea, 1 part rum.

      • John Schilling says:

        Grog. Like the pirates drank. 4 parts hot water, 1 part rum.

        Ye forgot the lime juice, ye scurvy dog!

        • Well... says:

          My daughter pulled an Um Actually on me once when I said this. Apparently dogs cannot get scurvy; she was taught this fact (and to correct people with it) on some PBS Kids show.

          Crap, they got me too. Sorry.

      • bean says:

        Grog was specifically a Royal Navy drink, specifically to keep the men from hoarding the rum. I would assume that most pirates drank their rum straight.

    • broblawsky says:

      If you live in/near NYC, you can get Dr. Brown’s, which means you can make The Stone Fruit: 2 parts Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry soda, 1 part Slivovitz plum brandy. Inspired by re-reading Dracula.

    • Ketil says:

      Some options I didn’t see mentioned:

      Moscow mule – vodka, lime juice, and ginger beer, served icy cold, and traditionally in a copper cup. I don’t keep accurate recipes, so go look it up or mix to taste – but I prefer Fever Tree GB.

      Gin tonic – it’s probably no longer fashionable to do it like this, but Hendrick’s gin, your favorite tonic, and garnished with cucumber slices and fresh black pepper.

      Some other options for summer I like are Campari and orange juice, or mojito (rum, lime, fresh mint leaves, syrup, top up with soda).

    • episcience says:

      My girlfriend and I have been on a cocktail kick since we’ve started quarantining together. Favourites are:
      — Negroni. We make it with Antica Formula, Campari, and whatever gin the local spirits merchant recommends — we’re currently enjoying East London batch #2. I like to go slightly lighter on the gin than the standard equal parts (so I do two parts gin and three parts vermouth and Campari when making two cockails). Make sure you have heaps of ice and stir until everything is ice-cold and the tumbler is sweating. Use a potato peeler to peel some orange skin without any pith, twist to get some oils out, and rub it around the rim of a lowball glass before pouring. Twist the orange peel into a nice spiral or flower as a garnish.
      — Manhattan. Not something I drank much of before quarantine. Four parts bourbon (Wild Turkey is the go to), two parts vermouth (Antica Formula, as above), generous amounts of both Angostura and Peychaud’s bitters, serve with a Luxardo cherry. We like these served low too.
      — Margarita. Two parts tequila blanco (Cabrita or Espolon), one part Cointreau, one part freshly-squeezed lime juice, salted rim.
      — Martini. Here we differ. Mine is a gin martini (Brooklyn Gin is good) with 4 parts gin, 1 part vermouth, 1 parts olive brine (from Perello canned green olives, honestly the best canned olives I’ve ever tasted), served with three olives on a toothpick. Hers is a vodka martini (Tito’s), with a tiny splash of olive brine and only using vermouth to coat the inside of the glass before serving (with an olive).
      — Paloma. 2 parts tequila blanco, 2 parts grapefruit juice, 1 part lime juice. Serve in a highball with a salted rim, top with grapefruit soda, garnish with half a slice of grapefruit. Super refreshing on a hot summer’s day.

      We’ve also experimented with gimlets and Moscow Mules, and have had a couple too many Aperol Spritzes whilst sitting in the park in the sun. Any recommendations appreciated!

      • SamChevre says:

        My recommendations given what you have and like:
        A Boulevardier – equal parts bourbon (or rye), sweet vermouth, and Campari.- very like a Negroni, but richer.
        A Perfect Manhattan – equal parts sweet and dry vermouth (same total as the sweet vermouth in a regular Manhattan), lemon peel garnish.

        I’d try Cocchi Vermouth di Torino – it’s a slightly less honey/vanilla profile than Carpano Antica.

    • Fitzroy says:

      I love a French 77: St. Germaine elder-flower liqueur and a squeeze of lemon juice topped up with champagne. It’s even nicer with a measure of good gin in there as well.

      A good Old Fashioned is a joy as well. I know just one cocktail bar in London that makes them properly (IE with the bitters dripped slowly over a sugar cube to dissolve it, slowly stirring). Indeed the process take sufficiently long that when you order an Old Fashioned they serve you half a pint of beer while you wait.

      • Lambert says:

        I’d ask which bar it is but I expect I’d have to liquidate all my assets to buy one.

      • SamChevre says:

        A really good Old Fashioned (although I’m a rich simple guy vs a sugar cube guy) – just good bourbon (I like Elijah Craig), sugar, and bitters garnished with an orange twist–is a delicious cocktail, very easy to make and very hard to buy.

        • CatCube says:

          I actually started drinking Old Fashioneds with simple syrup during the quarantine, and started using the syrup in my coffee. It help me use it up before worrying about it going bad, always an issue when you live alone. It does make it easier to dissolve sugar in stuff.

    • Ed Silva says:

      Nothing beats a good caipirinha. Tasty, easy to make and strong as hell.

      3-4 shots of cachaca
      Cut one lime in 4 slices, remove the white strand/core, and score the skin with the knife.
      Throw one big spoonful of sugar (sorry I can’t be more specific. Just get one big spoon and stack as much sugar in there as you can, it’s better to add too much than too little).

      mix the shots with lime and sugar in cocktail mixer and grind with a pestle. Then throw some ice cubes in there and shake well. You’re done! Needs almost no ingredients and is super quick.

      For the cachaca, the best one for me is Velho Barreiro, but any should be fine. You can also substitute with vodka, but it’s less authentic!

    • Byrel Mitchell says:

      I really like a vermouth-heavy dirty vodka martini:

      1 part vodka (Tito’s)
      1 part extra dry Vermouth
      0.3 parts olive brine

      And ideally 3 olives as a garnish.

    • Garrett says:

      A challenge, appropriate to your name:

      Come up with a mixed drink which uses goat’s milk as the base and actually tastes good.

      • Lambert says:

        Well first you mince some of that particular goat’s kid’s meat and add it to the glass…

      • SamChevre says:

        (I’m too dairy-intolerant to drink it but) I’d suggest a milk punch. 3 parts goat milk, 1 part brandy or Jamaican gold rum, I part rich simple syrup*, shake vigorously with ice, grate some nutmeg over the top, and drink.

        These were a favorite (with cows milk) when I could still have milk–and they are deceptively easy to drink.

        *My go-to Jamaican rum is Appleton Special Gold, my go-to brandies are Korbel (just fruity) and St Remy (richer). Rich simple syrup is 2 parts sugar, 1 part water, bring to a boil–it will keep at room temperature for months.

      • noyann says:

        White Muzhik.

        The taste you have to find out yourself. Then we’ll see what condition your condition was in.

        • Garrett says:

          Alas, a White Russian does not do so well when made with goat’s milk. I’ve tried. But goat’s milk has a pungency to it which seems to clash terribly.

          • noyann says:

            The things I learn here…

            Did you catch the oblique movie reference?
            (uggcf://jjj.lbhghor.pbz/jngpu?i=qbbFSViYa-L)

          • nkurz says:

            What kind of goat milk did you use? I’ve always intensely disliked goat cheese because of the taste. I also disliked all the goat milk I’d had, for having the same licking-a-dirty-goat flavor. Then I was given some very fresh goat milk by a friend with goats, and to my great surprise, it was approximately the best milk I’d ever drank — no caprine flavor, fabulous creaminess, basically perfect.

            Apparently some of the difference is breed, some is whether the does are kept near a buck, but a lot is just freshness. Cared for well, I think you at most three days. I’ve never had anything in a store that came close. I don’t know that it would do well in alcoholic drinks, but if like a good Muzhik you’ve got your own goats, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it was really good.

          • noyann says:

            The pungency of a riper goat chees is great when used as spice. A few small crumbs in a salad add a nice ‘vulgar’ tastiness to it. Start with few and small, then add to taste.

    • andrewflicker says:

      Your Bourbon’n’Ginger is identical to mine, down to preparation and Canada Dry, except that I vary up the bourbon based on what I have on hand, or feel like. Often Bulleit, since it’s incredibly cheap at Costco, but half a dozen other common bourbons as well on rotation. Good call!

    • andrewflicker says:

      Since a few people have mentioned Manhattans, and it’s one of my favorites- I heartily recommend you brandy your own cherries! Cheaper than buying the oh-so-expensive Luxardo cherries, and I find that the liqeur that I soak them in to be an interesting and flavorful ingredient in its own right. Lots of people do it very basic, with just brandy, sugar, water, and a bit of spices. Screw that- if you’re doing it yourself, go crazy!

      I change it up every time I do it, but here’s a sample recipe:
      2lbs ripe cherries, de-stemmed and pitted (use a cherry pitter!)
      3 tbsp whole allspice
      3 cinnamon sticks, broken up a bit
      1 whole star anise
      2 cups sugar (I did half white – half brown last time)
      1 cup water (add a bit more later if you can’t get the sugar to dissolve in)
      1 cup brandy
      1/2 cup bourbon
      1/2 cup white rum
      juice of 2 lemons

      Make a spice sachet with all your whole spices.
      Simmer sugar and water till dissolved, then add the spice sachet and simmer for a few minutes.
      Add the cherries, and mix so well coated- don’t let it boil/burn.
      Add in all the booze and lemon juice, and heat/stir till it’s hot but not simmering.
      Remove spice sachet.
      Pack jars/glass canisters with the cherries (using a slotted spoon).
      Pour hot boozy liquid into each jar until almost full (leave like 1/2″-1″ of air).
      Seal ’em, and refrigerate for use.

    • Doctor Mist says:

      Here are two I like.

      The Twentieth Century is

      1 1/2 oz gin
      3/4 oz Lillet Blanc
      1/2 oz white creme de cacao
      3/4 oz lemon juice

      The Lillet gives it a little foam and cacao gives it a mysterious taste without being enough to identify as chocolate.

      But if you like chocolate, I give you my own invention:
      His Nibs is:

      2 oz chocolate rye
      3/4 oz orange liqueur — I use Combier, but Citronge or even Cointreau works too
      3/4 oz Meyer lemon juice — or ordinary lemon juice with a little hunk of muddled orange
      Garnish with a Luxardo cherry.

      That much is my invention. It’s dead easy once you have a batch of chocolate rye, which I didn’t invent:

      1/3 cup cacao nibs
      1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns
      5 allspice berries
      1/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted
      2 2-inch cinnamon sticks
      1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
      1 1/2 cups rye whiskey

      In an airtight container, combine it all and swirl to mix. Let it sit at room temperature for a couple of days, shaking occasionally, and then strain into a clean airtight container.

      Serious Eats gives a recipe for a cocktail to make with it, but I tried it and thought it was dreadful. Try His Nibs instead.

  20. cassander says:

    So I need help with a topic that’s certainly not culture-warry at all. Which god should I worship?

    In the forgotten realms, of course. Some friends are doing a pandemic themed 5e game set in Waterdeep, and I’m trying to come up with an interesting angle (both from a mechanical and character perspective) on a necromanticly oriented character can comply with a mandate to “You know, like tone down the murder hobo this time…” (the last time this group played was in high school, and we were VERY murder hobo-y). In previous editions, cleric was the way to go for necromancy but I know nothing of 5th edition, so who’s got recommendations for interesting builds? Or any tips about what I should know that’s different in 5e from 3.5

    • Plumber says:

      I’d have my PC worship Tymora, the goddess of good luck (after Tyche split ib two).

      Dice as holy symbol.
      “Please baby please, Papa needs a brand new pair of shoes!” as prayer.

      My favorite 5e ‘build’ is for “Hans d’Shovel (back-story here)

      Race: Standard Human

      Background: Folk Hero

      Class: Barbarian

      STR:19, DEX:12, CON:12, INT:10 WIS:10, CHA:11

      Skills: Animal Handling, Athletics, Perception, Survival

      Second Level
      Class:
      Barbarian

      Third to Sixth Level
      Class:
      Fighter
      Subclass: Champion
      Fighting Style: Great Weapon Fighting
      ASI: +1 to DEX

      Seventh to 9th Level
      Class:
      Rogue
      Subclass: Swashbuckler
      Additional Skill: Stealth
      Expertise in: Perception, and Stealth

      Levels 10 to 16:
      Class:
      Fighter to 11th level
      Fighting Style Archery,
      ASI’s: +1 DEX, +1 INT, +1 STR

      Levels 17 – 20
      Class: Rogue to 7th level
      ASI: +2 DEX
      Expertise in: Athletics, and Thieves tools

    • ECD says:

      School of Necromancy Wizard is probably what you’re looking for.

      A circle of Spores Druid, or Death Domain (if your DM allows it) Cleric would be alternatives that maintain a necromantic vibe and powers.

      On specific builds, it depends on group and goal, but for a caster you can’t go wrong focusing on their spellcasting attribute, with con and dex as secondary stats. For a spellcaster, pumping the first ASIs into your spellcasting until you get to 20 is probably the right choice as it ups spell DC and attacks. Then feats depends on your interests and party.

      I tend to view the wizard base class as strong enough that multi-classing isn’t worth it.

      • cassander says:

        animate dead (the spell) seems pretty minimally useful. are there ways to make raising the dead viable in 5e yet or will I need to wait for the inevitable splat books?

        • ECD says:

          Animate dead and minionmancy generally are rather overpowered in 5e due to the bounded accuracy. Additionally, remember that because you control them, you can also equip them and they aren’t stuck with the gear listed. Depending on wealth, or loot, you can have your skeletons outfitted with half-plate (AC 17, given their dex) and wielding longbows (only +4 to attacks but 1d8+2+proficiency bonus (minimum 3 maximum 5).

          Managing it can (reportedly, I don’t play minionmancers, as I find the management painful) be rough, but if you’ve got enough room to deploy, it can get powerful fairly fast, especially as you can cast it multiple times. The real limits are your max control number, time and money for equipment.

          However, the other players may not love sitting and watching you spend as much time as everyone else put together to do your four (note you can maintain control over more than you can summon with one level 3 slot, so as prep you’d cast, short rest and use arcane recovery to get the level 3 slot back, recast and have four, then in future you can maintain all four with one slot in the morning, then short rest to get it back before adventuring all day behind your guards) longbow attacks and move your skeletons forward, as a bonus action at level five.

          This is mostly hearsay, but I think it’s doable.

          ETA: Technically you might be able to do 8, but I think that might run into timing issues with the 24 hour period.

          • cassander says:

            intriguing. We’re starting at first level, so it will take a while to get there, but I like the notion, and I can probably convince the DM to let me do larger, but fewer creatures if we ever get that far. It looks like 5e has really changed how character progression works. Is there a strong reason to go wizard over cleric?

          • ECD says:

            Yeah. If your DM is looking for models, the revised ranger companion might be a good place to look, as it scales quite well with player advancement. Frankly that scaling makes more sense for a bone golem or whatever, as you’re tinkering with it and grow more powerful.

            Might be a bit overpowered on a full-caster chassis, but that could be dealt with.

          • caethan says:

            The benefit of wizard over cleric is the 6th level school of necromancy benefit: your minions get bonus HP and bonus damage.

          • Spookykou says:

            Last I looked the companions are like 70% of a player character, giving one to a player character as a pet has pretty serious balance implications.

          • ECD says:

            Last I looked the companions are like 70% of a player character, giving one to a player character as a pet has pretty serious balance implications.

            Oh, definitely. The question is what do you pay for it? If it’s quite a few spell slots essentially permanently locked down on maintaining control of the creature you may well be balanced, even without the social issues which come with trying to walk around with a bone golem (or whatever).

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          animate dead (the spell) seems pretty minimally useful. are there ways to make raising the dead viable in 5e yet or will I need to wait for the inevitable splat books?

          A level 11 necromancer has 3 third-level spells that can command up to 4 skeletons each, 3 fourth-level spells that can command up to 6 skeletons each, 2 fifth-level spells that can command up to 8 skeletons each, and 1 sixth-level spell that can command up to 10 skeletons, for a total of 54 skeletons.

          A skeleton has 13 Hit Points, Armor Class 13, +4 to hit with a shortbow (range 80 feet at 1d20+4, 320 feet at 2d20 take-the-worse +4). That’s similar but not tactically equal to having a bone golem with 702 HP (but only +4 to hit, which is not mechanically impossible in 5E, just against tradition), crap AC and 54 pairs of arms making ranged attacks. That’s incredibly OP in 5E.
          (To make the 702 HP bone golem more equal to the Centurion Necromancer’s troops, a DM would want to make it lose 1 arm from each attack that does >6 damage and give it a vulnerability where Fireball reduces it to inanimate bones like a weird special Dispel.)

          • ECD says:

            It’s even worse, because the Necromancer gets their level added to HP, so it’s actually 24 HP per skeleton.

          • cassander says:

            Yeah, I saw the +4 to hit for skellies and was thinking about that in 3.5 terms, not realizing how much they’d scaled down attack bonuses in 5e.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            It’s even worse, because the Necromancer gets their level added to HP, so it’s actually 24 HP per skeleton.

            I stand corrected! So you effectively get a monster with 1296 hit points and 54 attacks from 108 arms, though Fireball usually dispels it.
            And 11th level isn’t even that impressive anymore. When I’ve played Adventurers League (Hasbro-sanctioned 5E play), you gain a level just from sitting in the chair for 2 4-hour sessions.

          • ECD says:

            And 11th level isn’t even that impressive anymore. When I’ve played Adventurers League (Hasbro-sanctioned 5E play), you gain a level just from sitting in the chair for 2 4-hour sessions.

            I wouldn’t know, my main campaign has stayed at nine for a long time. I think my DM is having some serious concerns about power creep, especially with six of us. Still, it’s actually pretty nice. We all know our tools, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to use them to solve the problem at hand.

            I stand corrected! So you effectively get a monster with 1296 hit points and 54 attacks from 108 arms, though Fireball usually dispels it.

            It’s definitely nice, but at the same time, the main limitation looks like it’s going to be spacing (good luck getting your army to all be in the same room in a dungeon crawl) logistics (no need for food, but lots of need for more remains and supplies) and maybe politics (DM dependent, but in most settings, trying to show up with an undead army ends up getting heroes and/or assassins sent after you).

    • Spookykou says:

      Lliira seems like the best bet, the goddess of eternal motion, her funerary rites are supposed to include animating the dead, maybe something like, you take the skeletons on a final journey, which is why they travel around with you.

      Still I would go with a religious wizard rather than a cleric, maybe with the acolyte background. The flavor for Clerics in basic 5e is very anti-undead full stop, especially the grave cleric.

    • Randy M says:

      Pff, my group was doing D&D pandemics before it was cool.
      I actually texted the DM when we had to cancel the third arc of our “stop the plague” campaign due to the social distancing, “wow, you really out did your prop design this time.”

      • Spookykou says:

        Oddly similar thing happened in my D&D game with a plague plotline that was running for a few sessions before Covid hit the stage.

    • broblawsky says:

      If your GM is willing to consider 3rd-party material, the Channeler makes for an interesting ghost-summoner.

      Alternatively, the Hexblade Warlock from Xanathar’s Guide gains the ability to summon spectres and can temporarily animate zombies or skeletons with Danse Macabre.

      Edit: the Phantom Rogue could also be interesting.

      As for viable choice for FR gods who might be willing to countenance necromancy:
      – Velsharoon, god of necromancy
      – Shar, goddess of entropy
      – Bhaal, god of murder
      – Jergal, god of memorials

    • strstr says:

      My current group invented the Ronald Reagan inspired god “Reaganov”. I’m currently playing as a Cleric that worships Reaganov and desires to bring the Free Market to all (for a price). His devout followers can invoke the invisible hand for assistance (cast Unseen Servant). There are more specifics, but they are all basically whatever our group thought was amusing (like the divination spell directly requiring gold).

      I find it to fun to worship a cartoonish take on a neoliberal/capitalist god. The “moral flexibility” is nice in our current campaign, since it throws a lot of curve balls when it comes to who/what we interact with. We were recently trying to establish free trade with the Feywild. We were eventually banned and told to never return (due to some unfortunate accidents involving fireballs).

      If you know your group well enough, you could also pick something else and worship a cartoonish take on it. In the same vein, Marx would probably work (but you would be inspiring the workers to unite). You’d probably have the knock spell since you have nothing to lose but your chains. Obviously, I’m stuck in the political philosophy mindset, but there are certainly others.

      As to how angles like this play out with necromancy: Reagan could be freeing his servants from death. Marx could be inviting all workers to unite, undead or alive.

      • rocoulm says:

        My current group invented the Ronald Reagan inspired god “Reaganov”

        He’s True Neutral but his most devout followers swear he’s Lawful Good?

        • strstr says:

          Reaganov can either be true neutral or lawful neutral. Mostly depends on how militant you are about Freedom. Mix in just a bit of ambivalence and you land in true neutral territory.

          Unlike the real world, Reaganov’s followers have no problem judging his good-vs-neutral-ness, since they unfortunately have mechanical effects. You could make all his followers be under the illusion that all effects that distinguish the two imply that He is good, which would be funny. I should keep that in mind.

          • bullseye says:

            Alignment has very little mechanical effect in 5e. A cleric can have any alignment regardless of their god’s alignment. Just about the only way to find out Reaganov’s alignment would be to somehow meet him in person, give him a magic item that cares about alignment, and ask him to use it

    • fibio says:

      Worship yourself, when one day you become powerful enough to ascend to the pantheon you can reach back through time and retroactively grant yourself miracles.

  21. relative-energy says:

    Scott, it’s really good of you to stand up for Hsu like this. Thanks for doing it!

  22. gbdub says:

    This was supposed to be a culture-war free open thread

    Aren’t fractional threads usually CW allowed? Or were you planning on making this one a special exception?

    • GearRatio says:

      Special exception. He thought things were getting too heated lately and was considering telling everyone to knock it off temporarily.

      • Gerry Quinn says:

        And then CW came knocking on the door…

      • gbdub says:

        Where did he say this? And if he meant it, I hope he reconsiders. The Culture War is very much live and immediately relevant right now, and I much appreciate a place to talk about it where more than one opinion is allowed

        • Nick says:

          From 156:

          5. Speaking of protests, the open threads have been getting pretty intense lately. I realize some awful stuff has been going on, and emotions are really high, but I want everyone to take a deep breath and try to calm down a little bit before saying anything you’ll regret later. I will be enforcing the usually-poorly-enforced ban on culture war topics in this thread with unrecorded deletions. I may or may not suspend the next one or two hidden threads to give everyone a chance to calm down. I hope everybody is staying safe and sane during these difficult times.

          I take “I may or may not suspend the next one or two hidden threads” together with 156.25’s “This was supposed to be a culture-war free open thread, but I guess the ship has sailed on that one” to say Scott was definitely leaning toward making this thread culture war free after all, and when the Hsu thing came up decided he couldn’t do that consistently.

          • gbdub says:

            Gotcha. I either missed that last sentence, or interpreted it to mean “open threads might not be posted at all”.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I think his goal was mainly “stop talking about BLM-related stuff.”

    • No One In Particular says:

      Do you mean “fractious”?

  23. gallowstree says:

    Most of the people who are ‘just asking questions’ and ‘support free inquiry’ when it comes to genetics, race, intelligence, etc. have not actually done the work of seriously grounding themselves in the science and literature. They’d rather idly speculate and have provocative-sounding conversations. Weirdly, this trait is often stronger in people who do have (different) areas of incredibly strong domain knowledge. The reverse thought experiment is illustrative – we would think it was very peculiar for a geneticist to go on podcasts and carry on about research in astrophysics or quantum mechanics.

    I don’t think this is something that is necessarily cancel-worthy, but to pretend that this is all totally normal behavior for an academic is not accurate.

    (P.S. And as other commenters have pointed out, claiming that Molyneux wasn’t well known as an alt-right figure in 2017 strains credulity.)

    EDIT: I missed in his bio that he had transitioned over to do some computational work in genetics/genomics. So he has more grounding than some other ‘race and genetics’ provocateurs. But his publication record is very sparse (5 papers total I can find), and most of it has to do with polygenic risk scores which are of…questionable utility, to put it charitably.

    • GearRatio says:

      The reverse thought experiment is illustrative – we would think it was very peculiar for a geneticist to go on podcasts and carry on about research in astrophysics or quantum mechanics.

      Not really. Shuffle your specialties and that’s what Neil Degrasse Tyson is. Nobody thinks it’s weird until it’s a banned thought.

      • ECD says:

        I’m confused, I know Degrasse Tyson as mostly a space guy and a preliminary look on his wiki page lists his degrees as all being in astronomy and astrophysics.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          He thinks he’s a qualified historian on the side.
          I’m 90% confident there’s a screen cap where he’s standing in front of a Powerpoint slide of this infamous chart to support atheism. Did I imagine that, guys?

          • No One In Particular says:

            I find your sarcasm in lieu of an explicit point unseemly.

          • ECD says:

            I mean, maybe, but: “I can’t agree to the claims by atheists that I’m one of that community. I don’t have the time, energy, interest of conducting myself that way… I’m not trying to convert people. I don’t care.”

            The closest I can find is his essay “Holy Wars,” which includes some stuff that might be moderately bad history of near New Athiest type, but also states:

            “Successful researchers do not get their science from their religious beliefs. On the other hand, the methods of science have little or nothing to contribute to ethics, inspiration, morals, beauty, love, hate, or aesthetics. These are vital elements of civilized life, and are central to the concerns of nearly every religion. What it all means is that for many scientists there is no conflict of interest.”

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @ECD: Cool, thanks for that quote.

            And for clarification, that wasn’t sarcasm. That was a Bayesian statement by someone with Aspergers, adjusting “I was sure I…” down based on knowledge of memory fallibility.

        • GearRatio says:

          In interview settings, he will talk about nuclear power, AI, global warming and genetics, to name a few I’ve heard him talking about. Here’s him talking about global warming, nuclear, automation and civil war history while being interviewed by somebody a lot of people consider an alt-right racist; no eyes were batted.

          • ECD says:

            I mean, maybe…but I’m not seeing any references to Adam Carolla as alt-right in his wiki page, unlike Molyneux. The closest it comes is a couple of controversies that are pretty clearly him being an idiot more than anything else (which obviously doesn’t mean he couldn’t/isn’t a racist).

      • gallowstree says:

        Degrasse Tyson largely sticks in physics and space, and even then is routinely mocked for holding forth on subjects he knows very little about (to be fair, some of this is just the inherent suspicion scientists have of any researcher who gets famous and/or gives a TED Talk).

        • GearRatio says:

          Degrasse Tyson largely sticks in physics and space, and even then is routinely mocked for holding forth on subjects he knows very little about

          He largely sticks to physics and space, but is routinely mocked for something he barely does, somehow? I would think the part where he’s known for getting out of his lane might be indicative of him getting out of his lane.

          Also, and very importantly: getting routinely mocked is not comparable in any substantial way to what Hsu is getting, which is something close to “let’s slur this guy with the agreed-upon ‘worst thing to be’ title and more-or-less destroy his career”. If Scott was telling us to protest Hsu getting made fun of on twitter and nothing else, nobody would care; if people were trying to hurt NGT in substantial ways for having an opinion on nuclear, I’d be similarly pissed.

          • keaswaran says:

            Nearly all of his TV show was rightly mocked for its ignorance of the history. I mean, saying that Giordano Bruno is some sort of ignored scientist, and saying that Newton was good and Hooke bad, is really a whole lot of buying unthinkingly into lots of propaganda.

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      Well, if he is ignorant on the subject, it should make it all the easier to prove him wrong, no?

    • Scott Alexander says:

      He runs a genetics company and he was on the first team to create a working polygenic predictor for height. It’s possible there are levels beyond his, but the highest-level people I know seem to endorse him (check the names on his petition – Robert Plomin is one of them).

    • Talexander Urok says:

      The reverse thought experiment is illustrative – we would think it was very peculiar for a geneticist to go on podcasts and carry on about research in astrophysics or quantum mechanics.

      Maybe all you’re observing here is that some disciplines make it into a controversy and others don’t? Did any physicists care that John Von Neumann didn’t have any credentials in physics, only chemical engineering and mathematics? There are plenty of crank physicists on the History Channel, but I believe the complaint there is that they don’t know what they’re talking about, not that they are “invading” other disciplines.

      • TomMustang says:

        I think theoretical physicists are special in that they are smart enough to do whatever they want. Off the top of my head, I believe Scott mentions how absurdly smart they are at the beginning of “the parable of talents, but he’s definitely said that many times. Theoretical physics is weird in that lots of people without a background pop-in, while lots of people with backgrounds in theoretical physics do amazing things in other fields.

        Smart people gonna smart.

        If you’re smart enough to be a publishable theoretical physicist, you will probably be awesome at lots of things too.

        The salient feature here isn’t degrees, it’s IQ.

        • boylermaker says:

          Replace “smart” with “mathy”, and I think you’re on to something. Every discipline needs math-ronin to ride in and and do your equations for you, and theoretical physicists are likely better-equipped than average to do this. Genetics is a subfield of biology that is especially amenible to gas-law style idealization, and so math is especially useful in that context.

          I would hesitate to say “smart” exactly because I have seen too many things like physicists trying to come in and solve biology by things like the physics of glass cooling [not a joke; also maybe paywalled, but the abstract will give you all you need], or whatever nonsense-du-jour Nassim Taleb is spouting today about GM crops. (Taleb is admittedly not a physicist, but people on the borderline between statistics and economics have contributed-via-math much more to biology than physicists, so I think it’s fair to lump in in the general category).

    • Murphy says:

      polygenic risk scores

      As a bioinformatician, I kinda dislike how polygenic risk scores get used. They can be informative when used properly.

      But they also often get used as a fallback form of data dredging for people who couldn’t p-hack any more interesting results.

      I think some of it is an artefact of how a handful of the most commonly used tools like plink output their results. One thing I always have to stress when talking to our grad students is that when plink spits out a low p-value variant it’s very very common for people to get fixated on that specific variant… when in reality it’s most likely not that variant itself doing anything but rather something in the surrounding haplotype blocks.

      Polygenic risk scores tend to replicate terribly across populations for this reason. Because of course various common snps are associated with completely different blocks.

      In practice it means that if you are using a polygenic risk score to check someone’s risk of [x] you need to use different tests depending on the population of the subject…. which is apparently politically unacceptable now even in medical tests with a solid statistical grounding in a manner that even a couple of years ago people would have called an absurd Strawman because apparently admitting any average physical difference between populations, even when medically relevant is politically unacceptable.

      For the record I strongly oppose Lysenkoism in all it’s forms. If you aren’t allowed come to a politically unpopular conclusion then any politically acceptable conclusions you do publish are meaningless.

      • Christopher Chang says:

        plink developer (and direct collaborator with Stephen Hsu) here.

        It is long past time that I created an updated tutorial and FAQ; I’ll try to include an explicit warning against the common misinterpretation you describe. If you’ve noticed other common pitfalls, feel free to elaborate on them either here or in a direct email to me.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          @Christopher Chang

          If you are willing and able I’d be very appreciative if you can answer my concerns in the following three posts as to Stephen Hsu’s work and company:

          https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/#comment-916234
          https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/#comment-916278
          https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/#comment-916702
          (Please note with respect to the issue posed in the third link: I have a tic-related obsessive-compulsive disorder. While this has been an annoying impediment at times, it also gave me a facility with basic arithmetic and an interest in digit-sum mathematics. Had I chosen to become a mathematician it is quite likely that my tic-related OCD would have been a source of inspiration.)

          Thanks,
          Anonymousskimmer

        • Murphy says:

          Hi

          I wasn’t expecting my sentiment to reach a plink developer!

          I suspect just adding a line to the FAQ won’t catch peoples attention much unfortunately. I’d suggest a line in the text output or a line somehow specifying an approximate estimated interval…. but I suspect there’s a thousand other explicit clarifications that people suggest and it’s not practical to include all the caveats.

          Congrats on writing one of the most used/useful tools in Bioinformatics!

    • BlindKungFuMaster says:

      Steve Hsu predicted the sample sizes necessary to create polygenic riskscores that capture most of the genetic variance in certain traits. At the time the field was all over the place in discussions of the “missing heritability”.

      Then he validated that prediction with a polygenic risk score that captures most of the genetic variance in height.

      Frankly, while height might not be one of them, there are a lot of traits where capturing most of the heritable variance by a prs is extremely high utility.

      Your objections would have sounded reasonable five years ago. Now, they are just wrong.

  24. No One In Particular says:

    This week, some students at Michigan State are trying to cancel him.

    I expect better from you, Scott. Take that as a compliment, or insult, or both, as you wish. If students want to get him fired, why not just say “Students want to get him fired”? You also don’t discuss who these students are, how many there are, what power they have, etc.

    They point an interview he did on an alt-right podcast

    You’re missing a “to” between “point” and “an”.

    You can read the case being made against him here, although keep in mind a lot of it is distorted and taken out of context, and you can read his response here.

    While I can understand a reluctance to stand on principle when one’s job is on the line, shouldn’t there be a social norm that anyone childish enough to put their complaint in a Twitter thread should be simply dismissed out of hand? “Hey, I have this super-serious point to make, and I’m going to split it into 144-character bits so it can be read with thirty-years-old technology that is trendy for some reason.”

    If you support him, you can sign the petition to keep him on here.

    Things that come to mind when reading this are “dollar auction”, “virtue signalling”, and “slacktivism”. I have virtually no connection to Michigan, academia, or race studies. There is no rational reason for MSU to take my opinion into consideration. I guess your implicit position is “I expect MSU to act irrationally regarding this matter, and I encourage you to manipulate that irrationality to the goals that I favor”. Kinda goes against the “Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons” thing.

    • Spookykou says:

      A note of personal preference, including a typo in a critical post feels rude in a way the typo correction alone would not.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      I thought “cancel” made the dynamic clearer than “fire”. I agree I’m a little annoyed at a lot of the ways it’s used, but I can’t think of a real argument against using it, so I kept it.

      I signal-boosted the petition because Steve asked me to. I also asked him whether it was worth having non-academics sign it. He says that it is, and since he is a high-ranking official at a university, I assume he knows more about how to influence high-ranking officials at universities than I do.

      It’s possible he’s just wrong and very bad at PR (see: the current situation), but I figured I would give him the benefit of the doubt and let him coordinate his own defense.

      • keaswaran says:

        I, for one, would have appreciated at least *some* description of what “cancel” means here. Do they want MSU to relegate him from VPR to a regular faculty position? Do they want MSU to revoke his tenure and fire him? Do they want MSU to write a Strongly Worded Letter that all the thousands of students can retweet? Do they want Twitter and YouTube to suspend his accounts? All of these are reasonably described by the word “cancel”, and while some of them seem like overreaction, not all of them obviously are.

      • No One In Particular says:

        I can’t think of a real argument against using it

        I find it vague and hyperbolic. When it comes to talking about this sort of conduct in the aggregate, I can see the “I can’t think of a better term” argument, but in a particular case, you can just say what’s going on.

        I assume he knows more about how to influence high-ranking officials at universities than I do.

        That doesn’t address the issue of having an arms race of petition-signing. Signing petitions is not a weapon that the “good guys” can wield any better than the “bad guys”. Maybe you think winning the game is more important than challenging it, but it does go against positions you’ve taken previously.

    • 10240 says:

      There is no rational reason for MSU to take my opinion into consideration. I guess your implicit position is “I expect MSU to act irrationally regarding this matter, and I encourage you to manipulate that irrationality to the goals that I favor”.

      I’d say either they act rationally and evaluate the situation independently. In that case signatures don matter.

      Or they act in a silly way and just look at whose mob is the bigger. That’s unfortunate, but if your side doesn’t play the game, it loses.

      Edit: Or (and this is I suspect often a pretty common scenario) they prefer to evaluate the situation independently, but if they see a big mob demanding one thing, and few people opposing it, they may feel the need to cave. If they see that there is broad support for both positions, they can decide themselves.

    • drethelin says:

      Buddy keep up with the times. The President of the United States is using twitter! It’s a big deal. People get fired and hired regularly from stuff posted on there.

    • TomMustang says:

      IDK, Tyler Cowen thinks that Twitter is one of the best, if not the best sources of info. There is lots of great stuff on Twitter. I think it’s fine.

      BUT

      Lets, asssume you’re right, Twitter is silly.

      Well then, where should he respond to his criticism? If not Twitter then where?

      Is Facebook more prestigious? Would his Facebook page get as many views?

      Should he hang flyers around campus?

      Will a post on his blog get as much attention?

      Whatever you think if the “character limit” Twitter was the best way to bring the unfairness to the publics’ attention.

      If not Twitter, what would you have him do?

      • matkoniecz says:

        Tyler Cowen thinks that Twitter is one of the best, if not the best sources of info

        Seriously? I would consider it possible if reduced to some subset, like “about ongoing events” or “personal opinions” or something, but such broad statement is clearly absurd.

      • No One In Particular says:

        IDK, Tyler Cowen thinks that Twitter is one of the best, if not the best sources of info. There is lots of great stuff on Twitter. I think it’s fine.

        I have no idea who Tyler Cowen isto , so while this looks kind of like argument to authority, it’s lacking the “authority” part. Twitter is a terrible source of information. It can be a source of links to information, but actually providing information is not something it does well.

        Well then, where should he respond to his criticism?

        I assume by “him” you mean Hsu. But my criticism was primarily directed towards the students.

        Is Facebook more prestigious? Would his Facebook page get as many views?

        The issue isn’t prestige or views, it’s what’s a proper medium. Twitter is, quite simply, not a proper medium to have an in-depth conversation. Full stop. For over two decades, we’ve had a protocol for transferring text over the internet. It even allows hyperlinks. If you can’t figure out what this hypertext transfer protocol is called, you don’t belong at college. If you want to include a link to a website or word document in a tweet, that’s one thing. But posting your argument in tweets is ridiculous.

        Whatever you think if the “character limit” Twitter was the best way to bring the unfairness to the publics’ attention.

        I assume you mean “think of” rather than “think if”. That typo, plus the lack of a comma after “character limit”, makes your sentence hard to parse. And the apostrophe in “publics'” is in the wrong place. Even if Twitter was the most effective strategy, there’s still wider issues such as participating in the degradation of discourse.

      • Simon_Jester says:

        Literally the only thing I know about Tyler Cowen is that I think he had an argument with Scott about preferences and psychology, and from what I remember I’m pretty sure Scott is right and this Cowen guy is wrong.

        • Nick says:

          Are you sure you aren’t thinking of Bryan Caplan?

          • Dan L says:

            Confusingly, here is Cowen weighing in on that disagreement with Caplan.

            Cowen comments on Scott’s work from time to time, with varying levels of approval. (And vice versa.) Depends on the topic.

          • Nick says:

            @Dan L
            Huh, I missed that post at the time. I only read MR on and off. Looks like Tyler agrees with Scott, though, with some criticism for his approach.

  25. LightlyRow says:

    If you’re researching infectious diseases, everyone understands that you need to work in secure facilities and take precaution in your work lest you accidentally release a dangerous pathogen or allow someone to break in and maliciously do so.

    It’s the same thing with genetics research and speculation on racial differences. There is an incredibly energetic and highly-motivated set of bad-faith actors who will use anything they can to legitimize white supremacist views. There is an even larger contingent of casual racists who would believe racist views if given by a plausible authority.

    If you’re a researcher, you need to take heightened precautions before even speculating on racial differences and you need to take pro-active measures to minimize the chances that your research is purposefully used for ill-intent. This is as unfair as it is unfair to demand that Ebola researchers have thorough safety procedures and a secure facility before they can recreate the virus.

    Steve took very little precautions. If you don’t think his blog has been used by racists, just read the comments. This isn’t a case of someone being caught up because a bad group happened to stumble upon their website. He allowed his legitimacy as a professor and the VP of research for a major institution to be used by actors with obvious ill-intent repeatedly. He is not being punished for researching taboo topics – there are plenty of genetics researchers, plenty of intelligence researchers, plenty of people who are studying difference in genetics between human sub-groups who are not being cancelled. He’s being cancelled from his job as VP of research, not as a professor because he is so blasé about the risk that it demonstrates exceptionally bad judgment.

    It is characteristic of Scott that doesn’t address any of the actual claims of the petition, relying instead on Steve being kind and patient and having a good heart. Lots of people who are reckless have the same qualities. It has no bearing on anything. If you’re reckless with this type of risk, an institution has every right to determine that you don’t deserve to hold a position of power and prestige.

    • Cliff says:

      If you’re a researcher, you need to take heightened precautions before even speculating on racial differences and you need to take pro-active measures to minimize the chances that your research is purposefully used for ill-intent.

      What type of precautions are you thinking of? Like, you can’t allow blog comments if you research in this area?

      • LightlyRow says:

        Like you need to be much more definitive to highlight the limitations of the research, be careful to correct ambiguity in your statements, be careful about the forums and circumstances in which you discuss the research, take steps to rectify if you made mistakes. I noted the blog comments as an indication of how the usual readers of his blog evaluate his writing. Having someone misinterpret you is not the fault here, it is a consistent failure to take any kind of care.

        I’m sure the usual suspects will be out in full force outraged that research in this area should be any more sensitive than anything else, but they are all disingenuous in their arguments. Every single person I have discussed this topic with online or in person is consistently outraged because *they believe that genetic differences between racial groups results in average cognitive differences and that aggregate social outcomes are due to this difference*. They don’t care about free inquiry – they never defend anything else in any other context – they just care that this particular view be maintained.

        • textor says:

          To demonstrate that people you’ve talked to do not care about free inquiry, you’d do well to either show them not being in support of free inquiry in general (Sam Harris comes to mind as a counterexample), or this topic being a representative one. So can you come up with another contentious topic which deals with such a consequential issue, has such a wealth of data in support for the position that’s socially shunned, and is censored to a comparable degree? Ah, but you’re of the mind that it’s not being censored:

          He is not being punished for researching taboo topics – there are plenty of genetics researchers, plenty of intelligence researchers, plenty of people who are studying difference in genetics between human sub-groups who are not being cancelled. He’s being cancelled from his job as VP of research, not as a professor because he is so blasé about the risk that it demonstrates exceptionally bad judgment.

          Forgive me for pedantry; Geoffrey Miller says, in a thread about another such cancellation:

          There are fewer than 500 active intelligence researchers in the world, and fewer than 250 usually attend the International Society for Intelligence Research annual conferences. By contrast, there are tens of thousands of social psychologists. The deterrence is very effective.

          Now you could also add Geoffrey to your list of people who you imply have some objectionable motivations, but he’s right; research of genetics of intelligence is extremely unpopular, to the extent research of intelligence itself, without any racial angle, is becoming toxic. Also, you are not correct that he is being canceled because of bad judgement, at least inasmuch as you don’t mean his cancellation is a consequence of bad judgement; grad student union’s intent is explicitly to punish his views per se.

          I also have issue with the following:

          There is an incredibly energetic and highly-motivated set of bad-faith actors who will use anything they can to legitimize white supremacist views.

          Is there any evidence for this being a real issue? But of course yours is a belief the supporter of this witchhunt shares, as he attacks luminaries like Arthur Jensen and William Shockley, claiming that they were motivated by money and not pursuit of truth; and gloats that “hereditarianism” is being slowly erased from the field.

          I find your thinly veiled accusations of bad faith hypocritical, sorry.

          • gallowstree says:

            Asserting that there is a ‘wealth of data’ supporting racial differences in IQ, and subsequently disputing any link between genetics and white supremacy, makes me think that your empirical standards are perhaps not terribly consistent.

          • LightlyRow says:

            Is there any evidence for this being a real issue?

            Is there any proof that humans have consistently used race as a justification for violence? You’re obviously arguing in bad faith, can’t take anything you say with any ounce of seriousness if you actually doubt the existence of white supremacists as being an issue or don’t recognize the propensity of humans to latch on to race as a justification for violence.

            I’m sure that there exists a strongly organized group of people who are trying to silence others because they disagree with their political views, but there does not exist a strongly organized group of people trying to implement a racial caste system.

          • Aapje says:

            @LightlyRow

            Is there any proof that humans have consistently used the desire to stamp out beliefs they consider harmful as a justification for violence?

            I’m sure that there exists a strongly organized group of people who are trying to silence others because they disagree with their political views, but there does not exist a strongly organized group of people trying to implement a racial caste system.

            So does that mean that you agree that people have a point who don’t see white supremacy as such a serious issue that it requires us violating our core principles, because there is not actually a real risk of ending up with an institutionalized racial caste system, but there is a real risk of institutionalized silencing of people with certain views?

          • AlesZiegler says:

            There obviously is “an incredibly energetic and highly-motivated set of bad-faith actors who will use anything they can to legitimize white supremacist views”. They are generally called, you know, white supremacists.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            @Scoop

            Wait, you are claiming that white supremacists do not exist?

          • Nick says:

            @AlesZiegler
            He’s not claiming white supremacists don’t exist, he’s claiming they aren’t an issue anymore. That is explicitly what he said. It’s also implied by the linked section of Scott’s article, which provides evidence that white supremacists are rare and powerless.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            @Nick

            Oh, I see. We will just have to agree to disagree on that, I guess. I think that even if they are few in number, they are still an issue.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @AlesZiegler: If a certain heresy is socially dangerous, how much effort should we dedicate and how much should we trade off other values to reduce their number from “a few thousand, probably all in low-status positions” down to a number where we feel they’re not an issue at all and what would that number be?

          • AlesZiegler says:

            @Le Maistre Chat

            Frankly, I do not like this phrasing of “reducing the number” of white supremacists, as if they should be sent to gulag. That is most certainly not what I want. But I do think that people who work in the field of human genetics should be aware that their research might be misrepresented as a part of racial (including nonwhite) supremacist propaganda, and they should not treat racial supremacism as a non-issue.

        • Cliff says:

          To be clear, are you saying Hsu was not being careful in the things he said about his research? Or are you saying he should have policed his comments more?

          • LightlyRow says:

            He was not careful in the things he said. The comments are evidence of his failure to take sufficient care – not just because he should have known how his statements would be misused, but because he *did* know (as indicated by the consistently racist comments on his blog through many years) and he did not adjust his behavior to be more clear or forceful on the topics to mitigate the ability of of misuse. This is sufficient, in my view, to lose a VP of Research position because of the lack of judgment it demonstrates. It is not sufficient, imo, to revoke tenure.

        • B_Epstein says:

          Your experience online and your interpretation thereof are your own. But there certainly are many who are willing to consider non-extremal options – “perhaps genetic differences amount to small differences in cognitive ability between groups, though almost certainly smaller than internal variance. These differences might explain some part of the observed social outcomes. If we don’t understand this well, we won’t be able to have meaningful discussions on this vital topic.” Are all people holding this view being disingenuous? Did no person you’ve met online profess this, not even a view, but a question?

          • Simon_Jester says:

            Either the supposed cognitive differences are significant, or they aren’t.

            If you hold that they aren’t significant, then the people advocating mindfulness of them are putting WAY too much effort into a subject likely to yield marginal returns on investment. A two-point IQ difference, say, would be inadequate to explain observed racial disparities in American society

            If you hold that they are significant, then you’re basically arguing something that might impolitely be phrased as “our society cannot accommodate green people without acknowledging the obvious truth that green people are, on the whole and on average, with perhaps some honorable exceptions, rather stupid.”

            This latter is a position that has a long history of being held in the face of ample evidence to the contrary, through multiple paradigm shifts in biology and medicine, ceding only very stubbornly and very slowly to changes that make the old positions untenable.

            It is this combination that gives rise to such suspicion. On the one hand, language is often used to imply that the differences are small BUT that it is vitally important that we keep talking about them. On the other hand, the idea that these differences even exist has been defended for centuries in a stubborn rear-guard action for centuries. The rear guard includes people who grow so wrathful and bitter at the idea of racial equality that they resort to terrorism when they’re afraid it might happen.

            I am reminded of an analogy Scott used several years ago. Imagine that the Department of Public Works starts putting a new chemical in the water. They assure you that it will not, contrary to scurrilous rumors, cause your fingers to fall off. But you notice that when splashed with the chemical they scream “NOOOO MY FINGERS!” and panic and wash it off themselves.

            When a claim is frequently advanced by people with strong apparent motive to manipulate the truth, suspicion becomes inevitable.

          • B_Epstein says:

            ……
            ……
            I’m genuinely confused. One of us really misreads the other.

            First, my point was simply that LightlyRow engaged in massive hyperbole, pretty much claiming that all online discussion of this topic is driven by more-or-less hidden white supremacists, not-too-thinly implying that no decent and reasonable person would ever question the mainstream position – and thus if someone does question it, they’re not decent and reasonable. I don’t see how your reply really engages with mine, here.

            Second,

            Either the supposed cognitive differences are significant, or they aren’t.

            Nope. Just nope. You don’t get to reply to a comment about the existence of a continuum by simply assuming a dichotomy.

            Next,

            If you hold that they aren’t significant, then the people advocating mindfulness of them are putting WAY too much effort into a subject likely to yield marginal returns on investment. A two-point IQ difference, say, would be inadequate to explain observed racial disparities in American society

            Disparities are multi-faceted. If we’re measuring, e.g., the number of key politicians and CEOs, then a two-point average difference might well explain a lot. Or perhaps it would take 5 points. Or 500. Wouldn’t we want to know?.. For reference, what is your stance on the 15-20 IQ advantage enjoyed by subsets of Ashkenazi Jews as an explanation for their unusual prominence in certain fields?

            Then,

            If you hold that they are significant, then you’re basically arguing something that might impolitely be phrased as “our society cannot accommodate green people without acknowledging the obvious truth that green people are, on the whole and on average, with perhaps some honorable exceptions, rather stupid.”

            You can absolutely hold that they’re significant (what does that mean?..) but less so than internal variance (as I wrote, explicitly). That is entirely and obviously different from your description.

            The rear guard includes people who grow so wrathful and bitter at the idea of racial equality that they resort to terrorism when they’re afraid it might happen.

            Eh, the avant-guard of the opposite idea includes people who grow so wrathful and bitter at the idea of any kind of physical difference between races, including, say, height, that they resort to denial of medical differences (and sometimes, terrorism). Both these groups suck a great deal. That’s a blatantly obvious “reverse intelligence” mistake.

          • 10240 says:

            @Simon_Jester Holding that racial differences in personality are significant, on the basis of bogus evidence, was widespread back when political pressure, and the biases of the scientists themselves, were in favor of the belief that differences were significant. Today, political pressures and the biases of most scientists are very much in favor of the belief that there are no such differences. As such, there is much more likelihood of the latter belief being held very stubbornly, even if there is little or no evidence for it.

          • LightlyRow says:

            Are all people holding this view being disingenuous? Did no person you’ve met online profess this, not even a view, but a question?

            My experience, which is just my own, is that literally all of the people I’ve met, when pressed on this issue (and who hold a strong or weak view that genetic differences do exist and the genetic differences are responsible for aggregate social outcomes), have a significant attachment to it because they believe that it should be a serious consideration in determining which legal policies (affirmative action, policing, etc.) to take. They are attached to the belief itself because of its political implications, and not to the belief as a curious scientific fact in itself. That might be just my experience, but I have read Chateau Heartiste back when he was Roissy and am well familiar with the alt-right / manosphere / MRA / race-realist / neo-reaction / dark enlightenment blogs and thinkers since way back in Obama’s first term, and I feel pretty confident in my belief that the focus on this topic is precisely because they would like to use it as a justification for certain politics and not because of an interest in science.

          • 10240 says:

            @LightlyRow It’s likely that people are interested in this topic because of its political implications. Does that mean that this interest is wrong, or that it’s only right as long as the science supports particular policies?

            You seem to think there is a significant risk that if people wrongly believe in genetic differences (or perhaps even if they rightly believe them), that may lead to dangerous political consequences, but there is no risk from the possibility of people wrongly believing that there are no differences. If the only options on the table were discriminating against minorities, or not discriminating against anyone, as they were in the 60s, then this view would be reasonable.

            However, today, legalizing discrimination against minorities is a light-year outside the Overton window; there is a pretty strong consensus that discrimination against historically disadvantaged minorities based on their group membership is wrong even if there is a difference between the mean abilities of the groups. On the other hand, affirmative action in favor of less successful minorities is very much on the table, and it’s usually justified based on the assumption that there are no genetic differences, which (according to some worldviews) implies that disparities in outcomes are the result of injustice. This ideology demands affirmative action to be increased until all races have equal outcomes. If there actually are genetic group differences in abilities, this requires discrimination against white people or successful minorities.

            So, I don’t think the idea that only a belief in the existence of differences can be dangerous holds today.

            I’m not saying that only a false belief that there are no differences is a problem, and a false belief in the existence of differences isn’t. If we wrongly believe that there are genetic differences, then we may pay less attention to (potentially remediable) societal causes of outcome differences.

            As far as I can tell, at this point we don’t know if there are genetic differenes; this is what Hsu says. Then people who assert that there are differences are wrong; they are about equally wrong as people who assert that there are no differences. The former group has about a hundred times less clout.

        • Aapje says:

          @LightlyRow

          Every single person I have discussed this topic with online or in person is consistently outraged because *they believe that genetic differences between racial groups results in average cognitive differences and that aggregate social outcomes are due to this difference*. They don’t care about free inquiry – they never defend anything else in any other context – they just care that this particular view be maintained.

          You can also turn this around: can it be that almost no one who rejects these beliefs is principled enough to defend free speech? That would also result in your observation that only people with one kind of belief speak out in favor of free inquiry, for cases like this.

          Note that you can find people who will defend free inquiry in such beliefs and into other beliefs on this very forum, so your accusation of bad faith is unconvincing to me.

    • gallowstree says:

      Nothing to add to the substance of the original comment, but wanted to register vigorous agreement to the characterization of Hsu’s behavior. This is an issue of professionalism and responsibility.

    • Clutzy says:

      It’s the same thing with genetics research and speculation on racial differences. There is an incredibly energetic and highly-motivated set of bad-faith actors who will use anything they can to legitimize white supremacist views. There is an even larger contingent of casual racists who would believe racist views if given by a plausible authority.

      If true, which I am skeptical of, the same extremely heightened scrutiny should be demanded of social justice social sciences. Because as we have seen, not hypothetically, actually seen in 2020, there is a highly motivated set of bad faith actors that will use anything they can to justify rioting and violence. And there is a large group of leftists willing to use their studies to justify massive changes in public policy.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        If true, which I am skeptical of, the same extremely heightened scrutiny should be demanded of social justice social sciences. Because as we have seen, not hypothetically, actually seen in 2020, there is a highly motivated set of bad faith actors that will use anything they can to justify rioting and violence. And there is a large group of leftists willing to use their studies to justify massive changes in public policy.

        Exactly. No double standards!

      • JPNunez says:

        The current riots were originated on a video of police violence.

        Dunno what that has to do with “social justice social sciences”.

        • Randy M says:

          But why protest in California (let alone Europe) when it is a Minnesota police department, if not for a belief that widespread racism is to blame?

          • Simon_Jester says:

            Because quite a few police departments in California, and for that matter also Europe, also indulge in excessive brutality. Regardless of whether racism is to blame, they’re protesting the murder* of George Floyd because they have reason to worry that they may be next.
            _________________

            *Gonna be blunt, when you choke a man out for like eight minutes, it’s murder.

          • JPNunez says:

            Why wouldn’t you protest in California when that kind of police brutality happens all over the states?

            Europe would be weird, except for this little thing called the internet that allows a video to be shown across the world. Europe has its own racism problems, so this sparking protests over there may be surprising, but not unnatural.

        • gbdub says:

          The proximate cause was a video, sure. But reflect on why you definitely know the name George Floyd but probably don’t know the name Tony Timpa. (Even if you do, consider how many, how large, and how well attended by politicians and the celebrities any memorials to Mr. Timpa or protests of his death have been)

          The idea that unjustified police violence is primarily a racial problem is widespread culturally and seems to be the dominant strain of thought in the academy, to the point of actively suppressing alternative explanations. And both the reactions to individual instances of police violence and the proposed solutions to it are going to be strongly influenced by this, quite possibly in a very negative and destructive way.

          • gbdub says:

            The crazy thing about that (in addition to the obvious) is that the first peak for Tony Timpa (when the video came out last summer) is like 8 times smaller than the current peak, which lags the George Floyd peak by a couple weeks.

            “Breonna Taylor” vs. “Dennis Tuttle” is also instructive. That one is doubly interesting in that “Breonna Taylor” peaked recently at 4x the height of the peak surrounding her actual killing.

            Another (less reliable) approach: Wikipedia maintains monthly lists of individuals killed by police in the US. The lists aren’t comprehensive (although there are a lot of entries) but I poked through to see how many entries were high profile enough to warrant individual Wiki pages. Excluding various mass shooting and terrorism incidents (which have their own pages, but mostly because of the crime and not because the individual died due to police), there does seem to be a bias in that the “notable” incidents are disproportionately black victims. A deeper dive than I have the time or skill for might involve trolling the sources for each death and figuring out what percentage get national publication level coverage.

            The general impression is hard to shake, that the most salient feature in whether a police killing makes national news is the race of the victim.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            I remember Tony Timpa, although I rapidly forgot his name.

            But I came across the video many times when it first came out, as sign of the abuses the cops do. Everyone I knew was angry about it, just like everyone I knew was angry about George Floyd.

            I wouldn’t have minded nation-wide protests over him. I’m not sure what they would have looked like, though.

          • gbdub says:

            I didn’t know until a couple days ago. Maybe it was a local/regional thing?

            I know we tend to get coverage of basically every police involved death in the local metroplex, but most don’t seem to become national news.

          • JPNunez says:

            And both the reactions to individual instances of police violence and the proposed solutions to it are going to be strongly influenced by this, quite possibly in a very negative and destructive way.

            I don’t think this is true, or at best, you’d be able to cherrypick examples to support your claim, but overall it does not hold.

            Look at the main proposal by academia to the current protests: defund the police. A simple, clearly non race-based proposal.

            Or putting into google “stop police violence” the first hit is

            https://www.joincampaignzero.org/solutions#solutionsoverview

            Only the fifth (out of ten) proposal is race based, but honestly, does not seem super crazy or biased. Tho I have to question whether this solution would work that well.

            I am sure you can look for more crazier, race-oriented solutions promoted by crazy academians on response to the current riots, or even before (cause police violence is not new), but the public seems v good at latching onto the solutions that are not race-oriented and crazy.

            I remember Tony Timpa, although I rapidly forgot his name.

            But I came across the video many times when it first came out, as sign of the abuses the cops do. Everyone I knew was angry about it, just like everyone I knew was angry about George Floyd.

            I wouldn’t have minded nation-wide protests over him. I’m not sure what they would have looked like, though.

            The cops kill so many people that you’d be rioting year round. People are desensitized to it, which is why only cases where there is maximum injustice are highlighted, thus, cases where black people are concerned, cause it intersects two powerful issues.

        • Clutzy says:

          Social justice science and its not very rigorous statistics are constantly cited by the protesters, rioters, supporters in media, and politicians they are allied with. They are given as justifications not only of the protests, but indeed even of the violence. They have been used to weave a narrative that police are hunting black people.

    • John Schilling says:

      If you’re researching infectious diseases, everyone understands that you need to work in secure facilities and take precaution in your work lest you accidentally release a dangerous pathogen or allow someone to break in and maliciously do so.

      I don’t think I’m alone in saying that the whole “your words are violence!” shtick has been wholly unconvincing every single time I’ve heard it before, and I’m skeptical that you have anything new to say on the matter. Words are words, violence is violence, and I can’t help but think of ways to demonstrate the difference between the two.

      Except, this time you actually do have something new to add. Instead of violence, the words you don’t like are now a deadly plague. And you think this is an appropriate comparison to make now, in the middle of an actual deadly plague that’s already killed a couple orders of magnitude more people this year than the KKK did in their entire existence? Yeah, this version is even more offensive. And I think wholly anticonvincing to anyone who hasn’t already drunk your brand of kool-aid. Let’s not have any more of this, please.

      It’s the same thing with genetics research and speculation on racial differences. There is an incredibly energetic and highly-motivated set of bad-faith actors who will use anything they can to legitimize white supremacist views. There is an even larger contingent of casual racists who would believe racist views if given by a plausible authority.

      By the same logic, anyone in the race- or gender- or ethnic-studes fields, anyone researching intersectional anything, needs to be extraordinarily careful unto the point of self-censorship, lest they set off a riot. Er, another riot. You’ll say that of course that’s different. And you’re right, it is different. The marginal Social Justice Warrior, the kind only one excuse away from taking the “warrior” part to the violently literal level, is I believe far more likely to seriously listen to the words of a scientist or university professor than is the marginal white supremacist.

      I nonetheless do not ask such researchers to suppress their own expression of whatever scientific research they might do, but that’s because I believe academic freedom and the whole panoply of first-amendment rights are not just the Law but Good Ideas. If we’re changing that, suppressing speech because we’re afraid the wrong sorts of people might listen to it – you go first.

      ETA: Ninja’d by Clutzy, at least in part

      • Clutzy says:

        Yours is better. The price of speed is often quality!

      • LightlyRow says:

        And you think this is an appropriate comparison to make now, in the middle of an actual deadly plague that’s already killed a couple orders of magnitude more people this year than the KKK did in their entire existence? Yeah, this version is even more offensive.

        I don’t know who exactly you think you’re fooling here with your clumsy attempt to try to use what you consider to be the tactics of the side you associate me with – like attempting to strike offense at something that you are not offended about. I never mentioned the KKK, because racism is endemic in every culture in every time period and is not limited to the KKK. I can think of at least a dozen genocides that happened in the last 100 years based on race. But, sure, recognizing this exists is drinking the kool-aid. This style of rhetoric you’re trying to use was tired a few years ago and is quickly expiring.

    • HALtheWise says:

      I think the infectious disease analogy is interesting because it highlights some interesting questions about agency and blameworthiness. It seems to me like there’s a spectrum of situations, roughly as follows:
      1) An infectious disease laboratory uses inadequate protective gear, and a deadly disease is released. It would be ridiculous to blame the disease for spreading, since that’s just what diseases naturally do, so we blame the laboratory.
      2) A genetics researcher publishes a paper with a factually true but easily abusable claim about human genetics. White supremacists abuse the true claim to support false and/or harmful beliefs, and ultimately to cause material harm to people. This case is up for debate.
      3) A person wears attractive clothing in a public place. A sexual offender sees them, and rape/abuse ensues. In this case, it’s pretty clear that blaming the victim is bad, and the fault should lie with the criminal.

      In all three cases, the situation could have been avoided by changing the behavior of either the person that took a risk or the entity that ultimately committed the crime, so there is some sense in which either would be “productive” places to lay blame. There are a variety of arguments for why case 1 and case 3 are different, and I find thinking through those to be insightful for deciding how to classify case 2.

      Ultimately, I’m concerned that by transferring blame onto researchers like Steve for the actions of white supremacists, you end up transferring blame off of the white supremacists themselves, and treating them as if they are have no agency themselves (like a virus). That seems dangerous, since I don’t actually think the KKK is a unchangeable part of nature, and I would very much like to work towards a world where there isn’t racial violence no matter what papers get published.

      • Simon_Jester says:

        The problem is that you can only blame a given group of people so hard.

        When an axe murderer murders people with axes, you blame them for it.

        But, to add a humorous hypothetical… Suppose you find out that they kept having problems with their axes breaking, and they kept going back to a particular supplier? And that they’ve been leaving five-star reviews of the supplier saying “this axe is great for murdering people!” At some point, the supplier’s behavior will start to seem downright irresponsible.

        We wouldn’t normally blame the hardware store that sold the murderer the axe… but if there is evidence of a persistent commensal relationship between the store and the murderer, then people may want to address that.

        This is also a reason why the “don’t blame the rape victim” analogy breaks down. In the rape, there are only two parties involved- a criminal, and a victim. It is clear that the criminal is 100% responsible for the crime.

        But here, there are three parties involved: the white supremacists, the targets of white supremacism, and the people who (inadvertently?) keep passing the white supremacists stuff that they see fit to use as ammunition.

        The rapist is clearly responsible for the rape, but if someone keeps selling the rapist Viagra and it never occurs to them “stop, you’re making this worse,” then that does not say good things about them. They’re either gullible or complicit.

        • jesduff says:

          To what extent should Viagra suppliers vet their customers in case they are rapists? If it’s impossible for them to vet their customers, should they stop producing Viagra altogether?

        • But here, there are three parties involved: the white supremacists, the targets of white supremacism, and the people who (inadvertently?) keep passing the white supremacists stuff that they see fit to use as ammunition.

          You are missing a fourth and fifth party — the people who want to claim that unequal outcomes by race (or sex) are proof of discrimination, and do so by a factual claim inconsistent with the researcher’s result, and all the people who are injured if that factual claim is mistaken and the results of making it harmful.

          How do you think the number of people who are confident that unequal outcomes are almost entirely due to discrimination compares with the number who are white supermacists?

          I would guess that it is larger by about two orders of magnitude. If so, the effect of factually true research on white supremacists is likely to be tiny compared to the effect on controversies over what can be attributed to racism/sexism and what to do about it.

          • albatross11 says:

            Also there are a lot of ordinary citizens who are neither researchers nor white supremacists, who would like to know the current state of knowledge in fields like genetics and psychometrics.

        • Monkey See says:

          This analogy doesn’t speak well of X studies departments 😅

    • Murphy says:

      There is an incredibly energetic and highly-motivated set of bad-faith actors who will use anything they can to legitimize white supremacist views. There is an even larger contingent of casual racists who would believe racist views if given by a plausible authority.

      This is Lysenkoism.

      Political Lysenkoism. And Lysenkoism tends to have a price in human lives.

      “our political enemies might like your results, hence pretend you have different results or shut up and don’t tell anyone”

      It’s also absurd. Lets carry forward with your virus comparison.

      Pathogens like Smallpox and TB have killed more people than every war in recorded history and every genocide in recorded history combined. Vaccines are our primary defense against them. As such, if you’re remotely intellectually consistent/honest any argument you make about genetics of race should also apply to talking about vaccine adverse events related to anything that anti-vaxers might use to support their position.

      Every anti-vaxer gishgallop includes papers like this:

      Narcolepsy and Influenza A(H1N1) Pandemic 2009 Vaccination in the United States

      and

      Increased Incidence and Clinical Picture of Childhood Narcolepsy Following the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic Vaccination Campaign in Finland

      Should the authors have avoided talking about it? been quiet about it? Just shut up in case the the collaborators of the ancient evils that have stalked the children of mankind throughout history might find it useful for a quote? Should they have phrased everything in such a way as to not imply that a vaccine could be dangerous?

      Of course not!

      the authors were scientists, they observed reality and they spoke about it frankly. Like good scientists should.

      If you’re only allowed come to a politically acceptable result, you’re no longer doing science.

      You don’t seem to want science, you seem to want propaganda for your own tribal beliefs.

      • Simon_Jester says:

        In regards to the vaccine issue: Aye, there’s the rub!

        Because see… we DO expect scientists who report adverse reactions to vaccines to be cautious and circumspect in reporting their results. Wildly speculative articles or papers (“DO VACCINES CAUSE ALZHEIMER’S?”) are discouraged.

        We want the facts, but we also want the facts to be used by honest people for honest purposes. It is a genuine problem that there are of people who, out of ignorance or malice, will use the facts badly, who will abuse or overuse the truth to support predetermined positions that have a history of causing destruction. The fact that this is true requires a degree of caution in vaccine research that is not required in, say, astrophysics.

        Because nobody’s gonna die in an epidemic caused by public hysteria that is in turn the result of some asshole willfully misinterpreting the evidence in a paper about astrophysics.

        And so we don’t really mind if astrophysicists ramble about God or overstate the significance of some finding or whatever, because it’s ultimately pretty harmless. We DO mind if vaccine researchers start talking in ways that can easily be seized on by bad actors. The very importance of their subject matter demands some awareness of how easy it would be to cause disasters by overstating one’s case.

        ============================================

        @LightlyRow was very much talking about this. Note that Lightly didn’t say “and therefore you should suppress your confirmed results,” and it’s disingenuous to paint the argument that way. Lightly said:

        If you’re a researcher, you need to take heightened precautions before even speculating on racial differences and you need to take pro-active measures to minimize the chances that your research is purposefully used for ill-intent.

        This isn’t “suppress the truth, it contradicts my political beliefs.” It’s “make sure NOT to leave room for some genuinely nasty and rotten people to willfully misinterpret your results to their advantage.”

        • Murphy says:

          After reading LightlyRow’s other posts I think you’re assuming far far too much good faith.

          Nobody mobs vaccine researchers for publishing that they’re seeing an unusual cluster of oddball cases that might be a vaccine adverse event. Even if it’s speculative. Indeed it’s encouraged.

          The crackpots constantly quote legit vaccine papers out of context or in misleading ways. We don’t respond by trying to fire the researchers.

          We respond by calling the anti-vaxers idiots. Not by trying to silence the researchers they quote.

          In reality we don’t make such absurd demands of vaccine researchers.

          But we do of geneticists.

          I point to those papers because they verifiably have ended up on most anti-vaxer gish gallops. Whatever careful phrasing you claim was used, it had no effect on the anti-vaxers.

          They also ended up on the CDC website because we don’t censor things like that.

          Because while the field of vaccine research has 1 pack of evil idiots on one side, genetics has 2 groups of evil, anti-science idiots to deal with. One trying to twist their results and one made up of people who object to the very existence of the field of human genetics on political grounds.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            +1. I think this is the most insightful post on this topic, and the takeaway lesson for me in this argument.

            ETA: I just mean the part about “we pile on geneticists but not vaccine researchers.” I think LightlyRow is arguing in good faith, but is generally incorrect.

          • JPNunez says:

            We’d pile on a vaccine researcher that went to an anti-vaccine podcast to discuss how his research may support some of the anti-vaccine claims tho.

          • Aftagley says:

            +1 JPNunez

            I don’t like the broad acceptance of “just doing research” as a defense of all activity related to that research.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            to discuss how his research may support some of the anti-vaccine claim

            I’d want to see what the researcher said.

            And be really really suspicious of “no, we cannot show you the bad thing he said, just trust us this is bad.”

          • JPNunez says:

            It’d be a podcast so you probably could go listen to it.

            I am honestly not that bored to go look at the particulars of the Hsu case, so I am limiting myself to hypotheticals like our vaccine guy.

        • LightlyRow says:

          The responses to my comments here remind me why I stopped participating in SSC a few years back. Not one person has recognized that I was making the argument that Hsu is engaged in a form of negligence, which does not warrant legal sanction in the form of damages, does not warrant removal of tenure, but does warrant removal of his position as VP of research.

          The commentators here cannot seem to distinguish between a duty to take care vs. a prohibition on an act. It is the difference between being liable for setting off fireworks negligently versus prohibiting fireworks altogether. I never suggested his research should be prohibited.

          Every single instance in which people in these comments have said “we don’t make heightened demands on researchers in X field,” we actually DO. Vaccine researchers are well aware of the potential for misuse and take active measures to try to counter it.

          If you want to argue that you think Hsu DID take sufficient care, that is fine and reasonable people can disagree. What instead people are arguing, although they fail to articulate it in these terms, is that Hsu does not owe a duty of care regarding how his research may be used. I disagree, and I don’t think any rational evaluation of the last 150 years of history can lead to any conclusion except that research which may be used to promote racist views should be carefully phrased and discussed to try to limit the possibility of misuse. The duty is heightened the more responsibility and authority you have in an organization whose values are explicitly about inclusion and tolerance.

          This isn’t a slippery slope, and it isn’t that hard of a judgment to make. The basic inability to grasp the notion of duty to care versus blanket prohibition, and to distinguish between being careful and suppression is at the root of almost all of the comments here.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            Every single instance in which people in these comments have said “we don’t make heightened demands on researchers in X field,” we actually DO. Vaccine researchers are well aware of the potential for misuse and take active measures to try to counter it.

            I’m not aware of any equally rigorous demands on any academic fields under the grievance studies umbrella.
            You certainly couldn’t Sokal a university medical department.

          • L (Zero) says:

            “Scientists weren’t careful enough in the potential for misuse of the atomic bomb” was explicitly used as an example in HPMOR, yet “racism played a role in the historical usage of the atomic bomb” is assumed by many SSC commenters to be such an absurd claim it must be trolling. God do I feel you.

          • Murphy says:

            No, I fully understand your position. And it is textbook Lysenkoism.

            You just don’t like it put starkly.

            You want anyone who produces results that are not politically acceptable or voices scientific opinions that don’t fit with the dominant political ideology to remain silent or to be purged from positions of influence. If any political officer hears about unacceptable results then it serves as proof that they weren’t silent enough.

            Sure, you don’t want to jail him or fine him, how very noble of you. You just want to remove him from any position of influence and replace him with a nice, politically acceptable modern incarnation of Trofim Lysenko.

            Calling it a “duty to take care vs. a prohibition on an act.” doesn’t make it better. An ideological purge remains an ideological purge and does not become less contemptible.

            Making a big show of rolling your eyes and complaining about the temerity of the SSC commenters to disagree with your factually incorrect claims doesn’t make your claims any more convincing.

            In virology, right now you can download the full genetic sequence of smallpox from the NIH website.

            Nobody so much as suggested firing anyone senior at NIH over it.

            Right now you can download papers that describe how to construct a virus, base by base from whole cloth.

            Nobody suggested removing any of the authors from positions of influence.

            Right now, you can download papers on base-washing and how to construct long DNA or RNA fragments.

            Compared to that, suggesting that principles of genetics that apply to every other mammal almost certainly apply to humans as well, that doesn’t even register.

            But you don’t care, you’ve got your isolated demand for rigour and it’s utterly isolated to politically unpopular results or positions.

          • Murphy says:

            @L (Zero)

            A great deal of the community does not mirror EY’s views.

            Neutron chain reactions were never going to stay secret.

            The principle of nukes were not going to be kept secret no matter what they did.

          • LightlyRow says:

            @ Murphy – The duty does not stem from it being dominant or non-dominant, but from the potential for harm. Characterizing it as “Lysenkoism” is absurd – not only did I clearly state that the sanction should be limited to removal of his VP of research position, I also clearly stated that the research itself should not be prohibited.

            You’re jumping to an extreme which would be absurd in any other context – someone has a duty of being careful in the handling of children could just as easily be characterized as Lysenkoism. If you want to say that you don’t think the potential for harm warrants the existence of the duty, then say so.

          • Murphy says:

            I also clearly stated that the research itself should not be prohibited.

            I clearly state that the sanction should be limited to removal of his VP of research position

            How very magnanimous.

            So you merely make it so that only individuals who produce politically acceptable results can get into senior positions, positions where they also strongly influence what research can happen at their institution at all and make sure that you send a message that anyone who wants their career to progress better make sure they only produce politically acceptable results.

            handling of children

            Grad students are adults, not chidren.

            Again, going back to the previous post, in virology, right now you can download the full genetic sequence of smallpox from the NIH website.

            Nobody so much as suggested firing anyone senior at NIH over it.

            Right now you can download papers that describe how to construct a virus, base by base from whole cloth.

            Nobody suggested removing any of the authors from positions of influence.

            If you’re concerned about “harm” from publishing true things then that’s about a million times more risky.

            But you don’t care, you’ve got your isolated demand for rigour and it’s utterly isolated to politically unpopular results or positions.

            You want your purge and everything you are posting is hollow, thin justification based on your , again to stress this, factually incorrect beliefs about the demands placed on scientists in other fields.

          • albatross11 says:

            LightlyRow:

            Do you think *all* people speaking about racism, racial differences, etc., are required to exhibit that level of care, or is it only the ones who come to some particular set of conclusions or raise some particluar set of issues?

            Because I do not see much evidence of people who speak carelessly about race and racism getting this kind of response, when they conclude that the black/white performance gap in education is caused by white racism, or when they claim that calling the police on a black man is putting his life in serious danger, or when they claim that there is no such thing as race, or that there are no average cognitive differences between racial groups. Those claims often seem to be increasing racial tensions—something that can plausibly cause enormous damage to the country. And indeed, we’ve sometimes seen riots and looting as a result of that tension.

            If your position applies a duty of being extra careful with words only to some people discussing these issues, and by great good luck that duty just happens to only land on people with whom you disagree on facts or morals or policy, then it will probably be difficult for those of us who do not agree with you to see why this isn’t just an attempt to put a thumb on the scales of who is able to speak in public.

            Suppose you live someplace where supporters of the ruling party can say almost anything without consequences, whereas opponents of the ruling party can avoid getting in trouble if they phrase every criticism in the most neutral and careful way possible, never give an interview to any press other than the state controlled press, and never associate with any dissidents. You will probably not think that’s a place that has robust freedom of expression.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            Notallcommentators (observe whether I will get deleted for an inapropriate sarcasm :-). I hope I understood your argument, without necessarily endorsing it.

          • albatross11 says:

            LightlyRow

            I understand your point about negligence, I just don’t agree, on two separate fronts:

            a. The Danger:

            I do not believe that discussing these matters openly is actually a particularly risky thing to do in the sense of societal bad outcomes. I think the expected impact by one academic giving interviews on some right-wing podcasts that talk about his work is very small, whatever its sign.

            We disagree about the sign (I think it’s a net positive, you think it’s a net negative), but also about the magnitude. And the magnitude is the only justification I can see for a demand for extreme care when discussing these matters.

            I mean, we live in a society where _The Bell Curve_ was published and widely read and is still available for sale, and where many mainstream books and some mainstream articles have discussed racial IQ differences and what they mean. There are online fora where people discuss this stuff openly, ranging from pretty serious folks like Steve Sailer and Greg Cochran and Razib Khan to various actual white supremacists and actual Nazis. We also live in a society in which there’s still plenty of overt racism if you look for it, though thankfully a lot less than in the past. Probably an average high-school kid, today, could tell you about common racial stereotypes w.r.t. intelligence.

            In that environment, Hsu going onto a right-wing podcast, even a white-supremacist podcast (I’m not sure how you’d qualify Molyneux’s podcast) and talking about racial IQ differences or the genetics of race is a drop in the ocean. Perhaps a few thousand people heard his podcast, of whom most were probably already regular Molyneux listeners.

            Even assuming Hsu devotes his whole spare time to talking about race/IQ and race/genetics questions in ways you think are insensitive and careless and easy to misinterpret, I think the actual size of the impact almost can’t be very large. There are thousands of people talking about these issues, with various levels of rigor and care.

            This is why I think the “working with smallpox” analogy doesn’t make any sense. This is a lot more like someone working with the currently-circulating flu strain. Maybe he’ll do some good, maybe he’ll do some bad, but a lab escape will not have a huge impact on the world.

            b. Consistency of the Standard

            Now, you have said that you believe that open discussion of these issues is society-level dangerous like doing experiments with deadly pathogens. And I have seen this argument many times.

            But what I don’t see is the people making this argument applying it to their preferred side of the same issues. It seems to me that plenty of prominent people go out in public and make very careless and imprecise and easily-misunderstood statements about race and society, like saying or implying that black underperformance in schools relative to whites is the result of white racism[0], or saying that there’s no scientific meaning of race[1] and IQ scores mean nothing but how good you are at taking tests.

            This looks like a double-standard, to me. You expect people expressing some views on these contentious subjects to be super careful in their words, implications, and associations to avoid giving anyone grounds for misunderstandings. You allow people expressing other views on the same contentious subjects to say whatever they like, associate with whomever they like, be imprecise and confusing in their words, etc.

            The term often used here on SSC for this is an isolated demand for rigor. It’s a way of putting a thumb on the scales of discussions, by making much higher demands of proof or evidence or credentials or care on one side than on the other.

            So, it’s not that I (or many others here) don’t understand your arguments, it’s that we don’t agree with them, and also don’t think you apply them to your own side in the same way you do to the other side.

            [0] Maybe the speaker meant structural racism instead. But surely, then, if this is an area where it’s critical to be very careful to avoid misinterpretations, they should be very clear about that, distinguishing it from intentional racism by white teachers or school administrators. I will admit that I am not familiar with cases where prominent media or academic figures got fired for that kind of lack of precision.

            [1] Note that this is one of those statements that is arguably true, but easy to misinterpret. If you were very concerned about people being careless and imprecise in these discussions, folks tossing around “there’s no such thing as race” without a lot of context would be good people to yell at.

          • Aapje says:

            @LightlyRow

            Not one person has recognized that I was making the argument that Hsu is engaged in a form of negligence

            The logical conclusion if no one gets you, is that you were being unclear in your communication. Perhaps even a bit careless and negligent in your assumptions.

          • Dan L says:

            Come on, man. This was yesterday. Miscommunication happens, but it’s ludicrous to pretend the speaker is always at fault here.

            ETA: your response there does you credit, but I would still push for a greater norm of humility of interpretation. (Doubly so for views not defended on this site, but that’s just me dreaming.)

          • Aapje says:

            @Dan L

            I wasn’t arguing that the speaker is always at fault, but that accusing everyone else of misreading you, without recognizing the possibility that one’s own writing is poor (and/or doesn’t mean what they think it means), is not very persuasive.

            I don’t see how the case you refer to is really relevant, because I wasn’t arguing that the speaker is at fault for any misreading. That is you misreading me (for which I don’t think I am at fault).

          • Murphy says:

            @Dan L

            If one person misunderstands you then it’s likely the readers mistake.

            If everyone misunderstands you then it’s likely the writers mistake.

          • Dan L says:

            Am I seriously going to have to explain the concept of survivorship bias? Representativeness?

            Do you really think nobody ready LightlyRow correctly? Of those that did, what do you think they did next? Who would have noticed?

          • Aapje says:

            @Dan L

            I have no idea how many people read LightyRow correctly or what ‘correctly’ even means in this context. I wasn’t commenting on that.

            I was commenting on the implications of LightlyRow’s claim:

            The responses to my comments here remind me why I stopped participating in SSC a few years back. Not one person has recognized that I was making the argument that Hsu is engaged in a form of negligence, which does not warrant legal sanction in the form of damages, does not warrant removal of tenure, but does warrant removal of his position as VP of research.

            The commentators here cannot seem to distinguish between a duty to take care vs. a prohibition on an act.

    • Aapje says:

      @LightlyRow

      There is an incredibly energetic and highly-motivated set of bad-faith actors who will use anything they can to legitimize white supremacist views.

      This undermines your point completely, because if they will actually use anything, then it doesn’t matter how careful you are. It won’t help to completely silence a discussion on a topic, only allow it behind closed doors, lie to people about the facts that they believe supports their point of view, etc, etc, because all of this will be interpreted as evidence of a conspiracy.

      At a certain point you have to accept that you cannot actually control what other people believe. If you don’t, your only choice is totalitarianism.

      • AlesZiegler says:

        I disagree.

        There are two groups – a) white supremacists highly motivated to use anything to increase racial prejudices of the general population, and b) part of the general population that is inclined to believe in spurious arguments confirming their racial prejudices, especially when they come from respectable (e.g. academic) sources, as opposed to low status hairless thugs.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          I’ve heard that it’s bad that Hsu was on Molyneux, but not that he said something untrue to Molyneux.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            I most assuredly do not want to opine on Hsu situation, not having done the research.

            But vitriol expressed here by many comments towards LightlyRow for making imo correct observation that white supremacists are highly motivated to twist results of genetic research to suit their agenda is wholly inappropriate.

          • gbdub says:

            The “vitriol” is not directed at the observation, but at the implied conclusion that “because bad actors might use your research badly, it is your responsibility to suppress your research”. Reading the arguments against LightlyRow with that little charity is also inappropriate.

          • Simon_Jester says:

            I’m not sure how to review the Molyneux interview without somehow indirectly benefiting or boosting Molyneux, and without having YouTube spam me with further links to Molyneux content I don’t want to see.

            If I knew how, I think I’d want to review that interview or at least its transcript.

          • John Schilling says:

            I’m not sure how to review the Molyneux interview without somehow indirectly benefiting or boosting Molyneux

            I’m not sure how to sell groceries to Stefan Molyneux without somehow indirectly benefiting Molyneux. If he’s struggling 80 hrs/wk as a subsistence farmer, fewer people will see his podcasts. Therefore…

            …you need a better standard for cancellation, or you need to understand that you won’t be taken seriously outside the cancel-happy bubble.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @Simon_Jester

            Ad-block and a private window. For extra security against Google linking your computer to it you could use Opera’s VPN. Granted his video will still get an addition view, but I don’t see a way around this.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            @gbdub

            The “vitriol” is not directed at the observation, but at the implied conclusion that “because bad actors might use your research badly, it is your responsibility to suppress your research”.

            Perhaps I will be corrected by the author him(her)self, but I do not think that this what he or she wanted to say. Implied conclusion is probably implied only in your head.

        • albatross11 says:

          If you only consider listeners who have evil motives and will never change their minds on anything, you can justify shutting down all discussion, because what purpose would any of it have?

          Of course, there are also people listening who would like to understand the world better. People who don’t know whether the black/white performance gap in schools is really due to some kind of racism or is due to something else, and would like to have a better way of thinking about the question. People who maybe would like to know why the poor Asian kids whose parents are fresh off the boat from China do better getting into the local school magnet program than rich white kids.

          Knowledge has some purpose other than to simply reaffirm the beliefs of evil people.

        • gbdub says:

          spurious arguments confirming their racial prejudices

          This bakes in two assumptions that weaken your argument. First, that Hsu’s arguments are spurious. Second, that the audience is still interested in confirming preexisting biases. Which is again placing the responsibility on Hsu, instead of the people engaging in motivated reasoning. Victim blaming.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            I have no opinion on whether Hsu´s arguments are spurious or not, and I do not blame him for anything.

            But I do assume that people are interested in confirming their preexisting biases, that is correct.

          • gbdub says:

            Well then what’s your point?

            Everyone is susceptible to confirmation bias, but confirmation bias works just as well (heck, even better) with true, useful information as it does with false information.

            Some people have biases I would prefer they don’t. But if I have a piece of information that could potentially support a “negative” bias, I don’t think it’s fair to force me to caveat the heck out of every one of my statements (and certainly not fair to cancel me) just because those negative-bias people exist. We definitely don’t apply this standard rigorously anywhere.

          • albatross11 says:

            People tend to confirm their own biases, but that’s not the *only* thing people do. Some people also update their beliefs, overcome their existing biases, come to understand the world better. The best way I know to enable that is to allow wide-ranging discussions about important issues without shutting anyone down or firing anyone or any of that crap. This will inevitably allow some people to say dumb or evil things. We do not have an option marked “make sure people only say smart and good things.” Instead, we can decide to what extent there will be mechanisms to punish people saying things some powerful person doesn’t like, knowing that sometimes, those mechanisms will be used to punish people who are saying dumb/evil things, and other times, they’ll be used to punish people who are disagreeing with the acceptable dumb/evil things someone is saying.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            @gbdub

            I honestly think that people should ” caveat the heck out of every one of their statements”, when it comes to sensitive topics like genetic racial differences.

            Now, caveat: I am also against cancelling those who fail to do that with twitter mobs. In fact my support for nuance sort of inevitably leads me to oppose twitter mobs.

          • gbdub says:

            when it comes to sensitive topics like genetic racial differences.

            But the determination of “sensitive topics” is not being judged in a viewpoint neutral way, as others have noted here. Careless and untrue statements on the same or similar topics are allowed without caveat, so long as they are on the “right” side and support the right biases.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            @gbdub

            So? Careless and untrue statements from the leftwing are bad. Careless and untrue statements from the rightwing are also bad.

          • Matt M says:

            So? Careless and untrue statements from the leftwing are bad. Careless and untrue statements from the rightwing are also bad.

            But only one of these will get you fired.

        • Aapje says:

          @AlesZiegler

          part of the general population that is inclined to believe in spurious arguments confirming their racial prejudices, especially when they come from respectable (e.g. academic) sources, as opposed to low status hairless thugs.

          It seems to be perfectly acceptable in academia to spread spurious arguments confirming racial prejudices different to the ones you are referring to.

          The perceived respectability of academia is not a given. If academia only allow subjective or spurious claims that favor radicals and moderates from one side, it is going to make people from the other side angry at academia in general and disbelieve them, not just on this topic.

          And this anger will not just be by white supremacists or those with great prejudice that is easily validated, but also by people who don’t want radicals to be left unchallenged or want academia to be a think tank for one side of politics. The latter group is surely far greater.

          Don’t come complaining to me if/when ever more people stop presuming that scientific claims are correct unless proven otherwise, but incorrect by default.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            Um, I totally agree that deep entanglement between social sciences and social justice activism is damaging to the credibility of the former, but that is for a different discussion.

      • LightlyRow says:

        This undermines your point completely, because if they will actually use anything, then it doesn’t matter how careful you are. It won’t help to completely silence a discussion on a topic, only allow it behind closed doors, lie to people about the facts that they believe supports their point of view, etc, etc, because all of this will be interpreted as evidence of a conspiracy.

        At a certain point you have to accept that you cannot actually control what other people believe. If you don’t, your only choice is totalitarianism.

        It does matter how careful you are. The anti-vax movement is pretty bad, but it would be significantly worse is vaccine researchers were less careful than they were. It can always get worse. Your only choice is not totalitarianism – there are gradations possible in this world. It isn’t life or death, you can have different thresholds of responsibilities, different sanctions, things can depend on the context.

        • Aapje says:

          Where is your limit where people are careful enough? If that limit is when white supremacists stop existing altogether, researchers can never be too careful and thus anything they do that doesn’t go 100% against the white supremacy narrative (even when the white supremacy narrative is actually less than 100% false), is ground for retaliation.

          Your only choice is not totalitarianism – there are gradations possible in this world.

          Yes, but your demands exceed the level of totalitarianism that I consider acceptable and seems to encourage, rather than discourage further increases in totalitarianism.

    • viVI_IViv says:

      It’s the same thing with genetics research and speculation on racial differences. There is an incredibly energetic and highly-motivated set of bad-faith actors who will use anything they can to legitimize white supremacist views. There is an even larger contingent of casual racists who would believe racist views if given by a plausible authority.

      And this doesn’t apply to Critical Theory and grievance studies professors who rant about the heteronormative white patriarchy all the time with zero evidence. In their case, it’s muh academic freedom.

      According to your logic we must approve the Catholic Church censoring Galileo: after all he carelessly disseminated his dangerous research, not devoid of factual errors, which could have been easily used by heretics and atheists to promote immorality, sin and upheaval the social order. Hell, two hundred years after Galileo, one certain Marx guy created a materialistic ideology which caused 100 million deaths and incalculable suffering. Clearly it would have been much harder for him to argue his case if people still believed that planets were being pushed around the sky by angels. And in fact his followers were the first ones to pollute the Moon with the hubris of Man.
      The Inquisition should have persecuted these heliocentrists harder! /s

      • Simon_Jester says:

        White supremacists have managed to kill, like, a lot of people.

        I’m pretty confident that in terms of actual violence dealt unto human beings, the ideas promoted by what you call “grievance studies” professors will amount to an ineffectual fart in a hurricane. They may well even result in a net decrease in human suffering.

        I know which group I’m more worried about.

        Well, I’m not so sure about “Critical Theory,” since I’m not even sure what you think that even means. “Grievance studies” I can at least parse

        • John Schilling says:

          I know which group I’m more worried about.

          The relevant groups are, first, white supremacists who will turn violent if and only if a scientist or professor says the wrong thing, and antifascists/SJWs who place similarly high weight on the teachings of their tribe’s academicians.

          I have my own suspicion as to which group is larger and more dangerous, and I suspect it’s not the same as yours.

        • White supremacists have managed to kill, like, a lot of people.

          Could you fill that out?

          Apartheid South Africa was a white supremacist society, but the number of people they killed was very small, relative to the population, compared to the number killed by black on black violence elsewhere in Africa. Similarly for the post Civil War American South, unless what you mean by “a lot” is “a few thousand over a period of decades.”

          If we are thinking in terms of ideologies that have really killed large numbers, tens or hundreds of millions, I can only think of two plausible claims for white supremacists — the Belgian Congo under Leopold and the slave trade. I’m not sure that either of those depended on the belief that blacks were innately inferior to whites, although it provided some support. If you look at Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden,” it’s clear that his support for imperialism is based on cultural, not genetic, differences — the burden is the obligation to raise the uncivilized primitives up to our level. And we have lots of examples of non-racial slavery in history.

          The essential requirements for both of those crimes was not a racial difference in genetics but in power.

          Did you have other examples that I haven’t thought of in mind?

          Also, do you think the connection between research showing differences in IQ distribution by race and what killed lots and lots of people is closer than the connection between academic Marxists and communist states, which killed many millions of people?

          • viVI_IViv says:

            — the Belgian Congo under Leopold and the slave trade. I’m not sure that either of those depended on the belief that blacks were innately inferior to whites, although it provided some support.

            If I understand correctly, the mass killings and atrocities in Belgian Congo weren’t motivated by any grand white supremacist ideology. In fact they were mostly carried out by black people of some tribe against black people of some other tribe.
            Belgian Congo wasn’t originally an actual colony of the Belgian Kingdom, it was a personal property of King Leopold who ruled it for profit using a mercenary army of cutthroats of various nationalities and local militias who seized the opportunity to settle old tribal conflicts. Eventually the place became so much of a shitshow that the European colonial powers pressured the Belgian government to seize the colony from their own king and run it properly, according to “White Man’s Burden” principles.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            Belgian Congo wasn’t an actual colony of the Belgian Kingdom, it was a personal property of King Leopold who ruled it using a mercenary army made of cutthroats of various nationalities and local militias who seized the opportunity to settle old tribal conflicts.

            Which raises the question: was it a state or anarcho-capitalist?

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            It had an archon: Leopold II.

          • JPNunez says:

            Are we discounting Nazi Germany as a white supremacist state?

          • viVI_IViv says:

            Are we discounting Nazi Germany as a white supremacist state?

            No, but they didn’t kill Jews because of race and IQ research. Had they based their ideology on such research, they would have had to conclude that Ashkenazi Jews were the master race.

          • JPNunez says:

            No, but they didn’t kill Jews because of race and IQ research. Had they based their ideology on such research, they would have had to conclude that Ashkenazi Jews were the master race.

            This is a silly argument.

            Even if we discount the jews killed in the holocaust, and assume the Nazis go onto WW2 to conquer territory for the jewish master race, they still go ahead and kill tens of millions of europeans.

            Maybe the idea of having a master race is the problem in the first place, regardless of whether you think the research is respectable enough.

          • Randy M says:

            Maybe the idea of having a master race is the problem in the first place

            Agreed. Let’s not reify IQ, or height, or any other partially genetic trait, even if we discover different demographics differ in trends.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          I never thought leopards would cancel my face!

        • mitigatedchaos2 says:

          Buddy, this ‘critical race’ stuff is Communist in its methods (collective moral liability + broken epistemology aiming at total equality), and conspiracy theories based on “unexplained group differences in outcomes must be the result of a conspiracy” don’t, uh, have such a great track record, either.

    • Incurian says:

      Censorship is great and all, but you need to be careful where you talk about it because even though you and me just want to censor the really dangerous ideas, once you release censorship into the wild it gets misused by every crank with an axe to grind.

    • Rinrin says:

      This is an isolated demand for rigor. It’s also a thinly veiled intimidation tactic that’s saying we won’t come for you if your work is hard to understand by the public, but if you engage in popular science we’ll lynch you.
      “Religion poisons everything.” It’s funny how that doesn’t change.

      • Simon_Jester says:

        Nah, it’s more like:

        If your research shows that left-handed people have on average two IQ points when controlling for all other factors, we’ll leave you alone.

        If your research then becomes an excited talking point among people whose entire political ideology revolves around the belief that left-handed people and their brutish stupid atavistic ways are threatening to cause the Decline and Fall of The West, and if you do nothing to alert these ideologues to the fact that no, a two-point IQ difference cannot cause that… Then at some point, we’re gonna associate you with that belief system, the one that’s getting a ton of mileage out of your results with no opposition from you.

        And if the belief system starts doing nasty things to lefties, then you are going to be held, in some small way, partially to blame.

        Again, this isn’t about suppressing the truth, it’s about not willfully lending moral support to immoral people who have a long history of creatively shifting their justifications to keep finding excuses for horrible behavior.

        • albatross11 says:

          Simon Jester:

          This looks like an isolated demand for rigor to me. I do not believe you or many other people hold to this standard when it is inconvenient to their views.

          Mainstream voices in the US right now routinely claim that the black/white gap in school performance is due to white racism. They widely report both true and false claims about police misconduct toward blacks. This surely increases racial tensions and sometimes leads to riots. As best I can tell, nobody ever thinks this merits deplatforming. Intemperate or inflamatory statements, getting basic facts wrong–no problem.

          At the same time, as best I can tell from your writing, you object when someone correctly reports the known facts about racial IQ differences–at least, if the do so in a way that might even conceivably lend any support for white racists[1]. The slightest ambiguity or intemperate language is a reason for cancellation–even talking about that data in the wrong company is reason for cancellation.

          This isn’t a concern for people being careful how they discuss touchy topics–it if were, you’d care when *anyone* discussed touchy topics. This is an attempt to put a thumb on the scales of what people are allowed to talk about and read, in order to help people and policies you approve to rise in status relative to the ones you disapprove.

          The result of doing that has been, and will continue to be, less-informed public discussions about critical issues that we as a country really need to get right, and a continued, justified loss of confidence in academic and media institutions that are visibly purging people for having the wrong political views or reaching the wrong conclusions.

          [1] Remember, if you report that Eastern European Jews and Asians have a higher average IQ than whites, this is probably because you are a white supremacist.

          • Matt M says:

            Indeed. The same people who are insisting it is absolutely vital that anyone discussing racial IQ differences take a significant amount of care in being absolutely clear in the evidence for their statements, the implications, etc. don’t demand even the slightest bit of care from someone discussing racial IQ differences… whose position on it is “they don’t exist and anyone who thinks they do is a racist.”

            The demand isn’t “take care when discussing this topic” so much as it is “take care when discussing this topic and coming to a conclusion that is outside the mainstream.” So the problem isn’t the discussion or the topic, it’s the conclusion…

        • Aapje says:

          @Simon_Jester

          And if the belief system starts doing nasty things to lefties, then you are going to be held, in some small way, partially to blame.

          This strongly implies that you are perfectly willing to accept academia spreading beliefs that result in nasty things happening to people (that you perceive to be) on the right.

          Again, this isn’t about suppressing the truth, it’s about not willfully lending moral support to immoral people who have a long history of creatively shifting their justifications to keep finding excuses for horrible behavior.

          Unless those immoral people are in your camp and hurt your outgroup.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      If you’re researching infectious diseases, everyone understands that you need to work in secure facilities and take precaution in your work lest you accidentally release a dangerous pathogen or allow someone to break in and maliciously do so.

      This must be some meme going around. We already had one person show up with this:

      Anyone doing scientific work on race has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their media appearances, for much the same reason that anyone working on smallpox samples has a responsibility to be extremely careful with their containment procedures.

      • Matt M says:

        I wonder if the same people saying this would unequivocally and without qualification agree that the majority of responsibility for COVID being a global pandemic rests with the leaders of the CCP for not being sufficiently careful in securing it and allowing it to spread.

        • Simon_Jester says:

          If I thought that COVID came from a disease research lab, hell yes I would say that the majority of the responsibility for COVID belonged with those who made a containment breach at that lab likely.

          Instead, I believe that the disease spread to humans from animals, and that the Chinese government made a good faith effort to contain the virus but, unsurprisingly and like almost everyone else on Earth, failed. COVID is very very hard to contain, for reasons that are already well known. Moreover, awareness of the salient characteristics of COVID takes time to percolate; the reasons it’s harder to contain than, say, SARS are learned only through experience.

          I strongly suspect that by the time the Chinese government realized how hard they would have to work to keep COVID fully contained within China, COVID had already escaped China. The Chinese government almost certainly could have handled it better, but a lot of other governments have screwed up too.

          All things considered, I don’t think they could really have prevented the outbreak of a respiratory droplet-borne disease with a two-week latency period. Not short of having a time traveler show up when there were only like ten infected patients in the whole world and single them all out to be locked in plastic bubbles for a few months.

          • Aapje says:

            The danger of wet markets has been known for a long time. They chose not to shut them down.

            They also tried to cover up the outbreak, initially.

          • matkoniecz says:

            that the Chinese government made a good faith effort to contain the virus

            That is untrue. Their initial action were to deny, censor, terrorize people who spotted it and coverup the problem.

            They also are fully responsible for setting up system that works in this way.

    • Sebastian_H says:

      I’m open to this idea, but wonder specifically what other academic areas it should apply to. I’m not sure I understand the areas which you think require special care. Do they include for example:

      Communism?
      Moral relativism?
      Atheism?
      Post modernism?

      All of these have been used by highly energetic bad faith actors in the fairly recent past. Should people not sufficiently careful with these topics be barred from being in the grant making process? Do you believe that in general they have been such that it makes a norm where Steve is just another example of that? Or is he to be the first, and we should move next to Communists?

    • mitigatedchaos2 says:

      If you’re a researcher, you need to take heightened precautions before even speculating on racial differences and you need to take pro-active measures to minimize the chances that your research is purposefully used for ill-intent.

      Wouldn’t this also apply to those researchers who are arguing on behalf of a “systemic racism” explanation? If it’s asserted that some groups (such as Asians) cannot do better through either culture or biology, that pretty much just leaves either chance/weak selection effects or conspiracy. Accusations that a racial or ethnic group succeeded through conspiracy have been quite dangerous in the past.

      Can researchers in these other categories be said to have done their due diligence on this matter?

  26. Le Maistre Chat says:

    Hey Civilization players: I haven’t bought a new entry since Civ 4. I’m curious if the game’s “message”, for lack of a better term, has changed?
    What I’m gesturing toward:

    I had Civ 2 back in, uh, I guess fifth grade. Cities were made up of individual population units (initially 10,000 people, abstracted bigger as you get closer to the present). They could be Happy, Content, or Angry (you later got the options to turn units of people into Scientists, Tax Collectors or Elvis Impersonators if there was enough surplus food). If Angry people became a majority, the city would riot, producing nothing for the state. There was also “Corruption”, where based on how far a city is from the capital, the more stuff produced by the tiles is inaccessible to the state (very Seeing Like a State, but it’s treated as total waste instead of free people making their own stuff with it). Researching better governments has benefits like reducing Corruption, down to zero. Depending on your form of government, you could rush what a city was currently building by working people to death or with cash. You end up choosing either Democracy for peace or Fundamentalism for war. Under Democracy or the more primitive Republic, there’s a Senate that can force the player to do something they don’t want to do (make peace). Every government building (which inexplicably includes things like Marketplaces) in the Realm takes money from your treasury each turn. Settlers or Engineers could “terraform” land tiles. You have a Research & Development program from 4000 BC until victory or defeat. There were two victory conditions: conquer the word or launch a starship to Alpha Centauri. The way productivity worked, it was always a better idea to conquer other civilizations’ cities rather than trade with them: more living space under your government led to a faster spaceship victory.

    I then bought Civ 3 (this must have been somewhere in Middle School age) and years later, Civ 4.

    By Civ 4, some of the mechanics of 2/3 had been changed as “unfun” and new complexity was added. You always had total access to everything produced by land tiles in use. Tiles never change except by chopping down trees or global warming (desertification). A city would never go into civil disorder: as cities got too big, they would start getting Angry heads, units of people who refused to work. This was actually a resource, because the optimized way to play was to slave rush a building or unit in every city every ten turns, improving the city while simultaneously making it “not too crowded”. Upkeep costs were by city rather than by government building. There was never an internal government faction forcing you to make peace. On that note, you don’t have a simple government like “Democracy”: you now choose one government policy from each of five columns like the stereotypical Chinese menu. Want both Universal Suffrage and Slavery? Go for it. You want Free Religion or a Pacifist state religion with that?
    There were now more victory types: Domination, where you controlled at least 67% of the world’s land and population. Diplomatic, where you control half the world’s population and get one AI civilization to help democratically elect you ruler of the world. And the one that required the least violence: Cultural, where you research the technologies that unlock the most Culture-producing stuff and then make your people become Luddites who produce Culture (culture, science, and taxes compete for the same resource) until three cities reach Legendary Culture.
    Your civilization also had two special abilities (introduced in Civ 3), which depending on your leader. This led to the devs guessing what two adjectives from a buffet best described a historical person like Abraham Lincoln, and their guess would have totalizing effects on the entire American population (e.g. “this guy was Philosophical” = your cities produce 100% more Great People).

    So what are things like now? I’m looking for deep implications about politics and economics, not changes like “tiles are now hexes and units can’t be stacked.”

    • Randy M says:

      Shamus Young is doing a series about the gameplay of the Civilization series at his blog. It doesn’t directly answer your question, but it may be of interest nonetheless.

    • C_B says:

      Civ 5:

      Cities produce resources (the primary ones being food, money, and production) based on both the buildings/upgrades contained in the city itself, and the quality of the surrounding land (e.g., grasslands produce more food than deserts, building a mine on a hill makes it generate more production, tiles adjacent to a river produce more gold because trade, etc.).

      Cities have population units, representing [arbitrary number] people each. Those population units can be used to work tiles (you always get the resources from your city tile, but you only get resources from surrounding tiles if someone is working them), or they can become “specialists” (scientists, merchants, artists, etc.), providing less resources but more of some harder-to-get thing, like science or culture.

      Population units consume food, and a city will eventually hit an equilibrium where it can’t grow any bigger without increasing its food production. Military units and some buildings have gold upkeep. Aside from those sinks, all resource income is always fully available to the state.

      Happiness is civilization-wide. Having more cities and bigger cities decreases happiness, while various things like building colosseums and theaters increases happiness. Recently conquered or occupied cities produce extra unhappiness. If your civilization is a little unhappy, your city growth gets a big penalty. If your civilization is very unhappy, you get a whole bunch of penalties; you really, really don’t want to be very unhappy. By default, it’s difficult to make a large empire without happiness problems, but there are various options in the game that loosen the restrictions, allowing you to sprawl if you invest in it.

      You customize your civilization by selecting “Social policies” (civilization-wide values) with culture points, which are things like “Tradition” which makes you better at generating culture and building wonders, “Honor” which makes you better at fighting, or “Exploration” which makes you better at naval stuff and trade. In the late game, you pick one of three special policies called “Ideologies,” which are Freedom (capitalism), Order (communism), and Autocracy (fascism). Ideologies have some special between-civilization mechanics, like producing extra unhappiness for you if a civilization with a mismatched ideology from yours has much higher culture generation than you do.

      Different civilizations have built-in bonuses. Sometimes these are special units or buildings, other times civ-wide bonuses. For instance, the English get Longbowmen (longer range than Crossbowmen other civs get), Ships of the Line (better than equivalent boats for other civs), and global bonus naval movement all game long.

      You can win the game via Domination (conquering everybody), Science (building a fancy spaceship), Culture (making everybody drink your Coca Cola and wear your band T-shirts), Diplomacy (getting the UN to elect you World Leader, usually by bribing all the city states), or Time (having more points than anyone else at the end of the game).

    • silver_swift says:

      CIV 6:

      Like Civ 5 Cities have population units, representing [arbitrary number] people each. Those population units can be used to work tiles as normal and you still get the bonus from the cities own tile for free.

      A big difference from 5 is the addition of districts, large city upgrades that take up an entire tile and allow cities to specialize more. Districts are limited both directly by the size of your city and indirectly by the fact that you lose the resources from the tile. Population send to work on a district instead turns into specialists, (provided you have build the correct buildings in that district).

      Amenities, Housing, loyalty and religion are now all tracked per city, rather than civilization wide.

      Amenities work similarly to happiness in older versions of civilization. Cities need an amount of amenities based on its size. Luxury resources add one amenity to four or six (depending on the resource) of your cities. Beyond that, you can add more amenities through the usual wonders, buildings and other bonuses. Having too few amenities reduces population growth and production and having dramatically too few amenities makes rebels spawn near the city and attack it (this typically doesn’t happen as a city stops growing before it reaches that point).

      Housing represents the capacity of a city to grow. Cities cannot grow larger than their housing capacity + 5 and growth slows down dramatically as you near this cap. The initial amount of housing for a city depends on whether the city is located next to fresh water, a coast or not near a water source. On top of that you get a small bonus for farms and other early developments, but as your city grows and you progress through the tech tree, you will eventually need to build neighborhood districts in order to house your entire population.

      Loyalty represents your control over your cities, it is based mostly on happiness and pressure. Happiness is based on amenities and pressure is generated by other nearby cities. Nearby domestic cities (cities controlled by you) generate positive loyalty while nearby foreign cities generate negative loyalty. Larger cities generate more pressure. If loyalty drops too low, the city will secede from your empire, becoming a free city, that might eventually join another nearby civilization (or, in practice more likely, immediately get conquered by said civilization).

      Governments work differently than before. You select a government type, which gives you specific bonuses and a number of economic, military and diplomatic policy slots. These policy slots can be filled with any matching policies that you’ve researched and there are no restrictions on what policies can be combined with what government (there is no slavery policy, but you can be a democracy with serfdom).

      • silver_swift says:

        (there is no slavery policy, but you can be a democracy with serfdom).

        Oh oops, no you can’t. Serfdom becomes obsolete when you unlock Public Works, which is a prerequisite for democracy. Also, there are in fact a few policies that are unique to a particular government.

        You can, however, have Corporate Libertarianism as your government with Collectivism* and Music Censorship policies.

        Would be fun to figure out what is the most ridiculous government that is theoretically possible.

        * Collectivism does require that your civilization is currently going through a Dark Age, (as opposed to Collectivization, which requires a communist government) so you could argue that this represents the society breaking down and paying only lip service to Libertarianism.

        • Dack says:

          Would be fun to figure out what is the most ridiculous government that is theoretically possible.

          My current game of Civ6 has New Deal Fascism.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            How is that ridiculous? I ran Universal Suffrage Free Speech Slavery Free Market Pacifism in most of my Civ4 games.

          • silver_swift says:

            You actually can’t do that any more with the latest expansion (Gathering Storm).

            New Deal is one of the few policies that is now restricted to a specific government type (Democracy in this case).

          • silver_swift says:

            @Le Maistre Chat

            The only two of those that are directly incompatible are slavery and universal suffrage and even then I can kind of imagine a society that functions that way, you just need to find a reason why the free-all-the-slaves party isn’t getting enough votes to change things.

            There are any number of ways in which democratic societies end up ignoring the voice of a significant portion of their people, even if everyone has the right to vote. Maybe voter turnout among slaves is particularly low, maybe ending slavery is so far out of the overton window that nobody wants to run it as a platform (and the slaves can’t vote for one of their own because universal suffrage != everyone has the right to run for office) or maybe the slaves have some kind of hierarchy and the slaves higher up on the totem pole are afraid of losing what little status they have if the system collapses.

            It’s not particularly likely, (and historically inaccurate) but it’s not entirely unthinkable either.

          • AlphaGamma says:

            @ silver_swift: Or to go a bit more CW-y, you could have the slaves be leased convicts, and have certain criminal laws be dramatically more heavily enforced against a certain group of people so that a large proportion of them are felons.

            Universal suffrage doesn’t necessarily preclude depriving people of the franchise as punishment for a crime, after all. And even if the term of penal servitude for any given crime is relatively short, if people with criminal records have limited opportunity to earn a living in non-criminal ways (because nobody will hire them) then it often won’t be long after their release before they get convicted again…

          • Doug S. says:

            I can also imagine debt slavery and indentured servitude being tolerated by voters…

    • Bugmaster says:

      Alpha Centauri is the only true Civ. All others are but pale imitations.

      • jrdougan says:

        Too true. It has aged astonishingly well over the two decades it has been out. To be fair, some elements of it have snuck into to the later Civ games, but the complete package is still unique.

        As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
        Commissioner Pravin Lal, “U.N. Declaration of Rights”

      • Byrel Mitchell says:

        Civ 6 is the first Civ game I’ve played that seemed as good as Alpha Centauri, over all. Very different games, but with enough new, good mechanics that it’s not clearly inferior.

    • fibio says:

      Hey Civilization players: I haven’t bought a new entry since Civ 4. I’m curious if the game’s “message”, for lack of a better term, has changed?

      Probably the biggest changes has been a through-run trend away from being a historical game and towards being a game with historical trappings. Civ 6 is particularly guilty of requiring high level players to pick an initial strategy (Science, Culture, Religion, Diplomacy or WAR!!!) at the beginning of the game and stick to it come hell or high water. While this and many changes have arguably made the game more fun, or at least more approachable to new players, it fails to really model history in the same way say the Paradox grand strategy games try to.

    • mendax says:

      The lead designer of Civ 6, Ed Beach, is also the designer of the wargames Here I Stand and Virgin Queen which deal with the wars of religion in Europe in 16th century.

      He is currently designing a game about…. Border Reivers.

  27. hnau says:

    My sympathies to Prof. Hsu, and kudos for being (as far as I can tell) in fact a very upstanding person.

    That being said: “Here’s a detailed, civil explanation of why I’m not guilty” is not tactically or strategically the right response when the Mob comes for you.

    The right response is “lol, f*** you.”

    It’s tactically a better response because the Mob doesn’t operate rationally. It does what it thinks it can get away with (and then some), not what’s reasonable. And it smells fear.
    Defend yourself? You just validated the Mob’s narrative and, by reacting, told it that you fear the consequences of attack. It will fisk your defense, find something arguable or objectionable, and keep going.
    Apologize? You just gave the Mob a taste of blood and, by reacting, told it that you fear the consequences of attack. It will dismiss your apology, escalate its demands, and keep going.
    Laugh in its face? You just told the Mob “bring it on”, sending a signal that you aren’t afraid. It will back down and go looking for a softer target.

    It’s strategically a better response because as long as people keep coughing up polite, deferential responses to the Mob’s demands, it can spin “lol, f*** you” responses as admissions of guilt. No matter how defensible your position is, by deigning to defend it you give ground to the Mob and make the world less safe for people without such an ironclad defense.

    And make no mistake: no matter what your defense is, no matter how unpopular your views are, the demands the Mob makes are fundamentally invalid. An exercise of social-cultural force is never a valid response to an honestly held belief. It is intellectual terrorism, and there are reasons we don’t negotiate with terrorists. The Mob has no right.

    Argument does not get bullet. Conversely, I submit, bullet does not get argument.

    • zero says:

      The Mob is not the only other actor in this scenario. There is also Michigan State University, who controls the ultimate outcome. It is unclear to me
      what the optimal strategy to satisfy them would be.

      • hnau says:

        Fair point, but I don’t see it affecting the calculus much. Michigan State University presumably knew the facts that Hsu cited in his defense already. And there have been many cases of cancellation where the employer knew the facts and apparently didn’t care. The main factor in the employer’s decision seems to be the amount of pressure the Mob brings to bear. My claim is that the pressure will tend to be less if one adopts the defiant strategy.

        • Scott Alexander says:

          I think having a petition full of very famous people supporting you is helpful, and the defense seems to be important in getting the petition (even if it’s only a ritualistic step, as I suspect it was for most of the people involved)

          • The Big Red Scary says:

            Never forget– liberals get the bullet too.

            For what it’s worth, I have relevant credentials (tenure at a respectable institution, in a not irrelevant subject) and am familiar enough with Hsu to be willing to sign my name in his defense. However, the letter is written not so much as a defense of Hsu as a defense of an adulterated form of classical liberalism, emphasizing among other things diversity in hiring, which in most cases is a euphemism for affirmative action on behalf of one group and therefore effectively discrimination against another group. In short, I can’t in good conscience sign the letter as formulated, and think that some subtler form of “lol, fuck you” would be a more appropriate response.

          • 10240 says:

            @The Big Red Scary , I don’t really see the petition as taking a position on affirmative action. It uses the word ‘diversity’ and at a different point ‘inclusion’, but it’s pretty diplomatic about whether it means racial diversity/inclusion or diversity of thought. IMO it’s a good strategy for it to be diplomatic, and suggest that free inquiry doesn’t contradict diversity/inclusion (whatever we take those to mean), without really taking sides on anything other than academic freedom. I oppose affirmative action but I don’t see this as a good reason not to sign the petition. (I don’t know what version you’ve seen; it was a publicly editable document for a while.)

        • alawisgreen says:

          Michigan State University presumably knew the facts that Hsu cited in his defense already.

          You’re assuming that just because one person in MSU’s administration knows something, then all people at MSU know it. Imagine you’re the Dean of MSU. MSU has 2600 faculty. You might know Hsu by reputation, and interacted with him a few times. You haven’t read his blog. Hypothetically, if he posts racist things on it regularly, you wouldn’t know unless someone complains.

          As the Dean, your options are to 1) fire him immediately 2) start an investigation or 3) make a public statement affirming diversity.

          If Hsu made a statement saying, “lol f*** you,” which option do you feel the Dean would lean toward?

          • keaswaran says:

            On a minor terminological note – Hsu is the “Senior Vice-President for Research and Innovation”, and thus likely outranks all the Deans at MSU. So in this case, likely anyone in the administration knows him better than your post suggests.

            In any case, “lol f*** you” is perhaps an appropriate public reaction, even as much more sober documents and defenses are prepared privately for the administrators that will likely read them. (They should be phrased in a way that doesn’t make them awful if they leak, but they shouldn’t be written primarily for the mob.)

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        Building up a giant petition to save Hsu might create an expectation that the next guy who we try to cancel needs to come up with a giant petition or else get canceled.

        • Matt M says:

          Yeah… even if this results in Hsu not getting canceled, a statement like “we were going to fire him, but then all these relatively high status people spoke out in his defense, so now we won’t” strikes me as a hollow victory, at best…

          • Spookykou says:

            What about, spoke out against firing him for this, expressing that a lot of high status people disagree with this category of thing.

          • Matt M says:

            Are people speaking out against the category? Or are they defending the man?

            In Scott’s post above, he seems primarily interested in defending the man. There are plenty of similar such cases in the same category that, while I’m sure Scott opposes, he did not personally rally to the cause of.

            Unless everyone in the category receives a similarly vigorous defense, this interpretation will ring hollow to everyone involved.

          • Spookykou says:

            It is not clear what high status people signing the petition are motivated by, if I was to sign the petition personally I would be speaking out against the category, but I am both a nobody, totally unassociated, and in a profession where this kind of association could be bad for me so I am abstaining.

    • INH5 says:

      That only works if either you have an independent source of income or your employer is willing to back you up on it. And if it’s the latter case and that support ever falters, well, just ask Milo Yiannopoulos. A university isn’t going to be anywhere near as lenient as Breitbart was.

      So I think that a defensive posture is the right move here, even though I have some quibbles with some of his arguments that I don’t want to get into here.

    • Marvin says:

      >That being said: “Here’s a detailed, civil explanation of why I’m not guilty” is not tactically or strategically the right response when the Mob comes for you.

      I agree that only trying to parry the accusations or basing your core argument on it is a bad plan, but I think Hsu sort of gets this, even though the response in the blog post primarily respond to the Twitter posts. He finishes with “Academics and Scientists must not submit to mob rule.”, which he probably should have started with. One of the letters in his support does this better, it starts with an argument that the MSU president should not fire staff due to a Twitter mob, independent of whether their accusations have merit.

      I’m not sure how literal I should take the defense you are proposing, but I think seriously arguing why the mob has no right is a better idea than to laugh at them because you believe it has no right.

      • hnau says:

        You’re right. As written my comment reads like “This is what Hsu should have done” but that’s not what I intended to convey (I agree there are practical reasons why his response makes sense as-is). My motivation was more to point out (contra what other commenters have focused on) that the details of Hsu’s defense aren’t important, because a much stronger claim (“the Mob has no right”) can and should be defended, and that claim suffices to show why Hsu is in the right here.

    • aristides says:

      Everyone already considers “lol, f u” to be an admission of guilt. If that was his response, the university wouldn’t want to defend him even a little, and his only recourse would be a law suit, which means hoping for a sympathy jury. A rational defense has the potential to get your employer in your side, and you can still sue in the end anyways. I do agree an apology is the worst option. It is explicitly an admission of guilt, and the only times I’ve heard it working is when your a democratic nominee for a position of power.

      • albatross11 says:

        There’s no reasoning with a mob, and probably apologies make things worse. Hsu needs to reason with his employer, and if he thinks apologizing will help him keep his job, it may be the prudent thing to do. In which case, that sucks, but he’s got to think about how to take care of himself and his family first.

        From reading a lot of what he’s written, one thing I am fairly sure of is that he has not been philosophically disarmed. That’s happened to a lot of liberals/progressives who were canceled by a Twitter mob–you could see the people basically cycling through all the defenses against the charges of {racism/sexism/white fragility/whatever} and being unable to apply any, as they personally had accepted the idea that such defenses were invalid when offered by a white person, and probably had cheered on previous mobbings. Tearfully apologizing while trying to explain somehow that “this isn’t me” without using any of the forbidden defenses, stuff like that.

        Hsu can be forced to shut up, to apologize, maybe even forced to recant, but he’s no more going to start believing the self-criticisms he’s been told to state than would someone like Steven Pinker or Sam Harris or Razib Khan.

  28. Randy M says:

    I agree with your take. This is a situation where neither truth nor good intentions are a suitable counter-argument even if proved, and the mob isn’t in the mood for reconciliation. Thus the proper response is probably “Yeah, so?” not “but I didn’t technically do all that.”

    FYI Atlas, you seem to be having an autocorrect problem with Hsu’s name.

    • Incurian says:

      I like it better that way.

    • Randy M says:

      I wondered if it wasn’t another valid transliteration of his Chinese name or something, but Hsu’s usage would probably have deference.

      • Michael Watts says:

        I wondered if it wasn’t another valid transliteration of his Chinese name or something

        Definitely not. Shu is a separate syllable from Hsu. (In modern spelling, shu is still shu, but hsü has become xu.)

  29. Scott Alexander says:

    I am not at all surprised this is happening, and am honestly shocked that Steve has been able to hold on as long as he has. This doesn’t justify firing him – I could be shocked if an atheist managed to stay alive for a few months in Saudi Arabia, without being in favor of killing him – but it makes it all dreadfully predictable.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      I am also surprised about all of those people.

    • teageegeepea says:

      Henry Harpending was a normal professor, and I think through him Greg got some sort of nominal status at Utah, but I don’t think that’s ever been his primary source of income.

    • Michael Watts says:

      I am not at all surprised this is happening, and am honestly shocked that Steve has been able to hold on as long as he has.

      I find this admission pretty disturbing, because it tends to imply that you are intentionally lying in your post when you characterize his discussion of the genetics of race as “basically repeating the same [thing] everyone else does”, even as you link that claim to a post in which Hsu says the same thing that got Larry Summers dismissed from his university administrative position 15 years ago.

      • Spookykou says:

        Doesn’t your own post support and provide evidence for the ‘everyone says this and it is grounds to get you canceled’ interpretation of what Scott is saying, I am not seeing how that is a lie, as much as it is Scott complaining about the state of things.

        • Michael Watts says:

          No? My post says that

          1. “Everyone says” one thing;

          2. Steve Hsu pretty clearly says the opposite.

          Saying the opposite of what everyone else says is indeed not a surprising grounds for cancellation. Agreeing with everyone else is.

          Compare Atlas’ comment (here) making among others the following points, which I agree with:

          1. Hsu’s protestors object to his views, not just the fact that he has appeared in public with other people who the protestors consider unsavory;

          2. The protestors’ characterization of Hsu’s views is substantially correct;

          3. Scott’s description of Hsu’s past statements on the genetics of race is phrased so as to imply that the views Hsu has expressed are the opposite of what they in fact are.

        • Spookykou says:

          I am not familiar with any of the relevant everyones so it is possible I did not understand you, in your post you reference only one other person, and imply that this person says the same things that Hsu said, and got canceled for it. You now seem to be saying there is a third group, which actually constitutes everyone, and they say different things from Hsu and this Larry Summers person, as such I was confused, and wrong.

        • this Larry Summers person

          Larry Summers is a prominent economist who was, among other things, treasury secretary under Clinton. He later became president of Harvard.

          In a talk at the National Bureau of Economic Research he discussed possible reasons why there were few women in some niches, such as math professors at Harvard. One of the possibilities he mentioned, I think about number three, was that there might be a different distribution of abilities.

          For which he was ferociously attacked, and forced out as president of Harvard.

          A much more prominent case than Hsu.

  30. Guy in TN says:

    And alternatively, if you have examined the evidence against Hsu and decided that the best course of action would be for him to be removed from his position, you can sign that petition here.

    • textor says:

      Good God. That’s a nice list right there.

      Is there some tool available to store the list of names, such that I always see them highlighted in browser? Wouldn’t wish to be gullible and trust research produced by intellectually dishonest opportunists. Who knows when they decide to smuggle an agenda.

    • leaguemember says:

      Is that list accurate? Someone I know from MSU is on it & it seems quite unlikely they’d sign such a thing.

      I guess it’s possible, but seems likely they’re not vetting their list properly

      • davidoj says:

        At one point it had the name of a person who has since written a letter in support of Hsu (Corey Washington) – see here http://archive.is/aj8Bh

        I’m going to guess it’s not the only faulty inclusion.

    • Briefling says:

      I don’t think it’s appropriate (in SSC comments) to boost a petition going after someone this aggressively.

      • Guy in TN says:

        Are you suggesting that my words and thoughts are dangerous in some sort of way?

        • B_Epstein says:

          There’s some irony in signal-boosting a petition against a person, with one of the central arguments being them spreading potentially dangerous knowledge, and then asking said signal-boosting to be treated as neutral knowledge sharing.

          • Guy in TN says:

            I edited my post above to be slightly less snarky.

            I’ll be straight with you: There is no such thing as neutral information. No neutral science. No neutral university research, or neutral choice in faculty hiring/retaining.

            You may be opposed to my post because you recognize that presenting information, even factually true information, is not really “neutral” knowledge sharing. Alright. Is it also reasonable to apply the same standards to Hsu?

          • B_Epstein says:

            “Direction”-wise – sure. You’re perfectly within your rights to post that link (unless Scott disagrees, I guess). People are then within their rights to criticize your for your potential impact.

            I guess your point is the difference in platforms and exposure? But that matters only for the magnitude. Nobody has called for a petition to fire you.

        • Briefling says:

          You’re participating in a political movement to get somebody fired from their job, of course it’s “dangerous” in the sense that a real person could experience significant harm stemming directly from your post.

          But lots of ostensibly dangerous speech is allowed here; I just think actively supporting the petition crosses a line. It’s too much of a call to arms against an individual. IMO, if this kind of comment were routinely allowed, it would break SSC.

          (By the way, I edited my original comment to take a less pointed tone, a couple minutes after your initial reply. Just FYI.)

          • Guy in TN says:

            We’ve both been editing our posts, it’s okay. I feel sorry for anyone trying to follow this conversation from the outside.

            If Scott decides it does cross a line, I would definitely want to see that line spelled out for future reference. Is the principle that in a trade-off between concentrated vs. dispersed harms, I should only be allowed to only advocate for the option of dispersed harms, even if I believe that choice causes greater net disutility?

          • Briefling says:

            How about, “Don’t use this space to coordinate real-world attacks against individuals”?

            I agree that it’s important to draw the line precisely. IMO it’s basically ok for you to say “Hsu should be fired” (although it’s still clearly an aggressive position, and should be argued carefully).

            But it’s not ok to say, “We can totally get Hsu fired by doing XYZ, who’s with me?” Which is how I read your original post, more or less.

            Does that distinction make sense?

      • silver_swift says:

        Pointing to “the enemy’s” side of a discussion that is being signal boosted on SSC seems entirely appropriate for SSC comments.

        • Briefling says:

          Sure, but my issue is that he encouraged people to sign the petition. Not that he linked to the discussion.

          EDIT: I acknowledge that this was not totally clear from the wording of my original comment. Merely linking the petition as an FYI is fine. Implicitly encouraging people to sign it is too inflammatory.

          EDIT 2: Another important point to emphasize. When Scott boosts a petition that says “please don’t hurt this guy,” that’s much less aggressive than when Guy in TN boosts a petition that says “please hurt this guy.” The apparent symmetry is completely superficial.

          • silver_swift says:

            Merely linking the petition as an FYI is fine. Implicitly encouraging people to sign it is too inflammatory.

            That is basically how I read Guy in TN’s comment: “If you disagree with Scott, here’s a link to the other side’s petition.”

            Obviously linking to the petition at all is acknowledging that some people might want to sign it and as such it might encourage people to sign it. I also suspect Guy in TN does actually agree with Hsu getting fired, but his actual comment sounds pretty neutral to me.

            (Also, completely separate from this, but I would be entirely ok with people defending the position that Hsu should be fired in the comments here as long as they did so in a civil way. I’d disagree, strongly, but the cool thing about the SSC comments is that you can read about a large variety of viewpoints, not just ones that you agree with.)

    • LudwigNagasena says:

      Crazy, a bunch of people most of whom probably can hardly explain how factor analysis works (Anthropology PhDs and undergraduate students?) try to cancel an honest scientist in a Twitter-induced rage.

    • Tatterdemalion says:

      Would you be willing to set out what you see as the case for firing him?

      (If you don’t want to face the hornets’ nest of hostility that will inevitably result in, I totally understand. And everyone else, if Guy or anyone else is willing to set out what’s likely to be a deeply unpopular position on SSC, please try not to dogpile – keep it kind, and ask yourself whether anyone else has already said what you have to say.)

  31. teageegeepea says:

    The folks at Mises.org did not think Stefan Molyneux was good at making even arguments whose conclusions they agreed with.

  32. INH5 says:

    As I discuss in a comment below, I’m afraid I find it hard to see how the facts justify this interpretation. Molyneux had been vigorously and frequently discussing controversial issues of race, gender, immigration, etc. on his show for quite some time by 2017.

    I second this. I fully oppose Hsu facing professional consequences for this, but Molyneux was widely considered a crank in the Youtube community, even by many “centrists” and “right-wingers”, well before May 2017 when the interview happened. If Hsu genuinely believes this about Molyneux, then he really should have done more research on him back in 2017 and especially right now.

  33. Peter Gerdes says:

    Thank you. Hsu is my personal hero and this is important.

  34. Reasoner says:

    Signal boosting this recent thread on “cancellation insurance” as a permanent way of solving the unwarranted cancellations problem.

    I felt like I did a decent job of answering objections last time around, but here is another pitch for the idea.

    The government’s monopoly on the use of force regulates the use of force as a punishment. As as a society, this has allowed us to move beyond blood feuds. The invention of law happened so long ago so as to be practically mythological (for example, consider Moses and the Ten Commandments, the Code of Hammurabi, or whatever). We’ve forgotten details of how it happened, but it was a massive breakthrough.

    Public shaming is a punishment just like any other. In the social media era, public shaming has become way easier. But unlike the use of force for punishment, the use of public shaming is totally unregulated. That’s why the current era feels so lawless. It’s possible we will only move beyond this when we find some way to regulate the use of public shaming the way we regulate the use of force.

    In the United States, the First Amendment means that our government isn’t well-equipped to regulate the use of public shaming. That’s why we need private firms to do it. Cue David Friedman’s ideas about anarcho-capitalism and legal systems different from ours. The public shaming crisis is not just a crisis, it’s an opportunity for legal innovation.

    However, although legal innovation would be great, it isn’t strictly required. A vast improvement on the public shaming status quo would be to achieve the basics of what our use-of-force legal system does. Identify some trusted people who are fairly likely to be disinterested parties. Assign them the job of spending several weeks acquiring expertise on the topic of “is this person actually a racist asshole”. Have them announce their verdict.

    What concrete form could this take? How do you turn it into a business? I think there is room for innovation there too, but here is one proposal. Post job ads online and hire a diverse range of seemingly fair-minded individuals. Sell subscription services to people who are scared of public shaming and want to preserve their livelihood (i.e. everyone). If someone is getting shamed, they report it to the cancellation insurance firm. The cancellation insurance firm assembles the strongest case for and against them and gets the judge team to come up with an overall verdict. (The judge team could also be hired on a part-time basis, jury style. In some cases the team could be, for example, 100% African Americans in order to achieve greater moral authority / have some baseline familiarity with the subject matter. But, and this is crucial, they should be “randomly” selected from the population, not self-selected the way pitchfork-wielding Twitter users are. It’s been said many times Twitter is not real life, this corp does arbitrage on that fact. Another crucial part is they are doing this as their job, hence they have a longer attention span than a little blue bird, and feel a greater obligation to carefully consider both sides of the story even if reading things they disagree with is painful and not something they’d normally do while goofing off online.)

    If the judgement team delivers a guilty verdict, the insurance firm stays silent–“Sorry, we can’t help”. However, if the judgement team thinks the person is innocent, or that the person is guilty but not guilty enough to get cancelled (the mob’s punishment does not fit the crime), they could:

    * Get their publication arm to publicize the case for the person’s innocence. Cancellation insurance is highly synergistic with a fair-minded, widely respected journalism business. We’re killing two birds with one stone here. Everyone knows newspapers are dying. Everyone knows newspapers operate with shitty incentives. Cancellation insurance represents a method for creating a new and highly lucrative journalism business that does not suffer from shitty incentives.

    * Hire people to find social media discussion of the person subject to cancellation and patiently refute false claims that are being made about them / provide a more balanced perspective.

    * Straight up give the person a cash payment to help tide them over until they find their next job. Maybe publicize the fact and the size of the cash payment so the mob feels silly. (Or maybe not, if you’re concerned with the mob bankrupting the cancellation insurance firm. However, I think the mob’s throughput of cancellations will remain more or less steady since it’s limited by other factors.)

    • Bugmaster says:

      This sounds like a good idea in theory, that is plagued by the same type of problems as libertopian private security companies:

      * What prevents your organization from being taken over by biased activists ? So far, no other organization had turned out to be immune. You say that your quasi-judges will be randomly selected from the population, but you have no power to do that; all you can do is randomly select from those who apply to work for you.

      * Who is in charge of this organization ? Who makes the hiring and firing decisions ? Is it you ? Why should I trust you ?

      * What prevents your organization from going full mercenary, and offering its services in the burgeoning cancellation-for-hire business ?

      * What prevents your organization from being cancelled ?

      * You say you will “patiently refute claims”, but no one reads patient refutations, so what’s your next move ? Directly giving money to people is not a good idea, but how will you able to afford lifetime support for someone who was cancelled and can no longer get a job ?

      * Let’s say I hired your firm, paid my insurance for many years, then got cancelled. Are you going to honor my claim, or are you going to do your best to weasel out of it, like every other insurance company ? If you did try to get me un-cancelled, and failed, can I sue you ?

      • Juanita del Valle says:

        Some of these complaints aren’t unique to the business model proposed: the issue of trust, for example, is core to all insurance companies, and is mostly solved by reputation or proxies for reputation (the existence of insurance markets in other spaces proves this is at least possible).

        Similarly, on the question of how you’ll afford premiums for a “lifetime of unemployment”: permanent disability insurance does exist, and covers conditions that are likely much more detrimental to lifetime earnings than a one-off job loss and reputation hit.

      • Reasoner says:

        What prevents your organization from being taken over by biased activists ? So far, no other organization had turned out to be immune.

        Look at the bottom line. Starbucks, for example, allows itself to be taken over because its clientele will stop buying Starbucks coffee if it believes Starbucks is not “woke”. On the other hand, if cancellation insurance customers believe that the firm is being taken over, they will take their business elsewhere.

        Know one org type that hasn’t been taken over? Banks. Know why? Because a core part of a bank’s business model is trustworthy management of customer money. As a bank depositor, if I think there’s a cultural revolution brewing amongst bank management, I’ll take my money elsewhere thank you very much.

        You say that your quasi-judges will be randomly selected from the population, but you have no power to do that; all you can do is randomly select from those who apply to work for you.

        Job ads don’t need to be clearly marked as “work for cancellation insurance corp”. That allows for a more random, less self-selected fraction of the population. Additionally, you can apply various adjustments to make your sample more representative of the population. For example, choose a subset of your applicants such that that subset answers opinion surveys with a similar distribution to the population at large.

        Or don’t bother with the whole random sample thing and just select people that you think are fairminded. It’s up to you. Your organization will grow a reputation over time based on its actions. There is a competitive marketplace of cancellation insurance firms here, so there’s room for diverse approaches.

        Who is in charge of this organization ? Who makes the hiring and firing decisions ? Is it you ? Why should I trust you ?

        The ideal CEO would be a sensible Black cultural commentator such as Coleman Hughes. Tell all your trustworthy BIPOC friends about this opportunity to make billions of dollars while ending the culture war and greatly upgrading the effectiveness of American institutions. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You’ll be the lawgiving Moses of the 21st century. (Tongue only slightly in cheek.)

        What prevents your organization from going full mercenary, and offering its services in the burgeoning cancellation-for-hire business ?

        What prevents us from going into the fast food business?

        Again, everyone will cancel their subscriptions if they don’t trust the organization to adjudicate in a trustworthy way. We’d sooner go into fast food than become a mercenary cancellation-for-hire biz for that reason. No one wants to buy cancellation insurance from a cancellation-for-hire firm.

        What prevents your organization from being cancelled ?

        Getting cancelled is free PR for us.

        You say you will “patiently refute claims”, but no one reads patient refutations, so what’s your next move ?

        They do if the patient refutations are direct replies to their tweets.

        With regard to the monetary payout, you select an insurance policy corresponding to the payout you want to receive. For example, if you want 6 months of living expenses in response to being cancelled, that will be a cheaper premium than a lifetime’s worth of living expenses. We hire actuaries to do some math and figure out our expected payouts and charge premiums high enough to ensure the business remains profitable. Just like any other insurance firm.

        Let’s say I hired your firm, paid my insurance for many years, then got cancelled. Are you going to honor my claim, or are you going to do your best to weasel out of it, like every other insurance company ? If you did try to get me un-cancelled, and failed, can I sue you ?

        Being cancelled puts the spotlight on you. Many people are suddenly paying attention to what you’re doing and saying. If you take this opportunity to drag your insurance firm through the mud because they aren’t paying out, that will be bad for your insurance firm’s reputation. Cancellation insurance subscribers will see that your insurance firm did not stick by you when they really should have. They’ll switch to a different insurance firm.

        On the flip side, giving you a payout can act as great marketing for us. Everyone seeing you unfairly cancelled, and us paying out for it, will be like “Wow, Bugmaster’s cancellation insurance is saving their butt. Let me get some of that insurance myself.”

        But we’d try to set up the contract in such a way that you can sue us as well.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          Know one org type that hasn’t been taken over? Banks.

          I don’t think this is true. Various unliked-but-haven’t-done-anything-illegal people cannot get business accounts.

          Ybbx ng gur thl jub ehaf arj-cebwrpg-gjb naq gur ceboyrz ur’f unq xrrcvat n ohfvarff purpxvat nppbhag.

          • Christophe Biocca says:

            I don’t think this is true. Various unliked-but-haven’t-done-anything-illegal people cannot get business accounts.

            The FBI worked hard to make that one happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

            Program since ended, but the message of “we can make it expensive to have these people as customers” was heard loud and clear.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            And it’s rather terrifying when combined with the government’s crackdowns on handling any significant amount of physical cash.

            This really should be more of a bi-partisan concern. You can be cut off from the banking system with no due process and the laws are built to make using the banking system a requirement to live.

          • Matt M says:

            I’m familiar with Operation Choke Point, but I’m not sure that’s a wholly satisfactory explanation. At least, it doesn’t answer the question of why wrongthink individual commentators can’t find anyone to process credit card payments for them.

          • acymetric says:

            Ybbx ng gur thl jub ehaf arj-cebwrpg-gjb naq gur ceboyrz ur’f unq xrrcvat n ohfvarff purpxvat nppbhag.

            Why on Earth would you rot13 that?

          • INH5 says:

            I’m familiar with Operation Choke Point, but I’m not sure that’s a wholly satisfactory explanation. At least, it doesn’t answer the question of why wrongthink individual commentators can’t find anyone to process credit card payments for them.

            My guess is that after Charlottesville a bunch of banks got spooked that they could end up getting investigated for terrorist financing if they continued providing services for “those people,” and one of “those people” did something. Or even if one of “those people” got explicit enough in their rhetoric to be designated as A Terrorist despite never directly participating in terrorism themselves, as has happened in any number of cases with extremist Islamist imams.

            A terrorism financing investigation is clearly a risk banks are willing to take when it comes to, for example, Saudi princes, but most openly white supremacist online personalities don’t have anywhere near as much money.

          • rumham says:

            My guess is that after Charlottesville a bunch of banks got spooked that they could end up getting investigated for terrorist financing if they continued providing services for “those people,” and one of “those people” did something.

            By current standards of protest, wasn’t Charlottesville was largely peaceful?

          • John Schilling says:

            Most protests result in zero dead bodies per urban area. Charlottesville, at one dead body, was atypically violent.

          • rumham says:

            No deaths at any of these largely peaceful protests?

          • John Schilling says:

            Do you understand the difference between “most” and “any”?

          • rumham says:

            Yes. I also understand that recent protests that have had deaths have been labeled “largely peaceful”.

          • John Schilling says:

            By whom? Literally the only person in this thread who has used the phrase “mostly peaceful”, is yourself. The people you are trying to pick a fight with, are not here. Maybe you should go look for them somewhere else.

          • rumham says:

            @John Schilling

            By whom?

            Every major news site except fox and the majority of US politicians.

            You just put, in quotes, something I never said. I said “largely peaceful”, and I said so because it was a quote about the specific protests I was referencing. The stated conjecture I was responding to (which is why I block quoted it) is that the violence at the Charlotesville protest is what lead to what Matt M asked about here:

            At least, it doesn’t answer the question of why wrongthink individual commentators can’t find anyone to process credit card payments for them.

            Since a single (or more) death does not appear to get people remotely associated with said group unable to process credit cards, and indeed can still be labeled “largely peaceful” the open implication is that there must be additional reasons.

            I was not trying to be cryptic. I had thought the connection obvious, but that’s what I get for assuming. As that is the second time I have been misinterpreted due to brevity I will endeavor to be wordier in the future. But I honestly haven’t the foggiest idea what you thought it meant and why it received the response it did. My B brain is way better than it used to be, but apparently not up to snuff here.

            The people you are trying to pick a fight with, are not here.

            I am not trying to pick a fight.

          • INH5 says:

            It’s not just the number of dead or injured, but the public statements made by the organizers after the violence at the rally, which were…atypical, to say the least. After any of the recent protests where someone died, did the organizers of the protests make public statements that it was a good thing that that person died?

            Again, this is just a guess, but it seems pretty plausible to me.

          • rumham says:

            @INH5

            After any of the recent protests where someone died, did the organizers of the protests make a public statement that it was a good thing that that person died?

            They did not. I was unaware of that. Very well could be the missing factor.

          • Aftagley says:

            There really aren’t organizers of the recent protests. At least, none that have meaningful actionable control over what happens.

            The person who happens to be running the local BLM twitter account might post a “hey come protest” tweet, but I’d be willing to bet most people at the event wouldn’t have seen it. These things are organic, but also really hard to direct.

    • Outlaw_Thirds says:

      I think the idea of an insurance agency makes sense, but does not need an arbitration process; if you get cancelled, it pays out (unless they can find that you deliberately got yourself cancelled.) Rather than try to exonerate you after the fact, they could adjust your insurance rate based on your risk of being cancelled.

      • Reasoner says:

        I agree that exoneration is not necessary for the idea to work.

        But I submit that for the average person, their reputation is very valuable, and exoneration from a trusted source with a platform is something they would pay good money for. Warren Buffet once said

        We can afford to lose money – even a lot of money. But we can’t afford to lose reputation – even a shred of reputation.

        And

        Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.

        The fundamental problem with the modern attention economy is we have a situation where priceless reputations are being destroyed for a few bucks in ad revenue. I think there is a massive amount of value to capture here.

        • Outlaw_Thirds says:

          The observation about value being destroyed for so little is a good one. I just don’t think that it’s possible to reverse a cancellation. Has anyone successfully argued their way out of a cancellation? The best most can hope for, I think, is waiting for the heat to die down. If, however, there is some amount of representation that can reverse it, that would make a good estimate for the value of the insurance.

          • AG says:

            There are plenty of cases where the canceled have recovered after a few months. ContraPoints is still around. Don’t know if their Patreon revenue is the same as before.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            What happened to ContraPoints? I thought they were popular.

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            Being cancelled cost her something, including a fair amount of misery..

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPoints

            “In September 2019, Wynn described on Twitter feelings of awkwardness when asked in some contexts to describe her preferred gender pronouns.[22] The tweets were criticized as dismissive of non-binary people who use pronouns other than “he/him” and “she/her”.[23] Contrastingly, professor Lal Zimman opined about pronoun introductions, “Wynn is absolutely right that people engage with that practice in ways that can be somewhat problematic”.[22] Following negative reaction, Wynn deactivated her Twitter account for a week, then posted an apology.[23] She later stopped using Twitter.[24]

            In October 2019, Wynn’s video “Opulence” featured a quote from John Waters read by transsexual pornographic actor Buck Angel,[25] whose views on transgender people have attracted criticism, including by some who see Angel’s views as being transmedicalist.[23][25] Wynn was criticised for featuring Angel, including by journalist Ana Valens. In addition to criticism, Wynn and YouTubers associated with her were widely harassed.[23][25] Wynn’s January 2020 video “Canceling” addressed both criticism and harassment of her, and the broader context of perceived “cancel culture”. It was praised by Robby Soave of Reason.[26]”

          • Reasoner says:

            Colbert didn’t get cancelled:

            https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/cancelcolbert

            Jordan Peterson hasn’t been cancelled.

            Scott Aaronson was defended by our own Scott Alexander and did not end up losing his job (although he ended up leaving MIT voluntarily a few years later I think?)

            Heck, Donald Trump hasn’t been cancelled yet, but we’ll see in November.

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            Reasoner: interesting list of people who haven’t been cancelled.

            Cancellation is a somewhat random process– a matter of whether you can get a sufficiently large, angry, and energetic crowd together.

    • Reasoner says:

      If the judgement team delivers a guilty verdict, the insurance firm stays silent–“Sorry, we can’t help”.

      I thought a bit more about this, and I realized that from the insurance firm’s perspective, they’d like to be seen delivering guilty verdicts publicly, so they can be perceived as unbiased. So maybe they could deliver their guilty verdicts publicly as well, or at least require you to pay for a more expensive plan if you’d like your guilty verdicts to be suppressed.

  35. chalst says:

    Hsu defends himself mostly on the grounds of academic freedom (the exception: he does devote one sentence to noting MSU’s budget went up 40% since he took office), but I think, since the campaign is to relieve him of a particular administrative duty and not have him be fired from his tenured position as physics professor (from the linked GEU Twitter thread “The GEU recognizes that academic freedom entitles a scholar to express ideas without professional disadvantage”), this is a rather weak defence.

    • Aapje says:

      Tenure is merely a minimum defense against attacks on academic freedom, in the same way that a city wall made it much harder for attackers in medieval times to conquer the city. However, the city actually needed food and materials from indefensible rural regions to survive, long term. This is why sieges worked and why walls didn’t ensure that people couldn’t be conquered/killed, but merely made it very costly to do so.

      Similarly, tenure really only prevents unsustained attacks on certain points of view from being able to totally cleanse the universities, quickly. It is insufficient to ensure protection from sustained attacks and even temporary attacks still damage academic freedom.

      The Graduate Employees Union explicitly argues that as VP, Hsu funded research aimed at a certain political agenda and should be stopped from doing so, although I’m not sure how they can distinguish bad research with a political agenda from research that is done according to high academic standards (or at least, as high as other research), but gives results they disagree with.

      The goal seems to be to prevent this research that supposedly fits a bad political agenda to be funded, which surely is an attack on academic freedom, as it is a demand that research is only allowed if it has outcomes that fit certain beliefs. Scientists may keep their tenure, but if they lose their funding, they are unable to do many types of research, just like how a besieged medieval city can no longer keep its factories running or craftsman working, without supplies from rural regions.

      since the campaign is to relieve him of a particular administrative duty

      You make it sound like they want to stop him from signing work sheets.

      In reality, these are the duties they want to take away from him:

      This office assists faculty in a number of ways:
      – It administers the Intramural Research Grants Program, which supports projects that are judged to be competitive for external funding or are otherwise expected to advance the scholarly enterprise of the university, and the Strategic Partnership Grants program, which provides larger grants for projects deemed to be strategically significant to the university.
      – It provides support and oversight for major centers, analytical facilities, animal care facilities, safety and environmental services, and other functions that enhance research activities.
      – Working with the Office of the Provost, it administers certain funds made available from the MSU Foundation to provide startup support for new faculty, matching for external grants, and seed monies for new projects that have the potential to attract funds from outside sponsors. (Faculty seeking matching funds are advised to initiate discussions first with their department chairperson and college dean.)
      – It helps identify opportunities for external support of research and creative activities; manages participation in programs that limit the proposals an institution may submit; provides guidance and support for meeting requirements of the Michigan Life Sciences Corridor program; offers instruction on preparing and submitting proposals.
      – It maintains a website with information about conducting research at Michigan State and links to other sources of information about research activity.

      Also part of the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies are the Office of Research Ethics and Standards, which promotes the ethical conduct of research and assures compliance with federal, state, and university laws and policies, and the Office of Intellectual Property, which protects faculty inventions, represents the university in licensing those inventions, manages MSU’s portfolio of patents and licenses, and administers patent policy.

      Administrating grants, doing oversight and setting research standards is immensely powerful. Social justice advocates regularly demand that all these things are done according to their political views.

      PS. Your website is down.

      • Simon_Jester says:

        On the other hand, the realization that these administrative positions are immensely powerful means that if the position belongs to someone who is seen as ‘taking the side’ of a viewpoint that merits challenges… One can expect a push to drive the challenged viewpoint’s advocates out of senior positions.

        I would be very unhappy to learn that a powerful administrative position that handled grants for medicine or climate science had fallen into the hands of a homeopath or a global warming denialist, respectively. If I were to advocate that a global warming denialist be removed from a position of responsibility in climate research, perhaps I would be “demanding that this be done according to my political views…”

        But I would also be, simultaneously, quite sincere in my belief that a scientist who spends much of time trying to refute global warming in 2020 is not the caliber of person I want in charge of doing climate science that I expect to accomplish anything.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          Once you admit it’s conflict theory, it all becomes clear.

        • albatross11 says:

          Simon_Jester:

          I propose that you apply the above reasoning to:

          a. Someone in a position of power who openly discusses the findings of psychometrics, including where they raise uncomfortable issues w.r.t. race.

          b. Someone in a position of power who openly discusses the findings of critical race theory, including where they raise uncomfortable issues w.r.t. race.

          The way it looks to me, psychometrics is on *enormously* more solid ground than critical race theory, but to a first approximation nobody gets cancelled for (b) but many people get cancelled for (a).

        • zero says:

          Then the question becomes “What constitutes a global warming denialist?”

        • Simon_Jester says:

          @Edward Scizorhands

          The problem is, resolutely remaining in mistake theory paradigm can be very disadvantageous when dealing with certain kinds of challenge.

          This is particularly true when the opposition has credible ulterior motives for ignoring attempts to point out their mistakes, or when they have a good track record of successfully appealing to a mistake-theorist’s values in an attempt to manipulate them.

          @albatross11

          I propose that you apply the above reasoning to:

          a. Someone in a position of power who openly discusses the findings of psychometrics, including where they raise uncomfortable issues w.r.t. race.

          b. Someone in a position of power who openly discusses the findings of critical race theory, including where they raise uncomfortable issues w.r.t. race.

          The way it looks to me, psychometrics is on *enormously* more solid ground than critical race theory, but to a first approximation nobody gets cancelled for (b) but many people get cancelled for (a).

          Since you are using a certain amount of elliptical phrasing here to avoid saying precisely what you think gets (a)-type people in trouble, I cannot comment.

          I mean, I could interpret standardized test scores as a kind of psychometric parameter, and the observed achievement gap as evidence of the test scores being strongly correlated with a ton of confounders that raise uncomfortable questions with respect to race such as “really, are we STILL doing this fuck-over-brown-people nonsense in 2020?” By the literal wording of your comment they’d be an example.

          But I’m pretty sure they’re not the people you have in mind. That is, I think that you are attempting to covertly say that Group A is correct and unfairly persecuted, without directly coming out to say that Group A is correct and unfairly persecuted, with the implication that it’s “obvious” that Group A is correct and that’s why the Dread Ess Jay Double Yous are suppressing their findings.

          @zero

          Yes- but this isn’t the kind of question that forces us to go all existentialist or whatever and say “but what is global warming really?” We know what it is, we know there are people who want to act on it and people who don’t. Simple enough.

          • zero says:

            Would you be fine with a scientist whose position is “The IPCC report overestimates warming by a tenth of a degree?” This is a classic motte-and-bailey. The motte is “Humans are producing greenhouse gases contributing to climate change” and the bailey is “Global warming is a civilization-ending catastrophe and if you don’t want sweeping environmental regulations then you’re a bad person”.

          • B_Epstein says:

            Simple enough? Ha. Ha ha ha.

            RCP8.5 was proposed as a sort of extreme, unlikely-but-not-impossible scenario to understand the far reaches of global warming and its potential damage. Gradually, it began to be used, even by well-meaning members of the IPCC, as the “do nothing, business as usual scenario”, with no mention of the assumptions baked in such as halted technological progress, particularly pessimistic population growth, reversed energy efficiency trend, almost unlimited coal supply, etc. Due to a number of reasons including but not limited to “clickbait bias” and, frankly, the “with us or against us” attitude you seem to display, it grew to exert an outsized influence on the discourse about global warming. People who cautioned that it is not highly relevant (or possibly even physically impossible) were sometimes ridiculed or even tarred and feathered and dubbed “climate change denialists”. Even when they really, really weren’t. Simple enough, right? Wouldn’t want them’s denialists in the IPCC, right?

            …the next IPCC report is rumored not to include any analysis relevant to that scenario. It’s unlikely enough to be considered worth the effort.

          • albatross11 says:

            Simon Jester:

            No, I’m saying that when you get up in public and state a bunch of very solid findings in psychometrics, like the size and importance and persistence of the black/white IQ gap, you are very likely to get cancelled. This happens, even though you are stating things that are true and well-established. God help you if you then take the next obvious step and point out that this provides a plausible explanation for why blacks underperform whites in school and on standardized tests. It doesn’t matter how carefully you state that or how much data you bring.

            By contrast, when you get up in public and state that blacks underperforming whites in school and on standardized tests is because of white racism against blacks, or because of too few words being spoken in the home, or similar things, nobody wants to cancel you. It doesn’t matter that your conclusion isn’t supported by the available data, or is extremely speculative based on theories you have no way of confirming.

            More broadly, it’s commonplace to have mainstream journalists, academics, and politicians go out in public and make sweeping claims that American society is racist to its core, and that any number of social ills are the fault of white racism. Nobody’s worried about getting cancelled for speaking too broadly or running ahead of the available data.

            When I observe this situation, the model that says “this is gatekeepers enforcing high standards of care and rigor in these very sensitive discussions” does not fit very well with the available evidence, whereas the model that says “this is one side of a political debate shutting down its opponents by ruling facts and arguments that support them out of bounds” fits extremely well.

            For more examples, consider how many journalists and politicians repeat the BS number that says women make 67 cents per dollar men make, without even accounting for hours worked. Do not try to get away with that slapdash approach to data when you’re arguing the other side!

          • Yes- but this isn’t the kind of question that forces us to go all existentialist or whatever and say “but what is global warming really?” We know what it is, we know there are people who want to act on it and people who don’t.

            You were responding to “what is a global warming denialist.” Your answer seems to be “someone who does not want to act on global warming.”

            By that definition, I qualify. I don’t deny that global warming is happening, although I think the IPCC probably overestimates its size, judging by the comparison of past projections with what happened thereafter, and that much public discussion greatly overestimates the size.

            But, for reasons I have discussed here before, I don’t think we know either the size or even the sign of the net effect on human welfare, hence I am not in favor of doing costly things to slow warming.

            Following out the logic of your argument above, it appears that you would be opposed to research funding for someone who took the position on the subject that I take.

            Is that correct? Do you believe you can in fact demonstrate that the net externality from an increase in average global temperature is large and negative, demonstrate it with such certainty that there is no value to research questioning your result?

          • Spookykou says:

            @Albatross11

            This or things like it have come up in several places on this thread but I will respond to it here.

            My limited understanding is that the common response to “the wage gap is actually an artifact of X,Y, and Z and largely disappears when you control for these things” is to assert that X,Y, and Z are themselves artifacts of society wide structural sexism which is inculcated in women from birth.

            I believe this is generally repeated against most arguments of the form, control for blank and disparate impact blank between blank and blank goes away.

            It seems reasonable to me that someone coming into this with those assumptions would see ‘women make 67 cents per dollar men make’ as a valid and carefully arrived at figure, and similarly they would see any interpretation of the data that points at a non-sociological answer as invalid and careless.

            Hypocrisy/conflict theory need not apply.

            Hypotheticals:

            1. All interpretations of geological data that points to a creationism timescale for the Earth are invalid and careless, even if the study on the surface looks incredibly well done.

            2. All interpretations of human response data that points to parapsychology are invalid and careless, even if the study on the surface looks incredibly well done.

            3. All interpretations of anthropological data that points to alien visitations are invalid and careless, even if the study on the surface looks incredibly well done.

            I am not saying anyone would be canceled for researching those kinds of things.

            But they might be.

    • Briefling says:

      The rule being promoted is, “if you acknowledge controversial viewpoints at any time in your career, you will never hold a meaningful administrative post, and may occasionally be shamed and censured publicly.” Promulgating that rule is obviously going to have a chilling effect on academic freedom.

      Although I acknowledge that, for certain values of “controversial,” the rule is definitely already in place, and maybe also desirable.

      But the broad point is that this really is an academic freedom issue.

      • keaswaran says:

        Most academics have zero interest in holding “a meaningful administrative post”. They see it as a place for washed up former researchers to go when they can’t do research any more.

        I suppose it chills the research of people who want to move into administration. But moving into administration chills their research as well. (Just go look at the CV of any provost or university president who works in an academic field that you know about – very likely they did some really important work a while back, but haven’t done much in the past decade or so.)

        • AliceToBob says:

          @keaswaran

          Most academics have zero interest in holding “a meaningful administrative post”. They see it as a place for washed up former researchers to go when they can’t do research any more.

          I suppose it chills the research of people who want to move into administration. But moving into administration chills their research as well.

          Perhaps that’s true, but can you elaborate on the relevance? What I’m getting from your exchange with Briefling is:

          1) Academics that do well at both research and administration are fairly rare.

          2) Hsu may be an example of 1). At least, you don’t seem to dispute this.

          and now I’m confused about your comment. Are you saying something along the lines of:

          3) We shouldn’t be too concerned about compromising Hsu’s academic freedom, since such cases will be rare.

          Or does your comment imply something else?

          Edited: added more of your comment.

          • keaswaran says:

            Here is a policy someone might propose:

            No one who does controversial research on X should be granted administrative position Y.

            Here is an objection to this policy:

            Such a policy would have a chilling effect on X research, because anyone who might do X research but wants position Y would then avoid X research.

            I respond by saying:

            This is not that big a chill – people who are in a position to move into position Y and want to do so are already going to put their research on hold when they move into that position, while people who aren’t in a position to move into position Y won’t be affected at all.

            The policy doesn’t seem to actually cause any problems for research on X except theoretically through the chilling mechanism, so if the chilling mechanism is itself not relevant, then this doesn’t seem like a threat to academic freedom.

          • AlexanderTheGrand says:

            @keaswaran

            It’s not chilling because he may not be a chief administrator — it’s chilling because these associations mean that the entire internet is calling him a racist, sexist, eugenicist! If you’re a normal person who would feel bad that hundreds of your colleagues, and far more strangers, sign a letter saying that you’re a bad person, then you may be dissuaded from certain lines of thought.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @keaswaran

            No one who does controversial research on X should be granted administrative position Y.

            A couple questions about this hypothetical policy:

            1) When you write “does controversial research”, do you mean “currently conducting said research” or “ever having conducted said research”?

            I’m trying to understand why “administrators will put their research on hold” is important to your argument.

            2) Can you elaborate on your definition of “academic freedom”?

            It seems important to understanding your concluding statement.

        • Lambert says:

          So if you support what Hsu’s taking about you should have him cancelled so he can go and do more research?

          • zero says:

            Clearly, and with renewed vigor to spite those who would cancel him.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            This isn’t a punishment! It’s good for you!!!

          • keaswaran says:

            You should encourage him to step down from the administrative position to focus on his research.

          • John Schilling says:

            You should encourage him to step down from the administrative position to focus on his research.

            The research that he is supposed to either not do, or publish in such an obscure fashion that only a handful of irrelevant nerds will ever know of it? If I thought there were such a thing as “concern trolling”, I’d think this was an example of it.

        • Most academics have zero interest in holding “a meaningful administrative post”.

          Probably correct.

          But I think you are asking too narrow a question. The sort of attacks being made against Hsu are unlikely to get a tenured professor fired. But they could very easily prevent someone earlier in his career from getting tenure, or a tenured professor at a state university from getting an offer from Harvard, as well as making life generally unpleasant for him.

          So they do impose a significant cost on the target, hence deter people from doing, or reporting on, work likely to be seen as politically incorrect.

          Let me offer a real world example long predating current cancellation controversies. Richard Posner is both one of the leading legal academics of his generation, judged by citations to his work by other academics, and one of the leading judges, judged by citation to his cases. He was for a long time chief judge of his circuit. So far as one can tell, he was never seriously considered for the Supreme Court. It is widely believed that at least part of the reason was his coming out in favor of legalizing the adoption market, which could easily be described by critics as wanting babies to be bought and sold. That case surely makes legal academics with judicial ambitions less likely to write things that could be used in that way.

        • Aapje says:

          @keaswaran

          Most academics have zero interest in holding “a meaningful administrative post”.

          That makes this attempt to get him fired from the position worse, rather than better, because with little interest in the position, the quality of alternate candidates will go downhill fast.

          Relatively many of the people who are highly motivated for the position may have ulterior motives. Perhaps consistent with the people who want to get rid of Hsu, who think that certain research and/or research outcomes are forbidden.

    • mfm32 says:

      That’s an extremely limited scope and definition for academic freedom. It might be the minimum legally defensible definition (or not), but it falls far short of the goals and spirit of academic freedom. Universities are supposed to encourage and promote the expression and debate of ideas, not merely permit it. Administrative duties are an important part of an academics role. Making them contingent on orthodoxy is a great way to discourage exactly the free expression of ideas that sits at the core of academic freedom.

      You’ll note that the campaign is extremely thin on allegations that relate to Hsu’s performance in his administrative role. As far as I can tell, there are only two points it makes that could possibly be construed to relate to his administrative duties, and both are weak on their merits as well as their relevance. The first, a COI disclosure failure, was corrected within a month of the article’s publication. The second appears to be no more than a decision to fund a single scholar whose conclusions on racial bias in police shootings the campaigners disagree with.

      The campaign doesn’t even try very hard to make the case that they are against Hsu for his performance of his administrative duties. They state their complaint with him very clearly: his “views [are] unacceptable.” That is in my mind an attack squarely against academic freedom.

  36. Bugmaster says:

    I hate to say “I told you so”, but: whatever happened to Kolmogorov Complicity ? AFAICT, the Kolmogorov Complicity doctrine recommends that you stay away from controversial topics altogether. You could maybe work on them in secret; but in public, you should toe the party line, and reassure Stalin that Lysenkoism is totally fine. So, why does it not apply in this case ?

    • silver_swift says:

      From the post on Kolmogorov Complicity:

      [The Kolmogorov Option] is nothing more than a band-aid on the problems that even a harmless orthodoxy will cause – but if there’s no way to get rid of the orthodoxy, the band-aid is better than nothing.

      My guess is that Scott doesn’t think we’re quite at the point where we need to give up on having an actual, honest, public debate yet. The US in 2020 isn’t exactly Stalin era Soviet Union levels of bad.

      • TomMustang says:

        Dude Scott does follow Kolmogorov Complicity. That was literally the warning shot that he was about to adopt the Kolmogorov option without being explicit about it; I thought that was obvious out the time.

        Sure enough, Scott became way less Heterodox, retracted his opinions about IQ. He even authored an anti-IQ article in VOX.

        You might remember that this was at the time where he was being doxed, his “you’re still crying wolf” was being passed around conservative circles, he was musing if wrong-talk would eventually get medical licenses revoked. Scott was having all kinds of problems at this time, I think he said something along the lines of, his biggest regret being that in early SSC days, he didn’t separate his real-life identity from that of this blog’s author; he wished no one knew this was his because it was ruining his life. At one point he even threatened to take down the blog. This is at the same time IQ was banned on the SSC subreddit so as not to connect it Scott anymore, the entire culture war was moved from the SSC subreddit to theMotte, again not to tarnish Scott’s name.

        This all came after “you’re still crying wolf”, which now has an edited message on top telling Trump trolls not to read it.

        Scott did take the Kolmogorov option seriously.

        “Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightening” wasn’t a thought experiment.

        “Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightening” was Scott telling us that he was adopting the Kolmogorov option.

        I thought this was obvious. He was explicit as he could be, would you have him say “hey guys, let’s all pretend Stalin [the analogy to some specifically undefined subjects in the Kolmogorov post] is cool”.

        “Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightening” was Scott telling us that he was adopting the Kolmogorov option. And he clearly has. Defending a friend without getting into any details is hardly going back to his IQ days. He went from “IQ is real obviously real and and that becomes clearer with every study, fight me” to “no one knows anything about IQ, how can we know, it’s too hard, I don’t wanna talk about it.

        Kolmogorov Complicity

        • matkoniecz says:

          I thought that was obvious out the time.

          It also seemed pretty obvious to me.

        • Byrel Mitchell says:

          This perspective makes that post so much more grim.

          I really hope this is some sort of Turkin cycle low point or something and 20 years from now we’ll have recovered from our collective insanity. I don’t think I would be willing to stay here if it keeps getting worse, decade-after-decade.

        • silver_swift says:

          [On second thought, this was a bad idea]

        • Scott Alexander says:

          No comment on this in general, but I think you’re being unfair about the article in Vox. This was originally a post on my blog, which I wrote because I thought it was true and important. Vox approached me and said they thought it would be a good article for them, and I said okay. I continue to believe it’s true and important, and I tried to frame it in a way that wouldn’t flatter the biases of IQ denialists.

          • Bugmaster says:

            To be fair though, you’d say the same exact thing if your article was merely an insincere attempt at maintaining your Kolmogorov Complicity. To be clear, I’m not pointing any accusatory fingers at you personally, but merely pointing out that Kolmogorov Complicity does have hidden costs.

        • Bugmaster says:

          Right, but my point is, one cannot be halfway complicit. Stalin doesn’t care about nuance; he will send you to Siberia unless you do exactly what he says, and part of that is condemning the exact same “enemies of the people” that he tells you to condemn.

        • 10240 says:

          Scott doesn’t say everything he thinks, but he has written things (I won’t link to it, but it’s later than the Kolmogorov Complicity post) that were pretty clearly weren’t written as if he were trying to be maximally uncontroversial on these issues.

          Defending a friend without getting into any details is hardly going back to his IQ days.

          Not sure what he said back then, but I’d say saying that IQ is meaningful and heritable (with no mention of race) is less controversial than defending someone talking about the genetics of race (and not in the most politically correct way).

    • textor says:

      I think scandals of this sort are exactly why our Scott, unlike the other Scott, has expressed skepticism in the long-term tolerability of the Kolmogorov Option, in the very piece you’re probably thinking of. Honestly it’s so good, I’d rather just quote my favorite part:

      But the biggest threat is to epistemology. The idea that everything in the world fits together, that all knowledge is worth having and should be pursued to the bitter end, that if you tell one lie the truth is forever after your enemy – all of this is incompatible with even as stupid a mistruth as switching around thunder and lightning. People trying to make sense of the world will smash their head against the glaring inconsistency where the speed of light must be calculated one way in thunderstorms and another way everywhere else. Try to start a truth-seeking community, and some well-meaning idiot will ask “Hey, if we’re about pursuing truth, maybe one fun place to pursue truth would be this whole lightning thing that has everyone all worked up, what does everybody think about this?” They will do this in perfect innocence, because they don’t know that everyone else has already thought about it and agreed to pretend it’s true. And you can’t just tell them that, because then you’re admitting you don’t really think it’s true. And why should they even believe you if you tell them? Would you present your evidence? Would you dare?

      The Kolmogorov option is only costless when it’s common knowledge that the orthodoxies are lies, that everyone knows the orthodoxies are lies, that everyone knows everyone knows the orthodoxies are lies, etc. But this is never common knowledge – that’s what it means to say the orthodoxies are still orthodox. Kolmogorov’s curse is to watch slowly from his bubble as everyone less savvy than he is gets destroyed. The smartest and most honest will be destroyed first. Then any institution that reliably produces intellect or honesty. Then any philosophy that allows such institutions. It will all be totally pointless, done for the sake of something as stupid as lightning preceding thunder. But it will happen anyway. Then he and all the other savvy people can try to pick up the pieces as best they can, mourn their comrades, and watch the same thing happen all over again in the next generation.

      Greg Cochran, too, has expressed the same doubt, except much more bluntly and pertinent to Hsu’s topic, and less eloquently.

      • Michael Watts says:

        Greg Cochran, too, has expressed the same doubt, except much more bluntly and pertinent to Hsu’s topic

        I actually think this part of Cochran’s post is unfair:

        We don’t have to worry about the minefield being empty: people like Horgan know damn well what they expect research to find – if they thought there was nothing there, they wouldn’t worry about it.

        There are two levels of this question:

        1. What is the correct description of reality?

        2. What is the research going to find?

        It’s fair to say that Horgan knows exactly what he expects the research to find, and that it corresponds to Cochran’s view of reality. But we can’t generalize from that to the idea that Horgan’s view of reality coincides with Cochran’s! If I hear about a study into growth mindset, intercessory prayer, or racism, I explicitly expect that the “research” will come to conclusions that conflict with reality. I don’t see why I shouldn’t believe that John Horgan can take the same view I do of “the research”, despite having an opposite view of reality.

        • textor says:

          I’m not sure what your point is here. Clearly Cochran doesn’t imply Horgan’s general model of reality to be identical to his own in all ways, as it is not. But there’s only so much plausible deniability before your professed belief starts to look like a belief in belief for any reasonable observer. Sure, some fields are deeply corrupt (research into Pygmalion effect has produced many positive results yet see what Gwern has to say about it); still, you are expected to be able to criticize them on the merits of the argument being made, even if it’s repetitive. And if you have compelling arguments at the ready, which amount to general condemnation of all research yielding a certain output, for every combination of sample, procedures and math used – it appears that you use, internally, an explanatory model for the data, which largely coincides with one predicting these outputs using factor you are renouncing as if it were real.

          This ought to be enough to make Cochran’s case.

          • Michael Watts says:

            My point is that Cochran signs off by implying that Horgan agrees with Cochran’s view of the underlying reality, and I don’t think that was a fair implication.

          • Simon_Jester says:

            The analogy a few comments upstream from here, comparing the issue to research done on the power of intercessory prayer seems relevant.

            The kind of person who says, with a serious face, “I want to do research on the power of prayer” in the twenty-first century, is the kind of researcher who is, shall we say, a risk factor in the replication crisis.

            I expect that if a researcher is doing studies on the power of prayer, there is a very high probability that they are funded by Insert Evangelical University Here, or are otherwise predisposed to come back with a report saying “oh yes prayer is powerful.”

            They MIGHT be unbiased. They MIGHT be honest and stalwart and true enough to report a null result if they find one. But that’s not the way to bet.

            We tell people to stop funding Dr. Rhine to study parapsychology, or Dr. Wakefield to study vaccines. But not because we expect those men to find something that we want suppressed. We tell them to do it because we expect them to find nothing, massage the data until they can claim to find something, and then for people to spend the next twenty years parroting the bullshit-study.

            People have been arguing a scientific basis for racism for about the past 200 years. The justifications for this have shifted radically on various occasions, persisting through multiple paradigm shifts in the medical and biological sciences. It is enough to make some people who are quite committed to rationality begin to suspect motivated reasoning.

            And once you suspect motivated reasoning, it becomes appealing to oppose studies of a topic from those whom you expect to persist in the motivated reasoning.

          • textor says:

            @Simon_Jester

            People have been arguing a scientific basis for racism for about the past 200 years. The justifications for this have shifted radically on various occasions, persisting through multiple paradigm shifts in the medical and biological sciences.

            I’ve heard this claim made so often, and substantiated so invariably poorly, I’ve come to loathe the very idea of engaging.
            Whatever the “scientific basis for racism” may be (generally a notion I find suspect, since racism is a policy/normative belief, and science does not deal in oughts), Jensen’s 1969 paper on differences in scholastic achievement has stood the test of time; and its numerous cancellations all had failed, only to be revived with the miracle of inexhaustible state funding and make-believe social science, with massaged data and plainly nonsensical arguments, and without a single precommitment to a given model’s prediction.

            It is enough to make some people who are quite committed to rationality begin to suspect motivated reasoning.

            Indeed.

          • It is enough to make some people who are quite committed to rationality begin to suspect motivated reasoning.

            Indeed.
            The clearest case isn’t race, it’s sex. For anyone who believes in Darwinian evolution, the default assumption is that there will be male/female differences, mental as well as female, since we are optimized for reproductive success and the difference between male and female is their role in reproduction. So anyone who maintains that there are no differences without clear evidence in support is pretty clearly guilty of motivated reasoning.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            The kind of person who says, with a serious face, “we are only going to fire the bad people pursuing bad subjects,” is not the person you trust when they are saying it less than a day after Nathan Robinson over in Current Affairs says that a guy getting fired shouldn’t have made his bad tweet because he was tweeting “bad research,” and it was bad research because “it argues that violence fuels negative media coverage which fuels a political backlash that helps Republicans.”

            It doesn’t matter if the research is true or false. It doesn’t matter if it’s well studied. They even say “it might be true empirically.” But it states things that might help Republicans, so it’s bad.

            And this is also less than a day after that same progressive reporter was kicked out of his Progressivephiles group for, in the words of their leaders, making a “racist tweet,” and “instead of choosing to learn and grow from his mistake” he, somehow, “encouraged harassment that led to death threats.” Stop resisting arrest!

            This group does not give a shit, at all, about false positives. It’s conflict theory, and if some people get ground up in the gears, well, they should have known better. Why didn’t you just do what the cop said, man?

            They MIGHT be after very particular problems with saying incorrect things. They MIGHT be honest and stalwart and true enough to admit when they are wrong. But that’s not the way to bet. If this is how little they care about someone who has long been on-board with them, there is no hope for any due process for you.

            The goal is to stop these people from succeeding at their awful goals without ruining our own souls and without destroying the institutions they are threatening to blow up. But doing the right thing isn’t always easy.

          • Simon_Jester says:

            @David Friedman

            Indeed.
            The clearest case isn’t race, it’s sex. For anyone who believes in Darwinian evolution, the default assumption is that there will be male/female differences, mental as well as female, since we are optimized for reproductive success and the difference between male and female is their role in reproduction. So anyone who maintains that there are no differences without clear evidence in support is pretty clearly guilty of motivated reasoning.

            The default assumption is slightly complicated by the fact that evolution tends to be parsimonious: it doesn’t select for or against traits that don’t impact evolutionary fitness.

            It is logical to expect male/female differences in areas that would strongly impact reproductive fitness for Stone Age hunter-gatherers. This includes areas such as physical anatomy, and instincts regarding sex, pair-bonding, and childrearing.

            Behold, we observe fairly marked differences in anatomy, and you can make a pretty good claim for there being sex-linked differences in mating strategies and instincts. One must add a large caveat that evolution often solves problems in ways we would not naively expect, but the differences can still show up.

            The complication, though, is that so many of the traits we now consider important to success in society exist ‘at right angles’ to what a successful hunter-gatherer needs. There is no reason why, among hunter-gatherers, the men need to be inherently much more or less skillful with language, calculus, organizing physical belongings, or navigating a social hierarchy than the women. Both sexes would seem to have roughly equal need to do those things (lots, none, some, lots), so you’d expect the similarities to outweigh the differences.

            Such things MIGHT exhibit sex-linked differences, but such differences would tend to be a purely coincidental side effect of something else. These effects would, again, operate in less predictable ways, and would tend to be a lot weaker.

            The conviction that women are bad at (for example) calculus lasted much longer, and expressed itself much more forcefully, than you would expect if it was motivated by a dry belief in sex-linked differences caused by evolution.

            And that is the part where advocates of “women getting a chance to do [cool thing men get to do]” start to flip over from mistake theory to conflict theory.

            I don’t blame them; there’s a lot of experience out there suggesting that at least some men have been waging conflict-theoretic opposition to women in positions of power and respect for a long time. Publicly announcing that you’ve noticed this trend and are about to start hitting back is reasonable, if the underlying cause is itself compatible with justice.

            @Edward Scizorhands

            Tying into what I said to Dr. Friedman, the key point when examining a person operating under conflict theory for signs of bad faith is one of entrenchment.

            Does the degree to which they are pursuing a conflict-theoretic contest for power over institutions align with reasonable goals, and with the scope of their stated goals? If the answers are “no, and no,” then one starts to have good cause to suspect hostile motives.

            Sometimes the correct answer is to fight back. The professor in danger of losing their job due to unsupported allegations by a lone student who flunked their class two semesters ago may well deserve your help.

            Sometimes the correct answer is to get out of the way. The geocentrist professor probably doesn’t deserve your help staying in the astronomy department; there is no advancement of the cause of intellectual freedom likely to come from resisting his ‘arrest.’

          • @Simon:

            There is no reason why, among hunter-gatherers, the men need to be inherently much more or less skillful with language, calculus, organizing physical belongings, or navigating a social hierarchy than the women.

            I don’t think one can confidently predict what the differences would be, but it would be surprising if the optimal distribution of mental characteristics was the same for both men and women. Navigating a social hierarchy, most obviously, is a different problem for women, who possess the scarce reproductive resource (wombs), than for men, so the payoff to different talents is going to be different.

            Let me take one case where I think one can make a plausible conjecture which seems to fit the data, and which is relevant to much of the purported evidence for discrimination.

            Because women possess the scarce reproductive resource, being a male is a higher risk strategy, reproductively speaking, than being a female. A very successful male can father many more children than even a very successful female can bear, an unsuccessful male fathers no children.

            It follows that the payoff to talents that result in reproductive success is higher for males. Obviously, if such talents were free, everyone would have them, so the interesting cases are where they are not free.

            Consider some characteristic that increases your chance of being very successful but also your chance of dying early or being a failure in some other way. The payoff to being very successful is higher for males, so they will have more of such a characteristic, hence more superstars and more flops.

            That suggests that the distribution of some mental characteristics will be wider for men than women — more geniuses and more idiots, if intelligence is such a characteristic. That, I believe, fits the observed pattern for the IQ distribution. It also fits the outcome patterns.

            I think that example illustrates why the default assumption should not be that the distribution of characteristics is the same, although we would have to know much more than we do to have a reliable prediction of how the distributions differ.

            Do you disagree? If so, why?

      • Jaskologist says:

        For that matter, have you seen Other Scott’s blog lately? He’s gone full-on Stockholm Syndrome, and making great shows of how much he hates outgroup in order to appease the same group that abused and traumatized him as a child. Kolmogorov complicity has just meant trying to flaunt his own credentials for hating badthinkers more.

        • viVI_IViv says:

          I like him but does suffers from a severe case of TDS.

          E.g. a woke university in a woke state removes standardized testing as an admission criterion, at the insistence of its cancellor who is a Democrat woman who served as Secretary of Homeland Security under Obama. And apparently it’s Trump’s fault.

          A pandemic from China ravages mostly Democrat areas, in particular a city with a Democrat mayor married to a black lesbian (?) activist in a Democrat state. And apparently it’s Trump’s fault.

          Go figure…

          • Simon_Jester says:

            Do you believe that the preferred Republican policies for addressing the coronavirus pandemic are likely to prove effective in preventing Republican areas from being ravaged by coronavirus over the long haul?

            Do you believe that President Trump’s control of the executive branch does not confer on him a measure of responsibility for the federal government’s response to the epidemic, or lack thereof?

            Personally, I think the argument “big man, big desk, big responsibility” works fairly well at times like this.

          • viVI_IViv says:

            Do you believe that the preferred Republican policies for addressing the coronavirus pandemic are likely to prove effective in preventing Republican areas from being ravaged by coronavirus over the long haul?

            I can’t predict the future but so far they aren’t doing that bad. Yes, there are confounders of population density and so on, but given the available evidence you can’t reasonably blame Republicans for a problem that mostly affects Democrat areas (and Democrat demographics).

            Do you believe that President Trump’s control of the executive branch does not confer on him a measure of responsibility for the federal government’s response to the epidemic, or lack thereof?

            To some extent yes, but has he done much worse than leaders of comparable nations? It would be unfair to hold Trump to a higher standard.

            Personally, I think the argument “big man, big desk, big responsibility” works fairly well at times like this.

            Scapegoating isn’t exactly the most rational approach to credit and resposibility assignment.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Do you believe that the preferred Republican policies for addressing the coronavirus pandemic are likely to prove effective in preventing Republican areas from being ravaged by coronavirus over the long haul?

            I think everyone’s going to get ravaged by it in the long haul, but the questions to ask are 1) can we prevent overwhelming the medical system and 2) can we prevent the economy from being obliterated. I think both Republican and Democratic governors* have erred to far on the side of health rather than economy, but much more so the Democrats. I expect Republican and Democratic states won’t be much different on the health front (adjusted for population density), but Republican states will do much better economically.

            Do you believe that President Trump’s control of the executive branch does not confer on him a measure of responsibility for the federal government’s response to the epidemic, or lack thereof?

            Not really. The President has little power to do anything about this. He only has quarantine powers at the borders of the country and between states. With regards to use of these powers I’d give him an A- for shutting down travel from China early, and a touch late from Europe.

            He does also have the bully pulpit, and I’ll give him a…B on this I guess. I thought he was right at the beginning to tell everybody to wash their hands, hit the elevator button with their elbows, generally calm down, etc. Beyond that, it’s impossible to judge his ability to assuage public fears in the face of the relentlessly dishonest and motivated media. If Trump says “calm” they’ll say “Trump is wrong, panic!” and if Trump says “panic” they’ll say “Trump is wrong, fearmongering!” So on that front I blame the whole general mish-mash of political polarization and the abysmal state of the media.

            Then there’s the CDC and the FDA, and I blame their failures on mission creep and general institutional rot. That’s a bigger problem than Trump or anyone can solve, so I don’t particularly blame him for that, either.

            * Excepting New York, which was a screw-up of a completely different nature and I won’t lump into a general trend.

          • leadbelly says:

            What about his suggesting people use disinfectant internally? Or that exposure to UV, again, maybe internally, might be a cure? And then his claiming it was sarcasm? What marks would you give him for those.

          • viVI_IViv says:

            What about his suggesting people use disinfectant internally? Or that exposure to UV, again, maybe internally, might be a cure? And then his claiming it was sarcasm? What marks would you give him for those.

            How many people died because of these remarks?
            Less than those who died because the WHO initially repeated claims from China that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, or initially advised the general public not to wear masks. But the problem is Trump making stupid gaffes…

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            What about his suggesting people use disinfectant internally? Or that exposure to UV, again, maybe internally, might be a cure? And then his claiming it was sarcasm? What marks would you give him for those.

            Probably because he was poorly describing a UV light internal disinfectant therapy he either saw or an advisor mentioned to him. I doubt he came up with that idea by himself. Still, the media has to report it as “lolololol Trump says inject bleach!” So part of that is bound up in the general mish-mash of the awful polarized media.

            I give him a score of “what, grandma, you want to know how many ‘KB’ there are in a computer? No, that’s not, how that works, it’s a unit of information so…no, no, ‘does your computer have more KB than mine’ isn’t a meaningful question and no I can’t help you buy more KB, can I just uninstall at least 8 of these toolbars you’ve got on Internet Explorer, I think that might help?”

          • NostalgiaForInfinity says:

            @Conrad

            His actual words on the day don’t fit the “he was poorly explaining some UV therapy he’d heard about” theory very well:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wcQYA-ol_A

            “And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that, too.”

            The “poorly explaining UV therapy” also doesn’t explain the disinfectant comments:

            “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

            If he was actually referring to real research, why would he then say that he was being sarcastic rather than just provide it and make the media look dumb? Where’s the real research that inspired his disinfectant injection comments?
            Trump genuinely thought these were sensible, worthwhile suggestions, and the “I was being sarcastic” comment was an attempt to save face because he was being roundly mocked.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            It sounds like spitballing based on real things. I highly doubt Trump came up with “put light inside the body” by himself.

            I think the “it was sarcastic” thing was, as you said, an attempt to make it go away. Better to get it out of the news cycle than continue a back and forth.

            Take the W and a victory lap, you got him, Trump said something dumb.

            But ultimately I care about what people do, not what they say. Most people seem to be the opposite. Obama did all kinds of horrible things…but man he sounded so nice and made me feel good, so gosh what a great President.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          The other Scott over-reacts to serious things. The things deserve a reaction, but he doesn’t know how to be anything besides all-on or all-off.

        • leadbelly says:

          Why, then, did he describe it as sarcasm? If it was a serious suggestion, why would he do that?
          Have you seen actual footage of him talking about it? He keeps looking back at the experts as if they were grateful for his input on the subject, then goes on to talk about maybe disinfectant could be injected, perhaps in a “cleaning” way, clearly conflating the fact that the virus can easily be killed outside the body with the idea that people infected with it can be cured in the same way by simply “cleaning” their insides.
          “I would like you to enquire with the medical doctors if there is any way we can apply light and heat to cure.”
          Does that seem like something a smart person would say?

        • AliceToBob says:

          @Jaskologist

          I noticed Other Scott stood by his principles on the issue of Hsu. And I don’t think he’s trying to appease anyone. Rather, I think his views on Trump happen to overlap with the mob at this time, but he’s not a member.

          I’ve followed ShOp for years, but, yeah, over the past several months I’ve stayed away due to political differences. That said, everything he does seems to be in good faith, I admire him greatly, and I hope that the obvious stress he’s feeling about the current political situation abates soon.

    • aristides says:

      I’m sure when Scott wrote the Kolmogorov Complicity he was advising people like Hsu to hide their beliefs. But just because someone didn’t follow your advice, doesn’t mean you now let the pack of wolves devour him. You can still stand for Academic Freedom when the wolves start circling, even if you prefer this wasn’t necessary.

    • James Miller says:

      In my case the analogy is: comrade Stalin has a lot of power, but not yet enough to kill people like me. Years ago I insulted him, so I’m sure if he becomes General Secretary I’m dead. Consequently, I don’t have much to lose by openly opposing his rise, and indeed if I didn’t at this stage he would consider me a soft target and try to liquidate me earlier than he otherwise would.

      • Garrett says:

        Wouldn’t the best approach in this case be to find and kill comrade Stalin before he can kill you? After all, you’re facing murder in the near future, but the more time Stalin has to gain power the harder it will be to take such actions, even though it would also mean your murder is more predictable.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      I continue to recommend it as a good idea, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take even the tiniest action to help people who stray from it.

      If you are an atheist in Saudi Arabia I strongly recommend you keep your head down and don’t make waves, but if somebody does make waves and Saudi Arabia imprisons them, I can still be against this and link a petition to free them.

      If you’re asking whether posting this link is a departure from the policy for me, yes, a little, but I feel like I owe Steve for all the support he’s given SSC over the years.

  37. Deiseach says:

    Staying away from CW topics because who needs to spike their blood pressure to apoplexy levels, machine translation is still lagging behind humans a little.

    Using Google Translate, I tried getting a translation of an Irish term for a new housing estate. Google’s best guess was that this translated to “Towels” 😀

    On the presumption that not even an Irish housing developer is quite that quirky, I tried online dictionaries and God bless ’em, after a bit of “um, I don’t think so” and recommendations about secondary words, I got “The Furrows” which I think is much more likely.

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Using Google Translate, I tried getting a translation of an Irish term for a new housing estate. Google’s best guess was that this translated to “Towels”

      Sounds more like tents than a permanent building, but OK?

      How goodly are thy towels, O Jacobite, and thy other towels, O Éire!

  38. DM says:

    Just on the very narrow question of ‘was Molyneux known to be alt-right in 2017’ a quick look at wikipedia reveals that *all* of their citations to mainstream sources calling Molyneux ‘alt-right’ come from that year. So it’s simply wrong for Hsu to say ‘Molyneux was not a controversial figure in 2017, although he has since become one’.

    I don’t think Hsu should be fired. But I don’t think going to bat from his as personally a nice guy and therefore *couldn’t* be a racist is a very good look. Though I’m not saying he *is* a racist. Just that the fact that he is nice and smart and speaks carefully doesn’t mean he *isn’t* in sympathy with the racist alt-right. Steve Sailor’s comments here reveal him to be a smart man who (often) speaks carefully and reasonable on a variety of topics, and I have absolutely no qualms about saying that he is alt-right, or that being alt-right is bad and immoral.

    • Michael Watts says:

      I tend to agree that the defense Scott has posted makes no sense.

      For example, I question the intellectual honesty of this:

      his occasional discussion of the genetics of race (basically just repeating the same “variance between vs. within clusters” distinction everyone else does, see eg here

      where the link points to a post that does indeed repeat the same thing that “everyone else” says on the subject but — if you read beyond the headline — only for the purpose of making fun of the stupidity of “everyone else”.

      Even if you don’t bother to read beyond the headline, the post is only titled No scientific basis for race in the URL slug. Down in the webpage itself, the title is “No scientific basis for race”.

      Defend him on grounds you can actually defend; don’t defend him on the grounds that he simply meant the opposite of everything he said for the last 10 years.

      • DM says:

        I don’t understand the issue enough to know if you are right, but *IF* you are, that merits a correction from Scott, I’d have thought.

      • Byrel Mitchell says:

        In that article he says:

        One thing commenters seem particularly confused about is the difference between phenotypic and genetic variation. The clustering data show very clearly that, in certain subspaces, the genetic variation within a particular population cluster is less than between clusters. That is, the genetic “distance” between two individuals within a cluster is typically much less than the distance between clusters.

        To me that counts as “variance between vs. variance within clusters.”

        I don’t think I agree with you on what ‘everyone says’. It seems to me that you’re saying “everyone says” there’s no scientific basis for race; but I don’t think that’s actually compatible with the research. I’m pretty sure Scott has posted on this before, but I’m not finding it in a quick search.

        • Michael Watts says:

          It seems to me that you’re saying “everyone says” there’s no scientific basis for race; but I don’t think that’s actually compatible with the research.

          I agree with you on both points:

          1. I am saying that what “everyone says” is that there’s no scientific basis for race.

          2. The idea that there is no scientific basis for race is not compatible with the research, or really with anything else.

          As to point (1), compare https://twitter.com/lizstein_/status/1265071486638800897

          The imprecise use of race—a social construct—as a proxy for pathology in medical education is a vestige of institutionalized racism.

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      I would call 2017 the transition period for Molyneux. Before that he was an AnCap with perhaps rationalist trimmings? I watched him sometimes in 2015-2016 mainly because of his sharp criticisms of the media. After 2016 I lost interest, but he’d been doing his AnCap thing for more than a decade, so I think it’s reasonable to look at someone’s long history and say “oh, this is a libertarian” and be forgiven for not noticing the exact instant he started marching up the Authority axis on the political compass.

      • DM says:

        Yeah, it’s possible that *it only came out that he was alt-right so close in time to the podcast invitation that Hsu hadn’t heard yet* is a reasonable enough excuse. The fact that the Turkheimer and Flynn went on the podcast suggests that might be right.

        As a-relatively moderate by European standards (i.e. I don’t want to abolish capitalism) but probably not US-left-winger, since culture war is briefly allowed here, I will voice my suspicion that AnCaps are probably *more* sympathetic to the alt-right on average than randomly selected members of the population, despite this making no sense at all at the level of their explicitly professed ideology. However, I have no hard evidence to back this up, and there are obviously loads of AnCaps who aren’t anything like that at all. (Having read a little of his blog, I’d be shocked if Michael Huemer had anything other than entirely negative feelings about the alt-right at every level, even the unconscious.) And even if my prejudice is correct, I certainly don’t think it gives people a standing obligation to check whether anybody AnCap is dodgy in this way before going on their podcast.

      • brmic says:

        from the previously posted link, wikipedia state 5 jan 2017::

        Molyneux, Stefan (12 February 2016). “Why Liberals Are Wrong About Inequality – Bill Whittle and Stefan Molyneux”. YouTube.
        Molyneux, Stefan (8 July 2016). “An Honest Conversation About Race – Jared Taylor and Stefan Molyneux”. YouTube.
        Molyneux, Stefan (August 30, 2016). “What Is The Alt-Right? – Vox Day and Stefan Molyneux”. YouTube.
        Molyneux, Stefan (October 6, 2016). “In Trump We Trust – Ann Coulter and Stefan Molyneux”. YouTube.
        Molyneux, Stefan (November 7, 2016). “Why Political Correctness Must End – Milo Yiannopoulos and Stefan Molyneux”. YouTube.

        AFAICT Hsu was on the show in May 2017 and a minimum of due diligence could have informed him who he was talking to. AFAICT Hsu has held leadership positions from at least 2012, so it’s inconceivable to me that he wouldn’t have developed a minimal sense of ‘not every interview request is worth agreeing to’ by 2017. (Per his wikipedia page, Hsu became a professor in 1998, a CEO in 2003. Him not having developed even minimal media savvy by 2017 is to phrase it kindly, a stretch.)

        • DM says:

          ‘AFAICT Hsu has held leadership positions from at least 2012, so it’s inconceivable to me that he wouldn’t have developed a minimal sense of ‘not every interview request is worth agreeing to’ by 2017.’

          Why do you think the second thing follows from the first? I am suspicious of the purity of Hsu’s motivations, but I still don’t find this particular inference very obvious.

          • Simon_Jester says:

            Because if nothing else, a man who doesn’t know how to stop his time from being wasted will not be able to remain an effective administrator, organizer, and leader for fifteen years at a stretch.

            Being able to tell when it is inadvisable to accept an offer is a very basic skill for managers. That’s not to say every manager who accepts even one inadvisable offer should be punted into a volcano; people make mistakes.

            But someone who makes mistakes of judgment and then doubles down on defending their mistakes may not be the best choice for a leadership position, regardless of the nature of the mistake.

          • albatross11 says:

            Simon Jester:

            Do you also support this standard for academics going on popular talk shows and such to discuss race when the academics express views you agree with? Because it’s surely about as much a waste of time there as in Hsu’s case.

          • Simon_Jester says:

            If the academics in question are blathering on in ways that do not further their own interests, then yes, it is a mark against their judgment.

            If they believe that participating in the talk show DOES further their interests or cause somehow, matters are different- but in that case, the question “why did this man think this was a good idea” becomes relevant.

          • albatross11 says:

            Simon Jester:

            I think one reason it’s nice to have working researchers go out into mainstream places and talk to people about their research is because this is a good way for the public to learn what those researchers think, which is usually some combination of the current state of the field plus the given researcher’s personal take on things. I think this helps inform public discussion. I think it’s especially positive to do this on podcasts, because the podcast format allows people enough time to explain complicated new ideas, and a good podcast will allow the guest enough time to actually speak for himself rather than just be summarized/constantly interrupted by the host.

            I would say this is making the world a better place overall, and more such engagement by scientists is better than less overall. We live in a society where all kinds of critical political and business and personal decisions need to be made based on the best available information, and podcasts are one good way of helping the best available information get out into the world. This is one more reason that punishing people for appearing on the wrong podcasts is, in general, a really awful idea.

        • Byrel Mitchell says:

          Which of those headlines do you think are incompatible with him being a (non-alt-right) ancap?

          ETA: Or are you familiar with their content and are judging on that?

          • Simon_Jester says:

            Observation:

            Being alt-right is not a binary condition. It exists on a continuum. Like most political factions, the alt-right is a cluster of allied and mutually supporting political movements.

            Thus, when one looks for evidence of alt-rightyness, one is not looking for some single piece of ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt.’ One is evaluating some weighted average of many things that are said and done.

            Because of this, a person evaluating for alt-rightyness may well see a series of articles, each of which could individually be penned by someone who is not a member of the alt-right alliance, and think “gee, taken in combination these articles suggest considerable alt-rightyness.”

          • Randy M says:

            Of course, given “Being alt-right is not a binary condition. It exists on a continuum.”, merely finding someone is Alt-Right doesn’t mean they are now worthless on all matters.

          • Simon_Jester says:

            It means that saying “is someone alt-right” is only meaningful as a proxy for saying “does someone have an alt-rightyness score of more than X?” For purposes of the discussion, “X” is often selected as some threshold value beyond which a person’s net contributions are deemed unlikely to be of great value.

            It’s like saying “is Fred a conspiracy theorist?”

            Well, some conspiracies are more plausible than others (Julius Caesar was definitely killed by a conspiracy, John F. Kennedy not so much).

            Some conspiracies have more problematic implications than others (anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers dominating the world are, historically, pretty harmful; theories that the Olympics are rigged probably less so).

            In principle someone could be technically a conspiracy theorist while believing only in ‘conspiracies’ whose existence is common knowledge and supported by historical fact. They could, in principle, believe only in harmless conspiracies, or only talk about them as irony or comedy or what have you.

            But in practice, such a person would not be the kind of person we’re talking about when we say “conspiracy theorist.”

            “Is alt-right” is a little more complicated than “is conspiracy theorist,” because ‘conspiracy theorist’ is a term entirely about beliefs, while ‘alt-right’ is about a combination of beliefs and actions. But the basic analogy applies.

          • Tatterdemalion says:

            Of course, given “Being alt-right is not a binary condition. It exists on a continuum.”, merely finding someone is Alt-Right doesn’t mean they are now worthless on all matters.

            “Worthless on all matters” is a caricature, obviously.

            But remember that there are lots of opinions that are terrible but not alt-right; I think that most (not quite all) people of whom the question “Is X part of the alt-right?” is even remotely sensible to consider are going to be pretty damn contemptible people even if the answer is “no, not really”.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          Bill Whittle is a bog-standard “Reagan Is God” Republican.

          Ann Coulter is a bog-standard partisan Republican.

          Milo Y is a social libertarian.

          You’re basically doing the One Drop Rule of Alt-rightism. If you’ve ever talked to a single alt-rightist then you’re alt-right.

          • Simon_Jester says:

            Alternate explanation: As I said in a comment above, being alt-righty exists on a continuum, because the alt-right is not some single group that issues formal membership statistics. It is a political movement, that is to say, an allied coalition of separate groups and factions that have interlocking interests and act to support and legitimize each other.

            To further complicate the picture, the alt-right contains groups that actively desire to conceal their affiliation with the movement!

            As such, the only way to discern who is and is not part of the alt-right is by looking at which other political factions they support and legitimize. It’s not about whether you “talked to” someone, and it never was. It’s about what you said when you talked to someone.

            Furthermore, you’re reading the lists of participants and not the headlines. The argument may well hinge on the content implied by the headlines, not on the names.

            Aragorn talked to Frodo. Aragorn got into telepathic contact with Sauron. But he said to the former “you have my sword” and to the latter “screw you, your palantir line has been disconnected.” This is how you know he’s one of the good guys.

          • Aftagley says:

            I don’t know who Whittle is, but Coulter has made a career around the idea of always being to the right of whatever issue is begin debated and Milo Y was, to my knowledge, one of the founding poster-boys of the Alt right.

            This makes me sense we’re operating under differing definitions of alt-right. Would you be willing to define what your acid test for determining who’s alt-right is? Do they have to affirmatively claim association?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            My understanding of the history of “alt right” is as follows.

            Around 2007 Richard Spencer coined the name “Alt-right” as a rebranding of white nationalism, attempting to distance pro-white advocacy from anti-other advocacy (nazis, KKK) in order to create something like a white version of the NAACP or the ADL. No one cared because identity politics in general weren’t that big of a deal back then, and definitely not white identity politics.

            Over time, the name “alt right” got associated with various other non-mainstream but still right ideologies. I first heard the term in about 2015 when applied to ne-yo reakshun types. Eventually it grew to encompass basically everything right-wing that wasn’t GOP establishment neoconservatism. This was the case when Milo wrote An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right. As you can see it includes natural conservatives, paleocons, 4chan trolls doing it for the lulz, and oh yeah, those white nationalists and nazis too.

            It’s unfair to call Milo a “founding poster boy” for the alt right. He just wrote about them, and would best fit into that article under “meme team.” His main political thrust is definitely not white identarianism but “geez you social justice types are a buzzkill.”

            Anyway, after the 2016 election, Spencer does his “heil Trump” thing and anybody who had identified as “alt right” but wasn’t a WN, like Paul Joseph Watson or Mike Cernovich backpedaled so hard they could have won the Tour de France in reverse. Suddenly “alt right” collapses back down to being “nope, nope, nope, just them, just the white nationalist nazi guys, just them.”

            So, from 2007 – 2015, “alt right” meant “white nationalist.” From 2015 – late 2016 it meant “anybody on the right who isn’t a neocon,” and then from about December 2016 on it means “white nationalist.” Personally I think if you’re not advocating for a white ethnostate, you’re not “alt right,” you’re something else.

            I would consider myself a paleoconservative, which would have put me on Milo’s list in 2016, but I never identified as any kind of alt-right. I certainly wouldn’t have in 2016 because 1) I already have a perfectly good name for my general ideology and 2) lol obvious rhetorical trap nope.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            The fuzziness of the alt-right’s definition is a boon to its enemies: they can start with the narrow meaning to establish that they’re Nazis, then switch to the broad meaning to establish that there are enough of them to make a convincing bogey. They’re a lot like the social-justice movement that way: the horrible ones aren’t numerous, and the numerous ones aren’t horrible.

          • Aftagley says:

            The fuzziness is equally a boon to it’s adherents.

          • albatross11 says:

            Aftagley:

            This is true of every political label, isn’t it. Is Bernie Sanders a commie? Well, no, he’s not *technically* exactly a communist, but he does seem awfully friendly with some people who talk a lot about Marx and inequality, and some of those people associate with folks who you rather suspect want to bring back gulags and re-education camps, so maybe we should just paint him as a commie. Most of us can see why this reasoning is wrong here.

            Instead of deciding whether or not you can affix a particular fuzzy label to someone’s beliefs, maybe it would make more sense to talk about his specific beliefs. Because otherwise, this just seems like a massive exercise in guilt-by-association.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            The fuzziness is equally a boon to it’s adherents.

            Only the ones who are actually its adherents. Which is the very small number of Spencerite White Nationalists.

            The few of them get to conflate themselves with respectable paleoconservatives like me, but my many enemies get to conflate me with them.

            You’ve said before you’re left-aligned. But I’m pretty sure you’re not a communist. Conflating you with tankies might be a boon to tankies, but probably doesn’t do you any good.

          • Simon_Jester says:

            @Conrad Honcho

            So, from 2007 – 2015, “alt right” meant “white nationalist.” From 2015 – late 2016 it meant “anybody on the right who isn’t a neocon,” and then from about December 2016 on it means “white nationalist.” Personally I think if you’re not advocating for a white ethnostate, you’re not “alt right,” you’re something else.

            The reason the left doesn’t use “alt-right” the way you do is because the left perceives the white nationalists as being part of an interlocking alliance of different factions and interest groups that support and reinforce each other.

            The term has been adopted to describe the alliance, which resists being named or categorized at all- with good reason! Because if you’re relying for support on a group most people would oppose, it is to your advantage to argue that you are not affiliated with them and are in fact totally different.

            But that doesn’t mean people outside the group are fooled, or that they won’t seize upon whatever terminology seems appropriate to describe the phenomenon.

            @Paul Zrimsek

            The fuzziness of the alt-right’s definition is a boon to its enemies: they can start with the narrow meaning to establish that they’re Nazis, then switch to the broad meaning to establish that there are enough of them to make a convincing bogey. They’re a lot like the social-justice movement that way: the horrible ones aren’t numerous, and the numerous ones aren’t horrible.

            As @Aftagley points out, and as I point out to Conrad, this is a necessary response when a large cluster of loosely affiliated movements start moving in parallel.

            If the alt-right doesn’t want to be loosely defined, they can form a political party instead of trying to pilot the Republican Party around like a giant mecha suit, and all the right-wing-leaning people who DON’T join that party can start actually opposing it instead of tacitly going along with it out of general anti-liberal solidarity. That will create the desired effect of a clear bright line between those who are in the, oh, National Restorationalist Party or whatever, and those who are not.

            But of course doing this would be a terrible idea for the alt-right tactically, because the NRP would almost immediately end up wildly unpopular and probably associated with a bunch of hate crimes and terrorist attacks.

            So they don’t do that… but they cannot then justly complain that they are treated like a nebulous movement when they actively resist large scale organization.

            Another key point the left discusses when talking about the alt-right is that there are multiple layers of “is/isn’t a Nazi.”

            For every person who will join the Nazi Party in a country now there are others who essentially agree with Nazis but don’t want to pay the social signalling cost of saying so- a sensible choice on their part! And there are still others who in theory don’t agree with Nazis but who will, if Nazis start taking power, find a way to just sort of hover along and be mildly supportive.

            Part of the purpose of left-wing discussion of the alt-right is to try to probe the size and nature of the groups they’d expect to happily accede in the event of a right-wing putsch, even if they do not explicitly become that group’s foot soldiers.

            @albatross11

            The thing is, that exact line of reasoning is already applied to Bernie Sanders, and if we instead use the broader label “socialist” instead of the simultaneously narrower and vaguer colloquial term “communist,” it is in fact pretty much true that Sanders is a socialist.

            Now, the part you’re clearly trying to identify as bad is the ‘guilt by association’ part: Stalin was bad, Stalin was a socialist, therefore if Sanders can be proven to be a socialist, Sanders is also bad. But it’s not that simple.

            People who criticize the alt-right in practice can readily focus on things the alt-right is doing or has endorsed doing. Except for the spluttering low-information imitator types, they neither want nor need to rely primarily on guilt by association with Hitler; what is being done and spoken for NOW is quite bad enough!

          • 10240 says:

            @Simon_Jester Various alt-right-only-in-the-broad-sense people may be implicit allies of convenience with white supremacists, but that doesn’t mean that they are white supremacists. They are in the same direction from the status quo in the political space, but in different places. Different ideologies in the same direction from the status quo will often use similar strategies, “move in parallel”, and be de facto allies—but only until they succeed in moving the status quo to the more moderates among them.

            C.f. America allied with the Soviets against the Nazis. That doesn’t mean America was communist, and as soon as they defeated the Nazis, they became rivals.

            I disagree with the view that relying on the support of bad people is wrong. They supporting me is not the same as me supporting them. In a simple model of a two-party democracy with a one-dimensional (left-right) political space, everyone votes for the party whose ideology is the closer to them. Both parties will stay close to the median voter: the Nash equilibrium is both parties being at the median. (Hence the common perception that there is no real difference, and votes don’t matter; even though, in this model, policy very much depends on the electorate.) But the parties court and rely on the support of everyone on their side of the median, all the way from the center to the extreme. There is nothing wrong with that.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            The reason the left doesn’t use “alt-right” the way you do is because the left perceives the white nationalists as being part of an interlocking alliance of different factions and interest groups that support and reinforce each other.

            The term has been adopted to describe the alliance, which resists being named or categorized at all- with good reason! Because if you’re relying for support on a group most people would oppose, it is to your advantage to argue that you are not affiliated with them and are in fact totally different.

            Well, no, the good reason that we resist that categorization is because we are not allied and do not have anything resembling the same terminal goals. The White Nationalists literally want a White Nation. They literally want the United States to either expel non-whites, or to fracture into separate ethnostates, with perhaps whites taking the north, blacks the southeast and Latinos the southwest. This is extremely unpopular, and the ideology has few adherents.

            I am not allied with this, I do not support or reinforce this, because I am 100% opposed to it. I’m a paleoconservative, I believe in the American System of limited, federal government, individual liberty, the authority of state governments, cooperation between capital and labor, and issues of foreign relations (trade, immigration, war) conducted in the national interest, which currently means tariffs for trade, the kibosh on illegal immigration, a rethinking of legal immigration, and general isolationism. None of that has anything to do with establishing a white ethnostate.

            But that doesn’t mean people outside the group are fooled, or that they won’t seize upon whatever terminology seems appropriate to describe the phenomenon.

            I believe the people outside the group have fooled themselves. We call this “outgroup homogeneity bias.” I at least am able to see the radical leftists graffiti “liberals get the bullet too” and recognize, “ah, while I may be their common enemy, they are not allies.”

          • albatross11 says:

            Simon Jester:

            You’ve just written an elaborate justification for using guilt by association to tar everyone on the other side with the actions, beliefs, and intentions of the very worst people on the other side.

            How do you feel about applying the same reasoning to Muslims? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen exactly this line of reasoning from some anti-Muslim types.

            Or go back 70 years, and you can apply it to the left–there are genuine Communists in league with America’s enemies on the left, therefore we can and should purge anyone with much of a leftward tilt to their politics from government service and blacklist people we think might be Communists from working in Hollywood.

            Hell, look at a lot of the right-wing commentary on the BLM protests–the protesters include both peaceful people and rioters and arsonists and looters. In some sense, the peaceful protesters are giving cover to the looters and arsonists. Should we hold them responsible for that association? When there are a thousand people singing hymns in the park, a hundred tossing bricks through windows, and ten burning down buildings, should we find out the names of those thousand people singing hymns and target them for retribution? By the logic you’ve offered for dealing with the alt-right, I think you’d have to support that, too, right?

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            @Simon: In our two-party system, no special explanation should be needed for why anyone who wants to have any practical influence tries to work with one of the major parties, however forlorn the hope.

            In any case, I can’t make out just what sort of new party you’re envisioning. If it’s supposed to include the Nazis, that seems an odd way for the non-Nazi majority to react to being unfairly lumped together with the Nazis. If it’s supposed to exclude the Nazis, then it would hardly be fair for us ordinary conservatives to denounce it as if it included the Nazis, though we might denounce it for other reasons. (Assuming we bothered to, which is non-obligatory for reasons I thought you explained rather well in the subthread about protesters and looters.) Either way, it’s a lot of work to go to just to appease some opponent’s outgroup homogeneity bias.

        • TheMadMapmaker says:

          Wait, to be clear, you think that “a minimum of due diligence” would involve looking up that this person had once interviewed Jared Taylor, and therefore refusing to do the interview? Should have have done that because talking to someone who talked to Jared Taylor is bad in itself? Or should he just have done so out of fear of twitter mobs?

          • albatross11 says:

            Remember, though, interviewing a genteel racist like Taylor marks you out as evil forever, whereas interviewing war criminals like Henry Kissinger or Dick Cheney makes you a Serious Journalist.

      • Jaskologist says:

        Isn’t it neat how they got you to agree that it’s invalid to speak to heretics alt-right people? That’s a win even if you manage to save Hsu.

        Just wait until you find out what they define as “alt-right.”

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          One can be against the death penalty in principle while also arguing the death penalty shouldn’t apply to a specific case.

          No, I don’t think anyone should be canceled for talking to…really anyone. A few years ago I watched a conversation between Black youtuber Tommy Sotomayor and David Duke. It was enlightening just to watch a black guy have a civil conversation with David Duke. Please don’t cancel Tommy over that.

    • Garrett says:

      > or that being alt-right is bad and immoral

      What are the implications of that? If true, should such a person lose their job? Should that be true of anybody who holds a position that someone else believes is “bad and immoral”?

      • keaswaran says:

        Presumably it depends a lot on which job. Some people have many jobs. Notably, university administrators are usually both professors (i.e., researchers, educators, and grant-writers) and administrators, and usually have some amount of public relations as their job description. Turning someone like that back into a regular professor can in some sense count as losing a job, and in other senses really isn’t.

    • gbdub says:

      “Controversial” can mean more than one thing. Just because Molyneux was doing at least some of the things for which he is currently controversial does not mean he was contemporaneously controversial.

      And if he was considered controversial at the time that does not necessarily mean “so widely known to be not merely controversial but toxic, such that anyone giving him the time of day should be considered cancel-worthy”.

      That Hsu’s appearance seems to have been a non issue for 3 years leads some credence to the idea that he is being judged by a shifting goal post.

      • zero says:

        Alternatively, it was bad for 3 years, and people only started noticing now because Steven Hsu supported (biased/unbiased) research on police violence.

      • keaswaran says:

        When we say something should or shouldn’t be considered “cancel-worthy”, it’s worth being precise about what exactly is being canceled. Is the person being demoted from Vice Provost to Senior Dean? Or sent back to a regular faculty position? Or losing tenure?

        • albatross11 says:

          How about “visibly punished for expressing unpopular views.”

          • AlexanderTheGrand says:

            Right, to be fair, even if nothing concrete comes of this it still would give anyone with a career in academia pause before repeating Steve Hsu’s actions.

          • keaswaran says:

            Does “formation of a petition against you” count as “punishment”? If so, then we’ve got two competing punishments being drawn up here. (One petition against Hsu, and one petition against the signatories to the original petition.)

            This seems like an incredibly low standard for punishment though – it’s not clear to me that this is worse than having someone publish an article ridiculing your views, which is something academics absolutely should suffer if they publish something that deserves to be ridiculed. That’s how free speech works.

          • albatross11 says:

            keaswaran:

            There is a *huge* difference between people arguing that you are wrong or wrongheaded or evil in public, and people trying to get you fired or demoted from your job. If the anti-Communist HUAC and Hollywood blacklists had just been about making arguments that such-and-so’s political ideas are wrong and here’s why, we wouldn’t still be talking about how nasty they were 60-70 years later.

    • At a slight tangent …

      A good many years ago, I was invited to participate in some sort of conference in Paris. A little before it happened a bunch of the American participants canceled in protest against the inclusion of someone they said was a fascist.

      My reaction was that the inclusion of a fascist would be a reason to go, since I have never had a chance to talk with one. Fascism was obviously a convincing enough doctrine to persuade lots of people, some of them intelligent, I would like to understand why, and talking to someone who actually believed in it would help me do so, just as reading C.S. Lewis or GKC helps me understand Christianity, another set of ideas odd to me but obviously convincing to many.

      The “fascist” withdrew in counter-protest, but I managed to arrange to meet with him. He wasn’t a fascist, but he did have an odd view of the world. He thought classical antiquity was the high point of European civilization, Christianity what helped destroy it. His view of modern American civilization was more or less wall to wall McDonalds. I enjoyed telling him about the SCA.

      Similarly here. I was interviewed by Molyneux about ten years ago, on the subject of libertarian parenting, which in my case meant unschooling. I have a low opinion of him, not because he is or isn’t alt-right but because part of his thing is persuading people to break off from their families, a generally cult-like feel. I also don’t like what I have seen of his style — he feels like a con man. But I probably hadn’t seen most of that ten years ago.

      But that’s not a reason not to talk with him.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      I agree Hsu really dropped the ball on this one and I cannot begin to model what he was thinking.

      My departure from the people against him is philosophically prior to that, more of a “you are trying to fire this guy who is great at his job because he was on a bad podcast, what the heck?” If you accept that you should sometimes fire great people for going on the wrong podcast, probably Hsu is a reasonable person to apply that to, but I don’t.

      I’m trying to think of a good analogy…imagine that in 1955, someone tried to get a professor fired because he had been interviewed in a newspaper that had also interviewed communists. Or in 1800, a newspaper that had also interviewed atheists. This would pattern match to “these people are censors of the worst type, screw them”. I know everything thinks the alt-right is some kind of unique threat that deserves a totally different perspective than any other threat that has ever been faced, but I just don’t see it – someone like Molyneux is about a hundred steps from actual fascism, fascism is less likely to get anywhere in America than communism in 1950, and fascism has a lower death toll than communism.

      Once you accept every step of the argument for censorship except “Hsu appeared on a bad podcast”, adding the last step means you should censor him, but I’m pretty confused by this whole issue – I remember a time when of course you would laugh at people who said someone being on a bad podcast was reason to fire them, if anyone was saying that it was the people who would fire you for associating with gays or whatever, and those people were wrong not just because gays were okay but because freedom is important and it’s none of your business.

      • Anonymous Bosch says:

        Having Ron “Let’s Steelman Blood Libel” Unz on his podcast in 2019 gives me a second, stronger data point and tips me at the very least strongly against buying his 2017 Molyneux appearance as a one-off lapse in judgement.

        • Randy M says:

          … that is also went on a podcast with a bad guy.
          I don’t think it was the quantity of podcasts that Scott was objecting to.

        • Anonymous Bosch says:

          Again, this just assumes, like many of the posts above that simply talking to someone with objectionable views is somehow bad.

          It’s not an assumption of anything. It’s a narrow objection to the characterization of Hsu’s Molyneux appearance as “dropping the ball.” My thoughts on debating people with objectionable views are complex and laid out elsethread.

          I assume arguendo that Scott, for whatever reasons (tactical, I’m guessing) thinks it was a bad idea for Hsu to appear on Molyneux’s podcast in 2017, in which case it was likely a worse idea to invite Unz onto his in 2019.

        • Randy M says:

          @Bosch
          As far as that goes, you’re probably right.

        • Garrett says:

          If someone with impecable credentials, say a director with the Holocaust Museum or something, went on one of these podcast, would you be opposed? Arguably, one of their jobs is to make sure that the holocaust is remembered and respecting, and presenting arguments and evidence to Holocaust deniers seems to be a reasonable (if tilting-at-windmills kind of way) action to take?

          Or is the problem that he’s insufficiently obviously-not-racist?

          This seems to me to be a opposite-of-Nixon-goes-to-China problem. A Wizard’s First Rule kind of issue.

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            Nixon went to China because China was a huge world player whose power could no longer be ignored. This is not the case with Holocaust denial. Nor am I convinced, as Atlas claims above, that there is a “resurgence” in anti-Semitism, or that if one exists, it is attributable to the lack of anti-Semites being given respectful public hearings.

            There is something to be said both for engaging and ignoring bad ideas. There are many considerations that go into both of these things, but one consideration I want to focus on here is that the potential upside and potential downside inflect once those ideas rise and fall past a certain threshold of popularity.

            One upside to ignoring unpopular views is the idea that they should be starved of attention they would otherwise get. But I don’t think this applies to a very popular yet horrible idea (e.g., “invade Iraq” in 2003). There will be plenty of attention levied no matter what you say, so your refusal to engage Iraq war proponents has limited upside as uninformed people will probably hear their arguments anyway, so you may as well add your counter-arguments in the hopes that you can at least convince people that your arguments are better.

            However, as a bad idea is sufficiently marginalized, the adherents become more and more hard core, while normies become less and less likely to encounter it. This limits the primary upside of engagement (flipping believers) while multiplying the primary downside of it (undue attention). Eventually, once it becomes marginalized to the degree of Holocaust denial, you get to the point where the majority of its exposure is not due to the merits of the argument, but due to an excess of general liberal sympathy towards idea diversity as a terminal goal. And this is where the “ignore” case becomes more powerful.

            I believe this is, for instance, why evolutionary biologists are less willing lately to engage in public debates with creationists; they correctly surmise that the dwindling numbers of creationists they convince will be outweighed by the uninformed normies who find the creationist arguments palatable and figure that if there’s a friendly debate, it must be a subject of “legitimate disagreement.” (Note that this toy example doesn’t require the arguments to be *good*. It’s an inverse function with the fanaticism of the adherents. If creationist arguments are only good enough to persuade 5% of normies, while scientists persuade 95% of them, but the idea is sufficiently unpopular to begin with, even that small 5% slice of normies is coming from a big enough pie that the unpopular idea still comes out ahead from having been exposed in debate.)

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            I’m not sure where the “ignore” case comes in here, because, if you’re criticizing engagement with certain ideas, you’re not genuinely ignoring those ideas. If the ideas are so completely marginal and trivial that they should be ignored, why would it matter whether someone else engages with, or even platforms, them? Any increase in their popularity will still leave them of minuscule importance.

            I think you’re taking “ignore” too literally. My post mentions Holocaust denial but it assumes it is a bad thing and does not contain a heavily cited section proving the Holocaust happened, and neither do most of the other posts I’ve seen criticizing Hsu for hosting Unz. This is what I mean. Most people know Holocaust denial is a thing. But they’re not awash in the minutiae of whether this or that chemical could’ve really been deadly, they probably can’t even name any primary documents, etc. (To a Holocaust denier [or an extreme libertarian] this probably sounds dystopian. But I think it’s legitimate to want some things, like the Earth being round, to become common informational ground and not the subject of constant debate, or nothing will ever get done.)

            Conversely you can rarely escape debate about the Iraq war now and certainly couldn’t in 2003. So you might as well have a patter about poor planning, civil war, ISIS blowback, and Iranian regional dominance.

            What do you think about Jerry Coyne’s lengthy response from last year in Quillette to a popular creationist essay by David Gelernter? Coyne seems like one of the most famous biologist creationism debaters, and he quite explicitly says in the piece that Gelernter’s creationism should be debated head-on rather than ignored.

            I’m about to commute so if it’s lengthy all I can say is my prior is disagreement (and I know many biologists agree) but I’ll give it a hearing.

          • Garrett says:

            @Anonymous Bosch:

            The issue at-hand isn’t some consideration about “waste of time”. Even if debating these folks is a waste of time and unlikely to be productive, should they be demoted or lose their job over it?

            And, if so, can I pick the next subject which should cause people to lose their job?

        • 10240 says:

          @Anonymous Bosch Based on the comment @Scott Alexander replied to, I don’t interpret Scott’s comment as Hsu dropping the ball by appearing on Molyneux’s video, but as Hsu dropping the ball by defending himself by saying that Molyneux wasn’t controversial in 2017.

        • Murphy says:

          As someone without connection to the matter, reading the wiki that Ariel Toaff stuff seems kinda silly.

          Toaff doesn’t seem to be any kind of anti-semite. Reading the quotes it seems like he was attacked for other people’s paraphrasing of otherwise fairly careful statements about some possible weird side cult.

          In 500 years, if christians had gotten horribly persecuted in the meantime would it be wrong for a professor of history to talk about some of the possible roots of claims involved in that persecution in the westboro baptist church or the Jonestown massacre? There’s a million weird little side cults from every religion, are people really that keen to try to pretend that there were never any weird little side cults from judaism?

      • Guy in TN says:

        @Scott Alexander
        He’s not associating with these people in order to counter their views. He isn’t conducting adversarial debates. He is amplifying their voices, and using his scientific credentials to bolster their white nationalist world views.

        Like, isn’t it weird that Hsu’s main thing is talking about how important race/intelligence is, and he keeps either being invited on racist’s podcasts, or invites racists onto his? Haha what a weird coincidence! What an unlucky break for this neutral, objective researcher!

        We all know the Kolmogorov option is a thing, and all we know people have been using it in various forms for years (“hide your power level!”-4chan). Knowing that there is a coordinated effort to lie/hide political beliefs, we have no obligation to accept that framework of “he can’t be a racist, because he’s never said he’s a racist”.

        You say you cannot model Hsu in this instance? I can model him easily, it’s quite transparent: Study racial differences in a nominally “objective” way, trot out your “neutral” studies whenever they can be used to advance your political causes, and be chummy with far-right figures, amplifying their voices and bolstering their arguments with your facts, but never coming out to say whether you agree with them, or outright stating what your beliefs are. Be all coy, all the time. This is a model of a high-ranking professor who was trying to advance racial supremacy, and not get fired for doing so. This is Hsu.

        And yes, I think the state of Michigan should not be giving money to someone who is conducting research that is used to promote racial supremacy. Academic freedom has its limits. The state has not just the right, but the moral obligation to ensure that its limited funding for research and education is going to people who are making the world a better place, not a worse one.

        • zero says:

          This feels like the same type of argument you’d use to prove that Bernie Sanders is a Communist, and I reject it on the same basis.

        • gbdub says:

          1) This is how purity spirals happen. You don’t really look like a witch, and I’ve never actually caught you engaging in witchcraft, but you sit too close to witches and don’t openly condemn them loudly enough, so off to the gallows with you. Lather, rinse, repeat until we’re stacking rocks on people who refuse to participate in the farce.

          2) The state of Michigan gives tons of money to professors and administrators who openly advocate for directly engaging in racial discrimination, which would be a facial violation of the state constitution and the democratic will of the populace that funds them. Doesn’t it have a moral obligation to cancel them?

          • Guy in TN says:

            @gbdub
            1. “Purity spiral” is a phrase that means nothing to me. We can do good things, without also slipping into doing bad things. Not every action spirals into infinity.

            2.

            The state of Michigan gives tons of money to professors and administrators who openly advocate for directly engaging in racial discrimination, which would be a facial violation of the state constitution and the democratic will of the populace that funds them. Doesn’t it have a moral obligation to cancel them?

            Depends on the details. I do not consider the constitution to be sacrosanct, nor necessarily representative of the people’s democratic will.

          • zero says:

            Allow me to phrase it in a different manner, then. What measures do you propose to ensure that you only fire the right people?

          • Guy in TN says:

            @zero

            What measures do you propose to ensure that you only fire the right people?

            The same standards the university might apply when deciding to hire the best person: You review their background, their research interests, the ideas they amplify, and the people they associate with. The committee in charge thinks about whether they would be a net-positive or net-negative for the university, and makes a decision.

            While you cannot “ensure” that this process only hires the best professors, it is superior process than hiring people randomly.

            Likewise, I cannot ensure that the concept of “fire a professor for bad behavior” will be used appropriately 100% of the time, but I’m fine with that. Nothing in life can be ensured, but that doesn’t mean it must instead “spiral”.

          • cuke says:

            “Nothing in life can be ensured, but that doesn’t mean it must instead ‘spiral’.”

            Strikes me as a concise definition of how anxiety can distort thinking. Lovely turn of phrase.

          • Garrett says:

            I hereby call upon universities everywhere to ask all potential employees whether they support socialism in any form, and if so, to refuse to hire them.

          • Murphy says:

            purity spiral:

            https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/

            A purity spiral occurs when a community becomes fixated on implementing a single value that has no upper limit, and no single agreed interpretation. The result is a moral feeding frenzy.

            But while a purity spiral often concerns morality, it is not about morality. It’s about purity — a very different concept. Morality doesn’t need to exist with reference to anything other than itself. Purity, on the other hand, is an inherently relative value — the game is always one of purer-than-thou.

            In 1967, Mao’s Red Guards took to the streets determined to root out the ‘four olds’ of traditional Chinese culture, killing hundreds of thousands in the process. By 1968, they had fallen apart as factions fought each other to represent the truest version of Maoism.

            Even though intersectional social justice is a pretty great breeding ground for purity spirals, it is one among many. Nor is it confined to the Left: neo-Nazi groups offer some of the clearest examples of purity spirals: the ongoing parsing of ethnic purity into ever-more Aryan sub-groups.

            The problem is that while you might be happy with the idea that of course you’ll just not behave more extremely, there’s that other guy right behind you who can build social capital, get publicity and become a “thought leader” by being a little bit purer-than-thou.

            A few months later you yourself are tied to the pyre screaming “We could have done good things, without also slipping into doing bad things!” while the new high-purist explains how obviously he’s at the exact correct point of purity now that the village has purged the least pure among them.

            Meanwhile a contender for the position of next high-purist sharpens his knives.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @Murphy

            A purity spiral occurs when a community becomes fixated on implementing a single value that has no upper limit

            A few months later you yourself are tied to the pyre screaming “We could have done good things, without also slipping into doing bad things!” while the new high-purist explains how obviously he’s at the exact correct point of purity now that the village has purged the least pure among them.

            No upper limit? Like, an infinite upper limit? Is there any reason why I should believe this is a real thing, instead of a paranoid fantasy?

            Since presumably this concept of purity has existed since the dawn of man, why aren’t we all tied to pyres screaming right now?

            You must be missing something in the analysis, with that something making the “purity spiral” not a spiral.

            If you want to argue that this action represents a slight shift in the boundary for acceptable behavior, then say it. Don’t try to sell me a wild fantasy of infinite regress that ends in a global mass genocide. That’s just unserious.

          • Murphy says:

            Nobody claimed purity spirals are infinite in time.

            The red guards cultural revolution eventually ended.

            The instagram knitters eventually started to get back to normal.

            But while a group is currently spiralling there is no set line in the sand that constitutes a safe level of purity since it’s constantly getting redefined. Last week wearing black and owning a cat was too witch-like. This week having hung around with witches too much is too witch-like.

            While the spiral is in effect the inquisitors will cheer every time they root out another heretic or drive another “unacceptable” to suicide.

            Part of what eventually stops purity spirals is the tendency to cause those in the spiral to turn on each other until they eventually break up into factions like the red guard.

            That doesn’t mean there was a defined upper limit on the value for which they were seeking purity, it just means their group eventually de-cohered.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @Murphy
            I’m having a hard time distinguishing this concept that (as you say) must necessarily end with people “turning on each other”, from the simple goal of wanting to do good things but not bad things, which does not seem to always end in such destructive chaos.

            Like, is seeking the most competent person for a job an example of a “purity spiral” to you?

          • Guy in TN says:

            @Murphy

            While the spiral is in effect the inquisitors will cheer every time they root out another heretic or drive another “unacceptable” to suicide.

            Would you be willing to make falsifiable predictions about this?

            It’s a little macabre to say out loud, so I will avoid stating it directly. But I’d stake my reputation as an anonymous poster that if this dark event happens, there will be little to no cheering from the people who signed the petition.

          • zero says:

            Signs you might be in a purity spiral:
            Defending yourself from an accusation is seen as proof of guilt.
            The scope of prohibited activities keeps increasing with no end in sight.
            Consequences just for associating with the wrong people.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @zero
            @Murphy
            The word is still near-meaningless to me, as I’m not seeing it distinguished from the concept of wanting people to do good things, but not bad things.

            I’m trying to understand it: The argument seems to be that, if we try to set a new bar for moral standards that isn’t 100% spelled out, people will end up strapped to burning pyres somehow? Because of events that happened in Salem in the 1690s and on the Tumblr knitting community? Is this right?

            But isn’t it always the case that moral standards are shifting? Isn’t it always the case that moral standards are less than perfectly defined?

            There also seems to be a sneaking unfalsiableness to it, in its insinuation that the shifting standards don’t have anything to do with morality, but with people trying to one-up eachother in a social game. In this sense it’s approaching the old “virtue signalling” canard. To which all I can do is respond: No, it really is actually about morality.

          • Murphy says:

            @Guy in TN

            I suspect we might hit a rub here, on the one hand I would absolutely bet that there would be quite a lot of horrible people on twitter literally celebrating.

            On the other, the serious faculty types would only do the same if the spiral is in very late stages.

            If he did kill himself then I would predict roughly a similar response as the August Ames suicide and the Paige Paz thing: A lot of really horrible little people literally celebrating openly and a bunch of vaguely respectable people who did the pushing declaring that it’s not their fault but being faintly smug about their victory before moving on to a new targets.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @Murphy
            That’s a pretty big goal-post shift, from “cheering”, to people (correctly) not feeling guilt over someone else’s poor decisions.

            I mean yeah, no one should be ashamed for doing what they believe to be the right thing. Is that a purity spiral?

          • Murphy says:

            That’s a pretty big goal-post shift,

            Did I say everyone would be openly cheering? And I clearly state that some absolutely would be openly cheering. Just biased towards the most horrible people in the lower social positions with less to lose and more to gain from the performance.

            That’s a pretty big goal-post shift, from “cheering”, to people (correctly) not feeling guilt over someone else’s poor decisions.

            I mean yeah, no one should be ashamed for doing what they believe to be the right thing. Is that a purity spiral?

            Under my, and most people’s system of ethics this is a horrible sentiment.

            If you do something you think is a noble act for the cause and you end up causing some kid to die then you should probably feel some shame.

            You think people who drove a girl to suicide shouldn’t be ashamed?

            That driving a teenager to a suicide attempt is “(correctly) not feeling guilt over someone else’s poor decisions”

            If you drive teenagers to suicide for minor transgressions and don’t feel any shame you’re likely far far far into the mindkilled stage of a very awful purity spiral.

            But isn’t it always the case that moral standards are shifting? Isn’t it always the case that moral standards are less than perfectly defined?

            In normal times morals shift. But they tend to shift over generational time.

            During a purity spiral they shift from week to week, day to day or even hour to hour.

            To shift to the other side of the political aisle, racists aren’t in a purity spiral when they’re just generally racist and horrible to some group.
            If they’re creating skin tone charts or checking ancestry further and further back then they’re likely in a purity spiral.

            If you start measuring noses then there’s a good chance you’re in a purity spiral.

            They don’t tend to work well in stable groups, an amish town that’s had the same elders for a decade without leadership conflicts is unlikely to have many purity spirals.

            On the other hand, when there’s lots of small actors, competition is high and advantage can be gained by pushing your competitors down, that’s fertile ground. it’s why social media suffers from them quite often.

            yes, it can be performative, there’s no shortage of journalists and influencers who’s entire brand and following revolves around showing off to the crowd.

            Perhaps all those aryans truly believe… or perhaps sometimes they see a chance to eliminate a competitor who’s just a little bit darker than themselves in a local social game.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @Murphy

            If you do something you think is a noble act for the cause and you end up causing some kid to die then you should probably feel some shame.

            Is stripping someone of their money and power (because they used their money and power things to make the world a worse place) the same as “driving them to suicide”? What is the rule here? That no one should be punished for anything, because they might feel very sad about it and kill themselves, and then it would be my fault because I punished them? Do you apply the same logic when we punish murderers and thieves?

            To shift to the other side of the political aisle, racists aren’t in a purity spiral when they’re just generally racist and horrible to some group.
            If they’re creating skin tone charts or checking ancestry further and further back then they’re likely in a purity spiral.
            If you start measuring noses then there’s a good chance you’re in a purity spiral.

            I just don’t see any communicative utility in using the term “purity spiral”. I’m no closer to understanding what it means, and your examples of “x is purity spiral, y is just normal behavior” aren’t clearing things up.

          • Dan L says:

            @ Guy in TN:

            Without commenting on the merit of the idea in any given context, the basic idea of a purity spiral is that it can come about due to the use of a narrow measure in a relative sense. Ostracizing the wrongthinkiest member of a group may be a good idea at a particular time, but “ostracize the wrongthinkiest person you can” lacks checks against its repeated use and will lead to bad outcomes – relatively quickly, when people start optimizing against the rule rather than the reason it was created. The spiral continues until it does enough damage to the group to destabilize things, at which point a variety of bad outcomes can spill over to larger society.

            There’s a sequence on the broader topic of death spirals over at LessWrong. One takeaway is that they’re a particular risk in democratized or otherwise leaderless groups – spirals are pretty easy for an individual to see coming, but once a critical mass has coordinated around the simple but bad rule it can be hard to stop until the damage is bad enough to send a strong signal.

        • silver_swift says:

          We all know the Kolmogorov option is a thing, and all we know people have been using it in various forms for years

          You realize that if Hsu is Kolmogorov in this instance, that makes you Stalin?

          • Evelyn Q. Greene says:

            You realize that this is Guy in TN your talking to, right? He’s a regular defender of communist totalitarians. He likes Stalin and make only the barest effort to hide that fact. His paranoid conspiracys about Hsu’s “true politics” are, I imagine projection from personal experience.

          • Guy in TN says:

            I’m glad to see I’ve built quite a reputation for myself over the past few years.

          • Plumber says:

            Evelyn Q. Greene says: “…He likes Stalin and make only the barest effort to hide that fact…”
            Less of this please. I regard the accusation as absurd and I liken it to saying someone who’s written nice things about say Ted Cruz in 2014 as a “Nazi”, there have been posts by Stalinists (one posted in this very thread, he and @DavidFriedman had an impressive discussion on Marxian theory minutiae one or three years ago) and @Guy in TN has clearly stated before he isn’t one and I believe him, he’s a bit to the Left of me but not “the full Cuba”, and if he was all Pyongyang I’ve little doubt that he wouldn’t just come out and argue fully for that.

            If you’ve seen enough of my old posts you probably know that I self describe as “A bit more Left than Right”, but if you’ve seen even more of my old posts you’ll see plenty of times where I’ve asked our host to spare Right leaning commenters from the ban hammer and I don’t think I’m just being selective here. It really does seem to me that all long frequent SSC commenters represent their own views and admitted biases sincerely.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            Seconding Plumber’s less of this. I often disagree with Guy In TN’s takes and even find some of his posts grating, but poisoning the well is a shitty rhetorical tactic.

        • baconbits9 says:

          Like, isn’t it weird that Hsu’s main thing is talking about how important race/intelligence is, and he keeps either being invited on racist’s podcasts, or invites racists onto his?

          Not at all weird in a world where you have to toe the academic line and pretend your research doesn’t have specific implications OR associate with (alleged) racists.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          I’d like to see the Bad Words, too.

        • Guy in TN says:

          It’s pretty silly to be asking for the “bad words” receipts in response to a post where I specifically said there wouldn’t be any.

          Study racial differences in a nominally “objective” way, trot out your “neutral” studies whenever they can be used to advance your political causes, be chummy with far-right figures, amplifying their voices and bolstering their arguments with your facts, but never coming out to say whether you agree with them, or outright stating what your beliefs are.

        • Guy in TN says:

          There are two simultaneous rhetorical currents, in beautiful contradiction:

          1. Never look for dog whistles. You can only consider the beliefs of someone if they say so explicitly. Because we can’t read minds, it doesn’t matter if someone dedicates their career to a field with direct benefit for racists, gets invited to have friendly chats on racist’s podcasts, and uses this opportunity not to debate them, but to present scientific findings in a way that serves to bolster the racist’s agenda. Oops! How could they make such a silly mistake?

          2. Hide your power level. Be like Kolmogorov, never state your actual beliefs, and maintain plausible deniability. Advance your cause, of course, but only do so under the facade of neutrality to avoid punishment.

          It seems that “2” is directed for the internal audience, while “1” is directed towards the outsiders who start to see through it.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          @Guy in TN: 1) Zealously looking for “dog whistles” mean you’re going to inflict punishment on false positives at some rate above “zero, ever.” 2) If they stop inflicting punishment, people they disagree with will stop hiding.
          If you’d made that argument against certain other demographics than scientists, the Left would call it victim-blaming.

        • 10240 says:

          @Guy in TN I don’t think the two are contradictory. If people who hold particular views can’t say them out loud, especially in a way that people who don’t already hold those views can understand, then even if someone does hold those views, they have a hard time spreading them, so it should matter little if they hold them.

          When it comes to politicians: a politician may be a racist, and dog-whistle about it, in a way that’s not apparent to most people. Those politicians, if elected, then go on to never actually implement any racially discriminatory measure: that would make it obvious that they are racist, and it’s not even on the table anyway. Now, if their racism doesn’t show either in their speech or in their policies, why should I care about it?

        • 10240 says:

          The state has not just the right, but the moral obligation to ensure that its limited funding for research and education is going to people who are making the world a better place, not a worse one.

          What makes the world a better place is a politically contentious question; in a democracy, the electorate should decide what approach to take on morally contentious issues, not the government.

          Your idea involves a strange feedback loop: the people elect the government, but in turn the government should attempt to shape the political opinions of the electorate (at least by helping efforts to propagate certain ideas but opposing others).

          Assuming the government engages in this sort of propaganda according to the wishes of the electorate itself, this just leads to conformism, and stabilizes the currently accepted views: the majority will want efforts to propagate majority views, and hinder ideas contrary to mainstream views. If the majority is right, it will stay right; if it’s wrong, it will stay wrong.

          If the people making the decisions on how to shape the electorate are not really accountable to the electorate, this just reverses the democratic norm that the electorate is supposed to decide and the government should follow, not the other way around.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @10240

            Assuming the government engages in this sort of propaganda according to the wishes of the electorate itself, this just leads to conformism, and stabilizes the currently accepted views: the majority will want efforts to propagate majority views, and hinder ideas contrary to mainstream views. If the majority is right, it will stay right; if it’s wrong, it will stay wrong.

            All education (public schools, private schools, even homeschooling) can be thought of as operating in the same manner: To propagandize the currently accepted views of the teacher to the student. All teaching is a form of “conformism” in this way, “stabilizing” what is known into the next generation. While it is true that teachers like to say they are merely teaching how to think, the reality is that they are also invariably teaching what to think, as uncomfortable as that is to admit. I don’t see how one could object to this type of conformism without also implicating the very concept of education, public or otherwise.

            For the question of research funding, the impossibility of neutrality becomes even more inescapable. How is the government supposed to determine what gets funded and what doesn’t, in a non-ideological way? While the political non-neutrality of race/intelligence studies is fairly clear, even broad-scale funding decisions such “direct money to study medicine, instead of studying environmental issues” have an underlying political value expression. Heck, even funding education at all is a political value expression.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @10240

            To be clear, I’m not saying that the government should adopt an official stance on every issue, or even most issues. It is sometimes a good idea to fund competing research ideas and multiple opposing viewpoints.

            But since resources are limited, a government should not fund people advancing every possible viewpoint. It should not direct equal funding to Creationist Geology Departments as it does Non-Creationist Geology Departments. At some point, an idea does so much more harm than good (e.g. homeopathy) that the government should not direct any funding towards it at all. My undergrad had a “Homeland Security” degree, where presumably you learned how to defend the United States from being attacked. But notably, there was no corresponding opposing degree where you learned how to attack the United States. It is not unreasonable for a university to conclude that race/IQ studies should fall in the same sort of category, particularly if the negative real-world implications of such research is becoming nakedly apparent.

            Yes, this is political. Yes, this is censorship. Yes, this is conformism. And yes, this gives the very idea of liberal pluralism a squeaky wheel. But I’d rather face such truths with clear eyes and honesty, rather than pretend its anything else.

          • 10240 says:

            All education (public schools, private schools, even homeschooling) can be thought of as operating in the same manner: To propagandize the currently accepted views of the teacher to the student.

            @Guy in TN , I find that OK as long as the education sticks to the facts. I oppose efforts to use education for the purpose of shaping young people’s ideological or moral views, either by directly teaching those views, or by selecting what facts to teach based on how those will shape their ideology.

            While the political non-neutrality of race/intelligence studies is fairly clear, even broad-scale funding decisions such “direct money to study medicine, instead of studying environmental issues” have an underlying political value expression.

            What to studies to fund is a political decision, and IMO it’s OK for the elected government to decide it. For instance, it may decide to direct funding to the study of medicine, because it will lead to better medical care; the government (and through it, indirectly, the electorate) can decide how to weigh this benefit against other uses of that money. What is not OK in my opinion is to make the decision based on how it will change the political views of the electorate.

          • JPNunez says:

            If the people making the decisions on how to shape the electorate are not really accountable to the electorate, this just reverses the democratic norm that the electorate is supposed to decide and the government should follow, not the other way around.

            So then you oppose the professor who takes state money going to political podcast to comment about the state funded research and how it fits into the political views of the podcast?

          • 10240 says:

            So then you oppose the professor who takes state money going to political podcast to comment about the state funded research and how it fits into the political views of the podcast?

            @JPNunez No, except if the government doesn’t decide which researchers to fund based on how their podcast appearances will influence the electorate’s political views.

        • Dan L says:

          @ 10240:

          Those politicians, if elected, then go on to never actually implement any racially discriminatory measure: that would make it obvious that they are racist, and it’s not even on the table anyway.

          This assumes that all policies that instrumentally fulfill particular views will be clearly attributable to those politicians’ beliefs. How do you deal with pretextual defenses? Are you expecting disparate impact analyses to be a popular tool to connect the dots?

        • James Miller says:

          Here is my model of Hsu: “Using genetics to increase human intelligence is going to be of massive importance to humanity, so I’m going to study the genetics of human intelligence. It’s really annoying that issues of race poison discussions of IQ.” I hope I don’t get cancelled for having had Hsu on my podcast.

        • sharper13 says:

          @Guy in TN,

          Perhaps I can put the logic of this situation in a way which would be easier for you to follow:

          Hsu associated with racists (was on a racist’s podcast), therefore he must be a racist and should be fired. Scott Alexander supported Hsu in this post on his blog, so therefore he must also be a racist and fired. Guy in TN comments on and hangs out all the time on the racist Scott Alexander’s blog, so therefore he must be a racist and fired.

          Are you perhaps beginning to see yet how that whole standard of anyone who associates with racists must be considered a racist and fired could spiral out of control?

          • Guy in TN says:

            @sharper13
            I feel like this is something you would understand, if given any other context.

            Take terrorism. We can all agree that the people who hijacked the planes on 9/11 are murderers. Probably same for the people who directly organized and funded the plot.

            But what about the people who merely worked for the people who organized the plot? The IT guys, the accountants, who indirectly enabled it all to happen? And the various people who knew it was going to happen (family members and such), but did nothing to stop it? Maybe they aren’t murderers, but they are at least accomplices.

            And what about the people who didn’t know about the 9/11 plot per se, but probably should have known these were dangerous dudes, and they shouldn’t be associated with? And what about the people who helped people who helped people orchestrate 9/11? They are…something, right? Maybe not “murderers”, but something.

            So thing is going to spiral out of control right? With every last person on the planet indicted? No end in sight?

            Not really. I think you understand degrees of culpability.

            I’m not implying that Hsu is the equivalent of whatever Ron Unz is. So Hsu being fired for amplify Unz, does not imply that people who amplify Hsu must also be fired. These sorts of things are spectrums, not binary.

          • Garrett says:

            > Are you perhaps beginning to see yet how that whole standard of anyone who associates with racists must be considered a racist and fired could spiral out of control?

            Or in the case of way too much internal communication among employees at Google: if you didn’t vote for Hillary you’re a Nazi. And we don’t want Nazis to work here.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @Garrett
            This is a falsifiable claim.

            I’ll stake my reputation here: In the highly unlikely event that a petition to fire someone because of their association with Hsu is actually made, it will receive less than 40 signatures. And in this highly unlikely event, I am certain it will be unsuccessful.

            You want to stake a counter-claim?

          • sharper13 says:

            @Guy in TN,
            Here’s what I see as the difference between your example and mine.

            In your example, the activities of (doing IT, accounting, or being a family member of) for someone who happens to hijack a plane isn’t wrong.

            What’s morally wrong in your example is knowing someone plans to hijack a plane and murder lots of people and not doing anything about it, like reporting it to someone who might prevent it.

            Otherwise you’re calling everyone who does anything which directly or indirectly supports someone else in their goals (building a street they drove over, selling the airplane they hijacked, selling them their tickets on the plane, being their college professor, etc… pretty much everyone in the world) morally responsible for their crimes. But without being a knowing accomplice, that’s meaningless.

            In the other case (appeared on a podcast with, wrote a post protesting the bad treatment of, associating with, etc…) there is likewise nothing morally wrong with those actions.

            Just because you talk to someone in public (whatever the method) doesn’t mean you endorse nor support all of their past and future actions, nor should you be considered morally responsible for them.

            That’s the difference. Association with someone doesn’t imply knowledge and support. You’ve likely unknowingly associated with all sorts of criminals over the course of your life. If your work is at all useful, you’ve also directly or indirectly supported them.

            But you’re only morally culpable if you actually meant to further their criminal activities by your actions.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @sharper13

            Just because you talk to someone in public (whatever the method) doesn’t mean you endorse nor support all of their past and future actions, nor should you be considered morally responsible for them.

            Well, sure. But I don’t think anyone is claiming that because Hsu choose to give Unz a platform, that Hsu must necessarily agree with all of Unz’s views, or is responsible for Unz’s actions in some sort of way. If you think this is my position, I’m afraid you have misunderstood me.

            The problem is that Hsu chose to amplify people like Unz on his platform. The problem is that Hsu has a pattern of using his expertise to lend credence to racial nationalist viewpoints. These are bad things regardless of what Hsu actually believes in his heart-of-hearts. The issue is ultimately what he is doing, not what he believes (which is impossible to know with certainty, anyway).

            If one could invent a mind-reading device and peer into the depths of Hsu, determining that no, he isn’t actually racist at all, that wouldn’t actually matter in terms of what I think the university ought to do.

            I know this seems like a bait-and-switch, because my first post strongly implied that I didn’t understand how a neutral observer could come to any other conclusion than Hsu being motivated by racist ideas. But that really wasn’t the core issue here. If one wants to make the case that no, Hsu isn’t motivated by racism, he is just the most naive and gullible man alive, and hasn’t put 2+2 together about why white nationalists keep inviting him to speak about IQ/genetics, and really has no clue what the effects are of legitimizing people like Unz, then I would say he deserves to be fired on those grounds alone.

            The issue is that Hsu is using his research and platform to promote racial supremacy, whether he realizes it or not. (In my opinion, the lack of any apology from him indicates that he really does know what he is doing and is fine with it, but that’s ultimately beside the point.)

          • Guy in TN says:

            I’m a professor in real life. So, let’s say that it is discovered that I’ve been a member of the KKK for years, white hoods and all. What to do?

            One could argue that merely being a member of an organization doesn’t mean that you necessarily agree with that organization (true).

            One could argue that, hey, a man’s got to make a living, so setting up my booth downtown to sell printed copies of The Daily Stormer is just a way to pay the rent (sure, why not)

            One could even argue that, ultimately, a man’s heart-of-hearts is impossible to know, so even if I said “My name is Guy and I’m a racist” I could be lying about it. Therefore all arguments of “person x believes y” are invalid from the start.

            But even if one wants to build such an impenetrable argumentative fortress, the logical conclusion of each rationale only necessitates myself having vast levels of incompetence, irresponsibility, and dangerous naivete. If my defense is “I’m not a racist, I’m just completely oblivious to the ways in which I’m making the world a worse place”, I don’t think that should save my job.

          • CatCube says:

            @Guy in TN

            Y’know, back in January I’d have agreed that if we discovered you were a KKK member, you should be fired, full stop.

            However, I’m now really starting to approach full “First they came for the Communists…” in my analysis of this situation.

            If it turns out that you were a KKK member for 10 years, but it was so low-key that nobody knew it, I’m starting to ask if it should really matter. Sure, if you bring it to work, you should be bounced. But if at work nobody managed to detect it without knowing about it, maybe it’s just your personal life and it’s not affecting your job and we should leave it there.

            Don’t forget, though Niemoller wrote those words after WWII, he was referring to the suppression of Communists by Nazis well before the war, when Communists were literally–and I’m using the word “literally” literally here–literally engaged in persecution of clerics like Niemoller. Being a Christian clergyman in Communist Russia during the ’30s was not a fun time, and Communist parties in other countries were mostly puppets of the Soviets. But he recognized (after the fact) that even though the Communists were, in the early ’30s, an even greater monstrous evil than the Nazis were at that time (I know, it’s hard to believe, but before the ’40s the Commies were responsible for way more persecution than the Nazis or Fascists and it wasn’t even close), fighting the persecution of Communists and insisting on them getting due process and waiting for them to actually do something bad instead of assuming they would, could have helped the greater persecution of everybody else coming later.

            These dumb bastards who desperately want to be on the Committee of Public Safety are best occupied with their natural enemies. If we can keep a few members of the French monarchy around to occupy the time of these pinheaded little Robespierres, I’m not convinced that’s not going to be better for the rest of us instead of letting them develop into a full Reign of Terror.

          • A Definite Beta Guy says:

            Institutions of higher learning seem to be the obvious place to put all of your outright bizzaro ideological proponents, including both your KKK members and your communists. The expectation is that educated citizens produced by these institutions will not automatically believe their college professor just for being a college professor. There are obviously other fail-states…but all really come back to institutional failures that indict the university or the way society treats university education, not the professor personally.

            Additionally, since we’re talking about degrees, there’s a difference between being the 9/11 hijacker, being the accountant for the 9/11 hijackers, being the guy that says “yeah, those bastards had a point,” and the guy that says “hmmm, maybe this means we should re-evaluate our Middle East foreign policy.” You seem to be conflating the last two with the first two. I don’t even care if the university professor says we freaking deserved 9/11, whatever (again, these voices exist:universities seem like the BEST place for them), but I certainly, certainly, CERTAINLY don’t want to boot professors who “amplify Islamic radical voices” by criticizing our Iraq policy or Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @A Definite Beta Guy

            Institutions of higher learning seem to be the obvious place to put all of your outright bizzaro ideological proponents, including both your KKK members and your communists.

            This seems the opposite of obvious to me? There are lots of jobs in the world. Why would I want to direct ideologically outspoken people into positions where they have the opportunity to attempt to transfer their thoughts to 100’s of students at a time? There are lots of jobs where you don’t do that…perhaps nearly every job that isn’t teacher/writer/media person?

            Your position here is about as un-obvious to me as saying “people prone to ax-murdering should work in ax warehouses”

          • Matt M says:

            It’s the last place an ax-murderer would think to look for them!

          • A Definite Beta Guy says:

            Universities are not high schools and college students are not children. I do not see any particular reason to shield wisdom-seeking critical-thinking adults from any particular ideology.

            If your POV is that some ideologies are simply beyond the pale, I don’t think university should or does qualify as “polite society.” It’s a quarantined laboratory with a few cesspools, swim at your own risk and see what diamonds you can find in the rough.

            If you want to drain the pool, cool. Let’s start with firing all the commies. But if you are going to set up your review committees, there’s still a huge difference between “KKK member” and “talks on a podcast.”

          • Guy in TN says:

            This seems pretty scattershot. On hand hand you are saying that people with unhealthy ideologies need to be in academia, because their ideas are “quarantined there” (???). While on the other, you are saying “actually, we should fire the communists”.

            Maybe pick a lane here? Commentator’s pleas for liberal tolerance would be more believable if they weren’t punctuated by reminders that, actually, if given the power they’d be doing the same thing.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            ADBG’s comment was perfectly understandable.

            1. Let universities be home to all kinds of wacky ideas, even dangerous ones.

            2. But, if we are going to cleanse out the dangerous ideas from universities, then obviously the commies get swept out, too, in order to stop another 8-digit pile of skulls.

          • Why would I want to direct ideologically outspoken people into positions where they have the opportunity to attempt to transfer their thoughts to 100’s of students at a time?

            Because universities are supposed to be educational institutions, and being exposed to a wide range of beliefs is educational.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @Edward Scizorhands

            But, if we are going to cleanse out the dangerous ideas from universities, then obviously the commies get swept out, too, in order to stop another 8-digit pile of skulls.

            Oh. Well since the “fire people for dangerous ideologies” train has already left the station, I recommend informing everyone of the common-sense proposal of firing all communists, that is based on “obvious” assumptions that any reasonable person already believes.

            I presume that since the danger is so obvious, you will have no trouble implementing it with near-unanimous support.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            You seem to have problems with conditional statements.

        • leadbelly says:

          I haven’t listened, but surely the content of the podcasts are important? If he is interviewing the (I hope we can all agree) morally reprehensible Unz, and does so in a chummy and non-confrontational way, isn’t that evidence he is sympathetic to his views?

          • zero says:

            If Ron Unz doesn’t bring up his morally reprehensible views, I’m inclined to believe that it isn’t that strong of evidence.

          • leadbelly says:

            It isn’t like Unz keeps his views secret. Do you believe Hsu would have him on his podcast without even cursorily looking up who he is?

        • etaphy says:

          Have you heard of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio and how it might be a bit relevant to policing others’ acceptable behaviors?

          Let me posit that actual ‘fascism'(if we’re being precise, I’d say ‘communitarian behavior’ instead as it covers both the left-wing and the right-wing illiberal proclivities but I’m going for extra impact here) happens when one is willing to disregard that notion as it would pertain to tone policing others.

        • 10240 says:

          @Dan L I’d say you can just decide if you support or oppose the policies based on non-racial considerations; although when you are trying to predict what policies a politician will make if elected, it can provide a bit of information if he is racist. Not a lot: if there are non-racial justifications/pretexts for the policies, he will probably announce or at least hint at the policies during the campaign, in order to better appeal to racists (as well as others who support the policies for non-racist reasons).

          I acknowledge that many people care more about motive than me.

        • Dan L says:

          @ 10240:

          I’m not sure how you’d expect that to work out in practice, so let’s work an example: a politician runs on a platform of voting reform, including a better-educated voting public. This gets implemented via the stick rather than the carrot – in order to register to vote, you have to pass a basic civics test. But in order to mitigate the immediate disenfranchisement this would cause, voters can be literally “grandfathered-in”, where if they can demonstrate that someone in the past two generation of their family was registered in a state, they can be as well.

          I bet the policy would absolutely achieve its nominal goal. How loudly does it set off your racism alarm?

        • 10240 says:

          @Dan L I’d say any tampering with who can vote is immediately suspicious, especially if it clearly helps the party that proposes it, and it should probably require a supermajority.

      • keaswaran says:

        Are people trying to get him fired from his professor job, or just getting him demoted from a vice provost position to regular old tenured faculty? That makes a huge difference to my evaluation of what’s going on, and it’s not clear from the main post. (And surely, some protestors are asking for each option.)

      • smilerz says:

        Are we discounting the possibility that a person deeply interested a deeply technical subject was simply super excited to talk about his work with anyone that would listen?

        It’s not super unusual for really smart people to fail to grasp how others might view a situation.

      • Jameson Quinn says:

        I’m coming to this whole thing after the fact, and I haven’t looked into it systematically. I’ve seen some stuff, I believe on Delong’s blog about how Hsu rescheduled a lecture for MLK day, a university holiday, then specifically asked the one Black student if they had a problem with that. I also trust Scott’s judgement that Hsu’s a valuable science communicator and is in many contexts a nice guy.

        Based on all that, I personally don’t see a problem with the overall outcome here; that is, that Hsu lost his administrative position directing funds, but kept his faculty position. I’m a supporter of academic freedom but to me that stops at the faculty job; does not cover positions of administrative authority. Yes, if people can lose their admin positions due to online mobs, that can have bad chilling effects; but if people can be bad administrators and yet keep those jobs, that’s bad too, and I don’t know of any system that will avoid both harms. In particular, it seems to me from what I know that Hsu is probably, at the least, contrarian and insensitive to a degree that would give rise to reasonable doubts as to whether he could administrate impartially.

        Now, that said, I am sure that there are details of what happened here that are Very Bad. Online mobs howling for blood are scary things, and I’m not at all endorsing the excesses that I’m sure occurred. I’m just saying, given my limited and partial understanding of what happened, I don’t see what’s so bad about the basic tld̦r outcome.

        ETA: I realize that in Scott’s original post, the accusations against Hsu centered not on the MLK thing, but on him having done an interview with Molyneux. I agree that “don’t talk to person X or you will be cancelled” is a bad standard. In this case, it seems to me, based principally on the MLK thing (and on my understanding that this is part of a larger pattern), that it turns out that Hsu was a valid target for demotion. I don’t know if the cancellers (the ones who just wanted him removed as director of research) just got lucky this time and reached a valid conclusion for invalid logic, or if their underlying valid logic got reduced to something invalid due to compression over a limited-bandwidth channel.

        • Aapje says:

          then specifically asked the one Black student if they had a problem with that

          SJ advocates don’t seem able to make up their mind whether it is crucially important to respect minority opinions on such matters or whether it is discriminating based on race.

          Isn’t this just an allegation where anything he could have done, would be used against him?

    • or that being alt-right is bad and immoral.

      Can you give a definition of alt-right for which that claim is plausible? My impression is that the term covers a fair range of views.

  39. hash872 says:

    Would the US government taking a small % out of everyone’s paycheck for retirement savings, and putting it into an index fund, be workable? Especially if it was opt-out, not opt-in- the feds do it automatically as a nudge, if you have strong feelings about ‘government shouldn’t be making me save for retirement’ you can just fill out a very small form and they’ll return the money, and stop doing it going forward.

    Lack of retirement savings has been widely described as a potential crisis here in the US, and many of us look askew at Social Security. Bush’s plan to replace SS with a market-based retirement scheme was defeated- but what if, everyone with a 401k or pension contributions registered as such with the IRS, and if they’re not contributing, the IRS withholds an extra say 2% from their check, and puts it into a Vanguard-style retirement target index fund? The amount actually taken out from the paycheck would be less than 2% due to its tax-deferred status. And as mentioned, if you have really strong feelings about this, you can easily opt out. This program would include the self-employed (the IRS just includes the 2% in your estimated tax liability- again, would be less than 2% in practice), as they are regularly described as not saving much.

    While I doubt that 2% off of everyone’s check is going to make for substantial retirement savings, it is *something* (and maybe after the program gets off the ground, the % could be gradually increased a bit over time). 5%+ would be ideal, but I think that’s too drastic to just jump into. US equity markets would be happy for the extra funds (don’t many stable developed countries like Japan have high domestic savings rates?) It would be a nudge and not a requirement. It would financially help everyone below the level of upper middle class, which should theoretically make the left happy (yes I understand they’d complain in practice).

    An interesting argument that might make the right happy is that having financial investments has been associated with conservative values (just saw a Marginal Revolution piece on this). Once you have some ‘skin in the game’ in a market economy, one starts to lean at least a bit towards being small c conservative, pro-market, less of a ‘burn down the system/nationalize everything’ AOC/Sanders/far left mindset. Just a thought.

    (A variation on this would be a similar nudge to make employees use their employer 401k matching- I’ve heard that many workers simply don’t take advantage of it. Each employer with a matching program gets registered with the feds, if their employee doesn’t use it the amount gets taken out automatically- again, you can opt out if you’d like)

    • mfm32 says:

      This has been proposed a lot. It actually faces a lot of criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. The left has the concerns you would expect. But critics from the right will often raise the problem that the index funds anointed under this scheme would immediately and inevitably become the most dominant forces in the market, which would be distortionary on its own and would introduce substantial risk (or opportunity, I suppose) for government influence over companies and markets. At an extreme, you risk turning the stock market into some weird fascist / socialist hybrid.

      While I initially thought a scheme like this was a no-brainer, I found those critiques compelling. I think is is a general lesson about thinking through the political and structural consequences of government-led “nudges” that might seem obvious from a more narrow perspective.

      • hash872 says:

        I meant that Vanguard or Black Rock would manage the funds, and that they’d be in say Bob the Bartender’s name- not owned by the US federal government. (I share your concerns about the government being a passive investor in every company). Bob could even liquidate his retirements funds and spend them on a speedboat or strippers if he wants- it’s his money. Here the feds are simply acting as a pass-through mechanism to pass the funds along to the market- the same way one’s current employer is taking a bit out of one’s paycheck and giving it to Charles Schwab or whoever

        • mfm32 says:

          Yes, understood. But the selection of approved funds gives the government a large amount of influence, enough to be substantially concerning on its own. There is not a single index, and there are of course lots of funds that track any popular index. How do you choose which indices are included, and which manager? And then what is the default, which is of course most people will stick with?

          The manager is important for lots of reasons, not least because the fund manager ultimately chooses how to vote the fund’s shares in any corporate governance vote.

          Should the set of choices include an environmental, social, and governance fund? Which one? Should it be the default?

          These sorts of decisions would have enormous market consequences and cannot be avoided in these schemes. I find it very concerning for a government–even a well functioning one–to make those decisions over a capital base that would constitute a large portion of the economy.

          • hash872 says:

            Is there any way we could back of the envelope calculate how much 2% of the American worker’s paycheck is, out of everyone who’s not using a 401k now? That way we could figure out how much money we’re talking about, and see if it would majorly influence existing capital markets.

            My Vanguard Target whatever I believe has a pretty diverse mixing of US & European equity markets, with some growth stuff (Asia) thrown in there

          • mfm32 says:

            Very rough “fast math:”
            (1) Let’s say $10T total US wages (outdated source). Probably an undercount because it won’t include self-employment income.
            (2) 2% of that is $200B
            (3) Apparently 40% of the population uses a 401(k) today (source), so let’s say the net increase from your proposal would be $120B
            (4) That’s a ~25% increase in the total mutual fund market (source), all controlled by a single “plan sponsor” (in this case the U.S. government). By way of comparison, a fund company that captured the entirety of this new business would eclipse all of the existing players in that market except Vanguard.

            And that’s only at a 2% savings rate, which is anemic as you note.

            This proposal would turn the fund industry into a competition for the U.S. government mandated business. I suspect most existing plan sponsors would follow the U.S. government scheme as well, both to capture economies of scale and to avoid regulatory and political risk of deviating from the government scheme. That would increase the market power of the U.S. government decisions.

          • hash872 says:

            Yup, these are all great points. And I’m sure the Dems would demand investment ‘requirements’ to let the bill go through, ESG or green or what have you. On the right, Rubio and others are working to I guess prevent the federal employees’ pension from in any way investing in China? So lots of room for political interference altogether.

            It’s too bad, I personally was less interested in the ‘help the working classes retire’ side than the ‘let’s get all of society invested in the markets so that regular folks have skin in the game with capitalism, become more small c conservative, don’t want to burn the system down as much’, etc.

            (Also, how do high-savings countries like Japan do it? Individual households just choose to invest in their markets directly, no government nudge? I’ve heard that most of the Japanese government’s debt is owned domestically)

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        Yeah, I used to be “this is a no-brainer” camp, too. But I’ve just become so much more suspicious of people tinkering with things and there’s so many ways things could go wrong.

        We also had the bad timing of Bush proposing this just before a market crash, so people don’t fairly evaluate it.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        As a left-wing anti-monopolist those right-wing arguments were also my arguments.

        What are the typical left-wing concerns, then?

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          Left-wing concerns are that they just don’t trust the market. Sometimes with good reason, sometimes not.

          I can sit down and explain the market risks but I’ll just be Miss Othmar.

    • John Schilling says:

      It would greatly aggravate the existing problems with index funds in that they eliminate the vital feedback signal that the stock market is supposed to provide. If index funds are a little fringe thing, then they are a low-effort way for a small investor to achieve near-optimal results while freeloading on the more informed and focused investors’ analytical efforts. If index funds are the One True Way that everybody invests, then we lose the ability to say “While generally bullish on the market as a whole, the consensus among high-effort investors is that XYZcorp is doing something really stupid and a whole lot of capital is going to shift to the more sensible ABC Inc if XYZ doesn’t change its ways”. This results in highly suboptimal allocation of resources, and eventually no one will have reason to be generally bullish on the market.

      TL, DR: The government shouldn’t be in the business of picking the winners in the stock market, not even if it outsources that decision to a committee at Standard & Poor’s.

      • Randy M says:

        At that point, does the finance industry provide any added value?

      • mfm32 says:

        I find this argument very hard to understand. The more passive money there is in the market, the greater the returns to putting in effort for active investing. At the core of every “index fund doom loop” argument I’ve read is a claim that passive investment crowds out active investment, but the dynamics pretty clearly work in the opposite direction. Passive investment raises the rewards for active investing.

        • John Schilling says:

          Passive investment raises the rewards for active investing.

          It doesn’t much raise the rewards for active investing in the stocks making up the index, because they’re basically locked relative to one another by so much immobile passive money that the active investors can neither move them or profit from their movements. There will still be a secondary market in non-indexed stocks, with the possibility for large gains and losses, but I don’t think that nearly makes up for it.

          Also, what does it matter whether there would theoretically be rewards to be made in active investing, if the government (or the managers of your corporate 401K, whatever) takes most of your investing money and puts it in index funds whether you like it or not?

          Leave it alone, and if the index stocks stagnate then yes people will rationally shift their investment money to more active investments. This proposal breaks that signal as well, and largely locks the middle class out of the still-profitable side of the market. Yes, there will be a small population of rich (and a few very dedicated middle class) investors profiting in the non-indexed market. Why do you care?

          • mfm32 says:

            Index funds are price takers. They don’t “lock” anything in. They don’t exert price pressure at all, in the main.

            If we take the simplified case of an ETF and exclude index rebalancing for the moment, there is no price-moving trading that happens at all within an index fund. If the underlying stocks move, the ETF arbitrage mechanism reflects that (eventually) in the ETF price. But the ETF itself doesn’t do anything in the market. And all of the other activity is by definition active.

            It’s almost a contradiction in terms to worry about the whole market becoming passive. The mechanisms that underlie the market don’t work that way.

        • baconbits9 says:

          I find this argument very hard to understand. The more passive money there is in the market, the greater the returns to putting in effort for active investing. At the core of every “index fund doom loop” argument I’ve read is a claim that passive investment crowds out active investment, but the dynamics pretty clearly work in the opposite direction. Passive investment raises the rewards for active investing.

          Passive investing is by definition investing that ignores price. You put your money into an ETF and leave it there until you retire, and have no opinion on the price (to high, to low, just right) at any point. However you ETF is managed, it buys bundles based on the valuations of the stocks, so when you put your money into an ETF you functionally are saying ‘I agree with the market’s most recent move in this stock’ which means you are expressing an opinion without having an opinion. This would be kind of like if in an election everyone who didn’t vote automatically would have (at random times) a vote put in for the person in the lead at that point in the count.

          Now how does the active managing portion of the market exploit this inefficiency? The traditional way is to use arbitrage and sell the over valued stock vs the undervalued stocks, but arbitrage requires a return to the ‘correct’ valuation to work, and if 13.5% of US income is automatically put into an ETF every week then there is an automatic bid for every company, and any divergence between stocks has a self reinforcing mechanism which pushes against the arbitrage.

          This is more or less the same mechanism that causes ‘excess’ liquidity to drive markets up. The cheap borrowing reinforces optimistic investors more than it does pessimistic investors (buying and shorting are not mirror images of each other and this asymmetry is amplified by liquidity/margin buying). Going net long the market with leverage is a self reinforcing position in a world with excess liquidity*, and to prevent a crash you have to perpetually maintain excess liquidity.

          Returning back to the ETF buying, like excess liquidity having to be maintained, you have to maintain a net positive purchase of the ETFs. If you have a spherical economy with a perfect age, income and employment distribution then things are fine, for every retiree who starts selling his ETFs you have a new worker with exactly the same level of income just starting a job and buying exatly that amount of ETFs for their retirement.

          If you do not have a spherical cow economy then there will be at some point a switch from net buying to net selling of ETFs which will start a reinforced market decline (see Japan over the past 40 years).

          *Excess liquidity here means something like the cost of borrowing money failing to increase with increases in borrowing.

          • mfm32 says:

            I don’t follow your argument because I am having trouble connecting it to the actual mechanics of an ETF. As I’m sure you know, the ETF in which you own shares doesn’t “buy” anything in the sense of putting in a bid for a stock. It merely exchanges shares in itself for baskets of underlying securities. And it is generally passive in those transactions. Other market participants come to it and make exchanges. It doesn’t prompt them. It is a market maker.

            All of that means the price discovery is offloaded to other market participants, who are by definition active investors. The fact that there is lots of “slow” money ready to follow price changes raises the reward to driving that price discovery, for example by putting in a bid for a stock that you think is undervalued. Or investing in an index that isn’t market-cap weighted. Or any number of other active strategies that still dominate volume in the market.

            The complaints about short selling are an unneeded complexity here. There are lots of strategies beyond long/short, you can get price discovery without short selling at all (not that I’d support that), and short selling has always been a very difficult game because of the positive expected return of the stock market. That short sellers complain loudly about all of these facts is just self-serving noise.

          • baconbits9 says:

            I don’t follow your argument because I am having trouble connecting it to the actual mechanics of an ETF. As I’m sure you know, the ETF in which you own shares doesn’t “buy” anything in the sense of putting in a bid for a stock. It merely exchanges shares in itself for baskets of underlying securities. And it is generally passive in those transactions. Other market participants come to it and make exchanges. It doesn’t prompt them. It is a market maker.

            How is an ETF formed? At first it has zero value, so say you start an ETF with a million dollars. You call it the S&P 500 ETF, and it has $1,000,000 in assets in cash. Will this ETF mimic the returns of the S&P 500? No, it will mimic the returns of cash since its only asset is cash, for it to mimic the returns of the S&P 500 it will have to exchange that cash for claims on other assets that mimic (either directly through stock purchases or indirectly through derivative exposure) the S&P 500. In other words you are exchanging the cash in the ETF for the stocks that represent the S&P 500 (sometimes with some extra distance). Now if someone else wants $1,000,000 of exposure to my S&P 500 etf (a I don’t sell my million directly) they can create new shares of my ETF by putting cash directly into the ETF which then is (in fairly short order) ‘swapped’ for exposure to the S&P 500.

            It doesn’t prompt them. It is a market maker.

            This view skips the step of how ETFs get the cash to become market makers. It starts from the supposition that there is a fixed number of ETF shares and S&P 500 shares and there is simply a shifting around of those shares, and ignores that first a deposit has to be made, which then creates the ETF shares which are then exchanged for the basket of shares.

            for example by putting in a bid for a stock that you think is undervalued

            But not, for example, shorting a stock that you think is overvalued.

            The way that you can take advantage of this situation is to front-run the purchases, ie to add more buying pressure to the market and to skew the market higher, and then to front run the selling when the inflection point is reached to then skew the markets lower.

          • mfm32 says:

            Unless I misunderstand you, your description bears no resemblance to how ETFs work. There are no deposits to an ETF. No one “puts cash” into an ETF. In the main, the ETF never buys or sells shares for cash. It only acquires shares through in-kind creation / redemption transactions, which can occur only with investors who are by definition “active” in the sense that they do not simply index. In short, your proposed mechanism whereby ETFs bid up stocks cannot happen, because ETFs don’t enter bids.

            And the short selling point is still a red herring. Most goods in the world can’t easily be shorted, yet price discovery still works. I agree with the claim that short selling helps market efficiency in a number of ways, but it’s clearly not required for price discovery to work.

            What you refer to as “front running” is the mechanism by which price discovery in a market works. Because passive investors do not, by definition, take directional positions in the market, their only participation in that process is to buy from or sell to the informed traders at the market price. That supports price discovery, because it makes it easier and more efficient for an informed trader to take a directional position.

            There is still Bill Sharpe’s critique that active investing must, on average, lose money so it ought never exist in an efficient market. But that is an argument that applies no matter how much passive investing there is in the market.

          • baconbits9 says:

            Unless I misunderstand you, your description bears no resemblance to how ETFs work. There are no deposits to an ETF. No one “puts cash” into an ETF

            Explain how an ETF is formed. At one point it doesn’t exist, at another point it is set up and ‘tracks’ something else which has an established value. Walk through that middle period.

          • mfm32 says:

            With the caveat that ETF formation is a sideshow that must be quantitatively irrelevant to the overall market, here’s how it works in simple form.

            The trust for the ETF is formed in partnership an “authorized participant,” always a large institutional investor. That investor pledges shares in the underlying basket of securities to the ETF, receiving in return shares of the ETF. The authorized participant then sells the ETF shares on the market. The market price of the ETF shares track the underlying security basket by the arbitrage opportunity of creation / redemption transactions. Crucially, all of the ETF transactions are in-kind. They do not involve trading cash for shares, either of the ETF or the underlying securities. The ETF doesn’t “buy” or “sell” anything in the traditional sense, and certainly it doesn’t participate in the standard stock exchange trading processes.

            Could you argue that these dynamics create a distortionary effect on prices of underlying securities? Maybe. I personally don’t think there’s a compelling argument there, but I can’t exclude the possibility.

            But to make that argument you have to address–and therefore understand–the mechanisms as they actually work.

          • nkurz says:

            @mfm32:
            > Crucially, all of the ETF transactions are in-kind.

            I’m not familiar with the creation of ETF’s, but the beginner’s level summary provided by Charles Schwab says: “Under certain circumstances, an AP may provide cash in lieu of some or all of the basket securities, along with a transaction fee to offset the cost to the ETF of acquiring the securities.”

            Is this a sufficiently rare event that it can always be ignored?

            > Could you argue that these dynamics create a distortionary effect on prices of underlying securities? Maybe. I personally don’t think there’s a compelling argument there, but I can’t exclude the possibility.

            Both you and baconbits9 seem to be assuming an open-ended broad index ETF consisting only of long stocks, but does your opinion apply to all ETF’s? For example, if the 2% of all US payroll proposed by hash872 was mandated to be put in a particular ETF physically backed by platinum each year, would you similarly think that it would have no effect on the price of platinum? I’m not sure it would, but intuitively I’d think it must. If it would have an effect, why would stocks be different? If no effect, how would this work once there is not enough platinum at the current price to back the fund?

          • mfm32 says:

            @nkurz

            I’m not an expert, but I strongly suspect cash transactions by ETFs to be very rare. The simple reason is that the tax-advantaged status that ETFs enjoy (and their main advantage over mutual funds) relies on the in-kind transactions. Cash transactions ought to be taxed. But there are lots of ETFs in the world and they have gotten more complicated in recent years.

            As for the impact of ETFs on price, let me clarify: of course ETFs have an impact on prices of the underlying assets. If nothing else, purchases and sales of the ETF shares induces trading in the underlying through the arbitrage mechanism. I just don’t see a reason to believe that effect distorts price discovery. By definition, index investors are informationless traders who buy and sell at the market price, more or less randomly (let us simplify and say uniformly). I don’t see why we can’t treat them as a passive pool of liquidity, willingly taking the other side of trades that active investors offer. In that model, they support price discovery by making assets more liquid. The benefit would be increased if you assume–as I think is reasonable–that before indexing most passive investors were not particularly good at active investing. The total effect would be an increase in liquidity, which makes it easier for the remaining active investors to act on their information advantage, combined with an increase in the average quality (i.e. information advantage) of active investors.

            As I’ve said, there may be arguments that an increase in passive investing is a threat to price discovery. But I think those arguments have to be consonant with the way the market works at a mechanical level (vs. the abstractions that most participants and observer typically use). Statements that imply index funds are “locked in” to something or “forced to buy” require justification based on the actual mechanics. I chose ETFs as an example to explore how that might work, and I personally found the resulting explanation quite lacking.

          • nkurz says:

            @mfm32:

            Thanks, I appreciate the added details.

          • AdTriariosRedisse says:

            I’ll chime in with some details as I work directly with the management of several ETFs. The day to day management of ETFs includes a fair bit of trading activity. You already pointed out Cash-in-lieu trades, but the portfolio managers also trade to get rid of excess cash that has accumulated in the fund. This trading activity is generally pretty small proportionally, but index tracking ETFs also regularly rebalance, which sometime involves the buying and selling a significant fraction of a fund’s holdings. How and when a ETF rebalances is actually laid out in the prospectus if you’re curious. One mistake both you guys have made is the assumption that all ETFs are index tracking. Index Tracking ETFs certainly make up the majority of ETFs, but there are also plenty of actively managed ones out there too.

      • hash872 says:

        I don’t really agree with this popular criticism of index funds (if this were the case, doesn’t that simply put more potential money on the table for the smart active funds who are so much sharper than the dumb passive sheep?) But if that’s the only sticking point, then we can offer whatever are normal retirement plan options that existing 401k participants are already using- mutual funds or ‘growth’ funds or whatever.

        The point is a nudge to take a small % out of everyone’s paycheck to save for retirement.

        (Plus I believe the Vanguard Target Retirement X Year fund thingy re-allocates a bunch as we get closer to retirement, right? More bonds, less equities, etc.)

        • baconbits9 says:

          (if this were the case, doesn’t that simply put more potential money on the table for the smart active funds who are so much sharper than the dumb passive sheep?

          How will the smart active fund managers make money on this?

          • Anatid says:

            They will look for stocks that are overvalued or undervalued relative to their future dividends, and they will buy the undervalued ones and sell the overvalued ones. Then they’ll wait to collect an outsize profit from buying undervalued stocks that go on to pay out a lot of dividends. If there are very few active investors compared to passive investors, many stocks will be trading far from the expected value of their future dividends and it will be possible to make lots of money by this method. Lots of people will notice this and become active investors and they will make lots of money doing it. The activity of these active investors will cause stock prices to quickly move toward the expected value of their future dividends.

    • matkoniecz says:

      There will be a huge temptation

      – (a) to raid this funds in a future (either by individuals if it is their property or by government if it is on some government account)
      – (b) charge absurdly high fees

      Both happened in Poland where basically this system* was tried under name OFE (“Otwarte Fundusze Emerytalne”). See https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otwarty_fundusz_emerytalny (no English Wikipedia page, sorry)

      *except “index” part

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      Just going to piggyback here to say, those of you with teenagers, strongly consider setting them up a custodial IRA. Then get them in the habit that when they get money from babysitting or mowing lawns or bagging groceries or whatever, they put 10% in their IRA. Start that early and they will retire with a very nice sum. Or retire early. What a great gift for your kids. Join the rentier class.

      The hardest part of retirement savings is going from “nothing” to “literally anything.” Go ahead and set that system up for your kids so they don’t have to try to understand what the hell they should be doing when they’re in their early 20s and are still dumb about money.

      • hash872 says:

        Yeah, great point. Growing up in a not-wealthy/not financially sophisticated family, I didn’t know any of this stuff until I got quite a bit older. I definitely could’ve benefited from the custodial IRA. More than the actual amount saved from teenage jobs, the important thing is ‘building the habit’.

        I know Rich Dad/Poor Dad came out a while ago, but I’m still a bit fascinated by the topic of what upper class families pass on to their kids (as I had none of it, other than I guess a love for books)

      • anon-e-moose says:

        Custodial ROTH IRA, not Traditional. Schwab does it, some custodians do not. Remember that the minor must have earned income of you’ll run afoul of contribution limits.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        If you do this fricking teach them how to manage it. Don’t leave them in the position of having to, as an adult, reach out to a random person in the investment firm to ask how to add or withdraw from the account.

        I was in this position with Waddell & Reed when I needed to liquidate my account for expenses in 2007. Thankfully I eventually figured it out, but the difficulty in figuring out how to access my money certainly made me leery of investing with a brokerage firm in the future.

        (I understand that my account was not an IRA, still it’s necessary that they understand how to handle any investment account. And really, be careful with mandating this for your child. Get them to buy in to it, don’t just use your power as the adult to force them in to it.)

    • digbyforever says:

      I don’t know how relevant this is, but it’s worth highlighting a small ball version of this that was around for a few years, the so-called MyRA account. I think the key distinction was it was a Roth IRA that had to be invested in Treasury Bonds, so low risk, low reward, and the limits were much smaller, if nothing. I know I tried to get a buddy of mine who’s never had a job that offered retirement benefits to sign up so at least he could put away something for the future (and I think you could rollover into a normal Roth IRA if you saved enough), and that I thought it was a decent idea to provide a way for folks who otherwise wouldn’t have access to the retirement infrastructure to participate. But wikipedia indicates that apparently there were only 20,000 accounts total when they decided to scrap the program.

    • keaswaran says:

      What is the advantage of this over a system where the fund is entirely internal to the government, and the total value of the fund is determined by the dollar value of current contributions to the fund? That is, instead of giving everyone shares in the corporate stock market, give people shares in future wages/salaries. Those should be more stable than the stock market, but should also grow in line with general growth.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        This is presumably what social security will become when the trust fund is exhausted.

      • Christophe Biocca says:

        I’m not clear on what math you’re proposing here.

        Is the idea that if your average annual contributions to the fund constituted 1 in 400,000,000 over your working life, once you’re retired you’re entitled to 1 in 400,000,000 of the fund’s income during retirement?

        If that’s the case, working population is static, and taking 70% of working post-tax income as the income level you need for retirement (which is probably an underestimate, from my reading), you’d need the fund to capture approximately 40% of post-other-tax income. That’s a big chunk, and it’s worse if working population shrinks.

        • keaswaran says:

          Aren’t working population and average salary growing? Isn’t that what GDP growth is all about? We get occasional drops, but those are rare.

          Also, I think your 40% calculation might be assuming that everyone collects social security for the same number of years that they pay in, but I’m not sure I followed the details. If people expect on average to collect for fewer years than they pay in, then the number needed should be less.

          • Christophe Biocca says:

            The mistake I made was in assuming there were equal numbers of retirees as working-age people (which would be true under the same-number-of-years-assumption and static population, but it’s obviously not how this works). Using the 2.8 Social Security contributor to beneficiary ratio from 2013 (it has been decreasing steadily over time, so it’s probably a bit worse now), then the funding ratio is proportionally better.

            Population growth is exogenous and not something you want to depend on.

            Salary growth is driven by productivity growth, which is driven by investment. Normally, saving for retirement is shifting resources from consumption to investment now so that you can do the reverse at a later time with the returns from that investment. This investment increases productivity which is what’s actually needed to support someone down the line who won’t work but still consume. The two are tied together.

            In-current-time redistribution loses that benefit to the extent that it crowds out regular saving and investment.

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        It’s messy and opaque and probably useless to save money for the future by lending yourself your own scrip.

        The USG is so massive that it can conceivably be the counter-party for just about every other organization on Earth. In an inversion of the Lottery Paradox (where nearly every ticket is worthless so you assume all tickets are worthless), people assume that since it can be trusted in nearly every case it can be trusted in all cases.

        But the one organization that the USG cannot be a counter-party for is the USG.

      • a real dog says:

        The demographic collapse rendering the entire scheme unworkable and your retirees being at risk of dying in the streets. Moreover, once the fun starts, the young people start to realize that their payout is after the inevitable collapse, inter-generational solidarity breaks down and everyone is out for themselves and attempts to cheat the system however they can.

        This may, in fact, be based on current events in my country of residence.

    • Juanita del Valle says:

      The Australian superannuation scheme is similar to this. Individuals can choose who will manage their compulsory savings, from a long list of fund managers, who in turn offer different investment plans. There is no opt-out option: you can only access your funds pre-retirement age if you have are able to claim, among other possible conditions, severe financial hardship.

      As you suggest, this has resulted in Australia having a very large stock of funds under management given its population size. And some people have claimed that it has, at times, encouraged the populace towards more right-wing positions. For example, a proposed tax on mining companies supposedly became unpopular partly because of the possible impact on these savings accounts.

      Overall though, the system has bipartisan support, with only debate in recent years being about how much the rate of forced savings should be increased by (it is currently 9.5%, the left-of-center party wants to push it higher than the right-of-center party does).

      There are also more pernicious effects. The fund managers have a very, very large interest in the system remaining as it is, or being redesigned to channel more money to be under their management. And there are various issues with the way tax rules interact with the system, which often end up disproportionately benefiting the well-off.

  40. AlesZiegler says:

    If you are in need of distractions, I just discovered few hours of Larry Susskind, who uncanilly resembles a character played by Charles Dance on Game of Thrones, explaining quantum mechanics to Stanford students. It is amazingly good, at least if you, like me, do not know anything about the subject. He also has similar lectures on special and general relativity.

  41. Nick says:

    On a completely different topic: I’ve been reading some honkaku mysteries. Honkaku is Japanese for “orthodox” or “authentic”; it’s a subgenre that revived Golden Age conventions of mystery writing with strong puzzle plots. Apparently it has branched out in interesting ways since then, but I haven’t looked into that; maybe someone more knowledgeable about that could share.

    I started with Soji Shimada’s The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, and then I moved onto his Murder in the Crooked House, both from Pushkin press. The first was an amazing mystery. The second was pretty good, too; I only found the solution a bit out there. Shimada takes the puzzle very seriously, to the extent that there is a note in each book telling the reader when all the needed information has been given and challenging him to solve it before the detective does. It’s a great deal of fun; words cannot describe my elation when I discovered the key to the first book and worked out most of the mystery. Alas, Murder in the Crooked House wounded my pride somewhat. 🙁

    I had my eye on The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji next, and I hear it has an English translation, but I can’t actually find it in print, and Pushkin’s edition is not coming out until December. If anyone has suggestions on what I should read til then, let me know.

  42. rocoulm says:

    This week on opinions that don’t matter…

    Does anyone find it odd the way the phrase “social distancing” has been used? Like, it’s used to mean “physical distance in social situations”, but it sounds to me like it should be more…allegorical, I guess.

    If you’d asked me pre-COVID what the term meant, I probably would’ve thought a “socially distant” person was enigmatic, hard to get to know well, that sort of thing.

    • Statismagician says:

      It’s not just you, I think it’s a pretty silly-sounding term. ‘Give everyone six feet of personal space,’ for example, feels much less forced.

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      Agreed, it should be called “physical distancing,” while people should be encouraged to stay “socially close” via online/telephone interactions.

      • Evan Þ says:

        The WHO made just that change back on March 20th. Unfortunately, the old term’s stuck around.

        • Kaitian says:

          I think people like it because it sounds like “social media” which is hip and modern. But “physical distancing” just has a weird rhythm, I’m not surprised it hasn’t caught on.

          Apparently the term was coined in 2003, when “not physically meeting” was a much larger issue for most people than it is now.

        • keaswaran says:

          It’s interesting how much sensitive details of the timing some of the terminological changes has mattered. They got the words “SARS-COV-1” and “COVID-19” out there in February, which was early enough to largely catch on. The 2015 choice to stop naming diseases after places, jobs, or animals was very successful for this disease, but way too late for 2009 H1N1. This terminological change on “physical distancing” was just too late in the process – three weeks earlier and it surely would have caught on, because all the US restrictions and most of the European ones would have included the newer term.

    • gbdub says:

      It’s more like “societal distancing”, but that’s slightly trickier to say. Or “distant socializing”, but again, awkward. You need something that is easy to remember and doesn’t already mean something else.

    • Eric Rall says:

      I think it was originally supposed to mean something like “reduce the number of people you have close physical contact with”, which if applied on a population level will generally place people substantially further away on a social graph, meaning that the virus will have to make more hops in order to get to you from one of the people who are currently infected.

      This was not explained clearly to the public, and one of the most-repeated admonitions in support of “social distancing” was “stay at least 6 feet away from others when in a public place” which specifically mentions increased physical distance. So understandably, people started understanding and using “social distancing” to refer to physical distancing in public places.

    • J says:

      Originally they just called it distancing, but there were tragic misunderstandings with programmers trying to maximize Hamming distance, pilots maximizing geodesic distance, and mathematicians maximizing Hausdorff distance. Now they’ve clarified it to mean social distance, which we have all taken to mean maximizing the degree to which we ostracize others based on slight political differences.

  43. gbdub says:

    Scott,

    FWIW I looked at the petition link last night and it’s a Google Doc that a lot of people appeared to still be editing. I could see people being uncomfortable with affixing their name to something that is still a work in progress, so if I’m not misinterpreting what is going on, it would probably be good to add a warning to this effect and an update when the petition text is final.

  44. somervta says:

    A significantly better collection of the case in favour of the GEU petition is here, linking all of the back-and-forth between Hsu and his opponents.

    • zero says:

      I had to stop reading when the post decided to attack him based on who signed the petition, cherry-picking the worst of the signatories and using that as evidence for the accusations. No. No. No.

      • Marvin says:

        This makes me wonder, if the argument that bad people signing some petition can discredit the cause behind the petition is taken seriously (and not merely used to try to throw as much dirt as possible, reason be damned), then it could be worth it for bad people signing petitions they do not support in order to discredit them.

        Is this merely an absurdity against this type of argument, or has this already happened?

    • Pepe says:

      Yeah, that is not better in any way. That is just the original lynch mob organizer flinging a lot of shit at a lot of people. Also, using the Southern Law Poverty Center as some sort of authority.

      • Matt M says:

        Also, using the Southern Law Poverty Center as some sort of authority.

        Nearly every powerful institution in society believes they are. If Hsu is officially on SPLC’s “bad person” list, his time is limited and this fight is probably not worth having at all…

        • Randy M says:

          Or alternatively, is a very important fight.

        • Pepe says:

          He is not, but some people that signed the letter supporting him are, therefore, he is guilty by association.

        • salvorhardin says:

          The SPLC enemies list can be pushed back on. Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali haven’t done too badly for themselves.

          • Clutzy says:

            Didn’t they use non-American courts. The broad, and not very well supported in tradition, Sullivan case has more or less sanctioned lying about public figures in the US.

            The only major winner of a libel case recently was Sandman, who was just a kid that media people started lying about.

          • John Richards says:

            I wonder what it is about these two individuals, in particular, that helped them get out of their clutches.

          • DeWitt says:

            Do you mind sharing with the class, or are you just going to be smugly implying stuff?

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ salvorhardin

            Yes, I was happy to hear about those cases. Unfortunately, I’m unaware of any others where the SPLC has been penalized monetarily.

            @ Clutzy

            Perhaps another (somewhat recent) example is Sabrina Erdely. My understanding is that the Rolling Stone paid the 2 million dollar penalty, unfortunately.

    • AliceToBob says:

      @ somervta

      After labeling as racist a number of academics who signed the letter defending Hsu, the author of your linked-to article wraps up with:

      To be clear, all these academics are free to research, write, speak, and publish as they wish. However, in the context of defending a colleague against accusations of scientific racism, a more strategic decision may have been to not sign at all.

      The first sentence is a lie, as evidenced by this whole crusade to purge Hsu. The second is a blatant threat.

      If by “better” you meant “bottom-of-the-barrel scummy”, then I agree with your characterization.

      • keaswaran says:

        Has anyone advocated the claim that Hsu shouldn’t research, write, speak, or publish as he wishes? I thought this was just about whether he would continue to have a major administrative position that helps oversee the resources given to *other* people’s research.

        • AliceToBob says:

          Has anyone advocated the claim that Hsu shouldn’t research, write, speak, or publish as he wishes?

          Hsu’s job is being threatened due to some combination of the above. I’m unsure if the constraints you mention have been made more explicit than that.

          I thought this was just about whether he would continue to have a major administrative position that helps oversee the resources given to *other* people’s research.

          Correct. Hsu’s job is being threatened due to some combination of the above.

          • keaswaran says:

            Which job of Hsu’s is being threatened? That is the question I want to know. It is one thing if his job as VPR is threatened. It is another thing entirely if his job as professor is threatened. Nothing I have seen says anything about *which* job is threatened or how, just that a crowd of protesters is demanding *something*.

          • Aftagley says:

            Putting my cynical hat on, it’s because it’s in both group’s best interest to keep that particular detail as fuzzy as possible for as long as possible.

            The protesting people probably would be happy if he got fully fired from being a professor, but they know their position to have him removed as VPR and they know their case for getting him removed from the latter is stronger. So, they likely want to conflate the two.

            Hsu’s supporters, on the other hand, understand their defense as keeping him as a professor is much stronger than their defense of him remaining the VPR, but they don’t want either taken away, so they make it look like both are being attacked.

          • rumham says:

            @Aftagley

            Putting my cynical hat on

            If my memory serves, every time I see you do this, I end up agreeing with you.

            What this means about the actual reasoning put forth I leave as an exercise to the reader.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ Aftagely

            Putting my cynical hat on, it’s because it’s in both group’s best interest to keep that particular detail as fuzzy as possible for as long as possible.

            The protesting people probably would be happy if he got fully fired from being a professor, but they know their position to have him removed as VPR and they know their case for getting him removed from the latter is stronger. So, they likely want to conflate the two.

            In the first paragraph of the open letter by those wishing to see Hsu fired:

            We are faculty, students, support staff, and allies within and outside Michigan State University demanding that Stephen Hsu be removed from his position as Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation.

            And you go on to say:

            Hsu’s supporters, on the other hand, understand their defense as keeping him as a professor is much stronger than their defense of him remaining the VPR, but they don’t want either taken away, so they make it look like both are being attacked.

            In the open letter of support for Hsu, the second paragraph:

            We highlight that there is zero concrete evidence that Hsu has performed his duties as VP in an unfair or biased manner. Therefore, removing Hsu from his post as VP would be to capitulate to rumor and character assassination.

            So, I guess you can take your cynical hat off. There is no need to accuse either side of playing games.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @keaswaran

            Which job of Hsu’s is being threatened? That is the question I want to know.

            It is the position of VP for Research and Innovation; see my comment above to Aftagely. This detail has not been obscured.

            But I fail to see what it has to do with with our exchange. I referred to the two lines in the article by Kevin Bird linked to by somervta. Regardless of which job Hsu stands to lose, it’s a lie to claim:

            “To be clear, all these academics are free to research, write, speak, and publish as they wish.”

            It would be more truthful to claim:

            “To be clear, all these academics are free to research, write, speak, and publish as they wish, so long as they realize it may result in their removal from any position of power in the university administration”.

            Of course, that doesn’t sound very good…

          • Dan L says:

            So, I guess you can take your cynical hat off. There is no need to accuse either side of playing games.

            My opinions on the object questions regarding Hsu are complicated, but I really don’t like the process by which this nuance was lost, be it through cynical moves or more common laziness.

          • rumham says:

            @Aftagley

            Guess that answers the question. I’m obviously too cynical.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          Has anyone

          I doubt this is your actual threshold.

          If I go find one person who goes beyond “remove Hsu from his administrative position, but that’s all,” will that cause you to change your mind?

          Or would you say “by anyone I meant anyone relevant/important/significant, in which case let’s get that definition of relevant/important/significant out of the way.

          • keaswaran says:

            Yes, this is all stuff that we should be clearer about in this type of debate.

            There’s a question about what Michigan State should do.

            There’s a question about what various protesters are demanding.

            There’s a question about what I should personally say about the protesters demanding each of these things.

            I’m fine with “canceling” protesters that are calling for his faculty position to be rescinded. I’m not fine with “canceling” protesters that are merely demanding for him to lose his VPR position. I don’t know enough yet to have a clear opinion about whether he should in fact keep or lose the VPR position.

            But a lot of people here seem to think that all the protesters should be canceled, without even asking the question about which protesters are demanding what.

  45. Matt M says:

    Would anyone like to make a Steelman argument in favor of why mainstream journalists can/should/would publish news pieces (not op-eds or commentary) related to COVID trends and the effectiveness of various policies that focus exclusively on one of the cases/hospitalizations/deaths variables and completely fail to discuss any of the others.

    It strikes me as almost criminally negligent to publish a “cases are rising” piece that makes no mention whatsoever of what’s happening in hospitalizations or deaths. What legitimate reason is there to do this? How does this better inform the public?

    Any article I see that mentions trends in cases or hospitalizations or deaths, but does not refer to the other things at all, I am treating as an opinion piece that is intended to advocate a policy position, and not as a news piece that is intended to objectively inform. Is this unreasonable of me?

    • zero says:

      If you’re trying to measure recent trends, hospitalizations and deaths are data that reflect case numbers days before. Of course, the case numbers we have have their own set of issues.

      • Matt M says:

        Fair enough. But if you’re truly looking to inform, wouldn’t it be worth it to include a simple two-line paragraph that says something like “Many skeptics are pointing to the fact that hospitalizations and deaths are flat as a cause for optimism, however, all the experts agree that these are lagging indicators and we would not expect to see them spike until approximately two weeks following a spike in cases.”

        What’s the Steelman for not saying that? For avoiding any mention of a possible skeptical position whatsoever?

        • albatross11 says:

          Reporters are probably mostly not all that sophisticated users of these statistics. High quality sources of information *do* make the distinction between positive tests, number of tests, hospitalizations, and deaths, and clarify the lag time between them, but most mainstream news sources aren’t high-quality sources of information about science or medicine.

          • Matt M says:

            Sorry, this sounds like more of an excuse than a Steelman.

            I’m not a sophisticated user of any of these statistics, but I still understand that there are many variables to consider, and considering only one and ignoring all others is a good way to guarantee you’re not getting the full picture and that your understanding will end up severely lacking.

            And it’s not laziness either, because these articles do have numbers and statistics in them. It’s not as if the reporters can’t or won’t go get and think about and manipulate data.

        • Wrong Species says:

          But if you’re truly looking to inform, wouldn’t it be worth it to include a simple two-line paragraph that says something like “Many skeptics are pointing to the fact that hospitalizations and deaths are flat as a cause for optimism, however, all the experts agree that these are lagging indicators and we would not expect to see them spike until approximately two weeks following a spike in cases.”

          I don’t see how this is that big of a problem. Either death rates start trending up again, which justifies the concern, or they don’t, in which case it’ll show up in the data. Not pointing out other factors has been a long running problem with reporting but what you are talking about here will fix itself soon enough.

          The bigger problem, I think, is that they’ll write these horror pieces about it going up in Texas, Florida or wherever and not even bother to admit that it’s also going up in blue states like California.

          None of it really matters at this point though. Everyone has a side so the right has tuned out CNN and the left will continue to lecture the right about being irresponsible. It doesn’t really matter what specifically the media says about it now.

          • albatross11 says:

            And the only problem with that is that reality does not give a flying fuck whether my tribe believes in it or your tribe does. Even if the social truth where you live is that the virus is just a bad flu and only kills old folks anyway, or the social truth is that racism is a pandemic too so nobody should worry about spreading the virus during protests, the actual true truth is going to involve a lot of folks dying of pneumonia. Quite possibly, the social truth will be that anyone who mentions that all the people dying now are the consequence of the previous social truth is a terrible person who should be cancelled or shunned or silenced somehow.

          • rumham says:

            @albatross11

            I’m going to make a prediction now that will indeed happen (already has to some extent) but only in regards to the racism protests. Anti-lockdown protesters will continue to be called Grandma killers.

            Cuomo is already ranting about being science based again, and Fox is not denying that early opening in some states caused a spike.

    • Statismagician says:

      There isn’t one. Rounds-to-all professional reporting on everything coronavirus-related has been epidemiologically and/or statistically illiterate gibberish.

    • MilesM says:

      I would be genuinely interested in seeing such an argument.

      The most charitable interpretation I can come up with for the majority of COVID reporting is that it’s being done for the clicks by people who are too ignorant to realize how damaging it is.

      But I think the failure to always address cases/hospitalizations/deaths (and % of people testing positive) isn’t even the worst of it.

      It’s reports that blatantly ignore incubation time to try to blame something “bad” which happened 2 or 3 days prior for a spike in cases (which often turns out to be a data artifact). Closely followed by ones which find “trends” by looking at the entire country, rather than breaking things down geographically.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      Nate Silver has been complaining about this and will probably keep at it forever.

      The steelman is that journalism has been neutron-bombed by Craigslist and they cannot afford decent reporting.

    • Bobobob says:

      Clicks, clicks, clicks, clicks, clicks. I can’t even stress the word enough. Clicks.

      Most online news outlets are in seriously bad shape, and need quality clicks (NOT the same as “clicks on quality content”) to sell ads against.

      I have been part of this ecosystem, and I can summarize it all in one word. Clicks.

      • Matt M says:

        I’m not complaining about the headlines. Those are what drive the clicks.

        I’m complaining about the fact that even after you click, you get eight paragraphs, none of which bother to include the very basic and useful information that might make someone even a little bit more informed on the topic the headline is ostensibly about.

        I’ve long given up on headlines. I concede that because of how the Internet is, every headline is going to be indistinguishable from “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!”

        • Bobobob says:

          I’m convinced that online articles are written in such a way as to minimize bouncebacks, which get you dinged by Google. So it’s to the news outlet’s advantage to make you hunt through those eight paragraphs for nuggets of information, which keeps you on the site for the requisite 15 or 30 seconds and qualifies the click.

          • Nick says:

            So that’s what is driving that? I’ve wondered for a long time now. Thanks.

          • AG says:

            Huh, does that mean that people could penalize a site by coordinating bounceback campaigns?

          • Bobobob says:

            does that mean that people could penalize a site by coordinating bounceback campaigns?

            Possibly, but I imagine Google has an algorithm that can detect an unusual pattern/source of bouncebacks and discount the signal.

    • Aftagley says:

      It strikes me as almost criminally negligent to publish a “cases are rising” piece that makes no mention whatsoever of what’s happening in hospitalizations or deaths.

      My prior is that some percentage of cases of COVID will result in hospitalization and/or death. So if you say to me, “cases are rising by X%” I just mentally assume that there’s an attendant rise in hospitalizations and deaths.

      • albatross11 says:

        There’s a lagged increase in hospital admissions, and later in deaths. You get exposed today, become contagious in a couple days, start having symptoms in three or four days, feel like you’ve got a bad case of the flu for a week or so, then start having trouble breathing and go to the hospital ten days from now. They put you on oxygen for a couple days along with whatever the current protocol is for treating C19 patients, and as you worsen maybe they eventually put you on a ventilator. You finally die of pneumonia 20 days later.

        Depending on how available tests are, you may get a test when you start getting sick, or you may not get one until you show up at the hospital. Over time, we’re probably getting (in my very amateur view) a longer lag between positive test results and deaths, thanks to more widely available testing and also due to faster turnaround time on tests.

        • Matt M says:

          How long do you suppose it took you to think and type up those two paragraphs?

          Are you a professional scientist? Do you have years of experience as an epidemiologist?

          How come you can do that but seemingly zero journalists can?

          • Murphy says:

            Some journalists can, but I think you’re overestimating both many of the journalists and most of their readers.

            Sadly….

            the majority of readers are on a mental level where they’re sharing facebook status’s about how it’s really 5g towers or that it’s unfair they can’t have a pool party because their horoscope says it’s a good day for their health and they’re on immune-boosting homeopathic pills.

          • nkurz says:

            > How come you can do that but seemingly zero journalists can?

            I don’t disagree with your premise, but I’m not sure that I see any strong incentive for journalists to behave differently than they do. Can you flip things around and make a good argument for why it would benefit any individual reporters to write the pieces as you would like to see them? My fear is that the reporters are behaving rationally, and if you want the reporting to change, you’ll have to somehow change the incentive structure.

          • albatross11 says:

            I read a (paywalled) Wall Street Journal article on how the virus spreads that was pretty careful and nuanced. And I’ve seen some reporting from Vox (notably from Kelsey) that seemed to be trying to play fair with the data. And some other mainstream sources.

            Most journalists and most media sources do badly with it, both for clickbait headline reasons and just because they don’t understand the underlying science or statistics well enough to do a good job.

      • Matt M says:

        Does it matter whether or not that assumption is actually correct? Shouldn’t someone occasionally check to see if it is?

        • Anonymous Bosch says:

          I just asked my doctor friend and he says yes, significant percentages of COVID cases still result in hospitalization and death. Glad I checked, would have to have dated priors on this score because I failed to notice a cure.

          • zero says:

            If the increase in COVID cases is an artifact of increased testing, one would expect to see a higher number of reported cases without an attendant increase in hospitalizations and deaths one or two weeks later.

        • Aftagley says:

          Dumb counterargument: I assume the sun is going to rise again tomorrow. I only want someone to update that assumption if there’s a good chance my assumption is going to be proven incorrect. Unless that’s happening, I don’t need or want every weather forecast to start with “don’t worry, the sun is still going to rise tomorrow.”

          More applicable counterargument: Kind of folding in what albatross11 says above: increased cases are a more time sensitive indicator of the trend. If we make decisions off of infection rate, we can respond within a week or so. If we wait for hospitalizations, we’re limited to waiting 20ish days and if we wait for the trifecta, were a month or so behind. This might be another dumb analogy, but imagine a news article from the world 7 days after the government instituted a mandatory door-knob licking and in-face coughing policy. “Rates of infections increase following change, but hospitalization and death rates unchanged.” You’d agree this would be ludicrous, correct?

      • gbdub says:

        So if you say to me, “cases are rising by X%” I just mentally assume that there’s an attendant rise in hospitalizations and deaths.

        That’s exactly the problem! They aren’t reporting the number of cases, they are reporting the number of new cases confirmed via positive tests. Which of course is highly dependent on how many tests you perform, and on whom.

        As a toy example, consider a state where the only way to get a test is to be hospitalized with COVID symptoms. Then, a week later they roll out drive through tests where anyone who wants a test can get one. A week after that they make testing mandatory for the entire population. You would see a huge jump in confirmed cases each week, even if the total infected was exactly the same.

        Responsible journalism would at least consider things like “positive test rate” “case hospitalization rate” etc. There are many variables and “confirmed cases” is only one. But 90% of the time they don’t even bother to report rates as per capita because raw numbers are scarier.

        • keaswaran says:

          Most of the articles I see in the local media these days are now reporting the positivity rate as well as the number of positive tests. (Probably because the county started reporting this recently, with trends going back several months.)

    • Scott Alexander says:

      Seems okay to me. If some place has better medical care than some other place, they’ll have the same number of infections but fewer deaths. If some place has better social distancing than another place, they’ll have more infections and more deaths. It seems reasonable to care about how good the social distancing is, and, separately, how good the medical care is.

      • Matt M says:

        I’ve been limiting my social media usage lately, so I’m not as entirely up to date in this stuff as I used to be (because social media is pretty much the only place that skeptical arguments are still allowed to exist).

        My understanding is that the skeptic “explanation” for recent case surges is a mixture of demographic changes in who is being infected (more young people, less old people) and improving treatment methods (which would result in fewer hospitalizations and/or deaths per infection).

        Demographic changes would almost certainly be good news. A world where the young and healthy mostly return to normal while we actually do a good job of protecting the elderly and the vulnerable would seemingly be pretty desirable. And this world would, in fact, show cases flat-to-up with hospitalizations and deaths being flat-to-down. So “cases up” isn’t inherently bad so long as the cases are mainly confined to people who either we need to be out there working, or who personally want to be out there working (or doing other stuff to enhance their quality of life), and who are at little risk of death.

        Improving treatment is obviously good as well, but is reasonably unrelated to lockdowns such that it’s not worth spending much time discussing. In any event, what I’m opposed to is not journalists saying “Cases are up and that’s a concern that we should keep our eye on” (Alex Berenson, God-Emperor of the skeptics, has said as much himself), but the fact that they don’t bother to say “Whether or not this is truly a good or a bad thing won’t be certain until we can review the hospitalization numbers ~1 week from now, or the death count ~2 weeks from now.”

    • Well... says:

      You already knew I was going to say this, but I think we need a steelman argument in favor of why any journalists should publish anything.

      I don’t mean why anybody should write about stuff going on in the world — people are curious, enjoy gossip, and like to feel in-the-know, so that part makes sense — but why anybody should write in a way that is meant to pass as authoritative on what is truly happening and what is important to know about, when they have no legitimate claim to such authority.

      And I didn’t mean to hijack the thread; I think answering my question might answer yours.

      • Dan L says:

        why anybody should write in a way that is meant to pass as authoritative on what is truly happening and what is important to know about, when they have no legitimate claim to such authority

        You use a loaded definition of “journalist” that pretty much requires assuming the conclusion. Barring refinement, you can’t judge whether a person who professionally reports on events is a “journalist” until you’ve already arrived at a value judgement.

        • Well... says:

          Nothing in my statement is a value judgment. It’s a plainly worded statement you can test.

          Imagine a short piece of writing, or a talking head on a screen, or a voice on the radio, telling you about something going on in the world in a way that is not meant to sound authoritative about what is truly happening or important to know about; or else imagine one that is meant to sound authoritative on these things — because it actually is produced by someone with the authority to tell you what is truly happening and important to know about.

          Can you imagine an example of either of those that resembles any journalism you have witnessed? I cannot. The former is indistinguishable from blogging, vlogging, podcasting, social media-posting, etc. and the latter is impossible as far as I can figure, with a possible exception if you’re a child and the content is produced by your parents. (If you think journalists do have the authority to tell you what is truly going on and important to know about, I’d love to understand why you think that.)

          Once you’ve determined that someone does not have the authority to tell you what is truly happening and important to know about, but is attempting to give the impression that he does, then you know how to evaluate whatever this person says about COVID-19 (or anything else).

          • Dan L says:

            It’s a plainly worded statement you can test.

            Is Scott a journalist? Why or why not?

            Imagine a short piece of writing, or a talking head on a screen, or a voice on the radio, telling you about something going on in the world in a way that is not meant to sound authoritative about what is truly happening or important to know about; or else imagine one that is meant to sound authoritative on these things — because it actually is produced by someone with the authority to tell you what is truly happening and important to know about.

            Can you imagine an example of either of those that resembles any journalism you have witnessed?

            Easily, it’s probably a majority of my media diet.

            I cannot.

            Well, that’s not good.

            (If you think journalists do have the authority to tell you what is truly going on and important to know about, I’d love to understand why you think that.)

            I want to poke at this concept of “authority” a little more, because it’s coming across as an even-more troublesome form of credentialism. If I ask an experienced doctor – let’s say my PCP – to explain to explain coronavirus to me, do they have this “authority”? If the same woman is featured on a local news segment giving the same explanation, has she lost her “authority”? If Big Cable News features a recurring segment hosted by a former professional doctor who gives much the same explanation, is it coming from an “authority”? Does it matter if BCN’s correspondent never gave up his practice and still works there part time?

          • Well... says:

            In that instance, yes, Scott was a journalist. He was writing under the banner of Vox, a journalism outlet, and the presentation of his writing there was meant to make his piece look authoritative in the way I described.

            But of course we more commonly know Scott as a psychiatrist and blogger, and he doesn’t present himself as a journalist despite having been published in Vox; the “journalist” label isn’t necessarily sticky.

            Easily, it’s probably a majority of my media diet.

            Can you link to an example?

            If I ask an experienced doctor – let’s say my PCP – to explain to explain coronavirus to me, do they have this “authority”?

            I’ve parried this accusation of credentialism before, but I’m still working on the best way to explain my thoughts on journalism in a way that doesn’t invite the accusation in the first place. So let’s try this: it might be more helpful to think of authority in a relative sense. Does the authoritativeness of the presenter match the authoritativeness of the presentation?

            Your PCP almost certainly has more authority to talk about the coronavirus than some Eng-lit or Poli-sci major who now writes for a newspaper, but less authority than a viral epidemiologist who’s been head-down in a coronavirus lab for the past nineteen years. Does your PCP tell you about this coronavirus in a way that matches her actual level of expertise, or does she put a bunch of puffery around her explanation to try and pass herelf off as even more authoritative than God?

            The Big Cable News show she appears on will put this puffery around her no matter what, because that’s what a news show is. She will sit on a greenscreen set in a studio, but the greenscreen will be keyed so that on the final broadcast image, behind her there appear dozens of screens showing different things going on in the world, and below her will be a ticker of headlines, as if the show’s hosts and creators are omniscient and privy to all world events. The show’s intro will feature a 3D model of the Earth spinning, to further underscore this impression of omniscience, and along with graphics that look like fireworks and impressive machinery it will have theme music that features trumpet fanfares and orchestra stabs, to create a sense of majesty and power. Plus, the show will have an omniscient-sounding name like “Your World” or “The Nation” or “Just In” or “All Things Considered” or “Today Now”. The news anchors seated on either side of your PCP will treat her as if she is the world’s leading authority on the coronavirus, rather than just some practicing MD they pulled in for comment. Although your PCP might wear a nice blouse and try to speak eloquently, the anchors will dress in suits and speak in rehearsed tones that are meant to sound judicial and disinterested, as if they themselves are the impartial scholars who must decide what is true and worthy of passing on to the public.

            Usually those anchors got training in writing or acting or debate before becoming news anchors and that’s about it, but if one of them is a former or part-time doctor, that lends a bit more credence to his words, but he loses credibility by puffing himself up in all the aforementioned ways.

          • Dan L says:

            In that instance, yes, Scott was a journalist. He was writing under the banner of Vox, a journalism outlet, and the presentation of his writing there was meant to make his piece look authoritative in the way I described.

            But of course we more commonly know Scott as a psychiatrist and blogger, and he doesn’t present himself as a journalist despite having been published in Vox; the “journalist” label isn’t necessarily sticky.

            The label not being “sticky” is a huge issue in trying to use it as a categorization. The piece in Vox is directly based on an earlier SSC post – if you are drawing markedly different conclusions about them, something has gone wrong with your epistemology.

            This also leaves you with an issue of defining what a “journalism outlet” is in the first place – why doesn’t SSC itself count? For a fuller example, let’s start with an anonymous blogger posting articles on someone else’s site. They get some traction, and spin up their own site that is roughly a single-person blog. They drop the anonymity and start publishing under their own name. They start selling articles to major publications. They have a few guest contributions. They hire a freelance web designer to update the look and fix some broken scripting. They really start catching on in the mainstream. The blog becomes their full-time job. Frequent guest contributors start getting a share of the revenue. Frequent guest contributors become formal employees. The blog gets acquired by a major publication, but the creator retains full control. The creator hires someone full-time to manage the publication details of the site, but their personal contribution remains. And then, it tapers off. And then they sell the “blog” in full.

            When did those blog posts start becoming journalism? This is not a rhetorical or hypothetical question.

            Can you link to an example?

            You haven’t explained why the last link doesn’t count. Either Scott’s on thin ice when it was written here, or you’re giving an enormous amount of weight to Vox’s presentation. If any professional news outlet is going to meet the same judgement, you’re again defining your way to your conclusion.

            Does the authoritativeness of the presenter match the authoritativeness of the presentation?

            This is an exceedingly subjective measure. It is not one that is completely devoid of worth, but in practice it’s going to be immediately hijacked by personal bias.

            If you were merely trying to get people to be less persuaded by the aesthetics of presentation that’d be one thing, but you seem to be making far stronger claims about what one should then infer about the authors of the informational content.

            Does your PCP tell you about this coronavirus in a way that matches her actual level of expertise, or does she put a bunch of puffery around her explanation to try and pass herelf off as even more authoritative than God?

            The hyperbole leaking in does you a disservice.

            I did not choose the medical field by accident – a significant amount of the good my PCP does in her practice is puffery. The placebo effect is real and doctors optimize accordingly. A similar claim for psychiatry – sometimes, maybe all you really needed was An Official Authority to take your concerns seriously. Scott’s written on both of these at length.

            An expert isn’t doing anyone any favors by lowballing their expertise. But at the same time, the level of expertise required to be truly authoritative in a messy world may exceed human capacity. Such is life.

            Usually those anchors got training in writing or acting or debate before becoming news anchors and that’s about it, but if one of them is a former or part-time doctor, that lends a bit more credence to his words, but he loses credibility by puffing himself up in all the aforementioned ways.

            To be clear – are you saying that the exact same informational content loses value due to the aesthetics of where the part-time doctor presents it, or are you saying the doctor loses credibility in his professional medical capacity due to his other job?

          • Well... says:

            @Dan L: First let me pause to thank you for engaging me on this. You’ve provided thoughtful criticisms and excellent examples.

            “Journalism” is sticky. I can’t think of a persistent unit of media (whether that’s a network, a website, a recurring segment, etc.) that is journalism part of the time but isn’t some other part of the time, because its whole format and language and presentation style etc. would have to switch back and forth and this would appear incoherent to its audience.

            The people who produce journalism as their main full-time job are definitely “journalists”, that’s pretty clear-cut and it’s a sticky title in that case. People whose contributions come once or occasionally are the edge cases, and there you can start by looking at how they present themselves in general. If I’ve written precisely one op-ed in my life but I go around calling myself a journalist, then maybe that’s how I ought to be evaluated. As it happens, I think I did write an op-ed once (in my college newspaper) but I didn’t call myself a journalist then and I don’t now. (Plus an op-ed is kind of a special case anyway, since it explicitly sets aside some of the normal posture of impartiality and omniscience.)

            You glossed over the designer who “updates the look” but I think that’s the most important part. What kind of look? What does it mean to say it’s “updated”? What kind of impression is the look meant to impart to the viewer? What do various aspects of the look signal? A journalism outlet, including the Vox website you linked to, can be identified by these aspects.

            Vox, for example, is Latin for “voice”. I don’t know if this is supposed to imply the voice of “the people” or the voice of God or whatever else, but it certainly seems like it’s meant to sound grand and impressive. It’s pretty clearly not meant to stand for “some dude’s” meager voice (Ezra Klein’s, perhaps).

            I will grant you that Vox’s other formal aspects are relatively muted compared to most journalism. Someone who went to Vox completely naively might, if not for the banner saying “support our journalism” at first glance think it’s merely a collection of bloggers or something. But, if you scroll down and/or click around and look closely, you’ll see they use the same formatting patterns, terminology, role titles, etc. as the more puffed-up journalism outlets. They talk about being the “home” for “the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture”. This is puffery. It is journalism.

            a significant amount of the good my PCP does in her practice is puffery. The placebo effect is real and doctors optimize accordingly.

            Isn’t one aspect of placebos that they work even when you know they’re placebos? I don’t think you can say the same about someone who’s a college drop-out but who goes on TV every night in a suit, sitting at a fancy desk, telling you in mock-professorial tones whatever his organization thinks you should consider important, as if they’re the ones who are endowed by God to make that judgment call. That kind of puffery doesn’t work just because the audience unknowingly swallows it.

            And I’m not using hyperbole when I talk about God there. The spinning globes and fields of TV screens in the background and trumpet fanfares and singsong vocal inflections really are meant to impart the effect of dispassionate Godlike omniscience. It’s supposed to look awesome and grandiose, to impress you into acceptance and non-questioning. (Why do so many magicians wear tuxedos?)

            My claim is, and has long been, that if you strip away this sleight-of-hand, the puffery, then you don’t have anything resembling journalism left. Therefore journalism is the puffery.

            You said it yourself: “the level of expertise required to be truly authoritative in a messy world may exceed human capacity.” Definitely! My criticism of journalism is that it is nothing but the art of appearing truly authoritative while not being so in the least. Contrast this with mediators of realworld information who can at least claim some authority, such as scholarly journals or your PCP. Yes, they puff themselves up as well, but at least they have some legitimate knowledge and expertise underneath the puffery.

            are you saying that the exact same informational content loses value due to the aesthetics of where the part-time doctor presents it, or are you saying the doctor loses credibility in his professional medical capacity due to his other job?

            Oh, definitely the former. I don’t begrudge experts for making newsmedia appearances; they have strong incentives to do it, and I’m sure close to none of them have looked at journalism critically in the way I have.

            [ETA] I said “the former” there, and I meant it, but I would add that because the informational content and the aesthetics of its presentation are consumed together and not independently, the one impacts the other. Therefore the informational content your doctor relays to you in casual tones in the exam room cannot be the exact same as what she tells the news anchor sitting next to her in the TV studio (or to the audience watching the show), even if her words are unchanged.

          • Dan L says:

            First let me pause to thank you for engaging me on this. You’ve provided thoughtful criticisms and excellent examples.

            Wasn’t in an ideal position to continue the chain for a day or so, but I’m perfectly happy to push this thread until the 30-day timeout. Let me know if you’re still reading and I’ll keep writing.

            (I am not particularly interested in continuing in a hidden OT, and the visible ones might be an issue with CW restrictions.)

    • JayT says:

      I think the steelman is that most reporters are innumerate and don’t realize it, so they write something that they believe is accurate and important without realizing that they are only telling half the story or have the story backwards.

    • Dan L says:

      Would anyone like to make a Steelman argument in favor of why mainstream journalists can/should/would publish news pieces (not op-eds or commentary) related to COVID trends and the effectiveness of various policies that focus exclusively on one of the cases/hospitalizations/deaths variables and completely fail to discuss any of the others.

      These are not even vaguely the same question. Who do you foresee enforcing content restriction on speech?

    • LesHapablap says:

      I know someone who lives in Seattle who is a very well educated, mathy, blue-tribe technical person, and she thought the death rate if you catch COVID in Washington was 5% as of two weeks ago.

      So somehow the truth has been very distorted. I would love to see polling data that asks “If everyone catches COVID, what % of people do you think will die from it?” And other ‘factual’ questions, to find out just how distorted the general public’s view of reality is.

      • Matt M says:

        Jeff Tucker (a left-leaning libertarian who has been very skeptical and anti-lockdown from the start) posted a poll on his Twitter page asking “What is the median age of COVID deaths in the US?”

        20% of his followers guessed “Under 60,” which is off by over 20 years.

        I suspect if you asked the general public, less than 10% would come within 10 years of the correct answer.

  46. TheContinentalOp says:

    Some US States (including IL, NJ & PA) allow people to place themselves on gov’t compiled casino exclusion lists. Once you’re on this list you are not permitted to enter a casino. If you gamble and win (maybe the million dollar slot jackpot), you are not permitted to collect. If the casino authorities discover you, they are obligated to remove you from the premises.

    Additionally the casino can be fined for allowing people on the exclusion list to gamble. One case in PA involved issuing a loyalty rewards card to a player onsite. (That’s pretty sloppy on the casino’s part, IMO). But they’ve also been fined just for allowing excluded people gambling. Since ID isn’t required (unless you look underage) how are the casinos supposed to enforce this? Is facial recognition that good that they can spot these people? Or do their security SUV’s armed with ALPRs tied into the DMV database scour the parking lots? On the other hand, casinos do such damage, maybe I shouldn’t worry about them having to pay the occasional fine that they have no real practical way of avoiding.

    Fun fact: In PA you can put yourself on the exclusion list for 1 year, 5 years, or for life. If you choose lifetime, you can’t change your mind and are barred from the casinos forever.

    • Randy M says:

      Galaxy-brain take: putting yourself on the list is a good way to make gambling that much more exciting.

    • Aftagley says:

      I actually got to go “backstage” at a casino a while back and get a look at their entire security apparatus (long story) it was amazingly eye-opening.

      First off:

      Since ID isn’t required (unless you look underage) how are the casinos supposed to enforce this?

      So, the Casino I was at scanned 100% of all guests IDs on entry. I’d imagine that all casinos who are subject to this law would follow suit pretty quickly.

      Is facial recognition that good that they can spot these people?

      Depends. Casino’s probably have some of the best facial recognition software in the game. If this person has ever been identified as being on the exclusion list, yeah, they’ll catch you. If the casino has no clue what you look like, you’re probably good up until the first point someone checks your ID.

      Or do their security SUV’s armed with ALPRs tied into the DMV database scour the parking lots?

      SUV’s? Why would they do that. They’ve got the readers stuck to every lightpole and entrance to the casino’s parking lot. If you make it to your spot without your plate being read, someone has critically messed up.

      • Randy M says:

        If you make it to your spot without your plate being read, someone has critically messed up.

        Interesting. Is this only used for keeping a few problems out, or do they attempt to get more data on every entrant? Do they realize I’m only there for the cheap buffet and rodeo before I’ve locked my doors and determined how to tailor service accordingly?

        And if not, how long until Google’s casino opens up with these features?

        • Aftagley says:

          Is this only used for keeping a few problems out, or do they attempt to get more data on every entrant?

          Mostly column A. I wasn’t at on in Vegas, so maybe it’s different elsewhere, but the Casino I went to wasn’t really worried about maximizing profit from each individual guest. They don’t care if you’re just their for the (super expensive) buffet or floorshow, you’re still making them a bunch of money.

          Just out of curiosity, are you familiar with how prevalent ALPRs are just in your daily life? If you live in an urban/suburban environment, it’s pretty much standard at this point that cops will be able to trace your car basically everywhere you go. Some states even sell this data out to private companies that let basically anyone willing to shell out a couple dozen $k see where you’ve been and when.

          • Randy M says:

            Just out of curiosity, are you familiar with how prevalent ALPRs are just in your daily life? Some states even sell this data out to private companies that let basically anyone willing to shell out a couple dozen $k see where you’ve been and when.

            No, but I wish I knew who was doing, I’d gladly sell that info for single k $. (I know, it’s aggregate)

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        Don’t assume that all casinos are created equal. There are massive differences between states due to regulatory regimes, between tribal and non-tribal casinos, between casinos and racinos in the same state, and between the AAA Destination venues like Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno, etc and smaller midwestern and southern cainsos.

    • Christophe Biocca says:

      Since ID isn’t required (unless you look underage) how are the casinos supposed to enforce this?

      The casinos aren’t legally required to ask for ID from old-looking people != the casinos are legally enjoined from asking for ID.

      So in practice once the cost of the fines got larger than the friction-induced loss of attendance due to ID-checking everyone at the entrance, they’d switch to that.

      • sharper13 says:

        IDs are also essentially always required if you win any substantial amount of money.

        Have to do the IRS paperwork, after all.

        So if you won, you’d then lose anyway.

    • Lambert says:

      Casinos already have sophisticated facial scanning so that card counters can’t get back in.
      They share data so that you can’t get kicked out of each individual casino.
      Shouldn’t be too hard to request to be put on the list.

    • Thomas Jorgensen says:

      The main thing the list does is ban the people on it from collecting. You have to have a very, very bad case of gambling addiction to keep going to casinos after that, and the people so afflicted are going to be well known enough to the casinos that asking them to just not let you on the premises is not unreasonable – that is, the actual list the casinos have to care about is a lot shorter than it appears.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        This is true for casinos with lots of retail traffic (people in the local area making regular trips on evenings/weekends), less so for casinos with destination traffic (people all over the country/world flying in to visit your casino for a vacation). The latter case is where you start needing tools like facial recognition, etc.

        Security and other departments know the regulars, know when someone who WAS a regular puts themselves on an exclusion list (especially since you often have to present yourself at the casino to exclude yourself and then be taken in the back to talk to the representative of the lottery or gaming commission who’s always on-property), and pass the word.

    • Trofim_Lysenko says:

      It’s important to remember that in the US Gambling is regulated at the state level, so the discussion changes depending on which state. Even then, you can have multiple regulatory regimes in one state, such as here in Ohio where Casinos (Slot Machines + Table Games) are regulated by the Ohio Casino Commission (OCC) and Racinos (Video Lottery Terminals which are modern electronic slot machines but with slightly different RNG/software + Horse Racing and simulcast betting, No Table Games allowed) are regulated by the Ohio Lottery Commission (OLC). Then factor in that you have a lot of casinos operating on reservations and regulated by the local tribal government (sometimes operated by a national company for the benefit of the Tribal Council, sometimes entirely locally owned and operated).

      Having worked in the Casino industry for about 8 years now in multiple jurisdictions, I can assure you that it is extremely heterogeneous. Some states and some properties, all guests will be stopped as they enter the property and have their ID scanned digitally and stored (and in Missouri, the state troopers seconded to the Missouri Gaming Commission to enforce gaming regulations often casually pull up this database on slow days, looking for BOLOs and outstanding warrants), but this system is designed to catch guests under 21 and fake IDs, and doesn’t communicate with the DAP list (the Disassociated Persons list). It used to be the case in Missouri that you HAD to register and get a loyalty card to play, which meant presenting ID at the Player’s Club/Fan Club/Loyalty Club desk, which meant that you could be checked against the DAP list at that time to catch anyone who was supposed to be excluded. That law was changed a few years back, and the effect of relaxing that restriction DID create a situation where it’s now harder for casinos in Missouri to catch DAPs before they play IF they don’t use a card.

      By contrast, in an Ohio Racino regulated by OLC, guests are only ID-ed when getting a player’s card, conducting certain financial transactions (including paying out a Jackpot), or if they appear to be under 40 when entering. The reason guests are ID-ed when they win a Jackpot is that any jackpot of $1,200 or more requires a W-2G and has to be reported as income. Hand pays below $1,200 aren’t handled the same way. And as far as other financial transactions Casinos in the US are bound by the Bank Secrecy Act and Title 31, so the short version is that the same sort of activity that triggers reporting for a banking customer triggers reporting for a casino guest at a cashier window ($10,000 of activity at once or in aggregate in a day, etc etc)

      So in short, it depends on which casino you’re talking about, in which jurisdiction. Some scan IDs at the door and check against the state exclusion list. Some DO have facial recognition software. And any place where a guest has to present ID and interact with the loyalty card program there’s going to be a built-in check for exclusion. For example, the casino creates empty accounts for all excluded patrons in their guest database, flagged so that they show up with a bunch of pop-up warnings, so that when the guest services clerk searches their name and DOB to create a new account for the excluded guest who just turned over their ID, their list of matches for existing accounts includes that person’s name in bright red with a flashing EXCLUDED DOE, JOHN 1/1/1970 EXCLUDED. As noted, this doesn’t necessarily stop someone from making a card for them anyway if the clerk gives sufficiently few shits (which is stupid since that’s a good way to get your gaming license revoked, get fired, and/or get -personally- fined in a lot of jurisdictions, but I can attest from personal experience as both that clerk and supervisor of same that you can find people in that job who are careless and sloppy, at least until they get fired).

  47. Alex M says:

    I signed the petition. Thank you so much for distributing it, Scott! I like to support my fellow truth seekers in any way I can. It’s important to stand together and make it clear that an attack on ONE of us is an attack on ALL of us. “Where we go one, we go all” as a conspiracy theorist once told me.

    Since the culture-war rules appear to have been relaxed for this thread, I also have a hypothetical question. Perhaps it is related to current events, or perhaps not. I’ll let people interpret it any way they want.

    Suppose there are two groups of people. Group one is angry, hysterical, violent, and stupid. They cannot tolerate the existence of any group that disagrees with their (poorly informed) opinions. When they encounter such people, they immediately attempt to form a lynch mob and destroy that person’s reputation, career, and social prospects.

    Group two is intelligent, thoughtful, and wise. They can tolerate the opinions of people whom they disagree with, and try to see things from a nuanced point of view. If they were a bit more cruel, they could easily use their superior intelligence to eradicate group one. However, because they are pacifists, they let themselves get attacked repeatedly by group one without retaliating. In fact, many people in group two refuse to even acknowledge that group one is at war with them, even while their own membership is decimated by angry mobs led by narcissistic status-seekers in group one.

    So here is my hypothetical question. How long before natural selection eliminates all the pacifists in group two and the only members of group two left are more vindictive personality types who are willing to engage in coordinated retaliation against members of group one?

    Just asking for a friend.

    • zero says:

      Historically, group one eventually turns on itself, and the people in group two find they are not as tolerant as they thought when group three takes over.

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        Any group that imagines they are smarter than the other group — especially so much smarter that only their own benevolence is saving the other group from destruction — is in for a big surprise.

    • Christophe Biocca says:

      Your model is bad:

      1. “Natural Selection” assumes both group membership and pacifism (within group 2) to be inheritable traits. Given that the biggest predictor of membership in group 1 is “recent university grad”, that seems unlikely.
      2. Given 1, gradual culling of pacifists from group 2 doesn’t make group 2 more able to retaliate. The proportion changes but the total number of “willing to retaliate in a coordinated fashion” people in group 2 stays the same.
      3. The specifics of the mechanism you abstractly name “retaliation” matters a ton. If group 1 outnumbers group 2, copying strategies is likely ineffective. Doing something different may be entirely compatible with pacifism. For example, becoming financially independent shields you substantially from the mob. Publishing anonymously/pseudonymously has a similar effect.

    • Murphy says:

      Ah, I see, the wise group is “Us” and the hysterial group is “them”!

      Clearly the Rattlers need to be wiped out for the sake of us Eagles!

    • L (Zero) says:

      Here is my perspective as someone who got banned from this blog for several months primarily for not understanding a Star Wars reference. (Scott, if you actually read this, I guess I do not care if you likewise sincerely were that skeptical that any sincere person could misunderstand a Star Wars reference. I really hope I am not making things weird and about to get banned again.) It seems to me more like the defining feature of Alex M’s posited group landscape (again, not something SA ever said) would be that the vindictive members of group two are particularly eager to dismiss others as hysterical, regardless of a common interest in civil discussion.

    • AG says:

      This assumes that both groups have equal access to resources.
      It assumes that group one’s actions are actually significantly successful, rather than temporary.
      It fiats decimation.
      It adds things to the pacifist description that don’t match empirical cases.

    • Viliam says:

      To play Devil’s Advocate, if group one wants to destroy group two, and group two prefers the feeling of moral superiority their pacifism provides them… then destroying group two is a win/win solution.

      More realistically though, if you see a group that refuses to defend itself in a situation where it could, there is probably some intra-group mechanism that prevents it. Some mechanism where people who try to defend the group would get punished by those who don’t. Insisting that pacifism is the only way to go could be such mechanism.

      As a thought experiment, imagine that some SSC reader happens to be in a situation where they can pull some strings and get fired everyone who signed the petition against Prof. Hsu. Imagine that they do, and that it creates a chilling effect against people who would want to start Twitter witchhunts in the future. Now imagine they later write a comment of SSC describing exactly what they did. How many people would tell them: “I don’t like SJWs, but what you did is horrible and you should be ashamed”?

      I am not saying that pacifism is always a bad strategy. Groups that are too trigger-happy often turn against their own people. But if you go so far that you systematically punish everyone who tries to defend you, to such degree that there is no unpunishable defense left… then you shouldn’t be surprised by the predictable outcome. If that’s what you value (e.g. if you believe that your pacifism will literally get you a place in heaven), okay then, you got what you wanted. But if you would actually prefer to win, and yet you participate in dysfunctional mechanisms that punish everyone who wants to protect you… then you are Moloch’s breakfast.

      • nkurz says:

        > How many people would tell them: “I don’t like SJWs, but what you did is horrible and you should be ashamed”?

        Well, since we’re usually considerate here about piling on to people with whom we disagree, probably only two or three at most.

        But if you to ask how many would publicly agree that what he did was horrible, I’d guess at least 80%. Probably some of these are only saying that because it makes them look more consistent, but I’d still guess that well over half of the people who previously said publicly said they disagree with SJW tactics would genuinely believe that he should be ashamed, and that the problem with the tactics doesn’t go away just because one happens to like the immediate the results.

        What’s your guess? Am I falsely believing that the percentage would be high because I disagree with what I see as SJW tactics? Is the question distinct from “do the ends justify the means”? Maybe this is a scissors statement?

      • Christophe Biocca says:

        As a thought experiment, imagine that some SSC reader happens to be in a situation where they can pull some strings and get fired everyone who signed the petition against Prof. Hsu.

        This treats twits as having but-for control over who gets fired. No employment contract I know of comes with a “Twitter gets a veto over your continued employment” clause.

        Contrast with “firing the manager who’s using twitter trends to make staffing decisions” which is more than just defensible, it’s (I’d argue) the right call to make.

  48. Nicholas Weininger says:

    I currently take Elysium’s Basis supplement. They are now advertising an anti-cognitive-decline thing called “Matter” which seems, at first glance, really overpriced for what it contains (anthocyanins I probably get plenty of in my diet, a “patented” B vitamin complex, and some omega 3s which are supposedly more bioavailable than those in fish oil pills). Is there any real reason to spend $40/mo on this? Their scholarship on NAD+ precursors looked sound enough as these things go, but I’m worried they’re coasting on that reputation to do something much less worthwhile.

    • Doctor Mist says:

      I keep trying to figure out if even Basis makes sense. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years, but you can get nicotinamide riboside and pterostilbene separately for a lot less, and I’m not even sure whether I need the pterostilbene: I eat a lot of blueberries. It’s kind of only the fact that I would have to call them up to discontinue it (see Problems with Paywalls) that makes me continue.

  49. Bobobob says:

    On a totally non-CW note, I am really, really happy that the English Premier League is playing out the rest of its season, starting today. I miss watching live sports.

  50. Joseph Greenwood says:

    I purchased Humble Bundle’s “Fight for Racial Justice” bundle today, and now I have an extra Steam activation code for the game “A New Beginning – Final Cut”.

    Taking inspiration from Eric T: does anyone want this game? If you think you will play it, I am happy to give it to you for free.

  51. rocoulm says:

    (Try to keep this non-CW if possible)

    There’s been lots of discussion on chokehold bans lately, and speculation on whether or not it would actually lead to less police violence. But the debates I’ve seen usually revolve around enforceability and department accountability in general more than anything else.

    One angle I’ve not seen covered, though, is whether it even encourages deescalation of dangerous situations. It doesn’t seem obvious to me that an officer placed in a situation where a chokehold would be useful (but realizes he’s not allowed to use it) would instead use less force, rather than escalating further (e.g., drawing a gun instead). Does anyone have data either way on this?

    • AKL says:

      There is an ideas piece in the Atlantic in which David Brooks cites several examples of department level policy shifts that were followed by a reduction in violent encounters involving police. Not sure that any address choke holds per se, but it seems obvious that for most departments there is tons of low hanging fruit when it comes to policy changes that can reduce violence. Whether tradeoffs exist or whether they’re significant enough to avoid these types of policy changes, I guess YMMV but the answer seems obvious to me.

    • Well... says:

      Are police unions the reason we so rarely hear from actual cops about this? Or am I just not in the right bubbles? I’d be interested to hear what cops are saying about this whole situation, if anyone can refer me to (e.g.) some cop Youtubers or something. Youtube used to recommend me a few cop Youtuber channels but hasn’t in a while.

    • John Schilling says:

      I’m not sure how you’d even get good data on that. But the general concern seems quite valid.

      Note that chokeholds are one of the few techniques that would allow e.g. a 50th-percentile woman with professional training to reliably restrain a motivated 90th-percentile male thug without shooting bullets into them. That’s the sort of thing chokeholds were invented for, they work fairly well in that application, and they very rarely kill anyone. The alternatives, like tasing them and keeping the current on long enough that they are lying flaccid while you handcuff them, are also regarded as highly brutal, prone to abuse by those so inclined, look really bad on video, and occasionally kill people.

      Since attempting and failing to restrain a 90th-percentile male thug can create an immediately life-threatening situation for a 50th-percentile female cop (by any name), the possibility of a net increase in dead bodies seems very real. OTOH, maybe the thug in that scenario looks sufficiently unsympathetic on video that we don’t much care. So long as the thug is the one who winds up dead.

      • Aftagley says:

        that would allow e.g. a 50th-percentile woman with professional training to reliably restrain a motivated 90th-percentile male thug without shooting bullets into them

        I don’t know if this argument holds much water. Once a carotid hold is established – maybe the 50t-%ile woman could subdue the thug… If the thug in question doesn’t have much experience or wherewithal or is just being disruptive rather than actively resisting, then yes – it could probably subdue them.

        But your average 50th percentile woman would basically never be able to get a choke-hold established without exposing herself to a unacceptable level of risk.

        • rocoulm says:

          …e.g. a 50th-percentile woman with professional training…

          To be fair, I think he means 50th percentile raw strength (or something), but much higher than average skill, so not really your average 50th percentile woman. That said, I, too, am skeptical, but it’s also mostly beside the point for the rest of the discussion.

          • John Schilling says:

            Correct. If we want physically average women (or small men) to be able to serve as police officers, we need a way to leverage superior training against superior strength. Fortunately, most thugs are “trained” in a style of fighting designed to win monkey-brain ritual staus combat, not efficiently defeat adversaries combat. Unfortunately, the relatively fine line between the two does not have room for e.g. the Vulcan Nerve Pinch. Things like carotid holds may be the best we’ve got.

        • anon-e-moose says:

          Yes, Aftagley is correct. A 50% woman has absolutely no chance of getting into a mount to establish the choke in the first place. None. If she’s trained some MMA? None. Even a 90% woman. the strength delta is too great, and that position doesn’t suit smaller stature people.

          I find it very difficult, as someone who has been the choker and chokee(?), to see where a carotid hold fits into policing.

          To touch on your above post, cops are generally inexperienced in actual hand to hand combat unless they have a particular interest outside of work. To my understanding it’s taught, but not trained in the vast majority of cases, much like their shooting skills.

          If you’re in a one-on-one physical confrontation with someone as a cop, you’re already in a very, very bad place and you need to get help or run. You leverage your superior numbers and state-enforced ability to commit violence. If you want to learn to street fight, go talk to bouncers in a country western bar.

          • Aftagley says:

            I find it very difficult, as someone who has been the choker and chokee(?), to see where a carotid hold fits into policing.

            Choke-ed maybe?

            Anyway – it very specifically “works” to calm someone down who is already firmly in police custody. IE, you’ve probably already got them either physically restrained in a separate hold or they’re cuffed. If they start acting up or keep moving you can use a carotid hold to make them stop.

            The thing is, like we’ve seen over and over again, there’s a real danger that police will use the move punitively and unlike, say, tweaking someone’s joints when you’ve got them in an arm lock, the carotid choke has a non-zero chance of death associated with it.

      • I have a technical question about the chokeholds being discussed.

        Chokes in judo are designed to cut off blood to the brain, causing the opponent, if he doesn’t surrender, to pass out, not to cut off air.

        Which are the chokes used by the police doing?

        • anon-e-moose says:

          “chokes” in this context is an all encompassing term. Most use-of-force guidelines don’t differentiate from air v blood except to say that they’re only appropriate in deadly force. Some UoF practitioners specify that blood is less severe than air, but I don’t believe this is an actual policy anywhere for liability reasons.

        • noyann says:

          At least they include positional asphyxia, as in Floyd’s case.

        • Aftagley says:

          Most police are only authorized to use the kinds of holds talked about by David above. These “chokes” are designed to reduce bloodflow to the brain which pretty quickly will make someone go from agitated to calm and then from calm to safely passed out. This is occasionally a useful tool to have for police.

          The problem is that while doing these kinds of holds, it’s scarily easy to accidentally cut off oxygen as well as blood, which will kill you. This can be done when police mess up the hold or if someone has an underlying condition. Cops who are trained in using these kinds of chokes are likely going to be less skilled in applying them than your average judo fighter and will likely be using them on people way less physically healthy than your average judo fighter, which increases the danger.

          While police CAN establish chokes that deprive oxygen, this is normally only acceptable in cases where lethal force is authorized, a decision equivalent to a police officer pulling out their gun and shooting someone.

          • AG says:

            Is there any equipment that could perform such chokes consistently? Like a kind of neck cuff with a timer.

          • Tatterdemalion says:

            Is there any equipment that could perform such chokes consistently? Like a kind of neck cuff with a timer.

            No. There might be equipment that could do that if consistently used correctly, but anything you do involving fallible humans constricting the necks of other, resisting, humans is sometimes going to kill people.

            And the problem with trying to design that kind of thing, or issuing it to police, is that it’s just begging for risk compensation.

        • Chaostician says:

          While I am not credentialed in this field, I have expert exposure (my dad is a forensic pathologist), so I have some confidence in what I am saying.

          These holds are typically not chokes in a martial arts sense. They are not designed to cut off either air or blood. So they are supposed to be inherently non-lethal.

          Unless it triggers a preexisting condition.

          This is a contributing factor for both Floyd (heart disease & fentanyl / amphetamines) and Garner (asthma & heart disease). These conditions become apparent in the autopsy. Asphyxia doesn’t leave any marks on the body, so autopsies do not provide evidence for or against asphyxia. Strangling can leave bruises on the neck, but smothering or positional asphyxia do not.

          This doesn’t absolve the police. If someone dies while you’re using violence against them, it’s homicide, regardless of the cause of death. My dad has classified as a homicide a case where someone got in a fist-fight and the other guy died from a sickle cell crisis. The police can’t assume that the person they’re dealing with is healthy.

  52. albatross11 says:

    One thing that’s really striking about a lot of the debate over cancelling academics for talking to the wrong people, expressing the wrong ideas, working on the wrong topics, or coming to the wrong conclusions is that the standards are so different when it comes to mainstream figures, and to politics.

    Joe Biden was VP in an administration that covered up war crimes (“Look forward, not backward”), assassinated US citizens without any kind of oversight besides the boss signing off on the assassinations, bombed Libya in defiance of the War Powers Act (leaving a godawful mess behind), and supported the Saudis in their horrific (and still ongoing) campaign in Yemen. Nobody thinks anyone should be cancelled for having Joe Biden on their podcast.

    Discussing ideas with people whose ideas you speculate could somehow, through some chain of events, lead to piles of skulls, leads to cancellation. Discussing ideas with people whose past actions have actually left piles of skulls behind, on the other hand, seems to be perfectly fine.

    Similarly, discussing ideas with someone who is overtly Marxist seems not to lead to cancelation, even though Marxism holds the all-time championship in piles of skulls left behind for any intellectual movement.

    I infer from these things that the plies-of-skulls justification for cancelling people is an excuse, rather than a principle.

    • Well... says:

      Joe Biden is directly responsible for our government’s use of civil asset forfeiture which is a major pillar of the war on drugs, and you can draw a pretty clear line from the war on drugs to the problems between cops and (many) black people. If you bring this up with most Biden supporters I suspect you will simply hear “Well at least he’s not Trump.”

    • qwints says:

      Ironically, this exact whataboutism was used by the Stalinists.

      • Viliam says:

        How? Stalinists couldn’t have pointed at anyone with higher number of skulls.

        Oh, they probably just lied.

    • salvorhardin says:

      A further irony is that the sort of activist who supports cancel mobs is the most likely sort of person to say (correctly!) that a person’s intentions aren’t sufficient to judge the morality of their action: you also have to look at the actual effect of their action on others and “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone” isn’t a good enough excuse if you should have taken more care not to do harm. But the canonical action this is applied to is always saying something that hurts someone’s feelings, never leaving a pile of skulls.

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      I miss DrBeat. This is when he would come in to say that it’s all about instantiations of popularity. Also, All Is Lost.

    • Dan L says:

      One thing that’s really striking about a lot of the debate over cancelling academics for talking to the wrong people, expressing the wrong ideas, working on the wrong topics, or coming to the wrong conclusions is that the standards are so different when it comes to mainstream figures, and to politics.

      There is a critical dimension missing here, where people will automatically weight against what an acceptable level of skulls is in a given situation. A merely-competent wartime leader will certainly make decisions leading to formidable piles that could have been prevented by true excellence, whereas knifing Cindy at the barbecue will ensure you’re not invited back even though she’ll probably survive.

      The guilt-by-association dynamic is a little different, but still factors in baselines: an interviewer with a reputation for diverse guests is different than an interviewer who studiously appeals to a specific audience with one exception. An academic who gives one interview a year’s appearance is more notable than one that gives dozens. A browser history with hits to some truly wild shit is less worrisome than one with 90% of its log going to Stormfront. And so on – attacks can still be made and even find traction with others who lack the context for a baseline, but it’s harder.

      I infer from these things that the plies-of-skulls justification for cancelling people is an excuse, rather than a principle.

      Inferring that people are using that principle as a pretext is strictly harder than passing an ITT. Cynicism is easier, but far less useful.

    • keaswaran says:

      I think the relevant standard here is some sort of ratio. As in, how notable is this person for bad things, vs how notable for other things. Stefan Molyneux isn’t really notable for anything other than being an alt-right youtuber, while Biden is notable for many different political actions over a period that went from him being the youngest Senator in history to him becoming the oldest presidential nominee in history.

      And I think this makes intuitive sense of many other things. Reagan’s choice to use Philadelphia, MS as the site of his first rally as nominee chose a town that had zero notability other than for the KKK murder of civil rights activists. Tulsa is a far more notable town, so the fact that its most recent pop-culture notability is for a race riot is not quite as awful. While Washington, DC and New York have likely been the site of even worse actions than either of those towns, there’s enough other notability of these places that no one would complain about a rally there.

      • sharper13 says:

        This whole Philadelphia, MS things appears to be a convenient myth.

        Reagan’s first public speech as the GOP nominee was in New Jersey, near the Statue of Liberty.

        The later speech near (not in) Philadelphia, MS, was at the Neshoba County Fair, 7 miles away from the town. As the article notes, “The Neshoba Fair is large and popular, which probably explains why Democratic Senator John Glenn campaigned there in 1983, when seeking the presidential nomination, and why Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis spoke there during the 1988 general election campaign, shortly after being nominated by the Democratic Convention.”

        You could say truthfully that Carter kicked off his campaign that year in the town where the national headquarters of the KKK was, but that also doesn’t mean that’s why he spoke there. Without someone who was actually involved in the decision to speak there, without something explicitly tied to it in the speech, there’s no reason to believe either speech had anything to do with events in Philadelphia, MS, nor the HQ of the KKK.

        The candidates were fighting for voters in the areas where they could tilt the election, so the campaigned (among other places) in parts of the south. That’s it.

        The rest of the accusation you cited is a myth made up by someone who wasn’t involved and just happens to be opposed to Reagan.

        • keaswaran says:

          Oh, interesting! I hadn’t dug into the details of this – thanks for the clarifications.

      • cassander says:

        In addition to what sharper13 said, I hear this conspiracy all the time, and there’s a more fundamental problem with it. Let’s say it’s accurate, what percentage of voters in 1980 do you think knew what town Reagan gave his first campaign speech in? If no one knows you did it, is it still signalling?

        • keaswaran says:

          This is the “dog whistle” theory. Signals are intended for a particular audience. If your message is popular with one crowd and not with another, then you’ll want to send it on a channel that only the first crowd will hear.

          Regardless of whether or not Reagan was trying to signal something about civil rights cases, he certainly wasn’t trying to signal it to the median voter, but rather at most to the subset that is animated favorably towards him on the basis of these issues.

          • albatross11 says:

            I understand the idea of dogwhistling, and I’m sure some of it goes on, but it seems like it’s an idea with basically unlimited scope for abuse. It is *always* possible to painstakingly excerpt some politician’s actions and speeches and appearances and come up with evidence that he’s dogwhistling to some evil crowd or another. As best I can tell, this is basically never convincing to people on that politician’s side, but is often convincing to people on the *other* side, because it’s always easy to get Republicans to believe evil of Democrats, and Democrats to believe evil of Republicans.

            A good example of this is the right-wing campaign to convince lots of low-information voters on the right that Obama was secretly a Muslim. All kinds of innocuous things he said or did were used as evidence of this over the years (bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, for example), none of it convincing except to people who already disliked both Obama and Muslims. A few minutes of looking around would provide a lot of reasons this theory was silly (he raised his kids in a Christian church and had them baptized there, attended Christian services regularly, drank, etc.), but of course, most of the people who already wanted to believe ill of Obama weren’t motivated to go looking.

            If you are going to believe dogwhistling claims, I think you should at least try to decide whether the exact same evidence applied to someone you liked would be convincing. If Biden or Sanders had a campaign rally on Juneteenth in Tulsa, would that be convincing to you as evidence that they were trying to signal their friendliness to anti-black racists? If Trump bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia, would that convince you he was dogwhistling to Muslims? If Hillary had a picture where she was smiling to see Putin but frowning at Merkel, would this be convincing that she was in Putin’s pay?

            But really, these are great ways of convincing yourself of things you already want to believe. Feynman said The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool, and I think he was right.

          • cassander says:

            There’s also the line “If you’re always hearing dog whistles, what does that say about you?”

            But I’m not talking about the median voter. Do you know where any of the presidential contenders this year started their campaigns? Or last time around?I don’t, and if as many as 1% of Reagan’s voters knew the did, I’d be surprised. Some whistles even dogs don’t hear.

          • keaswaran says:

            Yes, this all sounds right. Most dogwhistle allegations are totally false.

            But it’s also undeniably true that campaigns sometimes use targeted outreach. Elizabeth Warren posted her preferred pronouns in her twitter profile, and this fact made a lot of young trans-friendly people very happy, and was probably not even noticed by most of the mainstream. Hillary Clinton released a lot of detailed policy around mental and developmental disabilities that was gladly celebrated by those activists, but completely ignored by everyone else. The Warren one is more of a dogwhistle, because it has the features of being right there front and center in a public forum, in a way that others barely notice.

            But any time a politician takes some time writing one sentence in a speech to make sure they get the idea exactly right, they are dogwhistling to the people that care about that idea.

          • Matt M says:

            Elizabeth Warren posted her preferred pronouns in her twitter profile, and this fact made a lot of young trans-friendly people very happy, and was probably not even noticed by most of the mainstream

            I think that’s more “pandering” than “dogwhistle.” Yeah, most people don’t care about pronouns. But most everyone does know what they mean and why they are there and who they are designed to appeal to. A dogwhistle, in theory, goes even further. It’s not just something you don’t happen to care about, it’s something you don’t even know is there unless you’re the target audience.

          • cassander says:

            @keaswaran says:

            No question, but again I get back to the recipients actually having to hear the message for it to be an effective whistle. Warren can put her pronouns up on twitter where anyone can notice them. If it is even accurate that Reagan started his campaign there, how many people could possibly have learned about it in 1980?

          • Don P. says:

            If it is even accurate that Reagan started his campaign there, how many people could possibly have learned about it in 1980?

            According to the Wikipedia article, it was controversial within a week (speech was August 3):

            Coverage of Reagan’s subsequent campaign stops in the North explicitly linked the location of the speech to the 1964 murders. Douglas Kneeland of the Times wrote on August 6, “Adding perhaps to the cautious reception he was given by the Urban League here was Mr. Reagan’s appearance Sundayat the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Miss., where three young civil rights workers were slain in 1964.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan%27s_Neshoba_County_Fair_%22states%27_rights%22_speech

    • birdboy2000 says:

      That’s what I find so loathsome about it. It’s useless against the powerful, it can’t stop actual material harm, but it’s great for i.e. terrorizing minimum wage workers into silence. For a “left-wing” tactic it sure looks ineffectual against the bosses!

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        That’s what I find so loathsome about it. It’s useless against the powerful, it can’t stop actual material harm, but it’s great for i.e. terrorizing minimum wage workers into silence. For a “left-wing” tactic it sure looks ineffectual against the bosses!

        “+1” seems way too weak here.

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        I recall that one of the complaints in Scott’s “Untitled” was that there are lots of strategies deployed against group X that only burn the good/moral/potential-ally members of X, while letting the other members of group X gain in power.

        And people still do it all the time!

        • Belisaurus Rex says:

          Gandhi’s peaceful tactics took advantage of the good qualities of the British people, and resulted in the removal of some of those good qualities.

  53. proyas says:

    You’re designing a human-sized combat robot that, among other things, will be nearly impossible for humans to beat in hand-to-hand combat. What features would you need to incorporate into the robot’s design to achieve that?

    The robot needs to be designed in such a way that every possible hand-to-hand attack from a human will almost certainly fail, whether it’s a tackle, a hard punch or kick, any kind of joint or limb lock, or any martial arts maneuver.

    The robot can’t be bigger or heavier than an average human man, but it doesn’t need to be humanoid.

    • baconbits9 says:

      Low center of gravity and spikes?

    • Statismagician says:

      A humanoid robot wearing perfectly standard late-medieval plate armor accomplishes this neatly, I’d think. Just put the fragile components in something shock-absorbing and make sure the joints bend both ways.

    • Randy M says:

      Rotating flame throwers out of the question?

      • proyas says:

        No, so long as the flame thrower is integral to its body. Maybe it would have an internal tank full of flammable fluid and then a nozzle on its exterior.

        The problem is, the flame thrower would run out of ammo, and the robot would need to still somehow be near-invulnerable to hand-to-hand attacks. The flame thrower can’t be its only defense.

        • rictic says:

          If we have to consider its performance after it’s run out of flame thrower fuel, do we also have to consider its performance after it has run out of energy?

          Actually, that suggests another route. A robot that’s radioactive enough could be unbeatable at hand to hand combat simply by virtue of being moderately durable and giving any attacker accute radiation poisoning (until its radioactivite material decayed).

          • Randy M says:

            I thought of that but held off for wondering what effect the radiation would have on the robot. Could you shield it’s delicate portions? Or maybe it simply doesn’

    • noyann says:

      Exude sticky stringy fast hardening glue on touch?
      Spike it with taser electrodes?
      If you had some Karate Kid Wall-E Number 5 in mind you need to set more constraints.

      • proyas says:

        I like the taser electrode spikes, but not the glue idea. The problem with the glue is that it could also blow back or be smeared on the robot by an attacking human, which would gum up the robot’s limbs and maybe cover important things with hardened glue.

        • noyann says:

          Teflon coating?

          • proyas says:

            Even if the Teflon solved the problem, the glue idea by itself isn’t enough to meet the design requirements since the amount of glue is finite and could run out. The robot needs to be able to defeat humans in hand-to-hand fighting without any kind of physical “ammo.”

            See my earlier comment about the flamethrower.

          • noyann says:

            Running out of matter becomes a problem, OK. But the same applies to the energy source for attack or defense. It will run out also eventually. Just feint, run in circles around it, or otherwise exhaust it for long enough, and the robot will eventually stop doing anything.

            There is a grey area here. You could demand that it outlasts a single human attacker for a given time, or a specified number of them, or a continuous flow of the youths of a nation thrown at it…

          • proyas says:

            In response to that and another comment, I made up this rule:

            An important rule is that the design can’t rely on integral weapons with finite ammo reserves. I see your point about thinking of its general-purpose power source as itself being a type of internal reserve no different from a flamethrower tank. For the purpose of this thought experiment, let’s assume it’s OK for the robot to run away if its power is running too low to finish a fight. However, it’s not OK for it to run away if any other onboard resource is about to run out.

          • proyas says:

            Running out of matter becomes a problem, OK. But the same applies to the energy source for attack or defense. It will run out also eventually. Just feint, run in circles around it, or otherwise exhaust it for long enough, and the robot will eventually stop doing anything.

            Assume the robot is smart enough to recognize these kinds of tactics as well as a human.

            Also, this scenario you describe makes me think the robot should have the ability to gasp and throw objects like bricks and rocks. If you were very fast on your feet and kept running around it too fast for it to catch up to you, it would throw something like a brick or stone at you to hurt your legs or cause a head injury.

    • Lambert says:

      Humans are squishy, and waste a lot of their mass on gall bladders and stuff. If you try to punch 100kg of steel, titanium and carbon compsites, you’re going to have a bad time.

    • MilesM says:

      What else does it need to be able to do, besides being invulnerable?

      I think a 170 lbs cube (or maybe a tetrahedron with sharpened edges, let’s make that sucker really hard to move) of hardened steel containing the minimal amount of shock-mounted electronics necessary for something to qualify as a “robot” might be pretty hard for a human to damage.

      And does it need to be proof against scenarios using terrain – like being pushed off a cliff – or does that go beyond “hand to hand combat?”

      In that case, I might go with a huge ball of razor wire with a very small armored core.

    • LosLorenzo says:

      Well, a flying drone with a gun would achieve this outdoor. Can’t be defeated hand-to-hand if it’s 15ft up. Doesn’t work indoors, though.

      If indoor use is a requirement I’d go with titanium alloy exoskeleton, razor-sharp, poison-coated spider. Micro-hooks on feet ensure firm grip on surface making it impossible to knock over. Doesn’t work if you’re not allowed to ruin the floor, though.

    • LosLorenzo says:

      Alternative design: Mutually assured destruction. Any old shape, but it has a mini-nuke and a sign that reads “if you assault me I will detonate my mini-nuke” in all languages. It might not be able to beat a human in hand-to-hand combat, but that was not specified. It will not ‘lose’ hand-to-hand, worst case is a draw.

      • proyas says:

        I don’t like the mini-nuke idea for many reasons, but I think it’s a good idea to design the robots with self-destruct bombs that can kill everyone within, say, a 15-foot radius. That way, if a human somehow beat a robot in hand-to-hand combat and the robot knew it was about to lose, it would blow itself up, killing the human.

        Humans would be strongly deterred from attacking the robots if they knew victory would mean losing their own lives.

    • John Schilling says:

      Array of small flamethrowers covering 360-degree arc.

      If that’s not the answer, what exactly is the problem we are trying to solve? What does it mean to be beaten in “hand-to-hand combat”? Does it mean the robot is destroyed, or just prevented from completing its mission – and if so, what sort of mission are we talking about? Does “hand-to-hand” mean that the robot needs to use “hands”? How far along the axis from “literally a robotic arm” to “flamethrower that kills would-be attacker before he gets within two meters” is the robot allowed to go? And, do we only have to worry about the human attacker using his unaugmented body, or might he be carrying a crowbar, pickaxe, can of spray paint, etc?

      ETA: Ninja’d by Randy. And yes, the flamethrower will eventually run out of fuel. The robot’s batteries will eventually run dry. Again, what exactly is the problem we are trying to solve?

      • proyas says:

        Again, what exactly is the problem we are trying to solve?

        This is a challenge to design a robot that can, unarmed, defeat even the best, unaugmented humans in hand-to-hand combat.

        “Hand-to-hand” means the robot and human are inflicting injuries on the other through direct physical contact.

        An important rule is that the design can’t rely on integral weapons with finite ammo reserves. I see your point about thinking of its general-purpose power source as itself being a type of internal reserve no different from a flamethrower tank. For the purpose of this thought experiment, let’s assume it’s OK for the robot to run away if its power is running too low to finish a fight. However, it’s not OK for it to run away if any other onboard resource is about to run out.

      • bullseye says:

        The robot resembles a robotic wolf, and burns human flesh for fuel, thereby eliminating the fuel problem. It also requires human fat to lubricate its joints, and so we discover what problem it is trying to solve: the obesity epidemic.

    • Fahundo says:

      A spider-like robot consisting of a round head that contains most of its mass and 8-10 legs. The robot only needs 3 or 4 legs to remain standing, which makes it practically immune to being tripped or joint locked by a single human being. The head has 6 or more holes located around its circumference in a horizontal ring. Each hole is just an opening through which a firearm housed safely inside the head can shoot the target. The head is just made of something strong enough that a man can’t pry it open with his bare hands.

    • oriscratch says:

      I think this has already been done with a combat robot called Son of Whyachi. It’s basically just a >100 lbs tribar of steel spinning really fast attached to some wheels. The spinning part covers the entire robot, so no matter where you try to hit it your limbs would probably get ripped off.
      Here is is at 50% speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9VymPqBCCI
      Normal speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDALLjxozIY

      • oriscratch says:

        Ok, a few modifications. The average US male is 200 pounds, and Son of Whyachi (SOW) is 250 pounds. SOW is overpowered because it’s designed to fight metal robots and not humans, so we can probably cut the weapon from 120 lbs bars to 20 lbs of blades without losing much effectiveness. We can probably use a lighter weapon motor as well. We can then use the extra weight to add bigger wheels (so it can drive on rough terrain) and faster drive motors (20 mph, which is standard for fast combat robots and is plenty enough to outrun a human).

        So now we have a giant 200 pound whir of spinning blades that can navigate most terrain, and it’s coming at you at 20 mph. Completely doable with current technology. I know you had a requirement that it should be able to throw and shoot things, but combat robot spinners have a tendency to hit debris so hard that shoot off as projectiles anyway, and sometimes that debris even gets embedded in the walls.

        Without a conveniently located set of stairs or special equipment (like really tough string to tangle the spinner without being cut), this would be pretty hard to beat.

    • proyas says:

      My own thoughts:
      -An insect- or spider-like robot would probably be best. For one thing, having more than four limbs will mean that even a skilled human wrestler will not be able to pin down all of its limbs. There will always be at least one free appendage with a knife at the end that can be stabbed into the human’s body.
      -At least one of the limbs should be as long as the legs of a human in the 99th percentile of leg lengths. This will stop a pro kickboxer with long legs from standing far back and kicking the robot from outside the latter’s reach. If you get close enough to strike the robot with some part of your body, your torso will have to be within range of a counterstrike.
      -Some of the robot’s limbs would need to be able to grasp objects. This would let it grab weapons that humans were using to extend their reach, like baseball bats and spears, and to yank them away with superior strength.
      -A big insect or spider would look scary to humans, which would have an effect during fights.
      -I agree the robot should be low to the ground and basically impossible to knock down owing to its low center of gravity and all its double-jointed legs.
      -If the robot could make loud noises, it would frighten and disorient human attackers.
      -Covering it with many spikes and/or razor blades would also make it nearly impossible to grapple with.

      • Fahundo says:

        how about a spiky scorpion? low to the ground, two big heavy pincers it can use to restrain people or possibly bash people with, that are also good at grabbing weapons out of people’s hands, and an extra long tail with a big spike that it can use on someone trying to stay outside the pincers’ reach. This thing can probably take people without using projectiles, but let’s give it a gun anyway.

        • proyas says:

          how about a spiky scorpion? low to the ground, two big heavy pincers it can use to restrain people or possibly bash people with, that are also good at grabbing weapons out of people’s hands, and an extra long tail with a big spike that it can use on someone trying to stay outside the pincers’ reach. This thing can probably take people without using projectiles, but let’s give it a gun anyway.

          Hmm. The stinging/stabbing tail could serve as the “long-leg-length” appendage I mentioned. If it had that and four legs, it would have too many limbs for a human to pin down.

          The thing I don’t like about the scorpion body layout is that it has a front and a back, and it is designed to fight enemies in front of it and unsuited to handle attacks from any other direction. This creates an exploitable vulnerability.

          I think a simplified, more radially symmetric scorpion would be a better design. The body would be spheroidal, and the four legs would be 90 degrees from each other. The legs would have many joints, and could act as arms as well as legs. A leg could do normal walking motions, but also kick, slap, punch, and grab humans.

          The long tail would be prehensile and able to sweep, whip, and thrash out in any vector with the same ease, unlike a scorpion’s tail, which is designed to thrash forward. Attacking the robot from behind wouldn’t be possible since it wouldn’t have a back or front.

          The topside of the body would have something like two, short arms with funny hands on them for grasping and shooting guns.

          I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to carry over scorpion pincers to the robot design because that would add two, big, heavy appendages that would do nothing 99.99% of the time. At the same time, there’s great value in being able to physically pinch an enemy with lethal force.

          The easiest way to give the robot that ability would be to program it use its limbs to do various types of “locks” on human attackers. Watch this and note how the instructor locks his ankles together to turn his legs into pincers that choke the student:

          https://youtu.be/zat6toIsy2U?t=77

          Imagine if the instructor’s legs were made of unyielding metal, and they had several ratchet points I guess you could say, up and down the lengths of each of his legs that he could progressively engage with one another to tighten the pincer.

          If that’s not enough, then maybe the robot needs one analog to a scorpion claw (less weight than two claws, and probably still sufficient), which would be akin to a mouth or beak. (Funny how thinking about this technical problem brings us back to nature’s real solutions to the same problems)

      • oriscratch says:

        I think you’re underestimating the strength and durability of robotic parts. Any robot with decent armor is basically invulnerable to punches and kicks, and any robot with decent motors will instantly skewer a squishy human.

        The main issues are stability and maneuverability. I’m a pretty big combat robotics fan, and every combat robot with legs I’ve seen generally either falls over from instability or is so ineffective that it’s instantly torn to bits. Big wheels + an extra stick leg for getting over obstacles or self-righting seems like the way to go. Bonus points if you put a knife on the end of the stick leg to flail around like a psycho when not in use.

        Also, a lot of people seem to be making the mistake of designing really complicated designs that sound cool but aren’t very efficient in reality. This happened a lot in the early days of combat robotics—people would come with super elaborate robots with arms and blades and flails and flamethrowers, and they would all get steamrolled by “hunk of sloped metal on wheels that pushes you into walls” or “spinny piece of metal on wheels“. I suspect the same principle of simplicity being better applies to designing robots intended to fight humans as well.

  54. baconbits9 says:

    Boris Johnson was in a minor car accident today when a person ran in front of the motorcade forcing the cars to come to an abrupt stop. It does not appear that any significant injuries happened, still I think this is among the worst behaviors in the world. Specifically it uses someone else’s good behavior as a weapon against them, it only works if the lead motorcycle stops. I would argue that the overwhelming majority of people NOT taking advantage in other people’s good behavior is a requirement for a high quality functioning society. This action should be immediately condemned by protesters, not because it is a terrible act on its own but because the only plausible reactions to these acts are worse behavior from the opposition.

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      It’s bad behaviour, but hardly an assassination attempt.

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        There’s no reason to assume assassination.

        But baconbits9’s overall point is good: the only reason the person tried it was because they knew the motorcade would stop. If your opponent really were evil they’d run you over and not care, but because they care you now have a weapon to use against them.

        This can easily lead to a cycle of escalations until someone does get run over and we end up right where we were yesterday (don’t run in front of cars) at the cost of some lives.

    • keaswaran says:

      Moral Blackmail is a really useful concept.

  55. Anonymous Bosch says:

    There’s no special vehicle for that, you just list a bunch of defendants. You’re essentially describing how entertainment companies pursue copyright infringement claims: they name several thousand John Does identified by their bittorrent IP address and try to extract settlements.

    The reason class actions require special vehicles is because the plaintiff initiates the lawsuit, and so they need a system where attorneys can represent a wide swathe of plaintiffs without having to individually sign them up prior to the complaint.

    • cassandrus says:

      This is actually not true. Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure—the rule governing class actions in federal court—is symmetric between plaintiffs and defendants: “One or more members of a class may sue or be sued as representative parties on behalf of all members . . .”

      The reason you almost never see defense-side class actions in practice is that the economics rarely make sense. Class actions are helpful when the costs of prosecuting each individual case are prohibitive, and you need to aggregate to amortize the costs across the class. But with a defendant-class, there are still going to be a ton of defendant-by-defendant costs that cannot get amortized, such as the cost of collecting even a successful judgment. And if the amount at issue is enough to justify those costs, then the case is almost certainly big enough to justify suing each defendant individually and avoiding the procedural hassle of a class action.

      • Anonymous Bosch says:

        TIL. (That’s what I get for letting the non-patent parts of my education wither away.)

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        It seems to me though that in this day and age it should be possible to prosecute a large group of people for individually small but collectively large damage, and attempt to make collections.

        I’m completely spitballing here, but this seems like a possible, and useful, and pro-social business model. A person gets fired from their job because of a twitter mob. Assume the thing was..some value of “unfair” or “wrongful.” They can sue the class of twitter users who harassed them and their employer into firing them, for either “wrongful termination” or just harassment. It’s pretty easy to scrape through all the twitter users who @’ed their employer and identify the ones who use their real names, or perhaps they could work like the record companies and sue the twitter handles and then subpoena twitter for the real identities. A lawyer could specialize in this type of “anti-mob law.”

        If they can get a judgement for $1M in damages, each of the 10,000 twitter users who harassed them is ordered to payout $100. Maybe you can collect, maybe you can’t, I don’t know. But that seems like a pretty pro-social result. There’s now a cost to joining a twitter mob. Don’t join unless you’ve done your research and you know you have your facts straight and you’re willing to eat the lawsuit if you’re wrong. Also, if you can sue and get a judgement in your favor, that’s evidence the damage to your reputation unwarranted, and you are now vindicated. Give you some closure.

        Does this sound at all reasonable to anyone?

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          It sounds reasonable to me. It would take a lot of work on the part of the judge (most likely) or the jury to parse responsibility (especially for the unfortunate tweeters who re-tweet a doxxing tweet to say how wrong the doxxing is).

          Even plaintiff class action lawsuits separate the plaintiffs into varying degrees. This might be something the plaintiffs would be required to pay for in a defendant class action.

          Also there’d need to be something to account for people who don’t respond to the suit, or people who don’t have the time to prove their innocence. Some punishment for dragging too wide a net.

        • John Schilling says:

          It seems to me though that in this day and age it should be possible to prosecute a large group of people for individually small but collectively large damage, and attempt to make collections.

          I think it would be impractically difficult to satisfy any meaningful requirement for due process when each member of that group says “I see your point and I agree in the general case, but you made a mistake because I specifically don’t belong in that group”.

          And no, “It’s obvious, just look at their tweets, I know it when I see it” isn’t due process. Which I’m pretty sure you’ll wind up agreeing with when e.g. someone with a high oppression score gets beaten up, points to a small group of bigots who posted explicit, specific, and immediate calls to violence, and a blue-tribe bureaucrat is tasked by the court with going through a massive twitter thread and deciding which hate-speaking bigots have to pay $1000 with no appeal. You may be able to imagine that process being implemented fairly, but do you really expect that it will be?

        • AG says:

          There’s also the case where someone re-tweets to disagree, but nonetheless spreads the word by doing so, and maybe more people join the mob because someone in the outgroup tweeted disagreement.

  56. Nancy Lebovitz says:

    Universities in trouble

    A convenient stash of links. I haven’t checked all of them, and metafilter is more SJ than I am.

    The short version is that a lot of universities aren’t set up well for distance learning, a lot of them (not necessarily the same ones) are dependent on money from tuition and fees and such. Also, a lot of people learn better when they’re around people and/or want the social connections they can make more easily in person.

    Lawsuits against universities.

    And there’s the question of to what extent graduates will be able to make money to pay off loans. The situation was really bad *before* the virus.

    • John Schilling says:

      Also, a lot of what universities normally offer is an excuse to get out from under your parents’ thumb and enjoy yourself unchaperoned for four years. With a side order of education and a juicy credential for dessert, but without the four years of student social life, I’m guessing a lot of students won’t be nearly as interested.

      When this is over, we’re going to need remedial adulting classes for a lot of these people. Be a shame if we didn’t have functional universities to teach them.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        One of the points in the metafilter discussion was that universities are great for students whose sexual orientations aren’t welcome in their families.

  57. zero says:

    What’s worse? Bad data supporting bad people or bad people arguing “Look, there’s a reason this data is being suppressed, and it’s because we’re right”?

    • albatross11 says:

      Does it matter if the data being suppressed is in fact factually correct?

      • Belisaurus Rex says:

        Data could be faked, but misinterpretation is more worrying.

        Could be that data is interpreted in a way that is factually incorrect in a way that the average person would not understand the intricacies of.

        Remember, the average American cannot even read a simple x/y line graph.

  58. Two McMillion says:

    When I was a child my parents took me to a petting zoo. The zoo was at a state park and consisted mostly of stereotypical farm animals: cows, horses, an ostrich for some reason, and goats.

    You pet the goats at a fence with a gap near the bottom large enough for a goat head to fit through. There were only a few goats at the fence when I got there, one mostly white with brown patches and another mostly brown with white patches. The brown one with white patches wasn’t interested but the white one with brown patches came to the fence and I spent an enjoyable few minutes petting its head and talking to it.

    After a while another goat wondered over. This one was all black. It came over to the fence but didn’t stick its head through. It had this sort of lazy appearance, just standing there, chewing something (its cud? Do goats chew cud?), looking at me through half-lidded eyes. Its eye were bright blue. I remember that distinctly. Anyway, it came over and stood watching me pet the other goat, chewing, chewing, tongue snaking out to lick its lips. I said to it, “Hello.”

    And the goat- I swear to Batman- paused in its chewing, looked at me, and said in an amused voice, “Hello.”

    I ran away screaming and demanded that my parents take me home. I could never make them understand what I was going on about. In the years since the incident, I’ve always regretted that decision. What would have happened if I had stayed with the goat that talked? What new things might I have learned? What new world could have opened up for me?

    Alas, we’ll never know. Such is life.

  59. Two McMillion says:

    Turning to (2), factual beliefs in themselves are merely true or false, not good or evil.

    This is incorrect because factually incorrect beliefs are intrinsically evil. The utilitarian reasons for this should be obvious.

    • zero says:

      How do you determine what the facts are?

      • Two McMillion says:

        I don’t have an epistemology vastly different from the rationalist standard, if that’s what you’re asking. Sometimes we don’t know what the facts are, and often figuring out what they are is a complex process. But that doesn’t mean you’re innocent if you believe something that is untrue. Why would it?

    • The utilitarian reasons are not obvious.

      Many false factual beliefs are undesirable from a utilitarian standpoint, but not all. Suppose that, as I believe, God does not exist. The false belief that God will punish you for stealing, murdering, or raping might well increase total utility.

      • Two McMillion says:

        I can’t think of any examples of incorrect beliefs where replacing them with correct beliefs wouldn’t be an improvement. The God example is an interesting choice, given the harm that has come from religion throughout history.

        • The God example is an interesting choice, given the harm that has come from religion throughout history.

          And yet the only examples I know of of societies explicitly atheist were enormously worse.

          The question isn’t “did belief X cause harm,” it’s “did belief X result in more harm than its absence would have resulted in.”

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          I can’t think of any examples of incorrect beliefs where replacing them with correct beliefs wouldn’t be an improvement. The God example is an interesting choice, given the harm that has come from religion throughout history.

          This feels like “True state atheism has never been tried!” AFAIK, a place where the ruling class improved the people by making them atheists has only ever happened in conjunction with false beliefs far more harmful than any religion, false about things as fundamental as “how to grow food.” If the alternative where the people’s beliefs are replaced “with correct beliefs” in your opinion is imaginary, of course it’s a better world. Imaginary better worlds are a dime a dozen.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          @DavidFriedman

          Gods aren’t spirits. Plenty of societies have existed that did have a god or gods.

          Also there are plenty of explicitly atheist societies within modern countries that aren’t noticeably bad.

        • Nick says:

          @Two McMillion

          I can’t think of any examples of incorrect beliefs where replacing them with correct beliefs wouldn’t be an improvement.

          There are examples. Sam[]zdat wrote about gri-gri, for instance.

    • Two McMillion says:

      Of course. The immense evil that his incorrect theory resulted in should make that clear.

    • Two McMillion says:

      A lot of people think of the physical and the spiritual as two different modes of existence, but this an error. If the spiritual exists, it is a part of this single reality as much as the stars and planets are. There are not two different sets of facts; there is only one set of fact that may be more confusing or less confusing. From this it follows that if moral realism is correct, the facts that make it correct are facts about reality. They aren’t facts about distant spiritual ledger where abstract concepts of good and evil are tabulated. They are facts about this universe right here.

      Well, I am a moral realist. It follows that moral and factual errors are the same kind of error: both involve a mistake about the nature of the reality we live in. If we call mistakes about moral facts evil, then we must also call mistakes about factual matters evil.

      Or to put it another way: If moral facts are facts about this reality, then the principle that if you tell a lie the truth is forever your enemy applies to them as well. If you make a mistake about a factual principle, you have made an enemy of moral truth as well as scientific truth, because those are ultimately part of the same thing.

      Thus: to be factually mistaken is evil.

      • Randy M says:

        I was with you at first, but I’d think you are using “evil” in an uncommon way. Most people consider it to reflect on intent in a way that “mistaken” contradicts.

        Thus, to mislead is evil while to be misled is not.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          He’s actually using a traditional definition of evil rooted in Platonism. Evil is non-reality, the privation of a good. It holds up logically if to be is Good.
          An important distinction is then that only a subset of evils are moral failings, or you get the ridiculous situation of saying “He said it would rain tomorrow and was wrong! EVIL!” with the modern connotations.

      • Nick says:

        It follows that moral and factual errors are the same kind of error: both involve a mistake about the nature of the reality we live in. If we call mistakes about moral facts evil, then we must also call mistakes about factual matters evil.

        That doesn’t follow at all. Errors about moral facts are in your judgment a subset of errors about facts about reality. You are claiming, formally, that if we apply something to the subset, we have to apply it to the superset. Why would you think that? That is like saying that if we call orange balls basketballs, we have to call all balls basketballs.

  60. nkurz says:

    Since Scott mentioned him in the last open thread (and in the header) it might be of interest that an interview with Peter Turchin came out in Time Magazine this week:

    In 2010, after analyzing historical cycles of instability, Turchin made a prediction that was published at the time in the journal Nature: America will suffer a period of major social upheaval beginning around 2020.

    Some were skeptical, Turchin says, because “people did not understand that I was making scientific predictions, not prophecies.”

    Then 2020 came.

    While he feels validated, Turchin is horrified to be right. “As a scientist, I feel vindicated,” he says. “But on the other hand, I am an American and have to live through these hard times.”

    https://time.com/5852397/turchin-2020-prediction/.

  61. thepenforests says:

    I hope it’s okay if I repost my advice ask from the last open thread, since the new thread got posted a bit early and I was getting some good responses (thanks to those who commented, it was much appreciated).

    Anyway: just got laid off, looking for job advice.

    Background: I have a PhD in physics with a focus on computational work (ie simulations). Since then I have two years of experience working as a software engineer, mostly with Java, but some C# and a tiny bit of Javascript as well. I’ve also picked up some of the usual ancillary skills: git, jenkins, jira, etc.

    To be honest though, I’m really looking for a job in anything but software development at this point. I don’t really like the work, and I’m not that good at it either. I feel like my actual comparative advantage lies more on the softer side of the skill spectrum: things like taking in large quantities of information, synthesizing it, writing up summaries for audiences of varying levels of technical sophistication, giving presentations to audiences of varying levels of technical sophistication – or heck, even just explaining things to coworkers. I’m *really* good at those things, and even on my best day I’m just a mediocre programmer.

    That being said, it’s not like I’m opposed to technical work, or even all work that involves programming. If it’s a job where I’m asked to *use* code in the course of doing my work, then awesome, sign me up. But a job where my actual goal is to *produce* code, as a product that the company will sell? No, not my thing.

    In general I feel like I have a pretty valuable skillset, and I don’t really doubt that I could provide a lot of value to a lot of companies. But I also don’t really know where to start looking. My pitch is basically “well-rounded generically smart person with solid soft and technical skills”, and I don’t know what you do with that. I’ve heard “data scientist” from some of my friends, but I don’t know, that just seems like consigning myself to a life of using SQL to extract minute trends out of vast, inscrutable datasets. Which, ugh. But maybe I have the wrong impression of data science – or maybe working with vast, inscrutable datasets is more enjoyable than it sounds.

    Other relevant info: I live in a small-ish Canadian city, which I know is going to heavily limit my options. I’d prefer not to move if at all possible, but I won’t entirely rule it out (I’ll be staying in Canada no matter what though, so in practice moving would likely entail either Toronto or Vancouver). Also, work/life balance is pretty damn important to me. Like anything, it’s negotiable to some degree, but only to a point. Again, I know this might limit my options.

    Anyway, all advice is appreciated, including straight-up job recommendations, outside-the-box advice, or advice that basically says “you’re looking at all of this in entirely the wrong way you idiot”.

    (Oh, or just generic advice: stuff like how to write good resumes or LinkedIn profiles, what to do/not do at interviews, how to negotiate a salary, etc)

    • NostalgiaForInfinity says:

      Product management? A big part of that is the kind of soft skills you describe, spending a lot of time talking to software engineers and non-technical people. Plus it allows you to use some of your existing experience so you aren’t starting from scratch.

      Most commercial data science is overrated in terms of how interesting it is in practice (I am a data scientist). Does pay well though.

    • Tenacious D says:

      Which region of Canada are you in, if you don’t mind saying? It sounds like your skills and interests would be a good fit for the type of boutique software shop or consulting firm that services the main local primary industry. For example, I live on the east coast and have a couple of friends who work for companies selling planning software (and associated analysis and training) to the forestry sector, and GIS software for offshore oil and gas. Depending on where you are, there should be similar shops around sectors like agriculture, aquaculture/fisheries, mining, manufacturing, etc.

      • thepenforests says:

        East coast as well actually – Halifax to be precise (don’t know why I was being coy really, I’ve posted that before on SSC)

        • Tenacious D says:

          I totally get why you’d prefer not to move.
          Does your simulation experience include any CFD? I imagine there’s a lot of niche consulting companies in Halifax that work on oceanography and marine infrastructure where you’d use code then write up the results for audiences of various levels of sophistication.
          Or if the Guysborough spaceport gets off the ground, I expect that would create some jobs for physics PhDs in the area…

    • Ms. Morgendorffer says:

      Adjacent to data scientist is BI consultant / developper. This is my current job and I like it a lot. Basically it revolves around using database knowledge on how to model data, developping ETL jobs to move data from system to system and process and clean them, and / or using reporting tools to create dashboards so other teams / decision makers can have an up to date overview of what’s happening in the company.
      I say and/or because while the postercard for a BI consultant is :
      Analyse source systems on one hand and problems encountered by different teams on the other hand
      Devise a Datawarehouse
      Create ETL jobs to load daily said DWH from source systems
      Create reports / extractions / system feeds to help said teams
      the skillset allows to do anything where you want to do something with data, like my last mission where I was in charge of creating the processing part of credit card clearing files in a bank.
      The skillset also requires that you understand the problems other are facing so you can devise good solutions for them. You’ll usually be invested from the business requirement definition part to the day-to-day operation and maintenance of the production system after implementation, and see a lot of functional domains.
      It can be very diverse, and (at least where I am) there’s a large demande for those skills.
      You could have a look at Talend, a free ETL based on Java, and brush up your SQL-fu, maybe read a book on what a datawarehouse is (slowly changing dimensions, usefullness of different denormalization schemes), and see if there’s any opening for a BI consultant where you live.

  62. Trofim_Lysenko says:

    A request for Science Fiction and Fantasy book recommendations. I have at least another week or so where I’m going to be mostly phone-sitting at work and have been allowed a kindle, and I’m averaging 1.5 books per shift.

    To help calibrate taste (sorry the list is so long, but 90% of the time I ask for recommendations and it’s all stuff I’ve already read):

    Authors I’ve read and quite liked:
    -RAH, Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, Lewis, Tolkien, Zelazny, Gene Wolfe, Bujold, most of John Ringo, Larry Correia, Dan Simmons, David Weber, Eric Flint, Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds, Iain Banks, Peter Watts, Jim Butcher, Cole & Bunch’s Sten books, China Mieville, Brian McClellan, Andrzej Sapkowski, Django Wexler, Hannu Rajaniemi, Neal Stephenson, Stephen Brust, Terry Pratchett, Yoon Ha Lee, Mercedes Lackey, Matt Stover, Brandon Sanderson, Scott Lynch, Jack Campbell

    Authors I’ve read and liked some of their work:
    -Scalzi (Book 3 of Old Man’s War pissed me off so much I dropped that series and haven’t come back to him since, but I liked the first two. I’ve been debating giving him another chance with the Interdependency books), James S.A. Corey and his component parts, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. LeGuin, Poul Anderson, Frank Herbert, Doc Smith, David Brin, Kameron Hurley, Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Stephen Donaldson, Gordon Dickson, Tanith Lee, CJ Cherryh, Joe Abercrombie, Kameron Hurley, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Moon, Elizabeth Bear,

    Authors I’ve read and didn’t care for:
    -NK Jemisin, Cixin Liu (8 deadly words-ed 3-Body Problem 3 times, never made it past 3/4ths in), Ann Leckie, Robert Jordan (got tired of WoT about 2/3rds through),

    • noyann says:

      (Apology for repeating from the already dying last thread)

      A list of SciFi with comments on their economics is here, maybe you find something of interest to you.

      Cory Doctorow may be too much Young Adult in many works, but Walkaway is definitely adult. Highly recommended.

      ETA: Andy Weir’s The Martian for some engineer porn. Better than the film, imo.

      ETA2: While searching for this, I also found this.
      Now you will spend all your time trying to decide what you like best. 🙂

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        I saw the post and have started combing through it, and already read The Martian. Thanks for the other suggestions!

    • Randy M says:

      Do you care for Orson Scott Card at all? I’d recommend trying some of his stand alone novels, like Wyrms, Worthing Saga, or Treason. His newer stuff is alright if you are a fan, but doesn’t seem as interesting. If you like those, there’s the Ender’s Game series, which is endless at this point.

      • Elementaldex says:

        If you opt for the Ender’s Game series I would go for the Shadow series first. I think its quite a bit more interesting.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        I thought I’d read all his books up to the early 00’s but I’ll check those, thanks.

    • Nick says:

      Greg Egan, Greg Bear, Vernor Vinge, and Michael Crichton, to take a few on my shelves you didn’t list. I’ll specifically recommend A Fire Upon the Deep by Vinge and Sphere by Crichton; the first is a classic and the second is IMO underappreciated.

      • Mycale says:

        I’ll second A Fire upon the Deep — I found that book to be genuinely delightful and really ought to get around to finishing the series. It’s well worth a read.

        I’ll also mention A Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

        • matkoniecz says:

          A Fire upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky were magnificent, I highly recommend them.

          Further parts were terribly awful, seemed to be a low quality offtopic fanfiction.

          But especially A Deepness in the Sky was magnificent.

          Vg jnf n jbzna’f ibvpr, Gevkvn Obafby. “Terrgvatf gb gur uhznaf nobneq Vaivfvoyr Unaq. Guvf vf
          Yvrhgranag Ivpgbel Yvtuguvyy, Nppbeq Vagryyvtrapr Freivpr. V unir gnxra pbageby bs lbhe fcnprpensg. Lbh jvyy or ba gur tebhaq fubegyl. Vg znl or fbzr gvzr orsber bhe sbeprf neevir ba gur fprar. Qb abg, V ercrng, qb abg erfvfg gubfr sbeprf.”

          naq riragf nebhaq jrer n irel avpr raqvat tvira jung unccrarq rneyvre.

          • Nick says:

            I read The Children of the Sky, the first sequel, and I was pretty disappointed. It’s not outright terrible, but it’s really not very good. I don’t know if I would pick up another sequel.

            A shame, because in other respects it is a very nice book to have on my shelves—beautiful cover, and just the right size for a paperback.

          • Aftagley says:

            Further parts were terribly awful, seemed to be a low quality offtopic fanfiction.

            Ok, I’m glad it wasn’t just me. I only got through around 1/3rd of Children of the Sky before quitting in near-disgust.

          • matkoniecz says:

            I fortunately stopped much earlier. I never, ever was so disappointed in any text.

            I encountered worse ones, but never expected something great from them. And this was simply sad.

          • kaelthas says:

            A Fire upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky were magnificent, I highly recommend them.

            Further parts were terribly awful, seemed to be a low quality offtopic fanfiction.

            +1

            I can also recommend “The collected stories of vernor vinge” and the novella “the cookie monster”.

          • albatross11 says:

            I thought _Children of the Sky_ was okay but not really great. It was disappointing to me mainly because _A Fire Upon the Deep_ and _A Deepness in the Sky_ were so amazingly good. (Personally, I think _Deepness_ is the best SF novel I have ever read.).

            There was a clever idea he had in _Children of the Sky_ that I wish he had been able to execute a lot better: Ravna understood the value in allowing exponential growth in their capabilities in ways the kids mostly didn’t, and that the Tine entrepreneur *did* understand, and this exponential growth was much earlier in Tine civilization than it would have been in human civilization, because of the way Tine consciousness worked.

          • Doctor Mist says:

            Agree about Children of the Sky; it was not up to the standard of the first two, if only because he didn’t use it to nibble at the edges of the Singularity as he did with Fire and Deepness.

            But I think that’s the only sequel there is? It’s not appropriate to call Deepness a sequel to Fire except in the sense that it was written later and takes place in the same universe. But it takes place before Fire and pretty completely stands on its own. If you liked Fire but didn’t like Children, do not let that put you off Deepness.

          • matkoniecz says:

            Strictly speaking Deepness is a prequel. And it is great.

        • Thomas Jorgensen says:

          .. Pournelles daughter, Jennifer R. Pournelle is hilariously the anti – Kevin Anderson, that is, she wrote a single book in her fathers universe demonstrating that she is a rather better author than he is, then went right back to being a successful academic.

          • Doctor Mist says:

            What’s the book?

            And what’s the story with Kevin Anderson? Is he somebody’s kid? Or are you referring to his collaborations with Frank Herbert’s son?

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            Yup – Those collabs are… bad.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            The Dune prequels are particularly cringe-worthy, but I decided some time back that Kevin Anderson is -extremely- hit-or-miss. And to be clear, I say that having quite enjoyed some of his books.

        • Belisaurus Rex says:

          The sequel to the Mote in God’s Eye, “The Gripping Hand”, is ok if you really loved the convoluted negotiation aspects of the first one but hated the plot/action/mystery.

          I’d put “Deepness in the Sky”, “Hyperion”, and “Mote” as my sci-fi top 3 (though you’ve already read Simmons)

          • matkoniecz says:

            I liked “Hyperion” though I would classify it as fantasy in space.

            One more time +1 to “Deepness in the Sky”.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        I was listing off the top of my head. Thanks for the Greg reminders, I’ve read at least a couple from each but not all I don’t think, so I’ll check their bibliography. Like the rest of you I loved A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness In the Sky and was let down by the sequel. I haven’t actually read any other Vinge though, so that’s a thought.I’ve read all of Crichton up through Next which was…..not good.

    • Kojak says:

      You ever read the three Takeshi Kovacs books by Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies)? Those are good fun, and a pretty easy read besides.

      Likewise, if you enjoy transhuman fic along the lines of Alastair Reynolds or Iain M. Banks, Peter F. Hamilton might be up your alley. I will say that I think the other two are better writers; Hamilton is still quite good, it’s just that they’re even better.

      And now I’m looking at this list and seeing that William Gibson isn’t on it? Have you never read the Sprawl trilogy? If not, I’m almost a little envious of you, having the opportunity to read it fresh.

      • Tarpitz says:

        Hamilton is a lot of fun. Something of a guilty pleasure, in many ways, but a lot of fun.

        • Aftagley says:

          Where should I start with him?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Pandora’s Star. And then proceed to the rest of the Commonwealth saga.

          • Tarpitz says:

            If you want to start with a stand-alone rather than risk beginning a series you might not end up wanting to finish, go for Fallen Dragon. Otherwise either Pandora’s Star (Commonwealth saga book 1*) or The Reality Dysfunction (Night’s Dawn trilogy book 1) would be a good option.

            *Technically, Misspent Youth is the first Commonwealth book chronologically, but do not start with it. It’s set much earlier, is in no way necessary to follow the story of the later books, is Earthbound near-future rather than the space opera that is Hamilton’s strength and turns his cringiest tendencies up to 11. It’s sort of hilarious, but definitely not the litmus test to see if you like the author.

          • rumham says:

            The Night’s Dawn Trilogy is my favorite. But you might want to slap a trigger warning on the whole damn thing. It can get a little rough.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Yeah Night’s Dawn did give me a bit of existential terror.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        I’ve read and quite liked the Kovacs trilogy, I thought Thirteen/Black man was so-so and didn’t care for his fantasy novel. I’ve read all of Gibson up to Pattern Recognition (I think that’s the title), stopped since I haven’t liked his later works nearly as much.

        Thanks for the reminder on Hamilton! I’ve only read the Commonwealth books and had forgotten he had other stuff.

      • cassander says:

        I’ve been meaning to read the Takeshi Kovacs books, but man was season 2 of the netflix show terrible. All the stuff I didn’t care about in season 1 and almost not of the stuff I liked.

        • Protagoras says:

          Seems not to be a political issue, as I basically never agree with you about those, and I agree about this.

    • achenx says:

      Kim Stanley Robinson? Red Mars is great, the sequels are ok. Years of Rice and Salt is excellent though it’s more alternate history than sci-fi/fantasy. Never read any more of his stuff after that though.

      Oh, and for the classics there’s A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller.

      • matkoniecz says:

        +1 to A Canticle for Liebowitz though it was quite depressing one.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        I really liked A Canticle For Liebowitz (read in HS courtesy of the Babylon 5 episode with a pastiche of it). I didn’t much care for Red Mars, eight deadly worded a little way into Green, and couldn’t finish Aurora either, so I concluded I don’t care for KSR.

        • salvorhardin says:

          There’s less-well-known early KSR that I like quite a bit more than the later Mars books. _The Gold Coast_, _The Memory of Whiteness_, and the stories collected in _Remaking History_ come to mind.

    • a real dog says:

      Sci-fi:
      Seconding Greg Egan, that’s good stuff.
      Stanislaw Lem is definitely a big one missing from your list, start with Solaris.
      William Gibson if you dig cyberpunk.

      Once Jacek Dukaj starts getting translated, jump on that one. I think “Ice” is in some kind of translation development hell since 2017…

      Fantasy:
      R. Scott Baker’s “Darkness That Comes Before” had some good ideas, dunno about the rest of the series.

      • noyann says:

        +1 Stanislaw Lem.
        His work is widely spread and heterogenous, and the space faring is of the cold war era style. But this mind was so vast and creative, see the list — try to get some sample pages (Google Books, Amazon) of the stories about Pilot Pirx, about Trurl & Klapaucius, of Summa Technologiae, and of The Futurulogic[al?] Congress (NEVER watch that movie!) to see what suits your taste.

        Recommended:

        +1 Solaris (re the film, avoid the remake but go for Tarkovskij!)

        Not SciFi works in a narrow sense, but there is great imagination in the books of collected reviews (A Perfect Vacuum, One Human Minute) or introductions (Imaginary Magnitude) for nonexistent books.

        • matkoniecz says:

          +1 for Lem. If available in English – The Futurological Congress is great.

          Solaris, His Master’s Voice, Fiasco (except the short prologue with mechas) are highly, highly recommended.

          Summa Technologiae is far more impressive if you remember that it was written in 1964.

          • noyann says:

            Venturing into nonfiction, there is a piece “Weapon Systems of the 21st Century or the Upside Down Evolution” — almost prophetic.

            What a great mind. RIP and thank you for expanding mine a little, Stanislaw.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            I read Solaris when I was 12 or 13 and remember not liking it, but that was 25 years ago so it’s probably worth another shot.

            So if I’m going to read Lem again, what’s his next best book after Solaris?

          • matkoniecz says:

            Depends on what you want, but The Futurological Congress is short and quite different from Solaris. Many like stories about Pirx – some great, some not, and Fables for Robots that I rather disliked.

            humor:
            The Futurological Congress – is fun and the best kind of absurdity very mild spoiler: (punenpgre unyyhpvangvat gung ur vf abg unyyhpvangvat nobhg unyyhpvangvat… – guvf erphefvba vf whfg bar bs uvtuyvtugf)

            science-fiction:
            His Master’s Voice – story about an effort by scientists to decode, translate and understand an extraterrestrial transmission. Alieness is even more alien than in Fiasco

            science-fiction:
            Fiasco – story about the first contact, aliens are not humanoids speaking English, has some missteps (freaking mechas in the prologue)

            interesting prediction from quite deep past:
            Summa Technologiae, Weapon Systems of the 21st Century or the Upside Down Evolution – rare kinds of quite successful predictions

          • salvorhardin says:

            I remember really liking Return from the Stars. And +1 to the Trurl and Klaupacius stories, collected in English as The Cyberiad.

          • noyann says:

            My memory is too hazy, too much time has passed for detailed recommendations. Instead: Google books or Amazon’s ‘look inside this book’ to get an impression of style and translation quality; Amazon reviews are the impressions of recent readers and often point out the best and worst of the book.

        • mlogan says:

          The main thing with Lem, imo, is to read the translations by Michael Kandel. The other translators are not as good.

          “His Master’s Voice” is less well-known, but one of this best novels, and I think will be appreciated by readers of this blog. There’s a strong element of Moloch in it.

      • matkoniecz says:

        One more +1 to Greg Egan, especially Diaspora.

        ———-

        Jacek Dukaj is great, though Ice seems one of weaker ones.

        “Perfect Imperfection”, “Other Songs”, “The Plunderer’s Daughter”, “The Cathedral” were all great. And none appears to be available in English.

        • Trofim_Lysenko says:

          I’ll keep an eye out for English translations, thanks!

          • matkoniecz says:

            You may want to search for CG short film “The Cathedral” by Bagiński – based on one of aspects of his story.

            Though now it is 18 years old computer-generated movie, so nowadays it is far less impressive.

      • Orion says:

        When it comes to Stanislaw, I’d start with Cyberiad, then move on to Solaris.

    • AG says:

      Murderbot novellas by Martha Wells. Breezy space sci-fi. You can probably finish all four currently released ones in a day.
      Steeplejack series by A.J. Hartley (3 books). Historical fantasy set in the industrial age.
      The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. Epic doorstopper fantasy.
      The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. Historical fantasy, but I very much anti-recommend the sequel.
      Alif the Unseen by Willow G. Wilson. Romantic fantasy with a modern cyberpunk bent.
      Superposition by David Walton and its sequel, Supersymmetry. Sci-fi thriller.
      The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff. Modern fantasy comedy.
      Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey. Epic doorstopper fantasy.
      Any novel by A. Lee Martinez. Comedic fantasy.
      Seconding the Cory Doctorow recommendation.

      Also you should try out Tamora Pierce, Diane Duane, and Diana Wynne Jones.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        I tried the Murderbot books but they didn’t hold my interest. Ditto Kushiel’s Dart though I finished that one. The Traitor Baru Cormorant I put down not even halfway through. I Like some of Tanya Huff and. Diane Duane though so I’ll definitely check out your other recommendations, thanks.

        • AG says:

          I’ll admit that I always skim through about half of each Kushiel book, and declined to read the third trilogy in that world at all.

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            .. The Kushinel series are Carey being deliberately lush in language, imagery and plot. I like them, but I can also see why people bounce the hell off.

            I am going to recommend you try Santa Olivia instead, because that is just. Fun. Science fiction rather than fantasy. Agent of Hel series also more straightforward than the Kushinel universe, but not as strong a rec.

          • AG says:

            I liked both Santa Olivia books, but found that they had lower impact. The second one especially was indulgent.

            Carey’s style of writing just isn’t always my thing. She takes a very slice-of-life linear approach, detailing every event in order whether you care or not. And then most of it does turn out to be relevant to the payoff, but that doesn’t make the build-up any less boring. My favorite was Kushiel’s Chosen, because it was heavier on character interactions, not as much new world-building to slog through since the first book did most of it. It had the most driving momentum throughout.

    • Bobobob says:

      Anything by James Tiptree, Jr. (real name Alice Sheldon).

      Speaking of pseudonyms, I’m curious how you decided on your user name!

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        An unsung hero of the Cold War. Single-handedly set Soviet genetics research back years! In other words, as a somewhat nerdy joke.

        And thanks for the reminder, name’s very familiar so it goes onto the list.

    • Elementaldex says:

      I have similar-ish tastes to your and would recommend both:

      City of Stairs – Robert Jackson

      City of Stairs is a really interesting ‘post’ divine fantasy world with very interesting main characters

      The Golem and the Jinni – Helen Wecker

      The Golem and the Jinni is historical fantasy with very mild romance based in New York in the 1920’s(?) The historical element is very well done and gives it a very nice setting and the book has very good prose/atmosphere.

    • What I have read most of recently, as mentioned before, is Cherryh’s Foreigner series.
      For fantasy, I thought Spinning Silver, by Novik, was great. I’m also a fan of Bujold’s fantasy, including the Penric series of novellas, or whatever you call linked stories too long for short stories, too short for novels.
      A while back I was reading some David Duncan, and liked Ill Met in the Arena.
      I’m also a fan of my own fantasy, Salamander and Brothers, but perhaps a bit biased.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        I liled both the Foreigner and Chanur books, and have at least somewhat enjoyed everything Bujold has written (even if the last few Vorkosigan books have leaned more and more on the ‘somewhat’).

        I keep meaning to look at your books, so now’s a good opportunity. And by Novik do you mean Naomi Novik?

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          I’ve read the Chanur series at least twice. Cherryh is famous for setting a high standard for characterization of aliens. That said, I found it grating how the lion-people’s belief in the supernatural only extends to the ship’s crew saying “gods-rotted” around 10,000 times per novel (apparently gods only exist to be the cause of the physical phenomenon of rotting). It was a sufficiently annoying verbal tic that I wished she’d just made them atheists like so many other SF writers.

        • Yes.

          Naomi Novik, who wrote the Napoleonic sea story with dragons books, also wrote a very good fantasy.

          • Doctor Mist says:

            Naomi Novik, who wrote the Napoleonic sea story with dragons books, also wrote a very good fantasy.

            Um. The dragons don’t count?

          • John Schilling says:

            And there’s the one with the wizard (who calls himself a dragon) and the witch. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that Dr. Friedman notes as Novik’s one “very good” fantasy the one with the Jewish protagonist who is an expert in microeconomics as applied under a couple of legal systems very different from our own?

            I do agree that Spinning Silver is very good, and I’d probably count it as Novik’s best – in part because of that unusual protagonist.

          • The dragons don’t count?

            The aren’t clearly fantasy.

            Alternate history and something between fantasy and science fiction.

            They are good, but I think Spinning Silver is better.

    • The Red Foliot says:

      I’m always surprised at how unpopular Jack Vance is here. I recommend the Lyonesse trilogy as his greatest series and the Alastor series as the one with the most interesting sociology to it. Alastor will particularly appeal to libertarians as two out of three of its installments extol capitalistic, individualistic societies and condemn their opposites. It also has an interesting aristocratic society in the Rhunes, who are insular, violent, and yet extremely dedicated to social refinement.

      Some criticisms of him are that his plots are linear and simplistic and that his characters, also, are often linear and simplistic.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        Would you say Vance is unpopular in the sense of disliked here, or just not mentioned?

        • The Red Foliot says:

          Just not mentioned, as I’ve literally never seen him brought up. It’s not too weird when I think about it, though, as folk here seem to prefer hard sci-fi, while Vance was more about fantasy in space with some tongue-in-cheek sociology thrown in.

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            Vance should probably have more of a presence here because of how good many of his main characters are at figuring things out .

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        Thanks for the reminder. I only ever read The Dying Earth for the D&D tie-in and it didn’t stick with me.

        • sfoil says:

          The Dying Earth was Vance’s first published work and is a fairly poor representative of massive amount of work he wrote afterwards.

      • FormerRanger says:

        I’ve been a big fan of Vance since I was a teenager. I still reread his best stuff now and then. I recommend the various “sequels” to “The Dying Earth”: everything about Cugel (“Eyes of the Overworld”, “Cugel’s Saga”), everything about the magicians’ guild (“Rhialto the Marvelous” and a few miscellaneous stories).

        Great stuff for D&D fans, but also very fun to read.

        He wrote a lot of good SF as well, sometimes mixed with fantasy, but a lot is straight SF, such as “The Demon Princes” series, starting with “The Star King.”

    • souleater says:

      The Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne reminds me of the Harry Dresden books

      Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (Or anything by Neal Stevenson)

      Peter F Hamilton is also quite good.

      • Aftagley says:

        The Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne reminds me of the Harry Dresden books

        If you liked the Iron Druid and Dresden, have you checked out the Nightside series by Simon R Green? It’s pulpy and stupid, but it manages to be a good romp.

        • Trofim_Lysenko says:

          I liked the Iron Druid books at first, but felt they started going off the rails Around his trip up yggdrasil and I couldn’t stand his apprentice / lover and checked out at that point (Book 8? 9?).

          I have nothing against good popcorn fiction so I’ll check the other series out, thanks!

    • noyann says:

      Rudy Rucker. Less known, but interesting SciFi. Can be a bit ideosyncratic (e.g. abundant Californian surfer slang in some books, you wave?, worldbuilding a bit burdened by the mathematical concepts they illustrage) but mostly still good reading. Much is free for download.

      I can fully recommend the Ware tetralogy.

    • John Schilling says:

      The one(s) you’re conspicuously missing are the Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle collaborations. Each of them separately is first-rate, the two in combination are Heinlein-level superb and in ways that overlap many of your other choices. Pick one whose general subject appeals, and have at it.

      Other suggestions:

      Vernor Vinge, starting with “A Fire Upon the Deep”, will scratch the Reynolds/Watts itch

      Ken MacLeod, probably start with the Fall Revolution series (but maybe one of the more recent ones will appeal more), think Mieville/Stephenson

      Ian MacDonald’s recent “Luna” trilogy is Stephensonesque with a nod to a particular RAH work.

      Alexis Gilliland’s “Rosinante” trilogy is a bit dated, but I’m about 50% certain James S.A. Corey named their favorite spaceship after it.

      Jack McDevitt does some pretty good work, maybe think Reynolds Lite.

      Charles Sheffield is no longer active, but was somewhere on the Asimov/Reynolds continuum.

      Ben Bova is still active but I haven’t liked his latest; his earlier work fits between Asimov and Heinlein without quite reaching the level of either.

      A. Bertram Chandler did some good old-school space opera which might interest you.

      Walter Jon Williams, also no longer active but did lots of good stuff scattered across too many subgenres to count. I’m particularly fond of Aristoi.

      Other contemporary authors worth a look, not going to try to characterize them all: Brenda Cooper, Allen Steele, Timothy Zahn, Michael Flynn, and Karl Schroeder.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        Thanks for the reminder of Pournelle. I’ve actually read a lot of Niven and Footfall, Fallen Angels, and Lucifer’s Hammer but I’d forgotten I wanted to check out the CoDominion books.

        Walter Jon Williams and Timothy Zahn are also on my quite liked list, I just couldn’t list everything off the top of my head.

        I read some of Bova (Jupiter?) and to be honest I remember it being sort of forgettable.

        Thanks for the other recommendations and reminders as well. I think at least some of these are in the Baen Free Library too..

        • John Schilling says:

          Yeah “Jupiter” is one of Bova’s later works; pretty much everything post-2000 and especially the ones named after planets fall into that category. Try, hmm, “Colony” (1978) for good early-period Bova.

      • jewelersshop says:

        +1 to Michael Flynn.
        Also maybe Walter Tevis or Jasper Fforde? The latter’s Tuesday Next series is sort of steampunk England with time travel (not for everyone, just for the Chronoguard) where riots break out over surrealist art and productions of Shakespeare plays go kind of like Rocky Horror Picture Show showings.

    • ltowel says:

      I liked the Interdependency a lot and would suggest reading it, but it suffers from Scalzi-protagonist and the last book coming out Mid april this year. It seems like it’s supposed to be a global warming allegory/fall of the roman empire story, but a lot of what’s being said is just so on the nose.

      I really enjoyed and recommend Children of Time which benefits from having some relatively alien aliens.

    • Doctor Mist says:

      At the risk of being self-serving or biased, your taste suggests to me that you might like the two novels by my late brother-in-law Bill Adams and his cousin Cecil Brooks, which I have just released on Kindle: The Unwound Way and The End of Fame (previously Del Rey Discovery paperbacks).

      The author that Bill always most reminded me of was Bujold, though once I told him so, he prudently refused to read her.

      If you have already read them, my thanks. Getting them out there has been a big job and seeing an occasional sale is a big boost. I had hoped to have Bill’s first, unpublished novel, out by now, but there have been various hurdles.

    • mike529 says:

      I found the Flight of the Silvers books to be fun light reads.

      Similar to Worm, but thankfully less verbose.

    • noyann says:

      I definitely not recommend (this is a CW thread, right? So why not be warring on something that is culture?): The Expanse by Corey. Although an interesting concept of aliens (kinda) making contact, ditto intra-humanity conflicts, ditto humanity growing outward through the galaxies, its characters had too much of an artificially synthesized plastic-y (and at the same time boilerplate cliché) feel to them, and the worlds/situations/settings felt like they were written with half a mind set on the movie/TV contract: shallow visual bombast. * (I usually read complete works (and writing notes, or diaries, where available**) of an author, but with this series I gave up at book 4. Bahhh. )

      * If you have one eye set on secondary aims, you only have one left for your work of art, which will lose 1/3 of its dimensionality. And that will show.
      ** To understand better this author’s path of growth, or the metamorphoses from a brief idea in a diary entry to a tentative scene to a chapter to a world.

      • matkoniecz says:

        Books were poorly written (at least what I tried), but I really liked TV series and I strongly recommend watching it.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        ;I was really liking the expanse until book 5 (I think). The shocking series swerve hit as I was reading current news about the part of Iraq I was in falling to ISIS and the sychronicity led me to drop the series and walk away. Finding out their solution to that was a pseudo generation skip killed my desire to give it another chance.

        I liked the first 3 seasons a lot but won’t be watching the rest to avoid the bit above.

      • Redland Jack says:

        I’ve been enjoying them all, so far (I’m just starting book 7).

        That being said, a definite downside (from the other stuff I’ve read by one of the authors, Daniel Abraham) is that I don’t think he’s great at creating a strong emotional connection between the reader and the characters.

        I enjoyed The Long Price (4 book series), but I struggled a bit through The Dagger and the Coin (another 4 book series).

    • Plumber says:

      I really liked First and Last Men by Olaf Stapledon, plus Rainbow Mars,Draco’s Tavern, and sone other works by Larry Niven.
      I very much liked his fantasy works better, but Ted Chiang had some okay SF as well.

      • The first volume of Das Kapital reminded me of Stapledon.

        • Plumber says:

          @DavidFriedman,
          So I recommended one guy who reads like Marx, one right-libertarian, and one whatever Ted Chiang is (judging by his age and his NYTimes probably some flavor of left-liberal-progressive)?

          I now need to recommend a left-anarchist (LeGuin?), a New Dealer (early Bradbury?), a traditionalst (Kipling?), and a fascist (?) to hit all sides now!

          • You might want to read Eric Flint, if you haven’t. He’s a patriotic American labor union socialist.

            It isn’t that Stapledon reads as if inspired by Marx but that Marx reads as if inspired by, or written by, Stapledon. Not the economics but the broad sweet of history.

            Clearly someone had a time machine.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        Thanks for the recommendations!

    • roflc0ptic says:

      I see you mentioned Stephen R Donaldson. Did you read the gap sequence? The style is pleasantly different from the overwrought writing in Thomas Covenant. He’s 2/3rds through a new trilogy called the great God’s war. I just read them last week. The first book was kind of all setup, limited depth, but I found the second immensely compelling.

      As kind of an aside, Donaldson explores different psychologies of sexual violence in both the Chronicles and the Gap Sequence, and has the consequences of that violence drive huge parts of the narrative arc. In great God’s war, he inverts this: he motivates a character to be rigidly obsessed with consent, and then sets up a scenario in which his rigid application of consen principles does immense harm to the person he’s attempting to protect. Perhaps it turns out alright in the end, but it’s fucking hilarious. Also relatable, in a “man I wish that woman still talked to me” sort of way. You tell someone you don’t think they’re capable of uncoerced consent one time

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        Just the 6 Thomas Covenant books. I’ll check the others out, thanks. And yes, I’ve received very bad responses for even saying I’ve read them, much less saying I thought they were interesting books.

        • roflc0ptic says:

          Great. One note about the Gap Cycle (not sequence, I got that wrong), similar to the note about “Great God’s war” – the first book is short and not that great, but it gets turned up to 11 shortly thereafter.

          Thanks for this thread. Lots of stuff to check out.

        • Redland Jack says:

          I found those tough to enjoy, mainly because it was so hard to like Covenant (just in general, but particularly after the events early in the first book).

          It is kind of strange that Angus is so much more likable, despite having similar issues.

      • Lapsed Pacifist says:

        The Gap Sequence is some of my favorite SF, and nobody’s read it!

      • Orion says:

        The Thomas Covenant books are some of my very favorite books, and I would say that the Gap series are substantially superior to the Thomas Covenant books.

        • Nancy Lebovitz says:

          What do you like about the Covenant books? I read the first six, mostly because Donaldson’s inventiveness about the land was fun. After a while, I thought of Covenant as just getting in the way of what I wanted.

          Did you read beyond the first six?

    • sfoil says:

      Your tastes runs a little pulpier than mine, but I’ll keep that in mind.

      James Blish for the “serious pulp” side – I’ve liked everything I’ve read of his, but haven’t read a whole lot. Cities in Flight, Surface Tension, and a few novellas where I thought he put in way more thought and effort than he needed to.

      John C. Wright, specifically The Golden Age. If you liked Rajaniemi and Mieville you need to read this. Don’t expect his other writing to reach that level, though I think you’ll find it worth looking into.

      Jack Vance, a good start is The Demon Princes. He was a major influence on Wolfe and Zelazny and is holds up very well in his own right.

      Greg Egan, I’ve only read Diaspora and Permutation City but recommend both.

      Stanislaw Lem, either Solaris or Cyberiad are good places to start.

      Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky.

    • SamChevre says:

      Books I like overlap with yours a lot–some others I like also:

      Tamora Pierce – YA but really good YA. Think the Trickster books are the strongest, but I’ve reread everything she wrote.

      Tad Williams – I like the Otherland books slightly better than the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn books, but both are great.

      Katherine Addison’s Goblin Emperor

      As much romance as fantasy, but Patricia Briggs is an enjoyable read.

      Also, Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series – yes, they are children’s books, but they are well worth reading and re-reading.

    • matkoniecz says:

      Alastair Reynolds – House of Suns

      I really liked it, mostly for magnificently large scale without diminishing it.

      Alastair Reynolds – Thousandth Night

      This is a short story that got expanded into House of Suns, very similar in the style.

    • David W says:

      Your list overlaps my taste extensively, so I’m going to be spending some time mining the thread. It’s only fair that I give some back. The piece that convinced me is your ‘liked some of their work’ authors, actually.

      Not fantasy exactly but scratches the same itch: Harald by David Friedman (yes, this one). First fiction book I’ve read where logistics and morale and alliances are all treated with the respect they deserve.

      Not quite Pratchett, Robert Asprin’s Myth series is light and fun.

      I don’t see Robin McKinley on your list. I recommend the Damar books (The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown). She’s also written a number of fairy tales reimagined that are nice, although not where I’d start reading. Contemplative rainy-day type books.

      You list Flint and Lackey but not Freer: maybe that means The Shadow of the Lion series will be new to you? Collaboration between all three authors, stronger than any of them alone. Fantasy set in a semi-historical Venice, fairly low powered magic focused on souls rather than physical effects.

      Speaking of Flint and Freer collaborations: Joe’s World series (the Philosophical Strangler) is absolutely hilarious.

      Another Baen author to recommend is David Drake. I would skip his early stuff where he was exorcising demons of Vietnam, but the RCN series starting at With the Lightnings feels like Pournelle, except that it’s Rome v Carthage in Space. Typically his plots are mined from actual history which helps his verisimilitude.

      Barry Hughart only wrote one book to my knowledge, but it’s awesome: The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox. Set in mythical China, hilarious yet also the only book I’ve found that feels like the same genre as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

      The closest I’ve found to Master Li is Yamada Monogatori: Demon Hunter, by Richard Parks, noir set in mystical Japan. Not as impressive but still worth a few hours.

      Closer to Butcher: Hot Lead, Cold Iron by Ari Marmell has the noir adventures of a down on his luck Fae. Only read him if you’re out of Dresden books, though.

      More recent, Rachel Aaron has two series I can recommend. The Legend of Eli Monpress is set in a world that takes animism seriously: the titular character begins the series by breaking out of prison by sweet-talking the spirit of the door to his cell. In a different style, Nice Dragons Finish Last beginning the Heartstriker’s series is basically Shadowrun with the serial numbers filed off.

      Nathan Lowell’s Quarter Share series – can’t put it better than the author himself: “Nathan centers on the people behind the scenes–ordinary men and women trying to make a living in the depths of space. In his novels, there are no bug-eyed monsters, or galactic space battles, instead he paints a richly vivid and realistic world where the “hero” uses hard work and his own innate talents to improve his station and the lives of those of his community.” Soothing, but still fun.

      Similar low-stakes sci-fi, E.M. Foner’s Date Night on Union Station.

      To go the complete opposite route, Glen Cook’s Black Company series really makes you root for the villains, and he doesn’t even try to make you consider them the lesser evil.

      On the fluffier side, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. Definitely on the junk food end of the spectrum, but if you’re desperate…

      • SamChevre says:

        Just a second–Shadow of the Lion is awesome.

      • Deiseach says:

        Barry Hughart only wrote one book to my knowledge, but it’s awesome: The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox. Set in mythical China, hilarious yet also the only book I’ve found that feels like the same genre as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

        Oh, I was so disappointed when he stopped writing these! I don’t remember the exact details but he had some big bust-up with his publisher so he discontinued the series.

    • AliceToBob says:

      Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay

      • Redland Jack says:

        Guy Gavriel Kay is my favourite author. I particularly like his ‘middle period’, namely everything after his initial ‘pure’ fantasy trilogy and before his latest two books.

        (Well, I also didn’t read his book of poetry, but maybe that’s my loss).

    • Phigment says:

      Glen Cook

      Lots of his books are good, but more specifically:

      The Dragon Never Sleeps is amazing Sci-fi that no one has ever heard of. It’s great. Read it right now.

      The Chronicles of the Black Company are what he’s probably best known for, and they’re good. Gritty, dark fantasy where wizards clash and soldiers get caught in the middle.

      Swordbearer is pretty epic swords and sorcery. It’s like Elric, but played completely straight.

      • Protagoras says:

        I like the black company books. Enough about the setting is thought through and sensible to make the bits that aren’t grate, which to my mind is better than the typical fantasy setting where you just have to avoid thinking about the logic (and since all the books are as told by fictional narrators, there is always the escape for some of the logic and plot holes that the narrator screwed up, though I’m pretty sure most of them are actually the author screwing up, as usual).

        • Belisaurus Rex says:

          Do they ever get better after the first trilogy ends? I started reading part two but quit. The switching narrators for the books in the second trilogy kind of killed it for me, and it seems like the new villains are pushovers.

          • Redland Jack says:

            I think the first trilogy is pretty much the peak of the series. Croaker tends to be the most likable of all the characters.

            Definitely skip the Silver Spike, which is just awful (and I don’t think ends up having anything to do with the rest of the series).

            The final book (well, I guess he just put out another one a year or two ago, but ignoring that) is interesting, just to see how things wind up (and I was kind of touched by Croaker’s final disposition).

    • Trofim_Lysenko says:

      Ok, holy crap! I give up trying to respond individually to everyone without spamming the new comment widget, but thank you, everyone! Feel free to keep recommending stuff/discussing with each other.

      The weird part (for me) is the feeling of having PROBABLY read some of the books I’m finding when looking into these authors…and being unable to remember!

      • matkoniecz says:

        Part of why you get good answer is listing of books that you liked.

        Far too often someone asks “anything to read that is ?” and then asnswers to all through proposals “thanks, but I already read that”.

    • alnkpa says:

      I like the Terra Ignota series. It’s sci-fi written by art historian Ada Palmer.

      • roflc0ptic says:

        Second this. Some of the reveals were a little too soap-opera esque for my tastes, but in total the series is really gripping.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        Hmmm. I loved the first book, but the second lost me somewhere around one fourth through. I don’t know if it was the pacing or that the writing style which I found clever and intriguing in the first book had palled, or the sense that there was a lot of character brownian motion but very little movement of the plot, but I found myself putting it down and just not coming back to it.

    • gojiban says:

      Malazan Book of the Fallen series, by Steven Erikson. A little difficult to get into, but one of the best things ever once you do.

      The Night Angel trilogy and the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks are more immediately satisfying and aren’t recommended enough.

      • mitv150 says:

        Seconding and thirding Malazan Book of the Fallen. There are some truly magnificent moments in this series.

    • FormerRanger says:

      Michael Swanwick. “The Iron Dragon’s Daughter” and two sequels, “The Dragons of Babel” and “The Iron Dragon’s Mother.” Also “The Dog Said Bow-Wow” (a collection of stories about two weird-future con-men, Darger and Surplus), and two sequels, “Dancing with Bears” about their adventures in future post-AI-apocalypse Russia, and “Chasing the Phoenix,” the same in China.

      @Trofim_Lysenko: Lenin makes an appearance in “Dancing with Bears.”

      He has a bunch of excellent short story collections as well, and other novels. (“Jack Faust” is about the most downer take on Faust ever.)

    • kaelthas says:

      – C. S. Friedman : The Coldfire Trilogy (Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls, Crown of Shadows): The story is set in a world where thoughts/emotions directly affect reality: People cannot use guns, because if you fear that the gun might explode in your hand, it will. This has very interesting effects on religion, but also on evolution, and of course it enables sorcery.
      And the Fallen Prophet is my all-times favorite anti-hero.
      – James Clemens : The “Banned and Banished” Series (“Witch Fire”, … ) : Reminds a little bit of Lotr, with its band of heroes trying to topple the dark Lord, but while reading Lotr feels like you are sightseeing some ancient ruins, with every Human, Elv, Tree or Stone having a history that reaches back 10.000 years – reading the banned and banished series feels more like you are visiting a zoo with lots of exotic animals: The books use lots of the common fantasy tropes, but makes them more exotic and colorful.
      I should mention that the series suffers a bit from deus-ex-machinas and diabolus-ex-machinas, and I wish the lector had banned all these fuck’ ing apos’ trophes.
      – Laurel K. Hamilton : A Kiss of Shadows (First Book in a Series) : Urban Fantasy about a Sidhe Princess returning to the court where her crazy, sadistic aunt rules as Queen. Nowhere else have I come across a plot that is such a unique mix of diverse events (magics, politics, violence, sex), while still being reasonably coherent.
      Sadly, the following books of the Series get worse and worse. (The second book is still enjoyable). And I read into her other Series (something about vampires) and found it rather boring.

    • Redland Jack says:

      I’ve enjoyed almost everything by Jeff VanderMeer (I didn’t like his most recent book, Dead Astronauts).

      I would say about him that if he were any ‘darker’, I probably wouldn’t enjoy it, and if he were any weirder, I probably wouldn’t like it. He manages to sit on the correct side of both of those lines.

  63. The Bendectin case is a little like that. A number of firms had produced an unpatented drug. It turned out that the drug sometimes produced negative effects on the daughters of women who took it when pregnant, effects that only appeared at puberty.

    By that time there were no records to show which company had produced the dose which woman took. No company had produced anything close to a majority of all doses. Under conventional tort law that meant that, since no company had a greater than fifty percent chance of being responsible for any particular injury, no company was liable. The court instead assigned liability in proportion to what fraction of doses each company had produced.

  64. David W says:

    A couple Open Threads ago, ana53294 expressed concern about permanent loss of land due to nuclear disasters. Since that time, I have found the Fukushima Revitalization Station website, which has some useful information on the subject. They have good maps demonstrating that radiation levels in the prefecture have fallen greatly, a presentation demonstrating decontamination procedures and results, and a good map of areas that have been cleared for returning residents.

    It seems as though 2/3 of the area evacuated is already reoccupied, and the remaining portion is making steady progress. Whether this is good enough and fast enough to speak to your concerns, I’m not sure, but I thought you’d like to know that these are not permanent losses, at least in the Fukushima incident.

    • sharper13 says:

      I’ve noticed that when nuclear disasters and nuclear waste comes up, many people don’t really understand the implications of half-lives and how radiation is produced, so there is a tendency to overreact.

      If something radioactive is really harmful/deadly, that’s because it has a short half-life. When it decays is when it emits energy in the form of radiation, so things which decay quickly emit more radiation faster. But because it has a short half-life, that also means it doesn’t stay around very long (comparably) before turning into a more stable/less deadly/less radioactive element.

      So physically speaking, the highly radioactive/deadly trait contradicts the trait lasts-a-long-time.

      • No One In Particular says:

        It’s quite possible for something to be both dangerous and have a long half-life. And a short half life doesn’t mean it goes away quickly. If you have a mol of something, it will take around eighty half lives for it to all decay. A half life of one year doesn’t mean it’s safe after a year.

        • sharper13 says:

          Sure, quantity obviously matters as well.

          A shorter half-life almost by definition means that it starts more dangerous, but becomes less dangerous faster. Notice I said “comparably”.

          I’m talking about years, decades, even centuries, for short vs. long, not days.

        • Protagoras says:

          Sure, say, U-235 is dangerous, and lasts an incredibly long time, long enough that you can find it in nature. But you have to get a substantial amount of it together to make it significantly dangerous, and, again, it’s found in nature. If radioactive waste disposal rules required only that waste be stored in such a way as to be no more dangerous than the ore the fuel was mined from, it would be a relatively trivial standard to satisfy. Actual standards are, of course, never that rational.

  65. AlexOfUrals says:

    Meanwhile in Covid Russia a heretical women monastery is supported by cossacks in denying secular and church authorities. Running the show is Father Sergey, ex-hegumen (abbot) of said monastery who was relieved from this position, barred from public preaching and accused of schism by the Russian Orthodox Church for his heresy – he says coronavirus is not a thing, everyone should stop self-isolation, get out and go to churches, and also something deadly vaccines with microchips something something “Satan’s electronic [concentration] camp”.

    I can’t seem to find a decent article on this story in the English media, which is understandable but still a shame because the guy is absolutely epic. He has portraits of Stalin, Nicolas II and Rasputin in his monastery cell. When asked he said Stalin is there because he eradicated sodomy. No wonder some cossack volunteers answered his call and came to the monastery to “protect it from provocations”, among them some veterans of the Donbass war. Also some obscure Olympic champion and a comedian were noticed in the monastery and gave interviews supporting the hegumen. Apparently he’s one of the most noticeable religious figures in modern Russian Orthodox Church, and among other things he’s known for being a ghostly father of Natalia Poklonskaya (a completely crazy and very memetic person of her own, a deputy of Duma currently, Prosecutor General of Crimea in the past, fangirl of Nicolas II forever). Comes as a little surprise to anyone familiar with modern Russian clergy and oligarchy, that before his spiritual career Father Sergey served a sentence for murder and robbery. The crimes to which he admitted while being under trial for embezzling and negligent homicide. Oh and of course Father Sergey is his church name. His secular name is Nicolai Romanov. Exactly like the guy on his wall, aka the last Tsar of Russia.

    • noyann says:

      Thank you so much for that!! — I soo needed a hearty laugh throughout this awful day!

    • ana53294 says:

      Where does it say anything about the coronavirus? The article doesn’t seem to say anything about it. Nor the russian article it links to.

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        It says here or here, for example. Unfortunately both are in Russian, not much of English media have bandwidth for this it seems, so I’ve been using Russian sources and didn’t read the article I’ve linked in details.

        ETA: I’ve found his video on youtube. He doesn’t explicitly mention the covid or self-isolation, but asks the Patriarch why are they prohibited from conducting sermons and meeting people. Also, the ending: “I’ve got a coffin. I’ve got nails. I’ve got a cross. Awaiting for your decision”

        • ana53294 says:

          I like this guy. Despite the Stalin calendar.

          He seems to be advocating for the separation of church and state. I’ve heard quite a few Russian Orthodox do so, at least the truly religious ones, because they don’t like the Kremlin interfering with their Church.

          And they seemed to have collected the money for the monastery privately? That seems like quite an accomplishment.

          It’s a pity he’s such a crank. But I already expressed my frustration on finding myself on the same side as nutjobs and cranks.

          • AlexOfUrals says:

            I’ve heard quite a few Russian Orthodox do so, at least the truly religious ones, because they don’t like the Kremlin interfering with their Church.

            That… hasn’t been my impression, generally. Unless by “separation” you mean “let the government do whatever they do, we should not question them or otherwise get involved in politics in whatsoever way”. But then again, I don’t know many very religious people, so not much confidence on this one.

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      A Russian Orthodox convent is accused of heresy? They’re probably OK, though with a chance that they’re espousing excessively progressive things like unisex ordination…
      >They’re led by a homicidal robber ex-abbot who makes ersatz icons of non-saints like Rasputin and Stalin and casts Summon Cossacks

      Well that was unexpected.

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        Well, technically he’s still leading this convent of which he was a hegumen – and a founder in fact, – so I’m not sure you can even call him ‘ex-‘, more like ‘rogue’… which doesn’t make it any better, does it?

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Rogue Cleric who does heterodox theury?
          I’m sure I could make this D&D build work.

      • John Richards says:

        By unisex ordination I assume you mean female priests? A convent that publicly advocated for that position would basically by cut off from the wider Eastern Orthodox community, and in no way considered canonical, or “licit.” They wouldn’t be considered “Orthodox.”

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Yes, that’s what I meant. In the Roman Catholic Church, “oh, the heresy has to do with advocating for female priests” would be the obvious prior when you hear “convent accused of heresy.”

    • The Big Red Scary says:

      Meanwhile in normality, I visited Kolomna yesterday, where I stepped inside the church off the old square to light a candle. Masks and 1.5 meters distance were the rule, with red tape on the floors to show you where to stand. In general, Kolomna seemed to be observing covid precautionary measures much better than people in my small suburban Moscow town. I should try to round up some cossacks to whip the invading Muscovites for over-crowding our local pond.

    • Aftagley says:

      Comes as a little surprise to anyone familiar with modern Russian clergy and oligarchy, that before his spiritual career Father Sergey served a sentence for murder and robbery.

      Given that this comes as a major surprise to me, could you point me at a source where I could learn more? I didn’t really know there was a progression from murderer to clergyman in Russia.

      • ana53294 says:

        There’s a progression from criminal to deeply religious.

        I’m not sure how sincere it is, but all of Putin’s KGB friends (and Putin himself), at some point started going to church regularly, funding monasteries and such. And you can safely assume most of Putin’s friends are criminals, although not all of them are murderers.

        Becoming a priest is not such a big jump from that.

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        Pretty much what ana53294 said. Another example is that it’s common for former or active criminal bosses to donate huge sums of money (as in “build a new monastery in the middle of the forest” huge) on religious purposes.

        And also, there definitely is plenty of officials on all levels of government who were previously accused and at times convicted of robbery, murder, rape or what-have-you. And the difference between that and a church official is often mostly in the style of closing and aesthetics of the office building, so one can generalize. Although I must admit a murderer who became a hegumen is a bit of an extreme example, but only a bit. Getting such credentials while already on the job is also not unheard of – there’s been a few of prominent cases where some high-ranking church official killed or badly injured a person in a car accident, usually drunk, and got away with it more or less unscathed – through divine intervention, I presume.

        • Aftagley says:

          Interesting. This implies that religious officials in Russia have more state-backed power than they do in America. Is this the case?

          • AlexOfUrals says:

            Definitely. I believe the Church acts like a kind of diaspora and is able to exert pressure to cover up its high-ranking members in such cases. In my very limited understanding, Protestantism is simply too decentralized for something like this, and they say something similar had been happening with the Catholic church and pedophilia cases, although to a much less egregious degree of course. And when you have a single strongly centralized religious organization, followed – at least nominally – by the absolute majority of the population, and that organization has been basically a part of the state apparatus since almost Medieval times, and the state itself is much more corrupt – no surprise they have quite a leverage.

  66. keaswaran says:

    This is exactly the concept of a microaggression as well.

  67. JohnNV says:

    Very mildly related, I was reading Scott’s review of the Hive Mind here and saw that Garrett Jones had issued a reply. But since this post was 5 years ago, the link to the reply is dead. I’m curious to know how he responded, does anybody have a record of it? Or can summarize it for me?

  68. Purplehermann says:

    A commenter linked an article by Unz about jews. I read it, and now I’m confused why anyone would bother listening to him or take him seriously in any way.
    He seems less convincing than David Icke

    • albatross11 says:

      As far as I can tell, Unz has gone off the deep end, and was always inclined to wacky theories that he could confirmation-bias his way into believing. OTOH, Unz’ site hosts Steve Sailer’s blog, and I think Sailer is a smart guy who often has some interesting insights, when he can refrain from snarkiness and actually address an issue instead of just dunking on the other side’s sillier members. (Admittedly, many of the sillier members of the other side have very prominent positions in the world, but still….)

  69. ManyCookies says:

    The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Title VII covers LGBT employees (Scotusblog summary). The crux of the majority position:

    All that matters, Gorsuch stressed, is whether “changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer.” As an example, Gorsuch offered the case of an employer with two employees who are both attracted to men and are, for all intents and purposes, identical, but one is male and one is female. If the employer fires the male employee only because he is attracted to men, while keeping the female employee, Gorsuch wrote, the employer has violated Title VII.

    Somewhat surprisingly, Justice Gorsuch joined the majority and actually wrote the opinion. I don’t know much about Supreme Court politics, is the choice of author for the opinion a huge deal?

    The dissent disagreed with this particular textualist interpretation, Alito+Thomas with a spicy Legislating From the Bench take and Kavanaugh with a separate milder dissent.

    Any particular thoughts? I’ve always thought Gorsuch-style arguments were sound, but even if this is bench legislation I’m personally thrilled with the end result.

    • Nick says:

      (Also somewhat surprisingly, Justice Gorush both joined and wrote the majority opinion? I don’t know much about Supreme Court politics but that seems significant.)

      Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion because Roberts, who has seniority among the majority, assigned it to him. It’s widely speculated Roberts joined the majority in order to do this.

      • ManyCookies says:

        Whoa what? Well then why did Roberts want Gorsuch to write the opinion badly enough to flip his own vote?

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          Because the reasoning in the textualist opinion would be the one that becomes legal precedent.

        • SamChevre says:

          In my opinion–there are two ways of thinking about anti-discrimination law: as outlawing discrimination against people based on class membership, and as outlawing discrimination against classes of people. Gorsuch’s opinion supported the first, and weakened the second; in general, that’s the conservative preference (“the way to stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”)

          • Fahundo says:

            how do you outlaw the first without outlawing the second?

          • SamChevre says:

            “Men cannot play on the women’s tennis team” is an example of the first. You can ban that without requiring the club to have an equally-good men’s team (an example of the second).

            Basically, any time you have a program/facility only for some class of people, you are violating sense 1 of anti-discrimination. But if you have equally-good facilities/programs for the corresponding class, you may not be violating sense 2.

            Edited to change example for better clarity.

          • Fahundo says:

            if both men and women can use both locker rooms, then the women’s locker room is just as well equipped as the men’s though

          • SamChevre says:

            Agreed (for clarity, my original example was locker rooms, then I realized my point was clearer with tennis teams).

        • JPNunez says:

          Well, if this is true, then Roberts would have lost anyway 5-4. So maybe flipping the vote was the lesser defeat.

          Dunno if I buy this argument, tho.

    • broblawsky says:

      As a supporter of the majority decision, I prefer Alito & Thomas’ open loathing to Kavanaugh’s mealy-mouthed equivocation.

    • Dan L says:

      Any particular thoughts? I’ve always thought Gorsuch-style arguments were sound, but even if this is bench legislation I’m personally thrilled with the end result.

      Surreal. I don’t know if I’ve put it anywhere in writing to point to, but Gorsuch’s argument is an almost exact match for my own reasoning. I believe I generated it independently (borrowing from my answer to the New Riddle of Induction), and to my knowledge haven’t seen it in the wild prior to this case.

      • L (Zero) says:

        Here is an example! From as recent as April, but still.

      • SamChevre says:

        wrong location

      • LionVanguard says:

        After reading the majority opinion and both dissents, I have had a hard time understanding how Gorsuch’s argument has been widely seen as convincing. Alito goes through his various hypotheticals and (to my mind) thoroughly dismantles them. I would be interested in a write-up of alternate avenues to understanding the intuition behind the Gorsuch position; I’m at a point where I don’t think I could even summarize it convincingly.

        On a basic level, it seems obvious that an employer could discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without even knowing the employee’s sex (for example, asking for orientation but not sex on the job application and rejecting all gay applicants). I really struggle to justify how this this behavior could be characterized as sex discrimination. Surely not knowing someone’s sex is sufficient evidence that you did not discriminate based on it.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          You make a good point, but this scenario was not one of the cases at hand. SCOTUS cannot rule on hypotheticals that are not present.

          • LionVanguard says:

            Much of the majority opinion is spent considering various hypothetical scenarios, each different from the case before them. I’m not sure why you would think considering hypotheticals is beyond their scope.

            While SCOTUS does need a live controversy before it, its rulings can have implications far behind that specific case. The majority position states, without qualifications, that discrimination based on orientation necessarily entails discrimination based on sex. The opinion acknowledges that this ruling will impact over a hundred other laws that include language referring to sex discrimination. Any lower court faced with the situation I described will be forced to conclude that sex discrimination occurred based on this ruling.

        • 10240 says:

          On a basic level, it seems obvious that an employer could discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without even knowing the employee’s sex (for example, asking for orientation but not sex on the job application and rejecting all gay applicants).

          If they all claim to be straight, the only way the employer can decide if they are lying is by looking at their sex (as well as that of their partner).

          • LionVanguard says:

            Even if an employer hired private detectives to determine a prospective employee’s orientation, they could still enforce their ban without ever learning the person’s sex.

            Furthermore, some sexual orientations are unrelated to sex. The Gorsuch hypotheticals fall completely apart for an employer discriminating against, for example, asexual employees. Their sex, as relating to dating behavior, has no impact on their orientation.

          • 10240 says:

            Even if an employer hired private detectives to determine a prospective employee’s orientation, they could still enforce their ban without ever learning the person’s sex.

            @LionVanguard At some level, the detectives need to take the person’s sex into account. A company surely wouldn’t be excused for discrimination just because it outsources its hiring process, with the hiring agency taking race/sex/etc. into account, but not telling the company.

            The Gorsuch hypotheticals fall completely apart for an employer discriminating against, for example, asexual employees. Their sex, as relating to dating behavior, has no impact on their orientation.

            Does the ruling actually prohibit discrimination against asexuals?

          • LionVanguard says:

            A company surely wouldn’t be excused for discrimination just because it outsources its hiring process, with the hiring agency taking race/sex/etc. into account

            I don’t want to belabor this analogy behind usefulness, but the detectives could simply interview friends and family and ask “is X gay” without learning their sex. Obviously this is an edge case, but it clearly demonstrates the majority conclusion proves too much.

            More broadly, I take issue with equivocating between “learning” a trait and “taking it into account”. Sex is obviously not what anyone in this scenario is hinging their decision on.

            Does the ruling actually prohibit discrimination against asexuals?

            The ruling states unequivocally that discrimination based on sexual orientation necessarily entails discrimination based on sex, and discrimination based on sex is prohibited under Title VII. The majority opinion is sex-binary, and makes no reference to orientations behind gay/straight, but as the core ruling makes no distinction there’s no reason to conclude other orientations (asexual, bisexual, etc) are excluded.

          • 10240 says:

            I don’t want to belabor this analogy behind usefulness, but the detectives could simply interview friends and family and ask “is X gay” without learning their sex. Obviously this is an edge case, but it clearly demonstrates the majority conclusion proves too much.

            @LionVanguard Then it’s their friends who have to take their sex into account.

            More broadly, I take issue with equivocating between “learning” a trait and “taking it into account”. Sex is obviously not what anyone in this scenario is hinging their decision on.

            IMO it’s a reasonable interpretation (though not the only possible interpretation) to consider it discrimination based on sex to discriminate between two people who are equal in all possible respects (including the sex of their partner) except their own sex. I do think this interpretation leads to weird consequences, I’ve argued about that elsewhere in the comments.

            The ruling states unequivocally that discrimination based on sexual orientation necessarily entails discrimination based on sex

            OK, I’ve looked up the ruling. I haven’t read it all, but the part you presumably refer to says

            discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex

          • The original Mr. X says:

            IMO it’s a reasonable interpretation (though not the only possible interpretation) to consider it discrimination based on sex to discriminate between two people who are equal in all possible respects (including the sex of their partner) except their own sex.

            If you change the sex of the employee and not that of the partner, you thereby change the employee’s sexual orientation as well, meaning that they’re no longer “equal in all possible respects… except their own sex”.

          • 10240 says:

            If you change the sex of the employee and not that of the partner, you thereby change the employee’s sexual orientation as well, meaning that they’re no longer “equal in all possible respects… except their own sex”.

            @The original Mr. X , It can be argued that the sex of the employee and the sex of their partner are more fundamental facts about the World than whether these two are equal. It’s reasonable to say that we (hypothetically) change one fundamental fact, and keep everything else constant, even if, by doing so, we change various “compound” attributes of the World that are functions of multiple fundamental facts, such as the sexual orientation of the employee.

            Actually, it’s like choosing a basis in a vector space. Let F₂ × F₂ be the two-dimensional vector space over the two-element field, with the first F₂ mapped to the employee’s sex, and the second F₂ mapped to their partner’s sex.
            One basis is
            e₁=(1,0)
            e₂=(0,1)
            Then the two coordinates are the two people’s sex. Changing the first coordinate independently of the second changes their sexual orientation, but not the sex of the partner.
            Another basis is
            e₁=(1,0)
            e₂=(1,1)
            Then the first coordinate is the employee’s sex, and the second coordinate corresponds to whether the employee is heterosexual. Changing the first coordinate independently of the second changes the partner’s sex, but not their sexual orientation.

            The court has to decide which basis is more natural. There is a weird thing, however, where the courts somehow uses both bases at the same time (see my comment); that, IMO, is wholly unjustified.

            (Here I’ve taken sexual orientation to simply mean whether the sex of the employee and their partner is the same; if we want to define it by attraction, we can substitute the sex the employee is generally attracted to for the sex of the employee’s partner.)

          • The original Mr. X says:

            @The original Mr. X , It can be argued that the sex of the employee and the sex of their partner are more fundamental facts about the World than whether these two are equal. It’s reasonable to say that we (hypothetically) change one fundamental fact, and keep everything else constant, even if, by doing so, we change various “compound” attributes of the World that are functions of multiple fundamental facts, such as the sexual orientation of the employee.

            If changing an employee’s sex changes various “compound” attributes of said employee, then they’re no longer “equal in all possible respects… except their own sex”, and your argument breaks down.

          • LionVanguard says:

            To put a finer point on it, the argument “of the people attracted to men, women and men are treated differently” draws boundaries that are not only weird, but that the employer doesn’t necessarily care about. If the employer were discriminating on the basis of race, you could similarly say “of the employees who are white men or black women, the women and men are treated differently”, but this would not be evidence of sex discrimination.

            More broadly, the entire test of “if you change only the variable of sex and get a different result, this is sex discrimination” seems very shortsighted. An employee consistently using the women’s restroom and locker room will be treated differently based on their sex status. An employee walking around topless at a company pool party will be treated differently based on their sex status.

          • JPNunez says:

            Or you could ask whether the candidate likes women or men and discriminate against everyone who likes men.

          • ManyCookies says:

            @JPNunez

            That, uh, may get smacked by disparate impact. Unless you’re a Subaru dealership.

          • 10240 says:

            If you change the sex of the employee and not that of the partner, you thereby change the employee’s sexual orientation as well, meaning that they’re no longer “equal in all possible respects… except their own sex”.

            @The original Mr. X , By that argument, it would be impossible to ever determine discrimination based on a particular attribute (except on disparate impact grounds). Let f be an attribute where
            f(X) = (X is male) XOR (the sky is blue)
            Then, instead of discriminating based on sex, you discriminate based on f. A reasonable interpretation ignores such made up compound attributes.

            An employee consistently using the women’s restroom and locker room will be treated differently based on their sex status. An employee walking around topless at a company pool party will be treated differently based on their sex status.

            Yes, I don’t know how the court would get around such questions if it wants to maintain this very literal interpretation of sex discrimination.

          • LionVanguard says:

            @10240, I’m sorry to belabor this question – I’m still struggling to get a full grasp of the your argument, and I appreciate you engaging with me.

            I understand it hinges on sexual orientation being a function of sex. That is, if you want to know if employee sex (E) = employee’s partner sex (P), at some point the values E and P must be learned. My response has been that the employer only needs to know the equality E = P, not the actual values E or P, and thus isn’t discriminating based on the values. I’m still not understanding why the fact that someone, somewhere in the process, needed to uncover E and P in order to evaluate the equality, entails that the employer is discriminating based on those values.

            Maybe it would be helpful if you presented another situation – based on race, religion, some other form of discrimination – where the response “I did not know the relevant trait of the employee in question” was not an unambiguous defense against discrimination claims. The only example I can come up with is discrimination against interracial marriage, which I think has a fairly unique history – though maybe for you that that one example, history aside, is justification enough.

          • The original Mr. X says:

            @ 10240:

            @The original Mr. X , By that argument, it would be impossible to ever determine discrimination based on a particular attribute (except on disparate impact grounds). Let f be an attribute where
            f(X) = (X is male) XOR (the sky is blue)
            Then, instead of discriminating based on sex, you discriminate based on f. A reasonable interpretation ignores such made up compound attributes.

            Even if that’s true (and I don’t think it is), it still doesn’t make your argument any more valid.

          • 10240 says:

            @LionVanguard I presume, according the court, it’s enough that an attribute is a function of the employee’s sex, even if the employer doesn’t learn it. You can’t define sexual orientation in such a way that it doesn’t involve the person’s sex.

            Maybe it would be helpful if you presented another situation – based on race, religion, some other form of discrimination – where the response “I did not know the relevant trait of the employee in question” was not an unambiguous defense against discrimination claims.

            The company outsources evaluating applicants to a separate agency. The agency is told to compile a score: 1 point for having a college degree, 1 point for having relevant job experience, and 1 point for being white. The agency tells the total scores to the company, which hires the candidate with the highest score. The company doesn’t learn the candidates’ race during the hiring process, but it’s still obviously racial discrimination.

            OK, this one can also be judged as racial discrimination based on disparate impact, but I would argue that it should be considered racial discrimination even if there is no disparate impact rule. If you want an example where there is no disparate impact on a protected class, but there is still discrimination based on protected class, there are only contrived examples, along with few real-life ones (sexual orientation, interracial marriage).

            A somewhat contrived example: An employer likes residential segregation. 80% of the white people in the town live in the white neighborhood, and 80% of the black people live in the black neighborhood. The employer only hires people who live in the neighborhood associated with their race. It doesn’t care about their race, only about whether it’s equal to the majority race of their neighborhood. There is no disparate impact: a random black person has the same chance of fulfilling this requirement as a random white person. But it’s still reasonable to say that this is racial discrimination.

        • Ketil says:

          On a basic level, it seems obvious that an employer could discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without even knowing the employee’s sex

          LionVanguard suggests discrimination against asexuals as not being frameable as discrimination on the basis on sex, and I think bisexuals is an even better illustration. If you discriminate against bisexuals in general, changing the sex of the person you discriminate against wouldn’t matter.

          Edit: Come to think of it… it seems as if Gorsuch refuses to accept homosexuality as a concept, and just breaks it down into ‘attracted to women’ and ‘attracted to men’. In which case discrimination becomes a matter of the sex of the discriminee.

          • Dan L says:

            LionVanguard suggests discrimination against asexuals as not being frameable as discrimination on the basis on sex, and I think bisexuals is an even better illustration. If you discriminate against bisexuals in general, changing the sex of the person you discriminate against wouldn’t matter.

            Essentially. Without speaking to how the ruling will functionally play out as precedent, it’s an error to speak of it as protecting discrimination based on orientation when it covers Ts but not As. (Bs are a little more complicated though.)

      • JPNunez says:

        Trivial google gets me this

        https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2743&context=facpub

        from 2001, but it mentions the argument is at least 30 years old, which would put it as relatively contemporary to Title VII (give or take….7 years).

    • FLWAB says:

      Gorsuch is providing an excellent teaching tool to illustrate what exactly the difference between a textualist and an originalist is. Gorsuch looks at the text, sees that it forbids discrimination based on sex, and applies that text to this new case. Since it seems apparent that if the employees sex was different they wouldn’t have been fired he says “Alright, that’s the text of the law so that’s how it goes.” Alito dissents with the originalist position, writing that

      If every single living American had been surveyed in 1964, it would have been hard to find any who thought that discrimination because of sex meant discrimination because of sexual orientation—not to mention gender identity, a concept that was essentially unknown at the time

      This is originalism in a nutshell: nobody making that law at the time thought it applied to gays, clearly. Therefore it should not be interpreted that way. Meanwhile Gorsuch writes almost in response that

      the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.

      Excellent teaching tool on the difference between the two judicial philosophies when the rubber meets the road. If a law has results that the legislators did not intend, the originalist says “They didn’t mean it that way, so it doesn’t count” while the textualist says “They should have written the law better if they didn’t want it interpreted that way.”

      • MisterA says:

        Gorsuch has gone up a lot in my estimation. I still disagree with him about basically everything, and I am sure he will still piss me off most of the time, but it’s pretty obvious he just wrote an opinion that he disagrees with as a matter of policy because that’s what the law says.

        I had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that the Supreme Court is just an appointed legislature and that both the liberals and conservatives just find whatever way they need to in order to advance their preferred politics. I now actually kind of suspect Gorsuch actually believes all that textualism stuff, even when it leads to policy outcomes he does not agree with.

        • Anonymous Bosch says:

          Gorsuch has been doing minor bamboozles for a while now in areas of criminal procedure. I don’t think he’s a libertarian by any stretch and he’ll end up overturning Roe but a consistent textualist is just about the best you can hope for with Republican appointments. He reminds me of Hugo Black, who wrote some important Warren Court precedents but dissented in substantive due process cases.

      • LionVanguard says:

        I think you are giving too little credit to Alito’s position.

        A major point of his dissent is that the majority not only declare their interpretation of the text plausible, but the only reasonable interpretation possible. From the dissent:

        [The majority] argues, not merely that the terms of Title VII can be interpreted that way but that they cannot reasonably be interpreted any other way. According to the Court, the text is unambiguous.

        The arrogance of this argument is breathtaking. As I will show, there is not a shred of evidence that any Member of Congress interpreted the statutory text that way when Title VII was enacted. But the Court apparently thinks that this was because the Members were not “smart enough to realize” what its language means. The Court seemingly has the same opinion about our colleagues on the Courts of Appeals, because until 2017, every single Court of Appeals to consider the question interpreted Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination to mean discrimination on the basis of biological sex.

        Earlier interpretations are relevant because they provide pretty clear evidence that reasonable people can disagree with the majority’s interpretation. In that case, within the textualist framework, the majority needs to make an argument as to why their interpretation is better. They avoid doing this by claiming it’s the only possible way a reasonable person could interpret the statute.

        • Aftagley says:

          Ugh, this is why I hate Alito’s dissents. He just feels free to be such an asshole in constructing his arguments. He doesn’t even have the kind of arch wit that Scalia brought to bear, he’s just kind of an angry jerk.

          • J Mann says:

            Yeah, Scalia was mean, but he was also an amazing writer. It’s like watching someone murder with an epee vs a chainsaw.

          • Aftagley says:

            If you can believe it, he was exactly as articulate in conversation. I was MC-ing an event for him once and he brutally excoriated me, then went in front of a crowd that was around 80% conservative and still managed to destroy most of them (along with the token liberals) in a way that had pretty much everyone laughing.

            The dude was an asshole, I don’t like him, but damn was he entertaining.

      • borsch4 says:

        This seems like a really bad way to explain textualism unless I’m missing something. To me saying that “they should have written the law better” seems very pedantic and a horrible way to interpret laws, especially if one wants to avoid legislating from the bench. What other word besides sex should the authors of the original law have used? Do they need to specify every other possible interpretation and say that’s not what they mean? I just can’t see how a textualist has a consistent way to apply laws.

        • 10240 says:

          What other word besides sex should the authors of the original law have used?

          They could have added something like “It’s not considered discrimination to require employees to have behaviors or appearance traditionally associated with their sex, as long as such requirement does not exclude them from particular jobs, or affect their ability to perform their job.”

        • No One In Particular says:

          You seem to be saying “It would have been really clunky to word the law so as to distinguish between ‘Men can serve on the board and women can’t’ and ‘Women can wear dresses, and men can’t”. Well, doesn’t that suggest that the distinction between them is rather artificial? I don’t see how “If legislatures want to make a highly artificial distinction, they’re going to have to word the law really carefully” is something we should be worried about.

          I really don’t get what point you’re trying to make here.

        • Aapje says:

          @borsch4

          Why can’t they just change the law if they want the law to be different from what it says?

          To me saying that “they should have written the law better” seems very pedantic and a horrible way to interpret laws, especially if one wants to avoid legislating from the bench.

          But pedantry is crucial when dealing with law. If you democratically pass a law and over time, judges interpret it substantially differently than as written, the new interpretation never got democratically approved. You have no idea whether the legislature would have accepted it at the time (in this case, very, very doubtful) or if the current legislature accepts it (which you can and should test by democratically amending the law).

          For me, the only valid kind of interpretation is minor oversights, things that didn’t exist at the time or such. Homosexuality is not, however, a new invention, nor a minor detail.

          Your argument seems to be that you should allow legislating from the bench to prevent legislating from the bench, which doesn’t appear very logical to me.

          Do they need to specify every other possible interpretation and say that’s not what they mean?

          Sexual orientation is, has never been and will never be similar to sex. This is not like a situation where the law is about books and the judge has to decide whether it was actually meant to refer to a greater category of things, that includes Kindle’s.

          I recognize that among people with certain politics, sexual identity and politics are seen as having a similar role. See the lgbtqrstvwxyz initialism. However, I never see sex and sexual orientation treated as being part of a greater category of things that are very alike, outside of how they are treated.

          There is a big difference between things being similar, or playing a similar role. For example, church bells and wine are part of the Christian construct, but a church bell is not a kind of wine or vice versa.

          The only way a judge could legitimately compare them if the topic of the law is the greater construct and it is very objectively true that they are part of the same construct. So a judge may legitimately conclude that a ban on bells, with no exception for church bells, violates the freedom of religion. However, it would be absurd to rule that church bells have to be labeled with an alcohol percentage.

          Title VII doesn’t prohibit many kinds of discrimination. For example, discrimination by IQ, work ability, body odor, personality type, physical disabilities, etc, etc. So it is not a general ban on discriminating by traits that are considered by some to be offensive or harmful to the ability to do certain jobs. At that point, there is no justification to just add some things that are different to what is already in the law, other than slippery slope lawmaking from the bench (gradually interpreting the law more and more broadly, to change it with small enough increments that they can get away with it).

          PS. Interpreting sex to include sexual identity is a lot more defensible.

        • Randy M says:

          To me saying that “they should have written the law better” seems very pedantic

          I get what you are saying and I’d lean towards originalism, but bear in mind that people have to obey the laws as written. It is highly important that laws are legible to the layman.

          I mean, theoretically. Who actually sits down and reads all applicable laws? So I guess it’s only relevant that laws are legible, in this case, to the HR department, union rep, employment lawyers, etc.

        • JPNunez says:

          Title VII was written in 1964; at the time, the concept of homosexuality was very clear and understood, so if the lawmakers had wanted to allow to discriminate against homosexuals, they could very easily have written exactly that down. It wouldn’t even have been too impopular.

          This is not a case where the founding fathers could not have predicted the internet in the constitution. There are a lot of people alive from the title vii times.

          Why can’t they just change the law if they want the law to be different from what it says?

          Because Congress had not decided to change the law, which can be interpreted as the electorate letting the judges do the interpreting.

          Sexual orientation is, has never been and will never be similar to sex.

          Is it really? as a straight man, a v important part of my attraction to women is to actually put my penis in their vagina, and I imagine that lesbians, even if they were attracted to the same women as me, would have a different endgame in mind.

          The word “Gynephilia” describes both attractions, but it is definitely different experiences for me and for a lesbian.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Title VII was written in 1964; at the time, the concept of homosexuality was very clear and understood, so if the lawmakers had wanted to allow to discriminate against homosexuals, they could very easily have written exactly that down. It wouldn’t even have been too impopular.

            And they did just that, in many, many, many cases. Sodomy was a crime in every state but Illinois, federal agencies could refuse to hire homosexuals, homosexuals could not get security clearances, if they had a clearance and were discovered they could lose it, many (most?) states barred homosexuals from being teachers, in some states other occupational licenses like lawyer, doctor, mortician or even beautician. Obviously homosexuals were barred from the military. They were even excluded from entry to the United States via a judicial interpretation of the ban on aliens “afflicted with psychopathic personality.”

            So, given that Title VII issued a ban on discrimination based on sex, and many, many, many others laws, regulations and executive orders explicitly mandated discrimination based on sexual orientation, it’s pretty fair to read that no one in 1964 would have interpreted “ban on sex discrimination” to include “ban on sexual orientation discrimination.” These were clearly regarded as separate things…by essentially everyone everywhere for 56 years until Neil Gorsuch unveiled the Grand Unified Field Theory of Sexiorientation.

          • JPNunez says:

            I posted downthread that the theory of sex-orientation-discrimination-is-sex-discrimination predates Gorsuch for a good 50 years. It is v probably at least contemporary to the civil rights act of 1964, if not older. It’s not Gorsuch’s invention.

            Dunno what you want me to say. For comparison, in Loving vs Virginia, Virginia argued that anti-miscegenation laws were ok cause they covered equally both white and black people, but the Supreme Court made this very same argument; if you changed the race of one person of the marriage, suddenly the marriage was ilegal in Virginia, which contradicted the equal protection law.

            Whether the current decision overturns other laws seems important to consider but can only be a factor in the decision.

          • albatross11 says:

            As with so many of these court cases, I’m torn. On one side, I strongly suspect that this was the Supreme Court making up the answers they wanted from the law to get to what they thought was a good policy. On the other side, I think they’re mostly actually making reasonable policy decisions–probably better than we could get from Congress at this point.

            That is, I don’t really think that gay marriage was required by the constitution, or that antisodomy laws or laws against birth control devices were forbidden by the constitution, or that the original civil rights act really was in any way intended by anyone to provide protection from job discrimination for trans people. I think the justices basically decided what policy would be best, and found some kind of justification to get there. And it seems like a bad thing in general to have the most contentious decisions on how to run our society made by people who never have to face an election. (And I’m none to thrilled with other such decisions–qualified immunity and allowing no-trial property seizures both seem like terrible policies to me.)

            And yet, I think legally recognizing gay marriage and legal birth control and getting rid of antisodomy laws were all really good policies. I am ambivalent about antidiscrimination law applied to private organizations, but if you’re going to have it, I think it should cover sexual orientation and sexual identity as well as race and religion and sex. I definitely thing the federal government should not have any discrimination on those grounds.

            IMO, DACA should have been done by legislation, not by executive order, and it should not have been decided by courts. But our political system seems so dysfunctional at this point that maybe it’s unreasonable to expect Congress to actually take up any controversial issues and address them in a reasonable way.

          • Aapje says:

            @JPNunez

            so if the lawmakers had wanted to allow to discriminate against homosexuals, they could very easily have written exactly that down.

            Title VII lists grounds that may not be used to discriminate on, not those that may be used.

            Laws that restrict the actions of the people typically only write down what may not be done, which is far preferable, because then anything new is allowed by default, unless legislators react to it, by banning it. This treats people as free by default, unless there are good grounds to restrict people’s behavior.

            Because Congress had not decided to change the law, which can be interpreted as the electorate letting the judges do the interpreting.

            No, it should be interpreted as them lacking the democratic desire to change the law, so it should remain as it is.

            Again, this is how a democracy that follows the principles of the trias politica works. The legislature makes/changes law and the judiciary applies law. There should be no change in the judicial application of the same law for the same circumstances.

            To quote Montesquieu: “Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator.”

            Is it really? as a straight man, a v important part of my attraction to women is to actually put my penis in their vagina, and I imagine that lesbians, even if they were attracted to the same women as me, would have a different endgame in mind.

            I think you misread. I meant the definition of sex as used by Title VII (male or female), not the sport.

            I don’t see how Title VII restricts discrimination by sexual behavior. For example, only hiring virgins (but one may not only hire (72) female virgins).

          • Aapje says:

            @albatross11

            If Congress is dysfunctional, the proper response seems to demand reform. This can be done with, but also without Congress (through a constitutional convention).

            If the rules are routinely broken, you lose a shared set of rules that binds everyone and limits their actions. Instead, what you have is: the ends justify the means. Favoring the ‘right’ outcome even when it happens by the wrong means, simply means that those with power get their definition of what is ‘right.’ Those people don’t have the moral high ground to expect others to refrain from using any and all means to get their way. In fact, the moral high ground just means you lose, when others cannot be made to act similarly.

        • 10240 says:

          @Aapje @Randy M @JPNunez I’m not sure if you got the comments you respond to right: FLWAB said that, in this case, the original intent interpretation was that sexual orientation discrimination is not covered, and the textualist interpretation was that it was, on the basis that sexual orientation discrimination involves treating two employees who are equal in everything except their sex (including their partners’ sex) differently.
          borsch4 argues that the textualist interpretation is too pedantic, and (presumably) that the originalist interpretation should be preferred to it.

          But pedantry is crucial when dealing with law. If you democratically pass a law and over time, judges interpret it substantially differently than as written, the new interpretation never got democratically approved.

          In this case, they judges did not interpret it differently than as written over time. They interpreted it differently from its literal text right away (treating sexual orientation as not covered), and now they returned to the literal text (albeit, presumably, only when it comes to sexual orientation, not when, say, employees who only differ in their sex use the same toilet).

          I get what you are saying and I’d lean towards originalism, but bear in mind that people have to obey the laws as written. It is highly important that laws are legible to the layman.

          In this case, I expect that most people who read the law would assume the originalist interpretation, not the (rather pedantic) textualist one.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            In this case, I expect that most people who read the law would assume the originalist interpretation, not the (rather pedantic) textualist one.

            This is basically Kavanaugh’s dissent, with which I agree. Yes, yes, Neil, if you get super pedantic and carve up the literal meaning of words just right and define the categories just so in a way no regular human would, you can get to your “textualist” conclusion. But no human would ever do that. Humans need to be able to understand the law as written or else we’re governed not by humans enacting laws they could understand but by whichever brand of pedant happens to be in power and can play the cleverest word games.

            I thought it was really funny in Unsong when Dylan blows up the guy who asked for “the bomb squad” when, if he didn’t want bombs he should have called “the bomb removal squad.” Very clever. But that’s no way to enact laws in the real world.

    • Wrong Species says:

      I know that we’re supposed to keep up the Noble Lie in public for appearances, but can we here not just admit this whole thing is a sham? Constitutional arguments have nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with supporting your favorite policies. Everyone knows this except for people like John Roberts. Notice how the Democrat appointed judges don’t ever oppose gay marriage or issues like it on procedural grounds. Constitutional arguments are modern day sophistry.

      • John Schilling says:

        Constitutional arguments have nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with supporting your favorite policies.

        LGBT rights are one of Neil Gorsuch’s favorite policies? Strange that we’re just finding out about that now; you’d think it would have come up in all the talk around his appointment and confirmation.

        I think you’re about to talk yourself into an unfalsifiable position backed up by circular logic: we know that Supreme Court justices always vote for their favorite policies, and we know what their favorite policies are because those are the ones they vote for.

        • Wrong Species says:

          No, procedural conservatives like Roberts and Gorsuch have “principles”. Everyone else knows what’s actually happening. We know this because judges make idiotic arguments that make no sense. We all accept it because living under a Constitutional government is not something many people actually want so judges resort to these ridiculous tricks to make it pass muster. The last few decades is just them using the flimsiest justifications to make their own laws.

          • Aftagley says:

            procedural conservatives like Roberts and Gorsuch have “principles”. Everyone else knows what’s actually happening.

            Wait, i don’t know “what’s happening”… Does that mean I’m a procedural conservative?

            Oh god, how will I break this to my parents.

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            Ive said it before, but the fundamental problem is that congress is goddamn useless.
            A super majority of the current electorate is in favor of gay rights, gay marriage, ect.

            In a functioning republic, congress would notice, and write the laws accordingly.

            Congress, however, cant pass laws more controversial than “Murder bad” at the present juncture, so the court, recognizing that it would be a bad thing if government just completely froze up and never, ever moved with the will of the people bends itself into pretzels to make law from the bench.

            Kill the filibuster.

          • 10240 says:

            In a functioning republic, congress would notice, and write the laws accordingly.

            @Thomas Jorgensen In a functional federal republic, the federal congress would leave it to the states to decide. Are the state legislatures as dysfunctional as the federal congress?

      • ECD says:

        This isn’t a constitutional issue. It’s pure statutory interpretation. Also, what John said.

        This is actually quite encouraging as a reminder that despite endless cynicism which wears on me, most people do actually have principles and stick to them.

        • Wrong Species says:

          I don’t know how anyone living in the US right now could look around and say with a straight face “You know what people are too cynical about? Partisanship”. Do you think it’s just some weird coincidence that Republican appointees vote conservatives and Democrat appointees vote liberal, regardless of whatever legal reasoning they use to get there? Good god, people. We’re living in the reign of Septimius Severus and you guys are acting like the Senate still has power. That ship sailed long ago.

          • ECD says:

            No. We’re not.

            Do you think it’s just some weird coincidence that Republican appointees vote conservatives and Democrat appointees vote liberal, regardless of whatever legal reasoning they use to get there?

            You saw this directly in the face of countervailing evidence. Now, I’m sure you’re going to say, because you say it above, that it’s just these two conservatives who actually say and do what they believe, but that statement is not actually proof.

            And with all possible respect, if your response to someone saying something is encouraging is to attempt to shit all over it, you may want to take a moment, step back and consider if perhaps you should stop.

          • Wrong Species says:

            No, there was also Kennedy. People only expect conservatives to be “principled”. The people cheering on Ginsburg aren’t doing so because they are just incredibly impressed by her wise judicial reasoning.

            And with all possible respect, if your response to someone saying something is encouraging is to attempt to shit all over it, you may want to take a moment, step back and consider if perhaps you should stop.

            You know as well as I do that that is not an argument. Either I’m right or I’m wrong. “You’re too cynical” doesn’t say anything about the correctness of what I said. You can’t just respond to my comment and expect me not to respond back because it brings you down.

            Obviously, this isn’t going to go anywhere so I’ll tap out but given what we know about motivated reasoning, maybe you should ask yourself which theory, the cynical one or the idealistic one, has more predictive power when looking at a wide range of cases.

          • John Schilling says:

            maybe you should ask yourself which theory, the cynical one or the idealistic one, has more predictive power when looking at a wide range of cases

            Maybe you should have used your theory to actually make a prediction, before the ruling was announced. That’s way more conclusive than saying after the fact, “my theory would have predicted that!” But there will be other opportunities, if you are so inclined.

          • Wrong Species says:

            Ok John, you use the judicial philosophy of individual judges to predict how they are going to vote. I’m going to stick with my method of deciding based on whether they were appointed by a Republican or a Democrat and be right 95% of the time. Glad we resolved that.

            The funny thing is that everyone acts like I’m right in their assumptions. Nobody wonders if Biden is going to nominate a judge that upholds abortion. Everyone knows that if Ginsburg dies before the election, Trump is going to nominate someone who is more favorable to conservatives. But the moment I mention the emperor not wearing clothes, everyone flips out.

          • J Mann says:

            WrongSpecies, are you saying that your prediction would have gotten Gorsuch and Roberts wrong, and predicted a 5-4 loss for LBGT rights instead of a 6-3 win?

            We don’t know John’s competing theory, so you might still have the best one, but this isn’t its best week.

          • Wrong Species says:

            My theory would have gotten 7 out of 9 justices right. It’s classic man bites dog scenario where people are only surprised when justices diverge from the party. No one talks about Sotomayor’s decision because it was predictable. Roberts is the only wildcard here, deciding to take it on himself to be the swing vote since Kennedy retired. Gorsuch apparently is also willing to do his own thing but is usually conservative. I guarantee you that if Democrats take back the Supreme Court they won’t be so concerned about “principled liberalism”.

          • ECD says:

            @Well

            If only there were another case, decided literally the same day, in which two of the judges appointed by Democrat presidents had joined those appointed by Republican presidents to decide whether or not a pipeline could be run under the Appalachian trail.

            For those who are actually curious, cross-ideological liberal opinions are more common than cross-ideological conservative ones, as you’d expect, because there are only four Justices appointed by Democrat presidents, so they require cross-ideological votes in order to win on the minority (depending on term and period) of cases which are not unanimous.

            And that’s without getting into weird groupings like the Sotomayor-Thomas dissent in Voisine v US.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          Would you agree with that if the textualist interpretation had been, “the crux of the issue is the orientation of the employee. If the employer would have terminated a homosexual man just as well as a homosexual woman, and would not have terminated a straight man or a straight woman, then there is no discrimination based on sex, only on sexual orientation. The statute only allows for discrimination based on sex, not on sexual orientation, so no dice.”

          I think that’s a more valid interpretation than the majority’s, since it actually gets to the issue at stake, “gay vs. straight.” If that had been the decision, would you still say that was principled, or would that simply be their own biases at play?

          ETA: For the record I think employment discrimination based on sexual orientation is wrong. I just don’t think this ruling makes sense.

          • J Mann says:

            I think it makes sense, but I’d have to read all 172 pages (or at least most of them) to make a reasoned argument whether it’s better than the dissent.

            Equality is a tough issue in law – when you get to the ground, there’s always a question what it exactly means. (E.g., “the law, in its majesty, prevents the rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.”) I don’t mean that to say that we should just be outcome-determinative, but it is actually pretty tough in some cases.

            In Loving v Virginia, the SCt found that it was racial discrimination to forbid interracial marriage, despite the states’ arguments that their prohibition applied equally to white people, who were forbidden to marry black people, and vice versa.

            Similarly, if an employer allows women to wear sundresses to work, but not men, I think people could see that as discriminating based on sex. (Although I guess they could argue how burdensome the discrimination was.)

            So from those, I think Gorsuch is being logical when he concludes that firing women for dating women but not firing men for dating women, and vice versa, is sex discrimination.

            The Originalists’ side is that almost no one understood the law when it was passed to mean that, and I haven’t read the argument well enough to understand it. There are some cases, like the bar against cruel and unusual punishment, where I think most of us want the meaning of the term to float with the times, but probably some where we don’t.

          • broblawsky says:

            Based on that interpretation, you could say, “we’re going to fire everyone with skin melanin concentration above X, regardless of whether they’re black or white” and thereby get around the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on race discrimination. Inventing new, legal categories to use to discriminate against people shouldn’t give you license to effectively discriminate based on categories covered by the existing legislation.

          • LionVanguard says:

            Drawing boundaries around “people attracted to men”, a category no one really organizes in, in order to show that men and women are treated differently, seems pretty flimsy. If an employer was discriminating based on race, you could similarly show that of the employees who are either white men or black women, women and men were being treated differently, but it would be dumb to conclude that there was sex discrimination going on.

            And is this strategy of “switch sexes and see if there is different treatment” even really what determination of discrimination should hinge on? Consider a man always changing in the women’s locker room, or a woman walking around topless at the company pool party – do we want a test that precludes the employer from taking action in these situations?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Based on that interpretation, you could say, “we’re going to fire everyone with skin melanin concentration above X, regardless of whether they’re black or white” and thereby get around the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on race discrimination. Inventing new, legal categories to use to discriminate against people shouldn’t give you license to effectively discriminate based on categories covered by the existing legislation.

            I think that only works if you’re inventing the new, legal category in order to get around the existing legislation. The “melanin content” criteria is intended to get around the racial discrimination prohibition in order to discriminate based on race. Melanin content is merely a proxy for race.

            But the orientation criteria is not a proxy for sex, and is not intended to be a proxy for sex. It also certainly isn’t a new category for discrimination. Before this I don’t think I’ve ever heard an advocate for gay rights argue that discrimination based on sexual orientation was really just a trick to discriminate based on sex. They definitely seem to think the discrimination is based on sexual orientation itself, full stop. Which is not sex, and is not covered by the current legislation.

            So it’s not the invention of a new category to get around the existing categories, it’s an old category, that’s definitely been discriminated against for a long, long time, and simply hasn’t been covered by legislation previously. Partly because of said discrimination on this specific criteria.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            A reminder that this is SCOTUS interpreting a Congressional law, not the Constitution.

            Like all human works, Congress’s law was not perfectly defined. But Congress, right now, can update its law to say “by ‘sex’ we meant ‘blah blah blah’.”

          • broblawsky says:

            As I understand it, Title VII the Civil Rights Act has previously been ruled to cover gender expectations and roles, not just biological gender. Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins expanded the definition of sex discrimination in such a way that defining “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” as distinct from sex is essentially impossible.

          • smocc says:

            @Edward Scizorhands

            I’m sorry, but this response makes me angry. Alito’s dissent noted that there have been several proposed bills that add sexual orientation to the CRA and they have not passed. The people who proposed those bills presumably thought that the existing Title VII language was clear enough that it didn’t include sexual orientation, otherwise why add it? The other lawmakers presumably thought that the existing Title VII language was clear enough that it didn’t include sexual orientation and decided not vote against including it.*

            It really feels like you’re saying that it’s not enough to simply vote against a proposed amendment, you have to vote against a proposed amendment, wait for SCOTUS to amend the law behind your back, and then propose a new amendment to change it back?

            * And the lower court thought that the bill as written didn’t include protection for sexual discrimination as did one-third of the Supreme Court justices!

          • rumham says:

            @broblawsky

            What is biological gender?

          • broblawsky says:

            Sorry, I meant biological sex.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            The people who proposed those bills presumably thought that the existing Title VII language was clear enough that it didn’t include sexual orientation, otherwise why add it?

            I don’t think this follows. It’s not like Congress never passes useless laws so they can signal how much they like things.

          • rumham says:

            @broblawsky

            Gotcha. I thought I was getting behind on the euphemism treadmill again.

      • No One In Particular says:

        On what possible grounds would a judge oppose gay marriage? There’s a difference between not striking down a law restricting marriage to opposite sex couples, versus opposing gay marriage. Speaking of the effects of a ruling as being the agenda of the justices is begging the question.

      • mitv150 says:

        There is a more charitable possibility than “this is all a sham.”

        The liberal judicial philosophy tends to be more concerned with justice than law. This philosophy permits creative interpretation of the law to arrive at just results. This is how the liberal justices usually rule and thus nearly always arrive at a result that aids liberal social causes.

        The conservative judicial philosophy (whether it be textualist or originalist) values law over justice. If the law is unjust, it should be changed. This philosophy values the process over the result and thus can arrive at results that do not aid conservative social causes.

        The unfortunate aspect of the above reading is that it has similar results to “this is all a sham” from the conservative viewpoint. That is, whether or not the liberal justices are consistently applying a “justice” standard, they are consistently getting a liberal cultural result. It’s only the cultural conservatives who are routinely “betrayed” by “their team” of justices through the application of the “law over justice” principal.

        • Aapje says:

          @mitv150

          The liberal judicial philosophy tends to be more concerned with justice than law.

          Yes, they violate the trias politica. Justice is inherently extremely subjective and thus is politics.

          What is even the point of Congress (or elections) if judges decide what is just, regardless of the will of the representatives of the people? Although, I guess that appointing judges is still a tiny bit of democracy that is left.

          This philosophy values the process over the result and thus can arrive at results that do not aid conservative social causes.

          Yes and that means that actually upholding democracy, while others defect against it, is a losing strategy. The liberal judges will always get the ruling they personally prefer, while the judges that actually defer to the legislature will regularly decide against their own preferences.

          So the logical result is that conservative voters start to demand that conservative judges become pure partisans too. And if they believe that legislating judges will always result in a liberal bias, they are incentivized to defect in other situations, like gerrymandering. Then liberals who can’t gerrymander equally effectively, are incentivized to find new ways to defect, etc, etc.

          I believe they call this the decline of the empire.

          • mitv150 says:

            I would like to be able to argue that arriving at the liberal cultural result through conservative procedure would help serve to defer criticism of arriving at the conservative cultural result through conservative procedure.

            Alas.

        • JPNunez says:

          I can think of two other explanations:

          -Judges are way more complex than “conservative” or “liberal” can describe. They follow different rules of reasoning in different situations, and sometimes not even consistently. They will sometimes vote aligned with the values of the party that helped nominate them, but not always, and those values are vague anyway.

          -They are Philosopher-Kings. They have positions for life, and no accountability to anyone. They can afford the luxury of being a “textualist” or an “originalist” or whatever other labels in how they interpret the law, but at the end of the day, it is mostly a game to them. Their decisions very rarely affect themselves directly. They may affect people close to them, but their self-image as Philosopher-Kings may be so strong as to not let them influence these decisions. Except, sometimes, the decisions include things so dear to them that they ignore their own self assigned label, or sometimes loyalty to the party that helped them wins out.

          Of course, these two possibilities, or the “it’s a sham” interpretation are hard to falsify. Right now Gorsuch looks like a Philosopher-King, but Kavanaugh seems to be voting loyal to Trump (sham pattern). Maybe Kavanaugh will later fall into the Philosopher-King pattern, probably once Trump leaves the White House, or maybe he will always be loyal to the Republicans, or the Trump brand of Republicans anyway.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Kavanaugh seems to be voting loyal to Trump (sham pattern).

            Did you actually read his dissent? I suggested you do before you call his vote a sham.

      • BBA says:

        I’m near diametrically opposed to you politically and I agree. Constitutional law is almost entirely made up on the spot and anyone who thinks it isn’t is kidding themselves. Unfortunately, with a Congress that’s both unwilling and unable to legislate, there’s no way out of executive and judicial overreach. At least, not without throwing the whole system out, which is unlikely to go well for anyone.

        • Wrong Species says:

          I’m glad someone else notices.

          The judicial system is going to blow up regardless. Roberts suspects this, which is why he will never overturn Roe vs Wade. But I don’t imagine the system is going to survive intact this decade at least not with any authority.

    • blumenko says:

      I am not sure I completely understand the ruling. If a man (and I mean a man, no claim of transgender or anything like that) refuses to use the men’s bathroom, and consistently uses the women’s bathroom, and he is fired, it seems like this ruling would claim he is being discriminated against, because if he were a woman he wouldn’t be fired. That just seems completely bonkers.

      • J Mann says:

        It does have some leveling effects. For bathrooms, I think you might be able to argue there was an impact on the workplace that justified enforcement, but I don’t see how you could stop a man from showing up to work in a sundress without forbidding dresses altogether.

        • AG says:

          The workplace can’t choose to hire or fire someone just for saying their gender or orientation is X. The second is especially relevant since the behavior of orientation occurs off the job. The former still leaves grounds for someone to get fired for behavior on the job.
          This ruling doesn’t seem to have an effect on bathroom laws that specify that people inside must match genitals (but in which case, an employer could not therefore fire someone who has undergone surgery, and certainly could not fire someone for saying they will get get surgery, but still conforms to the genital-matching rule).

          • LionVanguard says:

            Your matching genitals rule still seems incompatible with Gorsuch’s reasoning. blumenko’s summary is basically correct: the test Gorsuch applies is “if we change only the employee’s sex, and employer treatment is different, this constitutes sex discrimination”. As Gorsuch is explicitly referring to biological sex, which is highly related to genitals, the matching genitals rule doesn’t escape the conclusion of sex discrimination. Gorsuch and Alito both reference bathrooms as likely to be impacted by this decision (Gorsuch basically says “we’ll worry about that later”).

    • Deiseach says:

      Somewhat surprisingly, Justice Gorsuch joined the majority and actually wrote the opinion. I don’t know much about Supreme Court politics, is the choice of author for the opinion a huge deal?

      My impression is that it might be? What I remember from the controversy over his nomination was some breathlessness about his religious views and I remember going “He’s an Episcopalian! (Well, functionally*). The most religiously controversial he’s likely to be is ‘what is the proper form of address for the vicar’s lesbian partner when they are living together in the rectory but not yet married?'” and indeed, from the opposite side, there were worries he would be too liberal 🙂

      *See the tongue-in-cheek bit in the article about “will Gorsuch be the Court’s sixth Catholic or first Protestant?”

    • syrrim says:

      Suppose you were time travelling congressman. You’d seen this ruling, and now you wanted to go back and modify the text of the bill to prevent this ruling from being possible. How would you do it? It seems like your best bet would be to fully embrace a disparate impact approach. You would require that any hiring (, etc.) practice that disparately affects a protected group be demonstrated to be necessary for the job. Discrimination on any trait would be permissible so long as it was evenly distributed between different sexes/races/etc. It seems like, besides preventing obnoxious interpretations, this wording is closer to the actual intention of the bill. We don’t care about people’s private opinion on women or blacks, we care about policies that tend to harm these groups. So encode that into law, and leave the intention or method by which it’s accomplished be.

      Here’s the problem: for 56 years, this is exactly the law congress wrote. They created a bill with potentially ambiguous wording. However, no supreme court justice is dumb enough to completely ignore the intention of the bill in order to enforce a literalist interpretation, and make congress go back and reword it to describe what they meant. Cases came before various courts, those courts managed to suss out what congress meant, and this was maintained as precedent.

      That same precedent is supposed to be binding on the supreme court itself. Instead, SCOTUS here has adopted an interpretation of the text that is incompatible with every previous interpretation. If they had made this interpretation right off the bat, we might not take strong issue with it; congress would quickly put through a bill that more precisely encodes what they meant, and all would be well.

      To instead wait half a century to put forward a ridiculous interpretation like this one is to ignore the reciprocal relationship between the supreme court and the legislature. Congress puts forward a bill; SCOTUS interprets it; congress puts forward a new bill that relies on this interpretation. Never having itself defined or explained the concept, the relevant statute invokes the phrase “disparate impact”, and goes on to limit its application. This can only be understood through the lens of this reciprocal relationship. Congress provided a vague explanation of what sort of discrimination they would like to prevent, and waited for the courts to explain how they understood the wording. This understanding having been established, congress corrected percieved limitations in the interpretation, and the process repeats.

      Besides being how things have worked, this is precisely how we want things to work. Once a law has been adjudicated enough times, the text falls away and only the precedent continues to matter. This allows congress to know how their words are being interpreted, so they can change their wording, and it allows individuals the chance to know what is and isn’t illegal (remember, we are to believe that any employer who discriminated based on sexuality since 1964 was breaking the law *at the time*). Instead, this court has offered an interpretation that is inconsistent with prevailing interpretations, and therefore goes against the precedent established by that court.

      This constitutes legislation from the bench in the sense that the supreme court can continuously come back to old bills and make new things illegal using new modes of analysis. If textualism has exhausted its avenues, move onto orginalism, and so on, repeatedly pressing the law like so many olives. All of these interpretations are potentially valid when a law is first being understood, but once an understanding has been reached, further interpretation should be framed in terms of that existing understanding. Once a definition of a word in a statute has been provided, it is inconcievable that a future ruling would provide a different definition of the same word. The act of adjudicating should work to limit the possible future interpretations of a statute, until it is understood in detail. If new interpretations are desireth, petition should be sent to congress to provide new text on which to apply new interpretations.

      • AG says:

        And by what means do the oppressed minority have to fight against their oppression in your ideal world?

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          Maybe start with what homosexuals did in the US and hold parades, get to know people, explain their point of view, get popular TV shows and what not to help present them as sympathetic and change people’s minds over time? But then instead of relying on weird literalist word games from the courts just get the legislature to fix the laws.

          • albatross11 says:

            There’s substantial public support for same-sex marriage now, I think, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect that we could just get Congress or state legislatures to pass these laws.

            And yeah, I understand the specific decisions I listed first are all ones I think were good policy. But I don’t think this is inherent in the nature of having the SC make policy decisions.

          • AG says:

            @Conrad Honcho: so what about the case of interracial marriage, where the US didn’t reach majority approval until 1995?

            Justice isn’t always the popular thing. In fact, it rarely is. What means does a minority have to defend against unjust law?

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            AG:

            Justice isn’t always the popular thing. In fact, it rarely is. What means does a minority have to defend against unjust law?

            Every anti-democratic one that has legitimacy.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            so what about the case of interracial marriage, where the US didn’t reach majority approval until 1995?

            I don’t think Loving v. Virginia relied on weird literalist word games. We’re talking about government laws being applied equally, not the behavior of private citizens (employers), and the 14th amendment is plain about equal protection under laws. That decision was unanimous, and I’ve never heard of anyone thinking it was decided wrongly. Not even pedants who think the right thing was done the wrong way. So I’m not sure what your example is supposed to demonstrate.

            What means does a minority have to defend against unjust law?

            If the law is unconstitutional, like in Loving, go through the courts. If the law is not unconstitutional, then you have to do the hard work in the cultural and political process. “Just” is in the eye of the beholder, so if you’ve got eyes thinking something unjust is just, you need to change those eyes. What’s the alternative?

          • JPNunez says:

            If the law is unconstitutional, like in Loving, go through the courts. If the law is not unconstitutional, then you have to do the hard work in the cultural and political process. “Just” is in the eye of the beholder, so if you’ve got eyes thinking something unjust is just, you need to change those eyes. What’s the alternative?

            The eyes have been changed.

            https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/majority-americans-back-lgbtq-protections-support-sliding-n987156

            If the law has not changed accordingly maybe the problem is that the elective branches of government (congress and the president) do not adequately represent the people, probably due to structural, historical problems and/or bad faith actors, and the judges have to pick up the slack.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            the judges have to pick up the slack.

            Great, so let’s replace Congress and the President with Nine Robed Kings who make their royal decrees based on the latest opinion polls.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            not the behavior of private citizens (employers),

            Something I do not understand is how governments in the US can license subordinate governments (all businesses that have employees who are not relatives of the owner[s]) with less stringent limitations on what they can and can’t do to people than the limitations imposed on the parent government itself.

            Yet these subordinate governments not only can violate various civil rights, they can even violate voting standards themselves among their shareholders (the equivalent of enfranchised citizenry) by generating classes of stock.

          • John Schilling says:

            Something I do not understand is how governments in the US can license subordinate governments (all businesses that have employees who are not relatives of the owner[s])

            Those are not “subordinate governments” except in some weird private taxonomy. Those are groups of people cooperating for a common purpose.

            It is normal, at least in free societies, for individuals to have rights that the government does not have. They do not lose those rights just because they start cooperating. They do not lose those rights just because they ask the government to formally recognize the fact that they are cooperating.

            By your standard, the Catholic Church could not require that priests be Catholic. Churches are generally 501(c)(3) corporations, and any vaguely government-like nature you could ascribe to a for-profit “business”, applies just as well to a church. So, churches are “subordinate governments” and may not impose religious requirements for membership? I don’t think so.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Churches are explicitly exempt care of the free exercise clause.

      • JPNunez says:

        To instead wait half a century to put forward a ridiculous interpretation like this one is to ignore the reciprocal relationship between the supreme court and the legislature. Congress puts forward a bill; SCOTUS interprets it; congress puts forward a new bill that relies on this interpretation.

        This is not how things work; the Supreme Court does not give its blessing to every law that comes out of congress, or say beforehand how it is going to be interpreted. ONLY if a lawsuit above said law goes all the way to the Supreme Court, the SC gets to pronounce themselves and interpret it. I assume many (most?) laws have never been revised by the Supreme Court.

        Besides, the Supreme Court can (and has) contradicted themselves before, and what happens is that old laws are overruled. Given that not every law passes through the SC this is inevitable. You cannot seriously expect that a system as vague as human law never produces uncontradictory laws.

        This is how it is supposed to work, why you have a hierarchy of laws that you can find laws lower hierarchically have to yield to the higher laws. Precedent does have a weight but it is not final.

        • syrrim says:

          I assume many (most?) laws have never been revised by the Supreme Court.

          Higher courts adjudicate when there is disagreement among lower courts. So for most laws, the same process happens, just restricted to the opinion of lower courts. The major point is that congress gets the opportunity to understand how their laws are interpreted, and that this interpretation becomes part of the law. This would still be true even if the interpretation wasn’t provided by a previous supreme court.

          Precedent does have a weight but it is not final.

          I am interested in a discussion of the degree to which precedents aren’t binding. It seems like this is central attribute of a common law system, but one can easily notice issues with it, if taken too far. If we look at interpretation of the constition in particular, it seems like this document is far harder to change, and that its drafters would have put great care into making the wording reflect their intentions. If “the text falls away, and only the precedent matters”, then it seems their great effort was for naught. If we decide to apply the same logic to mere acts of congress, then we would find that SCOTUS could very well decide that an old interpretation had misunderstood the wording of the law and seek to correct it. Very clearly, this would be a pyrrhic victory for social justice, as it would tend to invalidate so many rights won in the court, and likely lead to the law being repealed, as it no longer reflects the goal of congress. But at least it is obviously in line with an interpretation of the decision that paints is as the justices merely following process, and interpretting the text of the law without regard to politics or bias.

          But we are supposed to agree that the new interpretation sits alongside the old. This is incompatible, it seems to me, with either an understanding of the law as a series of precedents, or as the product of acts passed by congress. Procedurally, it seems incompatible with a view that the justices were merely describing the only permissible interpretation with this ruling, since they could have instead based their decision off of any previous decision, or off of the text of the law, or some interesting combination of the two, in order to create just about any interpretation they might have liked.

          Practically, it does seem to turn justices into law makers. Your sibling comment seems to agree with this interpretation, but I would like some greater assurance before I determine that this is the case. Common law, of course, has a long history of giving judges wide lattitute in following their conscience. That they are required by process to describe their decision as a product of existing laws becomes an annoyance, but not a terribly great one; after all, there are so many different laws to choose from. But if this is the correct interpretation, then we should be very annoyed by the forces that conspire to tell us otherwise. A law has been made; we like what it will do; we disagree with the supposed reasoning behind it, but recognize this as not altogether too important. Time should not be wasted in pretending otherwise.

  70. BBA says:

    A silly quirk of New York law on private security: a security guard agency that contracts with property owners to provide security services, if its guards wear police-style uniforms, must use rectangular shoulder patches and metal badges to make it clear that the guards are not police officers. But a property owner who directly employs security guards can use any design they want. NYU’s “public safety officers”, for instance, wear uniforms much closer to police officers than to guards from a third-party service like Allied-Universal, but they aren’t police officers and have no particular legal authority. Some private universities have campus security departments with full police powers, but NYU isn’t one of them.

    (I’d like to show a picture of what the rectangular badges look like, but I can’t find any online – this law is apparently just a New York thing. In real life, they look cheap and unofficial, which is the point.)

    Come to think of it, it’s odd that private security guards wear badges at all. A police badge represents the authority to exercise the state’s monopoly on legitimate use of force. A security badge represents the authority to, well, wear a badge. This is almost literally the case – per section 170.1 of the regulations I linked above, wearing a security guard’s uniform makes you a security guard requiring a license, while without a uniform it’s a case-by-case determination of what your primary job duties are. (Also, if you’re armed, you’re a guard, but being licensed as a guard doesn’t mean you’re armed. The NYU guards aren’t. I don’t mean to launch a discussion of New York’s restrictive gun laws, but they exist, and a security guard license doesn’t get you around them like a police badge does.) It’s not often that “clothes make the man” has any legal weight, but considering how a major purpose of security guards is just to be seen to be protecting the property and thereby act as a deterrent, it almost makes sense… but honestly I’m still not totally sure why this industry is regulated at all, or whether these regulations are effective in achieving their purposes.

    • sfoil says:

      I think you’re grasping towards the reason that it’s regulated the way it is: because it’s closely related to the government’s use of its literal “armed forces” as a deterrent. On the one hand, you don’t want security guards or their employers to act like they’re actual police officers…but on the other hand, you want them to do one of the things we expect police officers to do (stand around and intimidate potential miscreants in an official capacity). If the way that you accomplish the latter is to engage in mimicry of the actual police, there should be some rules about how far you can go.

      • Well... says:

        Isn’t part of it also to kind of let everyone around know that you’re not exactly a civilian, and that you have the authority to do guard-like things? Like, if security guards just wore polos and khakis, anyone the guards had to intercede with would assume he was being accosted.

        Which makes me realize: as far as I can recall, I’ve never personally witnessed bouncers throwing someone out of a bar. I’ve seen bouncers though, and they’re never dressed anything like cops; usually they’re in street clothes. So how, when bouncers throw people out of bars, can passersby tell that the bouncers are bouncers doing their job and not mere goons pushing someone around?

        • GearRatio says:

          The quick answer here is that bouncers are usually of a particular body type that doesn’t care whether you’ve mistaken it for a goon or not.

          The longer answer is that the bouncer’s utility is very likely maximized if he’s easily ignored right up until he’s very large and very near you. The bar doesn’t want you to be very drunk but wants you to buy a lot of drinks; that means the bar wants you to forget that there’s a large man who will put hands on you if you’ve had too much to drink until it’s actually time for him to put hands on you when you’ve had too much to drink.

          • Well... says:

            The quick answer here is that bouncers are usually of a particular body type that […]

            When I read this, I expected it to continue “most people can easily see is that of a bouncer.”

            In other words, bouncers just look like bouncers and everyone knows a bouncer when they see one.

            It’s not where you ended up going, but I don’t think the sentence I imagined is all that far-fetched. There definitely are people who look like bouncers but who are not bouncers, but they are uncommon.

        • ltowel says:

          The answer here is simple – Bouncers are goons pushing someone around. If a random goon who wasn’t a bouncer physically removed some drunkard from a bar, nobody would care (except maybe the bouncers, because they have the monopoly on violence in the bar). Passersby in a bar area at the time bouncers have to physically remove someone understand and expect that there will be goons removing drunks and assholes from their establishments. There’s the shared social understanding at a bar – if the large sober men decide that this person shouldn’t be in the bar any more, you should listen to them – if it’s bullshit, don’t go back.

        • Lambert says:

          In the UK, security guards and bouncers all wear armbands with a little window that holds their ID card.

          It makes them instantly recognisable as someone who has the authority to manhandle you off the premises, but who isn’t the police.

    • sharper13 says:

      My experiences as a licensed security guard and security company owner are from western states, not NY, and from a couple of decades ago, but I’d throw out a few things which might bear on security guard licensing:
      1. The primary purpose of licensing seemed to be to ensure guards at least had a minimal amount of training in what they were legally allowed and not allowed to do. Things like in what situations can you perform a citizens arrest (i.e. detain someone), when are you legally allowed to carry a weapon and of what type, etc… Basically, you had to pass a test on that to get your license.
      2. A secondary purpose was to make guards “officially” able to represent the property owner to the general public. In some jurisdictions, unless they’re designated an officer of the company, random employee isn’t legally allowed to do the same things a licensed security guard is allowed to do to protect property and apprehend bad guys.
      3. The main effect of most security guards (the ones who aren’t specialized, so the great masses of them) is to act as a visual deterrent and observer. i.e. to convince people not to try anything illegal and to take good notes/photos/video/etc… when someone does. Most unarmed security guards are explicitly forbidden to physically restrain anyone, because no one wants their liability insurance rates to depend on the decision-making capabilities of a young adult they hired for a few bucks over minimum wage. (Armed guards, supervisors, specialized loss prevention teams, etc… are a very different story.) As a result, the uniform itself becomes important because it fulfills most of the visual deterrent portion of the job.

      • BBA says:

        In some jurisdictions, unless they’re designated an officer of the company, random employee isn’t legally allowed to do the same things a licensed security guard is allowed to do to protect property and apprehend bad guys.

        That’s what confused me – unless I missed something or there’s some other operative law here, New York isn’t one of those jurisdictions, but the licensing regime is the same as if it were.

    • Garrett says:

      Related anecdote: there are some EMS agencies around me which have their staff wear shiny metal badges as well. I have no idea why – we don’t have detention powers, exactly. We can’t even perform an involuntary commitment action on our own.

      • acymetric says:

        My somewhat cynical guess is that someone or a group of someones with the ability to make that call like to project some form of authority, and badges do that even if there isn’t any real authority behind them.

      • b_jonas says:

        If you are an EMS officer, you want people to let you into places quickly, because that saves lives. Wearing a uniform that shows that you’re an EMS officer is a good thing because of that, even if it doesn’t really give you any legal authority besides using certain medications that ordinary people aren’t allowed to buy. EMS officers here usually wear obvious red coveralls with glow-in-the-dark stripes partly for that reason.

    • Simulated Knave says:

      …the security guard industry is regulated because letting people have private militias is bad. Plenty of property-owners will try to push rights they don’t actually have.

  71. Pepe says:

    My wife (a humanities prof.) just asked me about AI. Specifically, whether there is a book that would provide a good introduction to the field. I know that might be very vague, but she basically doesn’t know anything about the topic. Any suggestions? Thanks.

    • Christophe Biocca says:

      Disclaimer: Computer Science background but by no means an expert on this topic.

      AI is a very broad umbrella term, to the point that people will lump both neural networks and A*-pathfinding in there despite having nothing in common.

      Machine Learning is the more specific counterpart and is where lot of what’s in the news today (Alpha Go, etc) is coming from (symbolic logic isn’t the hot field it was 50 years ago).

      The other (potential) obstacle is that a lot of books are aimed at would-be practitioners. http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/ is a pretty good book in that vein but it teaches both the math and how to program a basic network. Not necessarily what she’s looking for.

      • Pepe says:

        Yeah, not sure anything with math would work for her. I do think that the machine learning side of things is what interests her. I will check the link though, thanks.

    • Polycarp says:

      I recommend that she read What Computers Still Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason by Hubert L. Dreyfus.

  72. Le Maistre Chat says:

    In non-US violent politics, soldiers from the two most populous states on Earth, which have nuclear weapons, are killing each other without using their guns: only rocks and clubs.
    I can’t help thinking of the rules against escalation in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars romances.

    • Wrong Species says:

      Reminds of that old quote attributed to Albert Einstein about World War IV being fought with sticks and stones. Maybe he was just a world war too early.

    • Aftagley says:

      I think 1000 is too large a margin to be meaningful for any kind of meaningful prediction.

      If we have 999 people die on that border, we almost certainly have a war. If we have only another 30 or so die, we likely have a continuation of the current quasi-peace.

  73. MisterA says:

    Is the site becoming almost unusably slow for anyone else? There is a lag of seconds when typing or scrolling on both browser and PC.

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      No.

    • Trofim_Lysenko says:

      I have notable issues with the very large open threads on my android phone, but I attributed that to it being a fairly stock phone and those being very large threads interacting with the “x comments since” widget. I haven’t noted any issues on my PC.

      • bottlerocket says:

        I think it may just be an Android/WordPress thing. I have the same problem with massive slowness/freezing/etc on mobile despite having a reasonably powerful phone (Galaxy S9). PC works fine, same as everyone else is saying.

    • Plumber says:

      @MisterA,
      That’s been the case for me for a couple of years now when I’m “logged in”, usually the site and posting get slower the more comments a thread has, logging out speeds it up, often I’ll compose in an e-mail field, log in and paste, then log back out.

    • Clutzy says:

      Your browser?

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      Reloading after commenting is slow on my PC, but there’s no issue with scrolling or reading. (Then if you’re reading in reverse order – which is to say the actual time order of comments / threads – it de-reverses it and you have to re-reverse and find your place, which is a nuisance but I don’t know of any fix.)

      That said, there are worse horrors than WordPress out there.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      Sometimes for me, yes. I thought it occurred when my blabbermouth makes a lot of comments, and so the JavaScript is executing the countdown for me to edit my posts, and it’s running all over the place.

      But you haven’t said much this thread, so that wouldn’t explain it for you.

  74. Well... says:

    I don’t disagree that corporations are increasingly woke now. I just don’t think that wokeness is either being driven by the business world (at least outside of news media) or particularly beneficial to it. In global perspective, if you look at Amy Chua’s books World on Fire and Political Tribes, re-distributive politics are certainly either compatible with or being driven substantially by identity politics in many places, e.g. in Latin America. I think the media, non-governmental activism organizations and academia are where woke politics are being created. As the push from there convinces more people, they exercise more woke values in interacting with the corporate world, which makes it more woke. But corporations are, in my view, a lagging rather than leading indicator here.

    This strikes me as uncontroversial, maybe even obvious. I have trouble seeing how anyone could seriously say otherwise (though I’m open to hearing good arguments, yada yada). I would only add that corporations do get into their own little wokeness arms races in which they might be said to be “escalating wokeness under their own steam”, and it’s possible (but, I think, unlikely) that these arms races could influence the bleeding edge of wokeness.

    the Democratic Party has, for better or worse, moved quite substantially to the left on economic issues in recent years, as the fact that Warren and Sanders were leading presidential primary candidates would suggest.

    I think you are accidentally substituting the “Democratic Party” here for “some critical mass of people willing to vote for or donate to a Democrat candidate in a given presidential primary”.

  75. salvorhardin says:

    For several months now, in (IIUC) many US cities, there have been emergency childcare arrangements made available by city governments for the children of “essential” workers. In San Francisco, at least, these follow similar risk reduction rules to the summer camps that are now opened up for everyone: a size-limited set of kids stay together, and with the same caregivers, for at least some number of weeks at a time.

    AFAICT we haven’t heard anything about significant COVID spread occurring through these childcare arrangements. Is that absence of evidence clear enough to constitute evidence of absence, i.e. evidence that it’ll be safe to put schoolkids together in these kinds of consistent groups throughout the summer and into the fall? Or are there reasons to doubt, e.g. are the circumstances of these childcares actually relevantly different, or is it too difficult to tell whether spread is occurring through them, or is nobody actually looking because our institutions suck? My guess is that if anything emergency childcare centers should be *more* likely to be sites of spread than generally-available ones since essential workers face higher exposure risk than the general population. But I don’t know if anyone has looked into this.

    • Viliam says:

      I am not an expert, but I saw a study saying that it is much harder for COVID to infect small children. Something something the receptors are not developed yet, or are smaller, or have a different shape, something like that.

      I don’t remember (and maybe the study didn’t answer it) for what age exactly it applies. I would assume it is on a scale, so kindergartens are safe, universities are not, and everything in between is somewhere in between.

      Also, splitting people into sets, where they freely interact with others in the same set, but avoid people outside the set, should in theory prevent spreading of the virus. But I am afraid that unless the set means “close family”, people will in practice sort themselves into multiple overlapping sets (family, classmates, close friends) which would defeat the purpose.

    • keaswaran says:

      The first problem is that as far as I can tell, most places in the United States haven’t been doing enough contact tracing to get any real evidence of absence from absence of evidence. At least, I would have expected that if they were doing real contact tracing, then after four months we would have been able to say something like “40% of cases are from immediate family, 30% from work in factories, 20% from general shopping, and 10% from schools”, or something else like that, that would have allowed us to figure out which sorts of businesses should be taking more or fewer precautions. But I haven’t seen *any* mention of *any* of this, apart from studies of a few dozen superspreader events in East Asia, or in February and March.

      But from places where I have heard of such studies, there seem to be very few incidents where a young child was the index case. But I haven’t heard whether these are places at which schools and daycares were already closed, which would basically cut off all the ways for a child to be the first contact in a household.

  76. GearRatio says:

    In happier news, this happened.

  77. bean says:

    Today at work, I had to do some training, and they were talking about determinations that had to be made by Authorized Individuals (AI). “If you want to determine the status of [redacted], consult an AI.” I am amazed that even a large company didn’t notice how weird that sounds.

  78. bullseye says:

    I don’t agree with the contrarian take that wokeness is bad because it allegedly stops the materialistic socialist left, which is the good left, from taking power.

    All my socialist friends are woke. The only woke vs. socialist conflict I can think of was a minor incident four years ago when some African-Americans gave Bernie Sanders a hard time for not putting enough emphasis on civil rights issues.

    The big faction that’s been getting left out of the left is the labor unions. I think they’ve mostly resigned themselves to supporting the establishment democrats, or have given up on politics because neither party supports them. A few defected to Trump.

    • Wrong Species says:

      The whole “woke vs socialists” thing just seems like a marriage of convenience between populist conservatives who want to say that the left doesn’t care about the poor, and some center-left people who want to use it to pummel white guys who don’t talk about identity politics enough. Hillary Clinton effectively used identity politics against Bernie, but Elizabeth Warren didn’t. The funny thing is that Biden never really got that treatment and he is way less woke than Bernie.

      But yeah, socialists are generally to the left on both economic and social issues. Antifa isn’t filled with neoliberal wonks.

      • INH5 says:

        Hillary Clinton effectively used identity politics against Bernie, but Elizabeth Warren didn’t.

        Remember the sexism accusation during the debates? Even if that didn’t make a difference, she clearly tried.

        The funny thing is that Biden never really got that treatment and he is way less woke than Bernie.

        That depends on the context. Biden did say that “trans rights are human rights” in response to Joe Rogan endorsing Bernie. IIRC he also dipped his toe into the whole “mean online Bernie Bros” thing. These were clearly opportunistic, but that’s hardly unprecedented in politics.

        But yeah, socialists are generally to the left on both economic and social issues. Antifa isn’t filled with neoliberal wonks.

        Antifa are overwhelmingly Anarcho-Communists. It’s hardly shocking that they’re on board with a movement that includes weakening the power of state security forces as a central goal. On certain other issues, such as gun control, they’re a lot further from the elite media consensus.

        • Wrong Species says:

          Remember the sexism accusation during the debates? Even if that didn’t make a difference, she clearly tried.

          That’s my point. Clinton successfully got the “Bernie Bro” thing going. But when Warren tried something similar, she failed.

          As for Biden, nobody actually believes he’s a social justice warrior. He’s just signaling that he’s willing to kiss up to them. I don’t think Bernie is either but if you look at the two before this campaign, Bernie was clearly to the left socially.

    • Hoopdawg says:

      Consider that when people speak of a conflict between wokies and economic left, by the economic left they mean, well, things like labor unions.

      It’s true that a whole bunch of wokies performatively professes support for radical ideologies. They should still be considered wokies for the purpose of identifying sides here.

      • bullseye says:

        I agree, but the OP referred to socialism, and the unions are not socialist; they want a version of capitalism that gives them a better deal. The wokies are the furthest left of anybody on economics, even though economics isn’t their main deal.

  79. Aapje says:

    From 1969 to 2003, the (municipal) Pedagogical Center Berlin intentionally placed children with pedophiles, based on the theory that it would teach pedophiles to care for someone and would give troubled youth the experience of being loved. These men were paid the normal allowance for foster care. Stories from children placed with these men suggests that a typical result was the sexual abuse of these boys.

    There was a political angle, where the psychology professor running the program believed that ‘liberating children’s sexuality’ would unleash energies that would in turn lead to political protest and the true democratization of German society. In other words, this was part of a far-left agenda (as well).

    This started off as a secret program, as it violated the law to place children with convicted pedophiles, but after the statute of limitations expired on the earliest placements in 1989, the professor wrote a report for the Berlin Senate Department for Women, Family and Youths. This is just like a national ministry or state department, but at the municipal level. It appears that at the time, an SPD (social-democrat party) senator was in charge of this department. Neither this politician nor the government bureaucrats who ran the department put a halt to this program.

    • Viliam says:

      I wish I could say this was a surprising news.

      It seems that the best media strategy for pedophiles is to reframe their desires in terms of “children’s rights”. Like it’s not about the adult person’s desire to f*** little kids, because very few people would empathise with that. Instead, it is all about providing equal rights to the oppressed little children.

      First, start talking about children’s rights in general, without mentioning sexuality, for example why smart 15 year olds are not allowed to vote, but demented 90 year olds are. When you get a sympathetic ear — usually on the Left, because equals rights are their applause light — very slowly and carefully proceed to sexuality. Carefully frame it as the child’s right to initiate sexual experience, to preempt the debate about consent. Again, first talk about two kids just below the age of consent together exploring their sexuality. Then proceed to younger age. Also mention that the child could be attracted to an older person, perhaps much older. Hey, if it’s okay for a 30 years old to have sex with a 50 years old, what’s wrong with a … years old wanting to have sex with a 30 years old? Keep insisting that you only want to discuss the relationships where the child is absolutely happy about everything, and has everything under full control. Because pedophiles, just like any minority, are only motivated by pure love, and would never hurt anyone to achieve their goals. How could perfect love with perfect safety ever hurt anyone? You know what actually hurts people? Your hateful prejudice!

      Of course this hypothetical scenario ignores the basic sanity check: How difficult would it be in real life for an adult person to extract “consent” from a little child, when the adult is in a position of power, has superior strategic thinking, and can spin all sorts of lies and manipulation against a victim with little knowledge of how the society actually works?

      Makes me wonder how many people who approved this project were pedophiles themselves. It’s true that the agenda of helping minorities is politically Left, but if someone fails to do the basic sanity check, I suspect there is another motivation involved. (Of course “don’t give a fuck” is also a plausible explanation for those who didn’t initiate the program, only signed what someone else wrote.)

      • AG says:

        Doesn’t work in the current configuration of the left. They’re the ones leading the charge on exposing abusers, in the church and in sports organizations, for example.

        The best media strategy for pedophiles is to continue to take away children’s rights by emphasizing how correct is it for parents/guardians to have total control over their kids, so that it’s harder for kids to escape/be taken away, and so that their testimony is always ignored.

        • Randy M says:

          Only, of course, with scrupulous oversight of foster care.

        • Space Hobo from Hobospace says:

          If you can convince people that sex with the minors is not necessary abusive, then someone who wants to “expose abusers” is no threat to you. Destroying social services might help you abuse a child of your own – that’s assuming you can get one, but in long term you’d probably prefer being able to just ask children out like you can with adults.

          • AG says:

            Historically, and even in the present day, the cases where sanctioned underage age gap coupling occurs have all been about parental/guardian control rather than consent. Cases where children dubiously consent to a pedophilic relationship also all occur in frameworks of obeying adults with authority/power over them.

            Shifting the discussion to “no, kids really have the power” enables kids to more openly question if a relationship is right for them, and so revoke their consent. It removes leverage from the adults.

          • Space Hobo from Hobospace says:

            To begin with, one can simply believe that children can consent and advocate for restoring this right. One doesn’t even need to be a paedophile themselves to do. I’m not interested in arguing on this topic, just to argue tactics.
            You locked yourself into mode of thinking that paedophiles would rather have power over children while being forced into the shadows, but they don’t have to see it that way. A true believer in child’s consent would probably prefer to be able to ask kids out, even if some reject them. Just like a regular philanderer would be interested in liberating women sexually to expand his dating pool.

          • AG says:

            It’s not about the pedophile’s preferences, it’s about what sort of society will have the most pedophilic happening occur.

            A world in which kids have much more rights than they do now, including one of consent, means that abused kids are much more likely to speak up about not consenting. There isn’t a secret large population of kids who want to fuck adults out there. Even if pedophiles get the societal permission to ask kids out, most of them will simply get dumped.
            The historical civilizations with a higher occurrence of schtupping kids than today had lower levels of respecting consent, and the civilizations today with a higher occurrence of schtupping kids than, say, the US, have lower levels of respecting consent.

    • Randy M says:

      Thirty-four years that went on? How did it end up stopping in the end?

      There’s some inconsistency/disingenuousness to the reasoning (other than the obvious…) in that if liberating children’s sexuality is a boon, then pedophiles don’t need to be taught to care for someone, they aren’t doing anything wrong to begin with.

      Have the responsible parties been publicized and driven from public life, at least?

      • Aapje says:

        Helmut Kentler has been dead since 2008.

        In 2003, he was 75, so 10 years after the official retirement age of the time, but professors commonly work beyond their retirement, so perhaps it ended when he left. Otherwise, someone else must have been in charge.

        There still seem to be a lot of unanswered questions…

    • chrisminor0008 says:

      That’s pretty much how I remember Berlin.

  80. Ketil says:

    Hot take: I don’t think I really agree with the popular idea of “Woke Capitalism.” (As expressed by e.g. Razib Khan on a recent episode of his new podcast.)

    Your link doesn’t seem to contain any useful information on the subject, so I don’t know what you are arguing against. I wouldn’t bring it up if it weren’t an issue I have with a lot of posts(ers) on SSC: they name-drop some obscure or vague term, and then expect everybody to be completely on board with what it means (to them).

    So a plea to everybody who top posts: please take the trouble to spend a couple of sentences introducing the topic. And to everybody responding, please cut and paste the stuff you respond to and wrap it using the Quote button.

  81. Le Maistre Chat says:

    Seconding “no one disagrees with this, Atlas.”
    It seems intuitive to me that corporations are woke because you need a university degree to get a job in corporate America, and US universities are the sort of place where being politically aware is encouraged and the three positions that won’t get you expelled are supporting the Democratic candidate, the Green Party, and anarcho-socialism. The universities are the brain cells sending orders to corporations, the judiciary, the permanent bureaucracy, et al.
    It’s Econ 101 that for every billion dollar corporation that builds brand loyalty and sales by signaling leftism, there’s an opportunity for an X-million corporation in the same industry to builds brand loyalty and sales by signaling rightism, and you solve for X by figuring out how much poorer the Red tribe is than the Blue tribe. If this doesn’t happen, well, maybe the High Capitalist who sees all those $20 bills on the sidewalk can’t find university-educated people with the right skills to pick them up for him?

    • INH5 says:

      It seems intuitive to me that corporations are woke because you need a university degree to get a job in corporate America, and US universities are the sort of place where being politically aware is encouraged and the three positions that won’t get you expelled are supporting the Democratic candidate, the Green Party, and anarcho-socialism. The universities are the brain cells sending orders to corporations, the judiciary, the permanent bureaucracy, et al.

      Because it’s not like there are enough “College Republican” clubs that people like Charlie Kirk can organize cross-country college campus tours. Yes, there are limits to the Overton Window there too (see the Groyper War of last year), but isn’t it a remarkable coincidence that advocating for reducing taxes is allowed but advocating for reducing skilled legal immigration is not?

      Yes, ideological enforcement is stricter on the fringe of the Right than that of the Left, but maybe that has something to do with the fact that Republicans control a large majority of state legislatures and have controlled at least one branch of Congress for most of the last 30 years, meaning that a (from a corporate perspective) dangerously left-wing economic agenda has basically no chance of being implemented? Whereas if Trump had actually lived up to his popular image, he could have caused big problems for big business purely through executive orders, IE by getting in an actual trade war with China, or putting the hammer down on businesses that employ illegal immigrants (as opposed to merely making it harder for economically unproductive refugees to enter the country).

      It’s Econ 101 that for every billion dollar corporation that builds brand loyalty and sales by signaling leftism, there’s an opportunity for an X-million corporation in the same industry to builds brand loyalty and sales by signaling rightism, and you solve for X by figuring out how much poorer the Red tribe is than the Blue tribe.

      Only if there are enough righties using the platform in question to move the needle on sales. If Twitter is mostly lefties, because a lot of righties still have Cable TV subscriptions and still mostly get their news that way (Fox New’s ratings are at an all-time high, despite all of the cord-cutting over the past decade), then there is basically no cost to posting empty virtue-signalling statements on Twitter, because most of the righties you might be worried about alienating will never know about it unless some pundit on Fox News decides to make a big deal out of it, and conservative pundits have much bigger fish to fry at the moment.

  82. Deiseach says:

    A couple of things: first, Ireland has been awarded a temporary seat on the U.N. Security Council. Very nice, now can anyone explain to me why this matters, given that it’s the Big Five who are wielding all the power and making all the decisions? There must be some reason why our government wanted this plum, but why is it a plum? What can any small nation do in two years?

    Second, genetics headlines from the ancient past! We’re a descendant combination of incestuous disabled hunter-gatherers, apparently? 😁

    • Pandemic Shmandemic says:

      It’s a plum because you get to garner favor from other countries in exchange for supporting resolutions that benefit them or damage their rivals and suppressing the opposite ones. While it’s true that each of the big five can veto any resolution individually they still need a majority to pass resolutions.

    • Tenacious D says:

      Does your Taoiseach have a grudge against Justin Trudeau? Because getting the award blocked his lifelong dream of the same.

      • Deiseach says:

        I thought Leo and Justin got on fine! Maybe they have fallen out since? 😁 Surely Canada can keep trying for a seat, or is it a case of “yah but Trudeau will be out of office by then”?

        • Tenacious D says:

          Ok, scratch that theory.
          If I understand correctly, being on the UNSC nominee shortlist is an opportunity that comes up only once a decade, if that. While there’s nothing that says Trudeau couldn’t still be PM in 2030, the stars would really have to align in his favour.

    • Randy M says:

      Second, genetics headlines from the ancient past! We’re a descendant combination of incestuous disabled hunter-gatherers, apparently? 😁

      I mean, isn’t everyone?

    • anonymousskimmer says:
    • bullseye says:

      A couple of weird things from that article:

      This guy was inbred, and buried in an enormous tomb that must have taken a lot of work from a lot of people. They think he was someone important because he was inbred.

      The baby with Downs was breastfed and then buried “in a sacred place”. So the takeaway is that they didn’t throw him in the trash for having a disability, I guess? But would they even know he had a disability? How do you identify a mental disability in a baby? He would have looked a little odd, I suppose, but Downs is pretty rare; I wouldn’t expect them to know what his appearance meant.

  83. ana53294 says:

    Science fiction of the past used to imagine self-cleaning houses and no housework. I dream of a future like that.

    My prediction after my cleanest housemate left:

    In the future, when we have robots that clean the house, windows, get rid of all the dust, etc., there will be people who have all this devices, and live in acceptably clean houses, there will be people who will use the machines and then use an extra dose of bleach to satisfy their OCD, and there will be people who will turn off the equipment to save electricity and soap, and will continue living in a dirty house.

    The third type really puzzles me. Why leave a pile of dirty dishes in the sink when you could fill the dishwasher, push a button and then go on your merry way? It’s not like we save that much money on electricity. It’s true that the stupid way the water bills work here don’t encourage saving money at all (we pay a fixed amount based on the number of people who live here), but still, it’s not like it consumes that much electricity. And at the end you get nice and dry clean dishes.

    Why do so many people not use a dishwasher even when they have it? For me, personally, I hate washing dishes so much having a dishwasher is a criterion when looking for a house. I understand some people find washing dishes relaxing, whatever, let them enjoy it. But those who don’t like it, and still insist on doing it manually, I really don’t understand. It’s not like they are OCD perfectionists, either; the dishwasher washes better than they do.

    I’ve asked, but my housemates haven’t been able to give me a satisfactory explanation. They say it’s about money, but when I calculated the amount of hot water they use, and how much it costs to heat that vs. the cost of the electricity of the dishwasher (the dishwasher costs about the same, since we don’t save money on water), they continue piling dishes in the sink. It’s not about money, or my arguments would convince them. They haven’t been able to give me a better explanation yet.

    • B_Epstein says:

      No idea about them in particular, but dishwashers, by themselves, do not wash better than I do. For starters, anything left to dry will run the risk of having a few pieces of food stuck to it. Streams of water do not beat rubbing. Then there’s the fact that if you’re doing no pre-washing, even a basic one, you will have to maintain your dishwasher more. Finally, anything with tiny holes (think sifters) will not be washed as well if left purely to the dishwasher.

      • ana53294 says:

        I’m not saying dishwashers wash better than people who care about washing dishes. But people who care about washing dishes don’t leave a pile of dirty dishes in the sink (because, as everybody knows, it makes it harder to wash later).

        I’m not arguing against those who prefer to wash dishes immediately after lunch, to have always spotless dishes in the house. Or put a lot of elbow grease into washing dishes and get better results than the machine. I get that. It’s those that half ass it but do more work for less results that I don’t understand.

        Despite my love for the dishwasher, I don’t think it works well for pots and pans (because it’s not good enough; when I have my own house I’ll have one of those > $1000 Bosch machines). So I clean my pots immediately.

        • B_Epstein says:

          I do have a pretty good Bosch, and it still doesn’t work perfectly well on pots and pans. As for turning the dishwasher on immediately – I don’t always have the time or energy right after a meal. You do have to load it, preferably not completely at random.

          • ana53294 says:

            I don’t turn it on immediately, but I do load the dishes immediately. It takes a couple of days to fill up.

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      I don’t like dishwashers, and I have come to be quite comfortable with washing up (it gets better with age). I always have a mug of strong tea after a meal anyway, so I wash the dishes while it brews.

      • ana53294 says:

        Why don’t you like them?

        Is it that loading is complicated? Unloading? You don’t like the results? The noise? You want to save money/electricity? You don’t want to get soft? You find washing dishes relaxing?

        • Gerry Quinn says:

          The loading/unloading, in part. And from my childhood I found the smell of the detergent then used in dishwashers unpleasant, although that has probably improved. But really, it just seems so simple to wash the dishes by hand and have it done.

    • Well... says:

      I didn’t use a dishwasher even when I had one, back when I was a bachelor. I continued this practice for months after my girlfriend (later, wife) moved in with me. I don’t mind doing dishes, I do them really thoroughly, and I (later, we) created so few dishes it seemed wasteful to use a dishwasher.

      Whether dishwashers do a better job is debatable. They use much hotter water than I’d be able to stand so they can actually get things “sanitized” according to some official standard, and I’ve heard they are more efficient (presumably once they’re filled past a certain threshold)..

    • David W says:

      I’m not 100% sure whether you’re asking about washing dishes to save money or not loading the dishwasher promptly.

      About washing dishes by hand: I tend to think that’s a heuristic developed elsewhere and not recalculating when the circumstances have changed. It was much more important for people a generation or two ago, as dishwashers have both become more efficient and less costly in that time. A calculation done by their parents may have become received wisdom, not recalculated.

      As an analogy, I had to redo the calculation three times and wait a week to convince myself to throw away perfectly good incandescent light bulbs and replace them with LED bulbs, rather than waiting for the incandescents to fail. In general it’s wasteful to throw away working equipment. In this particular case the electricity savings outweighed that quickly, but the general heuristic was hard to overcome. With a sufficiently strange calculation result, it’s natural to first assume you have missed a vital assumption or made a math error, rather than immediately change your behavior.

      Another possibility is that it’s about being the type of person who washes dishes by hand, rather than making the perfect decision every day. Being comfortable washing dishes by hand means that you won’t spend on installing or repairing dishwashers. You won’t reserve part of your kitchen for the machine – or worse, remodel your new kitchen immediately upon purchase. Maybe your housemates are more interested in keeping frugal habits for the future rather than optimizing right now. They could be afraid that if they stop washing dishes, they won’t be able to summon the willpower to restart when they move.

      About using a dishwasher from a personal energy perspective: putting the first plate in a dishwasher takes several minutes, since you first have to put away all of the clean dishes. I will often pile dirty dishes and load the dishwasher in a batch, rather than having to unload it immediately after using a mug.

      • ana53294 says:

        I unload it immediately after it finishes the wash and it’s not hot.

        Take out the plastics and put them on the drying rack (they don’t seem to dry in the dishwasher well).

        But if they were comfortable washing dishes by hand, why would they pile them in the sink until I can’t use the sink to wash my pans and pots?

        I understand why people who are OK washing dishes by hand because they do it better than the machine, don’t like the idea of having dirty dishes piled around, etc., don’t use the machine. But my housemates are definitely not that.

        • David W says:

          Hmm, given that this is ‘after your cleanest housemate left’ – maybe you’re dealing with excuses, not reasons. Perhaps the now-gone housemate was loading the dishwasher for everyone (well, except you), and the others are hoping you will take over that role. But they can’t state it, because it’s selfish and a little bit petty. If that’s true, then they are hoping you decide that loading the dishwasher is easier than having a fight around chores.

          • ana53294 says:

            No, I’m the only one who uses (and used) the dishwasher. I just patiently wait until they get around to it.

            I’ve learnt living with housemates that aren’t carefully selected for cleanliness: you either live with the dirt or you end up being the sucker who cleans for everybody. I prefer to tolerate dirt.

    • SamChevre says:

      I wash pots and pans by hand (with a bit of lye in most cases – 1/4 tsp in a quart of water gets stainless steel sparkling clean with no effort). I load the dishwasher sometimes (sometimes one of the children does) but I always load it to maximize how many dishes fit–sometimes, I need to have more dishes to identify what will be optimal.

      But I HATE it when my wife and kids leave dirty dishes in the sink–then I can’t wash pots without fishing all the disgusting, greasy dishes with coffee grounds mixed into the grease OUT first. We have a bus tub which is where dirty dishes are supposed to go.

      • ana53294 says:

        But I HATE it when my wife and kids leave dirty dishes in the sink

        Yeah, that’s the case for me. I just want to be able to use the sink without taking stuff out of it.

    • gdepasamonte says:

      “If I am going to use the dishwasher I should probably load it right now, but I can justify soaking dishes in the sink for a while if I wash them by hand later”. (Willpower cost of beginning any task)

      “Seems silly to use that powerful machine for a pot, a plate and a few bits of cutlery. I’ll get around to washing them after finishing this chapter of my book…”

      Obviously I don’t think these are good attitudes for someone who is sharing a kitchen, but I am susceptible enough to similar lines of thought that it’s easy to construct them.

      The second one is kind of interesting. Sometimes I consciously choose not to take a raincoat with me on a grey day and end up caught in the rain, even though the cost of putting it in my bag is tiny, and even though I know that I have a habit of doing this. A kind of aversion to having “overreacted” (packed a coat/run the dishwasher) in the imagined future in which (it doesn’t rain/you promptly wash up by hand), despite there being no real cost to overreacting.

      Separately from all this, I dislike dishwashers because they are expensive, bulky, and noisy (relative to a kitchen sponge), another thing that needs looking after, and I often want to use a kitchen item only to find that it has been put in the dishwasher and I have to wait for it. I also kind of enjoy washing washing up, and will further note that it is most enjoyable if you have the luxury of leaving it all to do in one go after your meal – in a shared kitchen this might not be the case.

    • a real dog says:

      Dishwashers for living alone / with a partner is a nice-to-have luxury. Actually, in this setup, a significant problem can be having to wait until it’s full to avoid wasting power and water.

      On the other hand, once you start inviting people for drinks / game nights / whatever, all the glass piles up fast.

      • Don P. says:

        I was interested to see a (YouTube pre-video) ad from a dishwasher detergent company recently, which claimed that the break-even point on dishwashers vs hand-washed is a 8 plates. My main reaction was to wonder why this powerful-sounding argument hasn’t made it into ads before, and I wonder if there’s some kind of COVID quarantine connection that I can’t put my finger on.

        • b_jonas says:

          There is a connection. Dishwashers sanitize dishes better and thus reduce spreading infecious diseases among family. This was known before COVID, and is still true.

    • Timandrias says:

      It would seem like you have a garden variety of lazy roommates. I think we did this for a few months when I started sharing an apartment, before some rules where put in place… My personal mental process was something in the lines of “I want to eat the food I just prepared, so I’ll wait to finish eating before I clean” and that had a 50% chance of happening depending on whether I had something more interesting to do after.

      So, if they are operating on similar lines, your roommates don’t clean after eating because they have something better to do. That doesn’t make any sense, as they will have to clean future, but there is a whole self-help industry built around beating procastination.

    • b_jonas says:

      Um what? Dishwashers consume much less water than doing the dishes by hand. Most of the monetary cost is not the water or the electricity, the amortization cost of the dishwasher (70 HUF per run is my estimate), but the diswasher detergent (the cheapest tablets cost 29 HUF per run), then comes the dishwasher salt, the water, the electricity, and the rinse agent in some order that I can’t quite determine. Admittedly this calculation could be different if you live somewhere where water is much more expensive.

      There can be some good reasons to not use the dishwasher of course, such as noise level, the dishwasher taking up space in your kitchen when your house is small, or that it will clog the drains.

      (At my job, there’s a dishwasher in the office kitchen that is almost never used. I got into the habit to wash clean cutlery (spoons and forks) from the shared kitchen before I use them for lunch, because I don’t trust that random other people have cleaned them up properly. I even carry my own bottle of dishwashing soap and sponge because I don’t like the dishwashing soap in the kitchen. I started all this before COVID became a thing.)

    • Nancy Lebovitz says:

      Speaking as a person who has a hard time doing housework and does much less of it than would be good for my quality of life, I think it’s worth looking into what’s going on, and, of course, possible solutions.

      Anyone who’s gone from neglecting housework to being at least reasonably reliable about it should chime in.

      It’s easy for me to assume that the people who say running the dishwasher is too expensive are just making up a reason for not wanting to wash dishes, but people can be weird about money as well as housework.

      Is there distinctive brain chemistry involved in being willing to do housework or not?

      Is there something debilitating about housework which makes a lot of people reluctant to do it? Is it just that any achievement is small and temporary?

      • ana53294 says:

        The strange thing for me is that they eventually get around to washing the dishes – by hand. But then, the way they wash cutlery also frustrates me to no end (leaving it in a bucket of warm water, swishing it around, and then rinsing it; that’s basically what the dishwasher does, but better).

        It’s like, there’s no difference between washing the dishes after you eat or before you eat. Washing them after has many advantages – the dirt is easier to wash, and you have clean dishes instead of dirty ones in the sink.

        I think the debilitating part of housework is how ultimately pointless it is. Things get dirty or dusty incredibly quickly.

        • AG says:

          I think the debilitating part of housework is how ultimately pointless it is. Things get dirty or dusty incredibly quickly.

          THIS. With laundry or vacuuming or cleaning the bathroom or dusting, I just set a very flexible schedule at intervals far less than my mother would approve of, but dishes is an unavoidable daily thing.
          My solution there has actually been to remove any slack. If I have extra dishes I won’t feel like washing the dirty ones, so I’ve stripped back to only having 1-2 sets, so if I don’t wash the one I just ate off of I won’t be able to eat off of anything at the next meal.

  84. Lambert says:

    Does the SCOTUS ruling prohibit discriminating against {straight men, lesbians}?

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      Yes. But probably not bisexuals.

      • AG says:

        How so?

        • FLWAB says:

          The SCOTUS ruling said that firing a homosexual was discriminating by sex, because the employer has no problem with women who find men attractive, but does have a problem with men who find men attractive. In other words, if everything was the same except the man was a woman then he (she?) wouldn’t have been fired. Thus by firing the gay employee he is discriminating based on sex, which is forbidden by the law.

          If it was a bisexual employee then the calculus is different. In that case if the owner disapproved of bisexuality, and wanted to fire the employee because they are a bisexual, the owner could do so because it wouldn’t make a difference whether the employee was a male bisexual or a female bisexual. Thus the employer is not discriminating based on sex, but on sexual orientation which is not illegal.

          • Aftagley says:

            Presumably bisexuals aren’t being discriminated upon as a result of their attraction to the opposite sex. I think in this case lumping them in with the gays is perfectly acceptable.

            ETA: You’re inventing a problem that doesn’t exist. If there’s been a record of people being completely fine with both straight and gay employees but is discriminating against their bisexual employees, then fine but until then we base our cases off of what we’ve got.

          • FLWAB says:

            Presumably bisexuals aren’t being discriminated upon as a result of their attraction to the opposite sex. I think in this case lumping them in with the gays is perfectly acceptable.

            But that has nothing to do with the SCOTUS decision. The decision was not “It is illegal to discriminate against homosexuals.” It was “It is illegal to discriminate against men, and discriminating against men for behavior that you wouldn’t discriminate against women for participating in is discrimination against men.” In the case of a bisexual, you would have to prove that the employer only discriminates against male bisexuals or female bisexuals for the discrimination to be illegal. If the employer fires all bisexual employees regardless of sex then they are not discriminating based on sex and therefore are not violating the law.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I just got finished reading the decision and both dissents. I am not a lawyer, but I like to pretend to be one on the internet.

            In the case of a bisexual, you would have to prove that the employer only discriminates against male bisexuals or female bisexuals for the discrimination to be illegal. If the employer fires all bisexual employees regardless of sex then they are not discriminating based on sex and therefore are not violating the law.

            You wouldn’t have to prove anything about what the employer would do to hypothetical groups under this ruling. Gorsuch goes to great lengths to establish that what matters here is discrimination against an individual, and not groups. If you would treat this specific individual differently if they were a different sex, that is sexual discrimination. I won’t quote the whole thing here, but see page 12 of the PDF.

            The joints at which Gorsuch has chosen to carve reality are “attracted to men” and “attracted to women.” If the employer would fire Pat (female) because she is in both the “attracted to men” and the “attracted to women” categories and would also fire Pat (male) because he is in both the “attracted to men” and the “attracted to women” categories, there is no sex discrimination taking place.

            Now, I think Gorsuch is off his rocker, and I agree with Kavanaugh’s dissent.

          • rahien.din says:

            The only difference between a bisexual male and a homosexual male is the bi male also has heterosexual sex.

            Gorsuch’s starting point is action : the employee can’t harm the employer except by their actions. And, it is on the basis of their actions that they are categorized vis-a-vis sexuality.

            Gorsuch’s argument relies on the normativity of the action of heterosexual sex to establish the employer’s proper attitude toward homosexual sex. Because [having sex with men] is normative for one sex but arguendo not the other, to discriminate on the basis of [having sex with men] is sex-based discrimination and therefore invalid.

            Inherent in that argument is that heterosexual sex is normative. Therefore, the only difference between the bisexual male and the homosexual male is the bisexual male also performs normative actions.

            Therefore, to discriminate on the basis of bisexuality is to discriminate on the basis of normative actions. That would be invalid, absent some higher standard.

          • Scott Alexander says:

            Not sure I get this.

            A bisexual is (attracted to men) and (attracted to women). The employer presumably wouldn’t fire men who are attracted to women, or women who are attracted to men. So you would have to argue that it’s okay to fire someone for a combination of traits that you couldn’t fire them individually for.

            But if that’s true, you should also be able to fire trans people, since being trans is having an unusual combination of otherwise usual gender traits, eg a trans man is (has a uterus) and (presents as male). You couldn’t fire them for either of those two things individually, but by the same logic as with bisexuals, it seems like you would be able to fire them for the combination.

            Since the ruling explicitly bans firing trans people, I would be surprised if the court would be okay with firing bisexuals on the same logic.

          • John Schilling says:

            You couldn’t fire them for either of those two things individually, but by the same logic as with bisexuals, it seems like you would be able to fire them for the combination.

            I haven’t read the full opinion, but I think the distinction is that you can’t fire them if any element in the combination involves the possession of a uterus, penis, Y chromosome, etc, because there’s black-letter law saying “can’t fire people for having a uterus”.

            There’s no law about firing people for wanting to have sex with women, or wanting to have sex with men, or wearing pants or wearing dresses or whatnot, so you can fire people for any combination of those things so long as you do it equally to people with or without uteruses. Or even any one of those things – a universal “no dresses” rule would be fine.

            Anything where s/uterus/penis alone shifts a person from the “keep” to the “fire” category is it prohibited. That covers most real anti-LGBT discrimination; we’re mostly spitballing about hypothetical edge cases.

          • FLWAB says:

            A bisexual is (attracted to men) and (attracted to women). The employer presumably wouldn’t fire men who are attracted to women, or women who are attracted to men. So you would have to argue that it’s okay to fire someone for a combination of traits that you couldn’t fire them individually for.

            Yes, that is the argument. Or rather the argument is that an employer can fire an employee for any reason he wants that isn’t specifically illegal. The majority opinion on this case is not that it is illegal to fire gay people just because they are gay, or trans people just because they are trans. It is that firing someone because he is gay is sex discrimination because if he was a she then you wouldn’t fire her. If you made it a policy to fire all people who have sex with men, regardless of their sex, then that would be fine. If you made it a policy to fire all people who have sex with women, regardless of sex, that would also be fine. Neither of those policies are discriminating by sex, which is what the case is concerned with. So if you made it a policy to fire all people who have sex with men and women, regardless of their sex, then that would be fine too. Heck, if you were fine with employees that drink coffee, and employees that eat bagels, but made it policy to fire all employees who drink coffee and eat bagels then you could do that. That is legal.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Anything where s/uterus/penis alone shifts a person from the “keep” to the “fire” category is it prohibited. That covers most real anti-LGBT discrimination; we’re mostly spitballing about hypothetical edge cases.

            Yes, that’s my reading. Gorsuch rejects the “would fire both gay men and lesbians so it’s not sex discrimination” argument because it’s not switching one thing (man|woman) while holding the other thing (homosexuality) constant. “Homosexuality” isn’t really a thing in the worldview of this decision. A person is not “homosexual” or “heterosexual.” The categories of human are “attracted to men” or “attracted to women.” So switching from, say, gay male to lesbian switches two things, not one. We’re changing both sex (man->woman) and we’re changing attraction (to men->to women). Instead we switch one thing, (man->woman) while holding the other (attracted to men) constant, and find the impact on the employee changes (fired->not fired). Ergo, this is sex discrimination.

            In the case of a bisexual, though, the attractions are held constant, and the one and only thing changing is the sex of the employee. Since the action (firing) doesn’t change when the sex changes (even if we stipulate the reasoning does), there’s no sex discrimination.

            I think this entirely comes down to how the Gorsuch carves out the categories. In his dissent, Alito called this “loading the dice.” I agree, it makes no sense, because humans do not put themselves or others into the categories “strong opinions about sex with men versus sex with women” but “strong opinions about heterosexuality versus homosexuality.” Gorsuch picks the weird framing into which humans do not put themselves in order to arrive at this conclusion, “loading the dice.”

          • rahien.din says:

            Heck, if you were fine with employees that drink coffee, and employees that eat bagels, but made it policy to fire all employees who drink coffee and eat bagels then you could do that. That is legal.

            If you were fine with employees that drink coffee, and employees that were men who have sex with men, but made it a policy to fire all coffee-drinking men who have sex with men, that would be discriminating on the basis of sexuality.

          • FLWAB says:

            If you were fine with employees that drink coffee, and employees that were men who have sex with men, but made it a policy to fire all coffee-drinking men who have sex with men, that would be discriminating on the basis of sexuality.

            Actually it would be discriminating on the basis of sex, and would be struck down as such. The problem would be that you were firing men in particular. Firing all coffee-drinking employees that have sex with men is acceptable under the law. Firing all coffee-drinking men that have sex with men isn’t, not because of their sexuality but because of their sex.

          • AG says:

            Thanks for the responses, everyone. I think I understand this edge case now.
            In the hypothetical “check this box” Gorsuch used, it seemed like you would still have to know the sex of the applicant for it to work, but I suppose it depends on exactly how employers formulate the “check this box.”

          • Galle says:

            I think this entirely comes down to how the Gorsuch carves out the categories. In his dissent, Alito called this “loading the dice.” I agree, it makes no sense, because humans do not put themselves or others into the categories “strong opinions about sex with men versus sex with women” but “strong opinions about heterosexuality versus homosexuality.” Gorsuch picks the weird framing into which humans do not put themselves in order to arrive at this conclusion, “loading the dice.”

            Gorsuch’s framing is unusual socially, but it makes much more sense from a material standpoint.

            Let’s say we have an adult human X. Suppose we also have an attractive man. Let’s go with Chris Hemsworth. Will X find Chris Hemsworth sexually attractive? Based on the information given, we can’t say.

            Now suppose I also tell you that X is heterosexual. This gives you two additional bits of information (since X could be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual) but nevertheless, you still cannot say whether X will find Chris Hemsworth sexually attractive or not.

            Suppose instead that I tell you that X is sexually attracted to men. This gives you only one bit of information (since either X is sexually attracted to men or they aren’t), but nevertheless, it is still sufficient to answer the question of whether X will find Chris Hemsworth sexually attractive or not.

            The obvious counter to this argument would be to come up with a reversed scenario, where we ask whether X would be attracted to Y, an attractive person who we defined as being the opposite sex of X. But Y is a purely hypothetical person who can only exist inside this thought experiment, whereas Chris Hemsworth is a real person.

            The fact is, for almost any practical question, it is more useful to know what sort of people someone is sexually attracted to than it is to know whether that person is heterosexual or homosexual. The only reason we’d even really be interested in the latter question is to find the answer to the former. This suggests that the former is a more useful carving of reality than the latter.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            The fact is, for almost any practical question, it is more useful to know what sort of people someone is sexually attracted to than it is to know whether that person is heterosexual or homosexual.

            Well, no, because the practical question to know whether or not a homophobe is going to discriminate against a person is “is the person homosexual?”

          • Galle says:

            Well, no, because the practical question to know whether or not a homophobe is going to discriminate against a person is “is the person homosexual?”

            Okay, I will grant you that as one of the few practical situations where it’s more useful to know if someone is homosexual than it is to know if someone is attracted to men. But I maintain that in the vast majority of situations, it’s more useful to know the latter.

          • Ketil says:

            But if that’s true, you should also be able to fire trans people, since being trans is having an unusual combination of otherwise usual gender traits, eg a trans man is (has a uterus) and (presents as male). You couldn’t fire them for either of those two things individually, but by the same logic as with bisexuals, it seems like you would be able to fire them for the combination.

            I didn’t read the whole thing, but from the discussion here, it appears that the criterion for sexual discrimination is whether changing the sex of the person in question would change the outcome – in which case, the treatment is discrimination based on sex.

            I don’t understand why you think it is about “combinations”, and I think that would depend on how you choose to define your primitive (or irreducible) terms. For many, homosexuality is a meaningful term in itself, for Gorsuch, it is apparently separated into male and female versions (“being attracted to X”). If you discriminate against transgenders, changing sex (either pre or post) would make the person cis, so that obviously falls under the rule as Gorsuch seems to understand it.

            Discriminating against bisexuals would not be prohibited, because if you change sex of the bisexual, you would still treat him or her the same way. Likewise, discriminating against people who are attracted to men would presumably not be prohibited (so you can hire only straight men and lesbian women).

            I don’t see any other way of interpreting this that Gorsuch is shoehorning discrimination on sexuality onto a rather poorly fit law against discrimination on the basis of sex.

          • outis says:

            Conrad Honcho:

            The joints at which Gorsuch has chosen to carve reality are “attracted to men” and “attracted to women.”

            I think that is really the key point, and it’s not something that is imposed by any legal (let alone rational) principles, but rather it was freely chosen by the court.

            It’s a rather surprising choice, too: it’s a form of extreme reductionism that completely denies the concepts of homosexuality and heterosexuality, against the beliefs of both parties in the dispute (to say nothing of the general public). It’s like choosing “slicing into a human body with a knife” as the salient concept, and concluding that surgery is illegal (or that stabbing is legal, perhaps), because they are indistinguishable under that lens.

            So we have the paradoxical result that, in order to reach the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the court has to first deny the validity of the concept, and foreclose any possibility of invoking it in the human interpretation of actions. It would be mildly amusing, if it weren’t yet more proof that the Supreme Court is operating as the supreme legislative power.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            So we have the paradoxical result that, in order to reach the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the court has to first deny the validity of the concept, and foreclose any possibility of invoking it in the human interpretation of actions.

            I think it’s also rather odd in the sociological scope. Gays and lesbians have created an entire culture, with its own vocabulary, conventions, holidays, art, literature, film, poetry, about the homosexual experience. This ruling reduces gay men to “dudes who like dudes.” It’s very strange after something like Obergefell where Kennedy’s decision was an ode to gay love.

          • John Schilling says:

            The fact is, for almost any practical question, it is more useful to know what sort of people someone is sexually attracted to than it is to know whether that person is heterosexual or homosexual.

            For practical circumstances not involving dreamy celebrities being admired from afar, anyone concerned whether X might find Chris to be sexually attractive is probably interested in whether Chris might find X sexually attractive as well. That’s going to be tricky if you’re trying to define your terms in a way that reveals X’s sexual preferences but conceals X’s gender.

          • Galle says:

            For practical circumstances not involving dreamy celebrities being admired from afar, anyone concerned whether X might find Chris to be sexually attractive is probably interested in whether Chris might find X sexually attractive as well. That’s going to be tricky if you’re trying to define your terms in a way that reveals X’s sexual preferences but conceals X’s gender.

            Perhaps, but even in that case you’re still not being maximally efficient. To answer the question “Will Alice and Bob be attracted to one another?”, we technically only need the following four bits of information:

            1. Alice’s gender (female)
            2. Bob’s gender (male)
            3. Whether Alice is attracted to men (yes)
            4. Whether Bob is attracted to women (no)

            Including a full description of Alice and Bob’s sexual orientations means including two bits of information that aren’t necessary to answer the question.

            Also, suppose we bring Alice and Bob back to the original question of discrimination at work. Suppose a manager would fire Alice for marrying Cathy, but would not fire Bob for marrying Cathy. This is clearly an identical action that is being treated differently based on the sex of the person who performs it. Is that not discrimination based on sex?

            I don’t know. Maybe I’m just biased because I have a strong aesthetic preference for reductionist solutions like this.

        • salvorhardin says:

          The logic of the decision AIUI is that “no sex discrimination” means you can’t, in a professional context, treat a man who acts a certain way differently from how you would treat a woman who acts the exact same way. So if you had a rule that says “employees may not have sex with someone of the opposite sex,” a male employee who has sex with a woman would be treated differently by that rule from a woman who has sex with a woman, ergo it would be discriminatory. But a rule that says “pick one or the other but not both” would in theory not fall afoul of this.

          Edit: ninja’d by FLWAB.

      • 10240 says:

        As the first step, no. As the second step, they would probably take a broad construction argument that if discrimination against gay or straight people is prohibited, then discrimination against bisexuals should also be. Which makes no sense (given that the first step relies on a very literal interpretation), but they did something similar regarding interracial marriage.

    • keaswaran says:

      I think that strictly speaking, an employer that announced a policy of firing any employee that was dating a woman would not be violating the letter of the law as the Supreme Court has interpreted it. I don’t particularly expect any business to try this though. And there might be a second case to be made that this policy has a “disparate impact” on the protected group of men, because most men are straight and most women are not dating women.

    • Space Hobo from Hobospace says:

      I imagine the most likely literal application of such principle would be for some particularly heteronormative boss to refuse to hire/fire everyone whom he catches dating men. This way he’d keep all gay men and most women out. Would have to hire a few token lesbians to keep up appearances, but otherwise it’s foolproof.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        Disparate impact.

        • LadyJane says:

          What if an employer had a problem with trans women and decided to respond by prohibiting all employees – including cis females – from wearing skirts, dresses, earrings, necklaces, makeup, etc.? That wouldn’t necessarily fall under “disparate impact” since it’s not preventing dress-wearers (who are predominantly female) from working there, just from wearing their dresses to work. Would that be acceptable under the current interpretation of the law?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Would that be acceptable under the current interpretation of the law?

            My guess would be yes? I think dress codes are acceptable. Would probably have to have a reason beyond “just ’cause.”

            However, I don’t think that “impact on transwomen” would matter, because in this decision, “trans,” “cis,” “homosexual” and “heterosexual” are not things. The only categories of human under consideration are {male, female} and {attracted to men, attracted to women}. In the alternate reality where the transwoman were born a cis woman, there would be no change in the impact of the rule.

            I don’t think this is a particularly good example. I’m not sure what would be though.

          • John Schilling says:

            That sounds an awful lot like e.g. the US military dress code, except that limited makeup and earrings are allowed. So, in principle, it ought to be acceptable for anyone who can articulate a plausible “it’s not just because we’re trying to drive away the femmes, honest!” reason for it.

            Of course, courts are not required to believe obvious lies, so it’s not a blank check.

          • Fahundo says:

            US military dress code actually has different standards for men and women.

          • cassander says:

            @Fahundo says:

            They are actually moving away from that, which is a move I wholly endorse. The only soldiers that should wear skirts are the Scottish.

          • Lambert says:

            A detachment of the Highland Regiment, the 3rd Foot and Mouth. Fearless fighting men, aptly referred to by the natives as ‘the devils in skirts’.

  85. leadbelly says:

    You quote Michael Levin a lot. Are you aware he is a big-R Racist, white supremacist, holocaust revisionist?
    Do you agree with his views? If not, don’t you think his work might be biased? Don’t you think using it to promote your own argument might reflect badly on you? Might not using his work be furthering his agenda?

    • rumham says:

      As far as the linked article goes his “holocaust revisionism” is:

      But even that isn’t his most outlandish idea. In a “book review” of an unpublished manuscript from a retired professor of classics, Levin—himself Jewish—fully endorses Holocaust revisionism, though of a decidedly odd stripe. While acknowledging the reality and horror of Nazi atrocities, Levin rejects any association between racism and Nazism. In fact, he insists that Hitler and the Nazi state were explicitly anti-racist, saying: “Far from showing the dangers of belief in group differences, [the Holocaust] shows where fervent belief in group equality may lead.”

      Levin and Steven Farron, the author of the manuscript under review, arrive at that conclusion by insisting that, far from seeing the Jewish population as inferior or subhuman, Nazis viewed Jews as superior to Aryans. The superiority of Jews to non-Jewish Germans was a threat the idea of racial egalitarianism that Levin insists Hitler was committed to. Jews thus needed to be made less exceptional, at first through dispossession of property and rights and eventually through genocide.

      Which doesn’t seem very revisionist. If the Jewish people were succeeding in society at better rates than whites, and all races are equal, than the Jewish people must have gotten there by abusing the system and oppressing the other races.

      Maybe I’m missing something here, and I’m open to correction, but this seems quite in line with what Hitler’s awful stated views on Jewish perfidiousness, both in his writings and his speeches. The master race talk of Hitler’s would go against this interpretation, but the linked article doesn’t bring up what his arguments are against it.

      Other claims I’ll stay out of, having not tracked all the sources, but this particular one seems relatively benign. From the way it was presented, I thought this was a Holocaust denier type situation.

      • Aftagley says:

        Well Holocaust Denial =/= Holocaust Revisionist. Not to be snarky, but “Well, at least he’s not denying it outright” isn’t really a great defense against accusations of Holocaust revisionism.

        Anyway, are you alleging that we need to go back and disprove the idea that Hitler thought all races were equal? Because he didn’t. That’s kind of his whole thing. Hitler liked some races (Aryans) and really didn’t like the others, to the extent that he was completely fine disposing of them via any means necessary.

        • rumham says:

          Well Holocaust Denial =/= Holocaust Revisionist. Not to be snarky, but “Well, at least he’s not denying it outright” isn’t really a great defense against accusations of Holocaust revisionism.

          I’m saying that it shouldn’t be that objectionable to try to reason if Hitler was capable of being internally consistent. Plenty of history’s monsters have been. In my personal opinion he was crazier than a shit-house rat.

          Is it beyond the pale to suggest that, Stalin, for example might have had an internally consistent philosophy?

          When you hear revisionism thrown around as a bad thing, it’s typically more than just someone trying to peer into a single dead historical figure’s brain.

  86. TimG says:

    I have a nephew with cystic fibrosis. That means both of his parents — including my sister— have a recessive gene. That means I have a 50% chance of having that recessive gene.

    When my wife and I were considering having children, we both got genetically screened. Our plan was that if we both had that gene, we’d do post insemination genetic tests and not implant an embryo that would have had CF.

    How much of a eugenicist am I?

    • James Miller says:

      Are you concerned that your propensity to be a eugenicist is a genetic trait that you will pass on to your children?

    • Well... says:

      Did you marry your wife because she had particular traits (intelligence, physical attractiveness, etc.) you thought were good?

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      Given the current prognosis and quality of life of people with cystic fibrosis I would call you a mild-to-moderate eugenicist. I understand where you are coming from. I understand and can agree with the desire to eliminate the cystic fibrosis alleles from the human gene pool.

    • bullseye says:

      It’s eugenic, but without the bad part of eugenics. The bad part is when somebody takes control of somebody else’s reproduction.

      • Dan L says:

        The bad part is when somebody takes control of somebody else

        Informed consent: somehow, still undervalued as a metric.

      • TimG says:

        The reason I asked was that the Twitter takedown of Hsu claimed he was a eugenicist — who had his own eugenics startup. I wonder how far away his startup is from what I did.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      If you’re wrong here, so is the entire Jewish people.

    • Thomas Jorgensen says:

      “A completely average amount”. This variation of eugenics has goddamn near unanimous approval. Not in polls, but north of ninety percent of people in that actual situation, who are given the option, take it.

      Heck, the percentage of people who abort if early testing indicates downs syndrome is also around ninety.

    • hnau says:

      Unless you’re exerting social (or political, etc.) pressure on others to behave the same way, you’re barely a eugenicist at all.

      The post-insemination screening part would raise ethical concerns for many people but IMO those concerns are more related to the ethics of abortion than to eugenics per se.

      • albatross11 says:

        I don’t think it’s eugenics when it’s just assortative mating. When smart people marry smart people and dumb people marry dumb people, we probably increase the variance of intelligence in our society, but don’t change the average.

        On the other hand, pre-marital or pre-implantation screening for genetic diseases classically fits the eugenics label. Aborting babies with detected genetic disorders also fits the label, and has a lot more of the creepy flavor that normally clings to the word “eugenics.”

        • hnau says:

          A major part of the early-20th-century “Eugenics” movement was “positive eugenics”– basically just encouraging successful people to marry other successful people and have lots of babies. It’s not the part associated with the really nasty stuff, but it came from the same lines of thinking, and it’s kind of creepy on its own terms in that it exerted pressure on people to act this way.

          • Garrett says:

            Which is funny because we’re now doing anti-positive eugenics. We’re subsidizing the unsuccessful to have children.

          • ECD says:

            Which is funny because we’re now doing anti-positive eugenics. We’re subsidizing the unsuccessful to have children.

            And we have an example of the first step from positive eugenics towards negative eugenics…

  87. Deiseach says:

    I think there’s two kinds of “Woke Capitalism” – the gay pasta kind, where companies don’t care a flying fig about cause du jour but they hope that by splashing the appropriate logo around they can sell more – well, packets of pasta, for one. I think this is the majority of them, indeed I’ve seen some comment from social media last Pride Month when everyone was sloshing rainbows about that LGBT people shouldn’t be fooled into thinking these companies are allies, really all they want is your money and they’ll abandon you if it’s convenient.

    The second kind is the more True Believer kind, I think they’re fewer and I think their influence waxes and wanes.

    • Matt M says:

      I think your ratios are backwards. I think nearly all of them are “true believers.”

      Let me ask this question – we’ve got a lot of people here in this comments section from a lot of different backgrounds, many quite successful in their fields. Is anyone out there personally aware of any high-level corporate executive ever saying something like “Yes, yes, we all know that the BLM narrative is false, but we have to put out a statement endorsing it because that’ll be good for our sales to the younger demographic?”

      I’m not a corporate hot-shot, but I did work at a top consulting firm for awhile, so I did get to meet some lower level (but still reasonably powerful) corporate execs. (Think less CEO, and more Senior Executive VP). I was around them a bit, sometimes outside of work. They never betrayed even the slightest sense that they didn’t actually agree with all the pride stuff, the diversity stuff, the environmentalist stuff. Now it’s possible I just wasn’t “in the club.” That they all keep their true feelings under wraps except for a few secret meetings with the CEO himself. But even if that were true, wouldn’t we see some whistleblowing? Wouldn’t we have at least one project Veritas video of someone catching the CEO (or even a junior VP) of Nike on camera saying “Of course Colin Kapernick is an idiot, but supporting him is good for business!” Why do you suppose that video doesn’t exist?

      We have countless thinkpieces from conservatives who have infiltrated academia (a far more inhospitable and unwelcome environment for such people than the average corporation) offering a “dispatch from the inside” where they reveal how crazy everything is and what gets said “behind the scenes.” But we have no such pieces from corporate America blowing the whistle on Woke Capital. Why not? IMO the simplest answer is “because there is no secret conspiracy.” The simplest answer (that they really do believe this stuff) is, in fact, the correct one.

      • Paul Zrimsek says:

        I’d be surprised if more than 10% of them are True Believers. As a guess at the rest, maybe 60% are going along simply because they’re Elite or Gentry, i.e., people for whom a decorously watered-down identity politics has ceased to be political belief, and become instead a form of etiquette– it’s taken for granted that if you want to be regarded as a good person, these are the noises you make. Sincerity is no more expected than it is with the more usual sort of etiquette.

        And the remaining 30% would be people who privately regard the whole thing as eyewash– but for that very reason are careful to keep repeating how good it is, lest the psychic mutant hellchild pick up on their bad thoughts and think them into a grave in the cornfield.

        • Matt M says:

          it’s taken for granted that if you want to be regarded as a good person, these are the noises you make.

          “Taking for granted that saying and doing X (regardless of whether you actually believe in X or not) makes someone a good person” sounds an awful lot like being a true believer to me. Whether you personally believe that is true or you simply go along and act as if it were true without much thought one way or the other seems almost irrelevant.

          To go full Godwin here, it’s like trying to draw some sort of moral distinction between the prison-camp guard who really truly believes the enemy race/class/religion is wicked and evil and deserves to be in prison and guarding them is a moral good and the prison camp guard who doesn’t really care about the enemy one way or another but figured this would be a decent way to earn a paycheck. It’s technically possible to split hairs and say that the first guy is worse than the second… but it also would be almost nonsensical to tell potential victims “Don’t worry about it, most of the guards don’t actually hate you, they don’t really care one way or another, they’re just oppressing you because everyone else is and they don’t really think about it much at all.”

        • Paul Zrimsek says:

          The whole point of wokeness-as-etiquette is that you don’t have to believe that saying and doing X makes you a good person. You only have to know what’s expected of you.

      • Randy M says:

        Is anyone out there personally aware of any high-level corporate executive ever saying something like “Yes, yes, we all know that the BLM narrative is false, but we have to put out a statement endorsing it because that’ll be good for our sales to the younger demographic?”

        They aren’t going to say that first part because they don’t care if it is true or false. The notion never occurs to them to consider.

        “X polls well” is marketing for true, and while they aren’t colorblind, they only see green.

        … would be a cynical response that answers your objection, but like a said downthread, I do think its usually both.

      • Wrong Species says:

        Based on what you said, I don’t think you can differentiate between them being true believers and fear of being canceled.

        • Matt M says:

          You could, in the event that you could ever find even one of them admitting to something like “I don’t actually believe this, but I’m saying it because I don’t want to get cancelled.”

          Even in private. Even if it was just to their spouse.

          What I find interesting is that on the entire internet, I’ve never even seen a social media post like “I am completely anonymous, but I am the wife of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and my husband absolutely doesn’t believe Pride month is worth celebrating, but orders his company to do it anyway because he’s terrified if he doesn’t, people will try and get him fired or his company blacklisted or whatever.”

          Such a post would be weak evidence at best. It could be entirely fake. There’s no way to confirm its accuracy at all. But it would at least be something. It’d be a start. As it stands now, the primary Woke Capital theory rests on millions of people baselessly asserting it must be true, but not a single first-hand account of someone claiming they have actual evidence it is actually true.

          This is almost the literal definition of a Conspiracy Theory. Like, one of the main reasons I don’t believe the government did 9/11 is because I’m not aware of a single person at any level of government who has said “I was in the government and I helped do 9/11.” That’s not to say that if some Twitter rando posted that I would believe them. It’s just to say that if such a conspiracy were true, I would expect to see at least one Twitter rando posting that.

        • acymetric says:

          You could, in the event that you could ever find even one of them admitting to something like “I don’t actually believe this, but I’m saying it because I don’t want to get cancelled.”

          Even in private. Even if it was just to their spouse.

          What I find interesting is that on the entire internet, I’ve never even seen a social media post like “I am completely anonymous, but I am the wife of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and my husband absolutely doesn’t believe Pride month is worth celebrating, but orders his company to do it anyway because he’s terrified if he doesn’t, people will try and get him fired or his company blacklisted or whatever.”

          Well, one reason you might not see this is that there is a reasonable probability it doesn’t stay anonymous, and the person doing it has hardly anything to gain and plenty to lose by saying it.

          People keep up appearances even in private about all kinds of things, no reason to expect this to be different.

        • albatross11 says:

          I think the real issue here isn’t true belief vs fear of being cancelled, it’s what we mean by “belief.” I think most people don’t find deep philosophical, scientific, or political arguments very interesting, and don’t have many deeply-thought-out political or philosophical commitments. Instead, they care about politics or social consensus on right and wrong the way I care about mens’ business attire–they’ll follow whatever seems to be the consensus but won’t actually care much or have any strong opinions. They know what one does and says, and they do and say those things, and enforce those norms on others by their disapproval. You can do that without ever thinking deeply about whether those norms make sense or are good.

          There have been a number of issues where polling numbers for Democrats and Republicans started out very similar, then the issue became a matter of contention between the parties, and a year or two later, Democrats and Republicans differed in polling on the issue. This is more-or-less the same phenomenon. Just as most people who murdered someone else for heresy or apostasy had never personally made a deep study of theology, most people who enforce the norms of a modern consensus on what may or may not be said w.r.t. race, gender, sexuality, etc., have never personally made a deep study of those topics.

        • Wrong Species says:

          @Matt

          When you are living in a culture of fear there really is no way to be sure of anyone’s sincerity. During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese officials weren’t going around telling people that communism was a mistake, even in private. That’s good way to get killed.

          Do I know that’s happening? No, but I don’t really expect to hear about it if it was.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        Eh, I work for a pretty big company and we got an email about how “gosh, there are sure a lot of passions swirling and deep things for everybody think about with all the stuff going on…” Basically the most mealy-mouthed tepid response you could give where anybody could read it and think, “oh, they’re talking about how bad police brutality is” or “oh, they’re talking about how awful the rioting and looting is.”

        I was rather impressed with whatever HR person had to thread that needle. A+ would equivocate again.

        • A Definite Beta Guy says:

          My company and most of my friends’ companies are definitely not doing equivocation. It’s right down to “and here is the company meeting from the BLM speakers about how to be a better ally, and you have day off to do community service, and you should wear black clothing to show solidarity!”

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          and you have day off to do community service

          Man, when that STEM strike thing happened I was so tempted to go to my boss and say, “gee, I really need to take the day off in honor of George Floyd and go play video games think about racism.”

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        I think if they were truly “woke” believers they’d buy into the liberal agenda with respect to worker’s rights and quite simply not pulling up the ladder behind them (e.g. turning everyone into permatemps). They don’t, so I don’t believe they are.

        • Matt M says:

          Nah, the whole point of Woke Capital theory is that they go hard left on social issues for the express purpose of buying them some credibility with the left, such that they won’t face as much outrage for going right on economic issues (which is what they really care about).

          I’m not saying they are leftists across the board. I don’t think any of them agree with Bernie Sanders when it comes to economics. What I am saying is that I see no particular evidence that their leftward stance on social issues is non-genuine. I understand the logic behind speculating why it might be. Just no evidence that it actually is.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          I can guess some plausible rationalizations here. So sure.

      • AG says:

        Jeff Bezos decided that Amazon will stop letting the police use its facial recognition tool…for only one year.

        Hard to top that for flimsy covers.

      • INH5 says:

        Let’s turn the question on its head. We know that Disney and other major movie studios are reluctant to put LGBT representation in their movies because they can’t sell their movies in China if they do so. It’s undeniable at this point that that’s what’s going on. Do we have any leaks from Disney executives saying, “sure, I’m all for the pride stuff, but if we put gay people in our movies we won’t be able to sell them in China, and that will lose a lot of money”?

        Even in the Sony leaks a few years back, I’m pretty sure that we never saw anything to that effect.

        Or let’s look at a non-Culture War example. It’s widely known that West African cocoa bean suppliers buy from farmers that use a brutal system of child slavery. Nestle executives must know about this, yet they continue to buy from those suppliers. Have any conversations ever leaked out of Nestle executives twirling their mustaches and saying, “yes, this supplier employs lots of child slaves, but that means that their margins are really low, which is great for our bottom line”?

        I could go on for a while. Corporations engage in shady and duplicitous practices all the time, and they seem to be pretty good about avoiding embarrassing leaks. Bad faith “corporate wokeness” campaigns seem like they would be child’s play by comparison.

        • Matt M says:

          It’s undeniable at this point that that’s what’s going on. Do we have any leaks from Disney executives saying, “sure, I’m all for the pride stuff, but if we put gay people in our movies we won’t be able to sell them in China, and that will lose a lot of money”?

          Before we respond, I just want to say that this is a great point and I thank you for making it.

          In this example, I think part of the reason we can safely assume that Disney censors itself to avoid Chinse sensibilities is by looking to somewhat odd, but non-extreme examples. Stuff like using the seven-dash line on a map that serves as otherwise unremarkable background art in one otherwise forgettable scene. There’s no reason to that other than “sucking up to the Chinse,” and if we already know they’re sucking up to the Chinese at that level, it’s safe to assume they’re sucking up to them on other levels too.

          I can’t really think of a similar such test case for woke capital. Maybe something like “what gets sent out in internal newsletters that are otherwise non-remarkable and wouldn’t be expected to be leaked out to the public for any real reason.” I can’t speak for anyone else, but in every company I’ve ever worked for, the content of that stuff (which is often written by normal executives, not HR/PR folks), in terms of toeing the line on diversity, pride, climate change, etc. has been indistinguishable from the external public-facing stuff that absolutely is written by HR/PR folks.

          This is why I think they’re true believers. Because even on minor issues… even in low-stakes environments… even on reasonably private channels… they sound the same.

        • albatross11 says:

          Well, I think we have a fair bit of evidence that for all of the strong political support for feminism and womens’ rights, the entertainment industry as a whole wasn’t actually much for enforcing rules against sexual harassment against important people. Tons of people knew about Weinstein, probably 95% of those people were vocally liberal and pro-feminism, and yet nobody talked about it in public until the dam broke and Weinstein was clearly no longer going to be in a position to retaliate. And I gather there were many other people doign similar things, usually powerful men coercing sex from either women or men who were afraid to say no because the powerful men could wreck their careers.

        • JPNunez says:

          While we don’t exactly have that smoking gun, we do have the leaks of Ike Perlmutter’s mails arguing that female superhero movies are “a disaster”. While back in the leak days it was argued that Perlmutter may have just been listing past failures, Kevin Feige has said later that Perlmutter did not have faith in female superhero movies.

          So that kind of leaks happen, it’s just rare. They are prolly used to not saying those kind of things. The email may have been an exception cause he was listing past failures, probably to argue his position, but by now everyone knows that China censors gay stuff, so executives don’t need to be emailing each other about it.

      • John Schilling says:

        Let me ask this question – we’ve got a lot of people here in this comments section from a lot of different backgrounds, many quite successful in their fields. Is anyone out there personally aware of any high-level corporate executive ever saying something like “Yes, yes, we all know that the BLM narrative is false, but we have to put out a statement endorsing it because that’ll be good for our sales to the younger demographic?”

        I could tell you but I’d have to kill you?

        Seriously, I’m not sure what sort of answer you can possibly expect to this question. Complete and total morons rarely become high-level corporate executives. And anyone who believes the “we have to pretend to believe this nonsense” version you suggest, would be a complete and total moron to ever say that to anyone they aren’t absolutely certain would keep it secret and not e.g. blab about it on a public blog comment section under an easily-doxxable identity. The first rule of We Have to Pretend to Believe This Nonsense Club is, you don’t talk about We Have to Pretend to Believe This Nonsense Club. And no, you absolutely don’t print it in internal newsletters that “won’t be leaked”.

        Your hypothesis is that all CEOs, etc, are social-justice true believers. But the standard of evidence that you suggest here, does not distinguish this hypothesis from the one where no CEOs, etc, really believe in social justice. Because only a complete and total moron CEO would ever share that evidence with you, or with anyone who would ever tell you about it.

    • Randy M says:

      Right, I think this is the distinction Atlas is getting at. Is the woke messaging market driven or ideology driven?

      There’s arguments that since progressives have more of the younger, college educated, childless crowd with more disposable income, that’s where companies will target their brand even if it excludes a sizable minority, especially in a field where brand loyalty may be what sustains a company making an identical hamburger or razor or whatever. On the other hand, marketing agencies or departments are probably drawn largely from this same crowd (at least lately and for newer corporations) and hence they may simply take these views as the default and assume all desirable customers share their views.

      It’s probably rarely all one or the other.

    • Viliam says:

      Doesn’t have to be a dichotomy. I would assume that the boss is usually the gay-pasta kind of person, but there are a few True Believers working in HR.

      The boss will fire someone because it seems like a more profitable option according to their calculation. The HR person will post a hysterical e-mail about how unsafe they feel working in the same building as the person guilty of wrongthink.

      • acymetric says:

        Doesn’t have to be a dichotomy. I would assume that the boss is usually the gay-pasta kind of person, but there are a few True Believers working in HR.

        Not necessarily just HR, but this is pretty much what I would generally expect to be true as well.

      • albatross11 says:

        The HR department’s job is to keep the company out of expensive lawsuits and other legal trouble. Some of the people in HR may be woke, but the most likely outcome of having HR think you’re a troublemaker who’s going to sue the company at some point is that they’re going to find a way to get rid of you, even while they retweet every #BLM and #BeleiveAllWomen tweet around.

        Thinking HR is a neutral enforcer of the rules is a good way to get screwed over, IMO.

    • Retsam says:

      Pasta-maker in hot water as rival posts pro-gay imagery on social media

      Someone was really proud of that headline.

  88. Matt M says:

    I apologize for the CW, but I kinda feel compelled to go with this one…

    Remember a few months ago when some of us were suggesting that it might not be the best idea to just happily concede that the government has unlimited power so long as it’s fighting a “public health emergency?”

    Guess what they’ve decided is now a public health emergency?

    • Lambert says:

      Is ‘$concept is a public health emergency’ the new ‘declare war on $concept’?

      • keaswaran says:

        At least it recommends more relevant behavior. War involves fighting an enemy. Public health initiatives involve changing cultural practices to mitigate risks.

    • Garrett says:

      If someone has declared that poverty is a public health emergency, the fastest solution is to kill all the poor.

    • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

      Are you predicting that the government will legally justify acts based on this proclamation in the same way that they have regarding corona?

      • Matt M says:

        Are you predicting that the government will legally justify acts based on this proclamation in the same way that they have regarding corona?

        It doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility. A county in Oregon recently imposed a mask requirement that specifically exempted “people of color” due to “heightened concerns about racial profiling and harassment.”

        While in this specific case there was (as far as I know) no official emergency order regarding racism, the presence of one might have made this particular obviously unconstitutional gambit a little bit more legally defensible…

    • 10240 says:

      As silly as these declarations are, don’t forget that politicians still want to get elected. They lock people in their homes because of an epidemic if they expect that this will get them more votes than not doing so. They make stupid declarations about racism like these if they expect that this will net them votes. And they would lock people in their homes because of racism if they expected that this would net them votes, which it clearly wouldn’t.

  89. johan_larson says:

    You know, if we want to do some really mad engineering, we could do much worse than a system of highways, bridges, and causeways that connect Australia to the Asian mainland through Indonesia. There’s a very handy string of islands from Malaysia to Timor. Think of it as a counter to the Belt and Road Initiative.

    • Matt M says:

      Hasn’t Australia (and all the other islands in that part of the world) recently re-discovered some of the benefits of being a literal island?

      • johan_larson says:

        It’s not really that hard to close a bridge if you need to.

        • b_jonas says:

          Yes, people traditionally do it using explosives, sometimes during wars, sometimes after wars. It’s a heck annoying to have to rebuild them.

    • bullseye says:

      Shipping is cheaper by water than by road, and I think Australia is far enough from Asia that passengers would want to fly instead of drive.

      Also, Indonesia has ten times the population of Australia. The selling point would be the bridge from Indonesia to Asia, with Australia as an afterthought.

    • keaswaran says:

      I expect that closing the Wallace Gap and the Torres Strait are likely not to be cost-effective – not quite as bad as the Bering Strait, since the weather is not as harsh and the population centers are only a few hundred miles away rather than thousands. But as others mentioned, ground travel is really mainly only relevant for short distances – for long distances you almost always either want air for the high speed (when sending people or light and expensive goods) or you want water for the low cost (when sending anything that isn’t perishable).

  90. Pandemic Shmandemic says:

    Why isn’t there a federal equivalent of ballot measures – aka national referendums ? Most hot-button issues that have been around for the last 2-3 decades are well suited for them in that they don’t require particular subject matter expertise and everyone’s opinion is roughly just as informed as another: Abortions, Gun control, Gay Marriage, Marijuana legalization etc.

    Whenever a supreme court landmark decision is made the argument of ‘well it really should have really been left to the legislature but the congress can’t be bothered to address it between all the pork packing’ but this problem exists on the state level too and yet ballot measures are a thing there.

    • Noah says:

      How exactly do you phrase referendums for abortion and gun control, given that the issues as they exist in the US are not binaries, and depending on where specifically your referendum draws the line, you’ll get varying results (or do you do a long series of referenda on every possible aspect of guns)?

      And for gun control at least “everyone’s opinion is roughly just as informed as another” is blatantly false; see all the idiotic legislation that targets cosmetic features or safety features because people can’t be bothered to know anything about what they’re regulating.

      • Pandemic Shmandemic says:

        I guess a better term would be that everyone’s opinion *can be* informed enough with a reasonable amount of interest and effort, as opposed to decisions about foreign policy or the trade deal with China.

        As for phrasing – you would phrase them the same way proposed legislation would be: prop “Mandatory firearms registration” vs prop “No-questions-asked handgun purchase and concealed carry throughout the entire US”. They would be laws just like those passed by congress and subject to the same constitutional constraints and judicial review.

        • John Schilling says:

          I guess a better term would be that everyone’s opinion *can be* informed enough with a reasonable amount of interest and effort, as opposed to decisions about foreign policy or the trade deal with China.

          What “can be”, but isn’t and never actually will be, is irrelevant. As Scott notes below, we’ve been doing this in California for literally generations now. People have been born, raised, and educated with the understanding that they will be voting on a dozen or more referendums every year that can override even the elected legislature on how the state is to be run.

          And they very consistently fail to exhibit any information, interest, or effort beyond “trusted members of my tribe / talking heads on TV say that this will do Good Things”. Pesky details like the cost of those good things, meh, that’s too much work to think about.

          • Garrett says:

            Yup. The voters of California decided to side with a megacorporation and overrule labor laws, but only as it applies to EMS workers. Because employees with low wages and high suicide rates clearly don’t need labor law protections.

    • edmundgennings says:

      There is no constitutional basis for it for various reasons. The federal government is an awkward semi sovereign institution that has grown to be the practical locus of politics, but is in origin closer to being the EU than Hungary.
      As its practical power has grown, no one who has sufficient control of the federal government to engage in dubiously legal growths in its power is going to engage in dubiously legal referendums they might lose, they just institute their preferred policy.

    • keaswaran says:

      There’s no constitutional procedure for a binding referendum. There’s not particularly much motivation for conducting a non-binding referendum, when both parties already hire pollsters to keep them privately up-to-date on public opinion about different wordings of different questions.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      California has this and a lot of Californians I know hate it. They say it’s pretty easy to frame a measure that sounds good but is horribly destructive for some reason, have some company who benefits it spend millions of dollars promoting it, and then somebody has to spend millions of dollars fighting it off.

      Also, the ballot measures passed like this become superlaws that can never be repealed except by another ballot measure, sometimes situations change (or they were dumb to begin with) and it becomes obvious that we need them gone, but getting another ballot measure is hard and whoever benefits from things being broken can spend millions of dollars making it harder.

      • Pandemic Shmandemic says:

        I’ve read some California ballot measures discussions and yeah those are all real problems but it’s not clear to me that it makes things significantly worse given that the standard legislature and government processes are already subject to the same dynamics via lobbying.

        It does have the potential to eliminate the perverse incentives that politicians currently have to avoid addressing those issues precisely because they make good campaign fodder but it will all come down to the mechanics of the nomination process.

        Also California ballot measures suffer from the relative obscurity of local and state politics whereas if a national gun control measure went on a popular vote we could probably expect everyone to be relentlessly made aware of it.

        • cassander says:

          Also California ballot measures suffer from the relative obscurity of local and state politics whereas if a national gun control measure went on a popular vote we could probably expect everyone to be relentlessly made aware of it.

          Had you ever lived in California and experienced the exhaustion of endless initiative campaigns, you might not embrace this so eagerly.

      • Orion says:

        The problem with California is that California allows you to amend the state constitution by a ballot measure; that’s why it creates “superlaws.” The proposal here is to allow a ballot measure to be a new way to pass federal laws, not a new way to amend the Constitution of the U.S., so Congress would still be able to repeal or amend acts originally passed via ballot measure.

        • cassander says:

          the constitutional changes make the troubles with the initiative system worse, but it has problems without that.

    • Randy M says:

      Has anyone observed any change in signature gathering for referenda with Covid restrictions in place this year?

    • sharper13 says:

      Why isn’t there a federal equivalent of ballot measures

      The short answer is because we don’t live in a direct democracy, but you likely already knew that.

      You mention the Supreme Court and “Abortions, Gun control, Gay Marriage, Marijuana legalization”.

      Are you proposing that the issue of what rights people have and how much power the government is allowed to wield should be determined from year to year by majority vote? That people just change the Constitution that way?

      Because preventing that is a feature of our Constitutional form of government, not a bug. See also Madison’s Federalist No. 10 & No 14 for a longer explanation.

      The point of the Constitution was to limit power such that popular tyrannies were limited.

      • Pandemic Shmandemic says:

        Yes this would introduce a component of direct democracy on the federal level.
        No constitutional amendments except maybe with a very high supermajority and still subject to some kind of SCOTUS veto power, just federal statutes – some of the above issues have measures that would run against existing constitutional law but most aren’t.

        Banning abortion would require an overthrow of Roe vs. Wade but making it free and unencumbered throughout the country is something congress could do without a constitutional amendment.

        Likewise banning guns would violate 2nd amendment but creating a national registry probably won’t.

        And afaik nothing about federal marijuana de/legalization runs against constitutional law except if one also wants to prevent it being criminalized at the state level.

        It could be a way to get SCOTUS to make a constitutional ruling on issues it currently rather not to deal with by passing them as laws and have them challenged on constitutional grounds.

  91. DragonMilk says:

    I may be late to this and missed many threads, but what TV shows have you binged on?

    Personally, I’ve started watching Gotham on Netflix, which to me has been suprisingly good so far (still in middle of first season).

    • Randy M says:

      I enjoyed most of Gotham. It’s campy, and several characters over stay their welcome at times, but seeing Oswald and Nigma (for example) chew the scenery kept me entertained.

      And I don’t think there’s ever been a bad Alfred, this one is no exception.

    • Space Hobo from Hobospace says:

      I enjoyed Gotham when it was a weird cop show in ambigious time period, kinda lost interest when it moved closer to being a prequel. You may also want to try Pennyworth, which is a very weird origin story for Alfred and his friendship with Thomas Wayne from the same producer, though not in the same continuity set in England in a weird alternate past full of fascists, communists, coke-snorting prime ministers, sexy queen and medieval executions live on BBC.

      Meanwhile I started re-watching Person of Interest again. Just got to 4th season where the fun begins.

      • AG says:

        PoI up through half of S4 was really a great thing. Too bad it got derailed by several external factors. Still, even inferior PoI was better than a lot of other Prestige TV.

    • AG says:

      In contrast, my bingeing has gone down immensely. This is mostly because I now watch the daily Met Opera stream after work, which leaves one too mentally tired to enjoy watching narrative media before or after. (When I do watch other things, it’s either one particular Mario Maker streamer, or an anime-cooking Youtuber. Other shows, I’m watching with someone on a schedule.
      I started on MLP:FIM, but find that I can’t do more that 2-3 eps of that at a go.

      But what’s on the prospective binge queue when daily opera is over:
      Finishing the remainder of The Magicians
      She-ra
      A couple of Jdramas
      Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
      ATLA
      Finishing the remainder of The Good Place
      Lots of various anime
      Continue with MLP
      Maybe skim through the remainder of Legends of Tomorrow and Arrow, watch the DCTV Crisis crossover

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        Finishing the remainder of The Magicians

        Don’t. Just don’t. God that was awful. I loved the books so much. I’ve read them all at least three times. One of my favorite series ever. And they just butchered it in the TV show. And the end of season 4…I was furious for a week. Read the books. Do not watch the show.

        • AG says:

          Everything I’ve read indicates that I would loathe the books, and I’ve enjoyed the things flagged as deviations from the books in the show, though.
          I’ve already watched and enjoyed the first 2 seasons, for reference.

          • Belisaurus Rex says:

            My enjoyment of the show dropped considerably after season 2. It stops being about the magic and starts being about the characters, and the character development is…ech.

          • AG says:

            The magic is the least interesting part of the show even in what I’ve watched, so this still isn’t putting me off. I’m aware that it’s about the characters all being disasters, so that part doesn’t annoy me as much as it does for DCTV.

    • Bobobob says:

      Just watched Into the Night, on Netflix, and I’m eight episodes into Babylon Berlin.

      I can’t say enough good things about Peaky Blinders, which I’ve watched twice, straight through.

    • MisterA says:

      If you never watched Justified, I highly recommend that. That show is bizarrely underwatched given how good it is.

      • AliceToBob says:

        Yeah, seconded. I watched the first couple seasons of Justified before life got in the way, and I’ve been meaning to get back to it at some point.

        • MisterA says:

          Oh yeah, definitely do. It does have the problem many shows have of the best season being the second one, so you’ve probably already seen the best of it, but unlike many shows, the later seasons never get bad – it remains extremely good right up to the end.

          • roflc0ptic says:

            And starts so good, too. The opening scene of the series (IIRC), where he’s at a rooftop restaurant, is just such a rich depiction.

      • Matt M says:

        Justified might in fact, be my favorite show ever, and I agree that it’s criminal that it isn’t more highly rated.

        I’m currently in the middle of re-watching it with my fiancé (her first time seeing it) and I’m just loving it. Walton Goggins may be the best actor of our generation. Every scene with Raylan and Boyd is just so darn entertaining. Every piece of dialogue is just about perfect.

      • Fahundo says:

        And yet when people ask for recommendations I always forget about it, presumably because it isn’t quite canon, and was also before the streaming era.

        What?

        • MisterA says:

          I am currently rewatching, can confirm Justified currently resides on Hulu.

        • Tarpitz says:

          It is sufficiently non-canon that as far as I know I had literally never heard of it before today.

        • Nick says:

          Yeah, I have heard a metric ton about The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad, and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of Justified.

        • Matt M says:

          *tinfoil hat on*

          The prestige media ignored it because it’s a show that spotlights red-tribe culture with red-tribe characters in a red-tribe setting.

          *tinfoil hat off*

          Edit: Now that I think about it, they mostly ignore all of the pretty-good FX shows. The Shield (Walton Goggins’ original breakthrough) is also criminally underrated. I think SoA got some attention because a lot of women loved the unrealistically-attractive bikers it starred. I wasn’t that sold on The Americans ever myself, but it’s better than a lot of other stuff…

        • Nick says:

          @Matt M
          Sonny Bunch argued in an old Weekly Standard piece (currently hosted by the Washington Examiner, because God has a sense of humor) that The Shield was what kicked off the 21st century Golden Age in television.

    • Anteros says:

      Proper binging? I had a period where I ‘wasn’t doing much’ and I watched all 331 episodes of ER in less than 3 weeks (having already watched the whole lot at least once)

      I was watching ‘The Last Dance’ on Netflix in a really restrained way, one episode a day – and really enjoying it. So predictably I lost the plot and watched the last 5 episodes in one session.

      I’m generally someone that doesn’t watch TV at all, but every so often I’ll indulge in a fairly intemperate way.

    • John Schilling says:

      Personally, I’ve started watching Gotham on Netflix, which to me has been suprisingly good so far (still in middle of first season).

      That was unfortunately the only good season, IMO. It works well as the backstory for Batman, and a view of Gotham before all the costumed freaks took over. Most of the first-season characters, whether canon or original, were a good fit for that story. Cobblepot never quite sold me as a mundane criminal mastermind, but close enough.

      When it became clear that they were going to introduce basically the entire Rogue’s Gallery, as adult nemeses for not-yet-Batman and friends, I started losing interest in a hurry. Comic-book supervillains are almost as silly a concept as comic-book superheroes, particularly boring when you know where their story arc has to lead, and I never believed Batman was the Young Turk of Gotham dealing with an array of much older villains.

    • Forlorn Hopes says:

      I can’t binge because it’s weekly episodes, but DCU’s Stargirl has been very enjoyable.

  92. Matt M says:

    Let’s say I wanted to start a blog/website/social group for people who are interested in hobby/activity X. My target demographic is people who are disappointed/frustrated/whatever with how the majority of current places for people interested in X have been fully co-opted by partisan, blue-tribe politics. My theory is that there are a whole lot of people who are interested in X, but are sick and tired of being forced to take a big helping of blue-tribe politics along with X. What I’m less certain of is how many of these people want “X without politics” and how many want “X but with red-tribe politics.”

    I suppose I have two main options. Option 1 is to be expressly and explicitly non-political. To take a firm stand that all content must be directly related to X, and to use a firm hand to enforce this rule. Absolutely no CW allowed, period. In the rare instance where a CW issue does seem to be relevant to X, my site will ignore it (under the assumption that if people are interested in that, they can get it literally anywhere else).

    Option 2 is to be expressly and explicitly red-tribe. In this case, we would cover the same sort of political and CW issues that the mainstream sites cover today, only from the opposing point of view. Obviously this would entail publicly taking some controversial positions that would probably make the site and its users a target.

    Which of these options would attract a larger audience? It seems like 1 is clearly “safer” but with lower risk comes (I assume) lower reward.

    • a real dog says:

      I think being explicitly non-political will lead to a huge shitstorm at which point you have to declare your values. If you value neutrality over groupthink, the groupthinkers will either boycott you or you’ll be forced to ban them to keep peace. Thus you’re left with the centrists and red tribers and you are officially considered a basket of deplorables on twitter. Still, at least the centrists are happy with you, so that’s a win.

      • Oldio says:

        Eh, centrists seem to stick with blue-tribe content, and just complain about it. You’re left with red tribers, and soon you’re carrying advertisements for MAGA shovels and literally-garden-variety concealed carry accessories on your home planting guide website.
        I tried to come up with an example where this hasn’t already happened.

        • Dan L says:

          You can find examples if you look hard enough, but Scott’s written about the general tendency before.

          The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.

          • 10240 says:

            When the mainstream place (e.g. reddit) only bans (say) far-righters, so the alternative (voat, gab) ends up mostly with far-righters. If the mainstream place is dominated by left-wingers, making everyone right of the center uncomfortable or banned, then the alternative will be more moderate, albeit still right-leaning.

          • Dan L says:

            If everyone right of center is uncomfortable or banned, it’s not going to stay mainstream for long. There is an unavoidable demographic problem with claims of extremist control of (stable) large spaces.

            Do you know of any unmoderated spaces that trend left? The major ones I can think of are various flavors of far-right, and this implies (but does not prove) that even truly unbiased moderation will encourage a leftward tilt.

          • Matt M says:

            Real “truly unbiased moderation” has never been tried!

            Seriously though, I’m not aware of any single large/mainstream entity who actually does moderate denigrating speech against whites in the exact same manner they might moderate denigrating speech against blacks. Or to treat the hammer and sickle in the same way they would treat a swastika, etc.

            Things like this are so far outside the overton window it doesn’t even occur to people to consider them to be bias in the first place.

          • Dan L says:

            Seriously though, I’m not aware of any single large/mainstream entity who actually does moderate denigrating speech against whites in the exact same manner they might moderate denigrating speech against blacks. Or to treat the hammer and sickle in the same way they would treat a swastika, etc.

            Do you know the mind of the True Unbiased Moderator? Getting from there to here requires some truly colossal assumptions in metaethics and political philosophy as an opening act.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            @Matt M

            Or to treat the hammer and sickle in the same way they would treat a swastika

            There are plenty, Germany being the most prominent. Interestingly, Wikipedia claims that Indonesia bans the hammer and sickle, but based on this they clearly don’t have a problem with swastikas. Because of their large population, I think this means more people live in countries that ban hammer/sickle but not swastikas than vice versa!

          • Matt M says:

            Is the penalty for displaying a hammer and sickle in Germany the same as the penalty for displaying a swastika?

            (Serious question)

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            @Matt M
            My understanding is yes although possibly it is only banned in the context of symbols of the (early 20th century) Communist Party of Germany. If it’s allowed in other contexts, you can substitute various Eastern European countries (e.g. Latvia).

          • Evelyn Q. Greene says:

            Do you know of any unmoderated spaces that trend left?

            Archive of Our Own.

          • Dan L says:

            Archive of Our Own.

            Does AO3 have an associated forum, or are you talking about the works themselves? I was more talking about discussion spaces, rather than any website with open submissions.

            I suppose the discussions on each chapter might count, but I haven’t seen any of those really get sizable enough to be worth comment – haven’t seen any numbers, but I’d be astonished if the average chain depth was over ~1.5.

        • 10240 says:

          What about SSC? Definitely not an explicitly right-wing place (Scott leans liberal), but neither one where centrists complain about it for being too left-wing.

          • Oldio says:

            SSC is a self-selected group based around a blog with an official bias for a movement most notable for its obscurity.
            Notably, we’re self selected for having a high IQ and being interested in political discussion about how every political platform out there is just tribal signaling.
            All of those factors together add up to a relatively civil and wide ranging set of political discussions.

          • Dan L says:

            SSC is a self-selected group based around a blog with an official bias for a movement most notable for its obscurity.

            No. I’m going to keep pointing people at this until it sinks in. I see your disclaimer, but I don’t think people really get that Scott has *explicitly contradicted* the “official bias”.

            There are strong founder and selection effects, but they aren’t reflective of a uniform distribution of Scott’s work.

            And you should always, always keep this in mind.

          • I wonder how many of the active commenters got to SSC via Rationalism. Certainly I didn’t.

          • @DavidFriedman

            I’ve always found myself interested in rationalism without ever identifying as a rationalist. I used to browse LessWrong as well because I’m interested in the same kinds of things rationalists are interested in. There’s at least always going to be a high degree of adjacency among people who reject the label.

          • Matt M says:

            I’ve always found myself interested in rationalism without ever identifying as a rationalist.

            This describes me fairly well also.

          • Radu Floricica says:

            I’m pretty sure the SSC commentariat and readership are (way) left of average in any practical way. We may act like rebellious teenagers, but if you take the actual issues and actual behaviors as opposed to stated opinions, that’s what you’ll find.

            Probably the main exception is that we’re to the right economically. And a couple of us take the teenage rebellion a bit too far and vote Trump (I probably would). But that’s it.

          • 10240 says:

            @Radu Floricica SSC readers, and to a lesser extent commenters, skew left on average, but it’s not a place that feels one-sided, or intolerant of right-wingers.

            Actually, when it comes to economics, we lean libertarian on regulation, but many are pretty left-wing on redistribution.

          • Matt M says:

            The fact that Scott specifically declares he will enforce moderation standards more strictly on the right than on the left, and that the right still feels more welcome here than just about anywhere else, should speak volumes about just about everywhere else.

            Like, even though Scott says “as a matter of policy, I will crack down on right-wing violations more than left-wing violations” and Twitter doesn’t say that, I still feel more generally welcome and fairly treated by Scott than by Twitter. Imagine that.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            Scott specifically declares he will enforce moderation standards more strictly on the right than on the left

            I took the last round of bans as signaling the end of that policy.

          • @10240

            Actually, when it comes to economics, we lean libertarian on regulation, but many are pretty left-wing on redistribution.

            I’m one of those who lean libertarian on regulation but lean center-left on redistribution (though I also lean right wing on national sovereignty issues and immigration), but I wonder if there’s a good term to sum up that ideology. A lot of Silicon Valley types seem to share it, preferring a hands off approach in terms of regulation but then to have the government through taxes or deficit spending engage in a lot of spending. I think their logic is that we have to try a lot of disruptive experimental things in order to advance, but these can be disruptive to people’s economic standing, so we need the government to provide a basic societal floor below the level of the disruption.

            I’ve heard the slightly cringey term “liberaltarian” but that’s an American-centric term. “Neoliberal” can include this concept but it’s also so flexible as to be a meaningless broad umbrella or a snarl word. “Left-libertarian” doesn’t cut it either since that term is associated with actual socialism in relation to anarchism, and this concept is more of a third way thing. I propose the term “center-libertarian” in contrast to right and left varieties, and in lieu of a proper terminology.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            I’m one of those who lean libertarian on regulation but lean center-left on redistribution (though I also lean right wing on national sovereignty issues and immigration), but I wonder if there’s a good term to sum up that ideology.

            “Nordicism” would be a swell name, except that everyone would assume it was a racial thing.

          • AG says:

            There’s at least always going to be a high degree of adjacency among people who reject the label.

            The joke in the diaspora is that “a rationalist is someone who argues with rationalists.”

          • Randy M says:

            To be fair, it sure beats arguing with anyone else.

          • Radu Floricica says:

            We think that a right-leaning economics makes more money as a matter of fact. What we want to do with that money is left-leaning. So we’re left, but with the epiphany that free market makes more money overall.

            Trying to figure out the ways I’m right-leaning all lead to the same pattern. I favor more personal responsibility because I think it’s a good idea as a way to a better society – not because that’s how I’ve been educated.

            But that’s probably my pattern, of going conservative after turning 30. US is a lot more diverse in this respect, and SSC is probably more diverse as well.

          • Quite a long time ago, one of the economists at the school I was teaching at gave a talk on what I think he called “libertarian redistributionism” or something close. Part of the point was that a lot of economically bad things are justified as ways of helping the poor. So the solution was to have some simple redistributive system, such as a negative income tax, and then rule off the table any attempt to justify other policies as helping the poor.

            It’s very much the same argument made by the one utilitarian economist I know, Quang Ng (Australian Vietnamese, and very bright).

          • albatross11 says:

            This is sort of like a definition of a Catholic I saw once: A Catholic is someone who has one or more obscure doctrinal disagreements with the Pope.

          • Theodoric says:

            I’m one of those who lean libertarian on regulation but lean center-left on redistribution (though I also lean right wing on national sovereignty issues and immigration), but I wonder if there’s a good term to sum up that ideology.

            Ozy labelled this (minus being right wing on immigration and national sovereignty issues) silicon valley liberalism.

        • Deiseach says:

          Or to treat the hammer and sickle in the same way they would treat a swastika, etc.

          Do you know the mind of the True Unbiased Moderator? Getting from there to here requires some truly colossal assumptions in metaethics and political philosophy as an opening act.

          The tricky balancing act around such:

          Flags and Emblems Act 1954 – caused a lot of trouble.

          2013 consideration of how you manage such displays.

          Including such matters as:

          Under the UNCRC, children have the right to leisure, recreational activities and participation in cultural life. …The CRC encourages States to consider the implications for the protection of rights under article 31 when developing policies in relation to access to public spaces for children, especially those who do not have facilities for play in the home.

          Why the heck are things like this being mentioned in a document about what flags you can fly or emblems you can paint on a wall? Because of things like this.

          Moderating symbols is not an easy thing at all.

    • zero says:

      Number 2 will inevitably be more popular, and in fact probably already exists, if you know where to look. The issue with Option 1 is that there are no perfectly unbiased robots (There’s a thought: get an algorithm to decide how political a post is) and the moderators’ biases will inevitably tip it in one direction, resulting in a lot of resentment and quitting from the other side. In fact, the sheer fact that this is billed as “a place to get away from blue-tribe politics” will ensure that the vast majority of the space is occupied by red tribers. See Scott’s Neutral vs. Conservative: The Eternal Struggle.

    • Lambert says:

      Option 2 will attract a larger audience. But you should be careful what you wish for.

      I’d go for Option 1.
      Case study: r/casualUK (politics is banned) is now about the same size as r/unitedkindom (which is now 90% left-wing politics), despite being significantly younger.

    • Janet says:

      My view is exactly the opposite of real dog’s: I think that you should absolutely take option #1. A few reasons for that:

      #1, as Michael Jordan said, “Republicans buy shoes too.” In your case, that means that there are blues out there who are primarily interested in X but are privately sick and tired of constantly having to genuflect to a political shibboleth (even one they generally agree with), and who are also privately afraid of being the next mob victim because they said the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong way, or whatever. There are also grays out there, and LOTS of people who are not interested in politics at all, who are still quite interested in X. You want all of them in your community, happily and productively engaged with X (and only X).

      #2, and I can’t overestimate the importance of this: culture-warriors and tribal enforcers, of any variety, are fundamentally rat-bastards to the people around them. Don’t think that the reds will be any better to deal with than the blues. You’re still going to be dealing with 100+ post flamewars, shitlord behavior, and so on, with these people. Better for you, to never let it get started, and bringing the ban-hammer on people who can’t/won’t stop themselves from doing it.

      #3, the rule you’re looking for is: off topic. You’re running a site on X. Things that are off topic need to go somewhere else, on somebody else’s site. It should be pretty straightforward to determine if a subject is off-topic, to politely request that the participants keep on topic, and to remove things that are off-topic (and, ultimately, ban people who persistently go off-topic). The only people who can’t handle that, are people you definitely don’t want around anyway (see point #2). So, if your topic X is, say, underwater basket weaving, then posts about, or even referencing Donald Trump are off-topic, regardless of whether they’re in favor of, or opposed to him, and they need to go someplace else to talk about it. Ditto police brutality, gender controversies, the theory of evolution, structural racism, and whatever the hell else. Go somewhere else if you want to talk about it.

      (I think our society would be a lot better off if there were more non-political spaces, where people can just have a hobby without any political litmus test, and where people with very different political views can set them aside and have a pleasant and productive collaboration on some good thing. My $0.02, and I hope you end up putting up such a place.)

      • zero says:

        What happens when people start arguing about politics as it pertains to the hobby? I think you’d have to ban on-topic political discussion as well, which leaves the general slant of the place up to the moderators.

        • Janet says:

          I think most hobbies are almost entirely non-political, and so shouldn’t come up. People who simply must inject politics into things, should be encouraged to go somewhere else to post that stuff, because it’s off topic… but post here on things related to X.

          An example: I belong to an online group to discuss women in tech. There had to be one decision up-front, on “what is a woman”, and the posted answer was: anyone who identifies as a woman. But it’s not a group about LGBT issues. Not about women’s issues (on non-tech topics). Not about tech issues (on non-women topics). Not about other social issues. And because of that, we can actually talk about women in tech: how to support new mothers returning to the workforce, or women who are supporting elders; how to encourage girls to stick with tech careers and to pursue tech degrees; how to address workplace bias effectively; and so on. People (men and women both) can come there and get straightforward advice or good information without having to pass an ideological test first. Because it’s not political, it’s also not a monoculture, which means that you get very different approaches on these topics. That makes it better.

          Another example: I’m part of a letter writer/penpal group. Now, I happen to know that the group’s founder is so far blue, she’s practically ultra-violet. BUT, she doesn’t bring it to the group. We send each other letters, exchange designs for silly stationery, make up little contests about how fast we can send a “Flat Stanley” around the world, and so forth. No politics needed.

          • Matt M says:

            Not about women’s issues (on non-tech topics). Not about tech issues (on non-women topics).

            Yeah, this is the sort of thing I had in mind for Option 1. All content must be explicitly on-topic, and explicitly non-political. This should eliminate much (but certainly not all) of the subjectivity.

          • A Definite Beta Guy says:

            I think most hobbies can be made explicitly political with very little effort and it can be easily framed that ignoring the politics is in fact racism/sexism/murderism.

            If I have an interest in gardening/lawn care that doesn’t specifically mention how evil lawns are because they take up too much water.

            Cooking, but without 10 million nods towards cultural appropriation or the dangers of factory farming.

            D&D, without talking about how racist the Vistani are portrayed and how we need to eliminate the concept of “race” altogether.

            Can’t even log onto PornHub without someone on Twitter complaining about the video titles.

          • Elena Yudovina says:

            @Janet Can I join that women in tech group somehow? I’m a mathematician by training, working in computer vision at the moment. Until now being persistently invited to “women in STEM” activities has been the only downside I personally experienced as a woman in STEM, primarily because they didn’t actually have a specific agenda that had anything to do with women in STEM. The best case was “a group that talks about whatever and happens to consist of STEM women” (a perfectly acceptable filter for a group, but not one I’m interested in), but I’ve also gotten variants of “a group that talks about social justice” (shockingly, being female does not automatically make me interested in talking about social justice!). Now that I have a kid, it’s at least a little more relevant, but I’m still very curious to see a group that does Women in Tech effectively and on-topic.

          • Lord Nelson says:

            @janet
            I’m also interested in taking a look at the women in tech group, particularly on the “new mothers returning to the workforce” front, since that’s a situation I’ll probably need to navigate in a few years.

            Assuming I qualify as techy enough. I have an engineering degree, but both it and my current engineering job are on the less technical side of STEM.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            As someone whose top three current hobbies are firearms, genre fiction, and video games, I’m afraid that doesn’t match my experience. Ironically enough, of those three the easiest to find apolitical discussion is actually firearms.

      • Fahundo says:

        #3, the rule you’re looking for is: off topic. You’re running a site on X. Things that are off topic need to go somewhere else, on somebody else’s site.

        This sounds like a really awful rule. If the goal is to have a casual community for people to hang out and talk, the last thing you want to do is strictly enforce such a narrow focus on all allowed conversations.

        The only people who can’t handle that, are people you definitely don’t want around anyway

        In my experience a group of people who meet up to talk about basket weaving is going to have subgroups who watch the same TV shows, or talk about cooking or whatever, and a blanket off-topic rule is also banning that. And generally people don’t want to deal with an overbearing admin who tells them they can only talk about one thing.

      • 10240 says:

        Things that are off topic need to go somewhere else, on somebody else’s site.

        Perhaps a better option is to have an off-topic section or some equivalent. (Open threads are basically the off-topic section of SSC.) People in the community will sometimes want to talk about off-topic stuff. Even if you ban it, people will post ambiguously off-topic stuff, and it takes a lot of moderator effort to remove them. Having an off-topic section makes it easier to keep the on-topic sections free of off-topic, for those who are only interested in on-topic discussion.

      • a real dog says:

        FWIW I’m actually in favor of option #1 as well – I’m just pessimistic about the outcome. The dystopia you end up in is probably better than if you went #2 from the start, though.

    • keaswaran says:

      One problem is that a lot of CW stuff is specifically about reacting to in-activity interactions. If you’re doing online multiplayer games, and men are making comments that make the women feel objectified or ignored, then as soon as women start to complain, you have to decide at what point the “no CW” ban starts to take effect. Does it mean banning the CW complaints about objectification, or banning the objectification itself, which is the first strike in the culture war? One way pushes you red and the other way pushes you blue. I don’t see how you’re supposed to stay neutral, other than by just assuming the issue won’t come up.

      • Tenacious D says:

        I think for issues like that, CW can be minimized by adjudicating them as disputes between individual members and resisting attempts to implicate entire groups (e.g. keep it at the level of “these comments from these people were unwelcome” not “men need to stop objectifying women”).

      • 10240 says:

        Perhaps one option: The (hopefully benevolent) dictator decides the rules. People who disagree with the rules or the way they are enforced can approach the dictator in private, but public debate is banned or discouraged (e.g. threads about it are quickly locked).

        In order to keep the place perceived neutral, the rules should be acceptable for most people other than extreme partisans. They should also be phrased in a neutral way, without political shibboleths. (E.g. “personal insults and politics are not allowed” which is then reasonably interpreted by moderators as including racism, rather than “We value diversity and want everyone to feel welcome regardless of race…”)

    • Scott Alexander says:

      If you aim for 1, you’ll get 2. If you aim for 2, you’ll get super-ultra 2. Might as well go for 1.

    • Iago the Yerfdog says:

      Have you considered making it an explicitly grey tribe space?

      EDIT: What I have in mind is something like a space for rationalist and/or libertarian gamers that allowed others but was clear on its primary audience and values.

    • Erusian says:

      “X, but for subgroup Y” is always a bad idea unless subgroup Y is wealthy and is willing to pay for the preference of not being around non-Ys.

      Personally, I’d just start one without any explicit political missions. You can keep it friendly through administrative methods without flashing the colors and explicitly attracting witches.

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        I don’t think he’s trying to run a profit. He just wants a place to discuss his basket-weaving without discussing politics, and since he can’t find that place he’s making it.

        • Matt M says:

          Yeah, I mean, if I can somehow spin this into a vastly profitable enterprise such that I can quit my day job, well that would be out-freaking-standing.

          But I harbor no illusions that this will actually happen.

          I’m honestly not that concerned with how to handle the “community” given that I’m pretty sure only about the top 1% of blogs are ultimately successful enough to actually acquire a community large enough to be worth thinking about at all.
          I’m more interested in the question of how *I* should approach writing my own content. Should it be “come here to read about X without having to think about politics” or should it be “come here to read about X from a red tribe point of view.” I’d like to think I’m capable of both, although given my own beliefs, “red tribe POV” would probably be easier for me (although higher risk… if I get popular enough for the outrage mob to notice me, but not popular enough to retire, I could be in big trouble).

        • Erusian says:

          Doesn’t matter. People will be bearing costs associated with the limited access and the author will be bearing costs associated with running things. Even a small community takes time and effort and has costs and if you’re successful without a way to sustain it then it collapses. You don’t necessarily need to make it a profit center where you’re replacing your job. But even Scott runs ads to defray the cost of hosting etc.

    • Etoile says:

      Well, #2 will eventually attract a sufficiently unsavory fringe that the moderates will want to dissociate from your site, or at least it’ll catch the eye of the Censors That Be, unless you aggressively police extremes.
      On the other hand, since a lot of blue-tribe politics are presented as matters of civility, politeness, and common decency, I don’t know how you get around left-wing complainers if you’re not enforcing blue tribe speech norms.
      Best outcome is to be visibly red-tribe while aggressively policing the egregious extremes, I think. There’s no pleasing the left, but you also don’t want to actually focus on X and not get completely hijacked.

    • Gwythyr says:

      A case study on option one would Giant in the Playground forums (owned\organized by Rich Burlew, author of a pretty decent comedy webcomic Order of the Stick).

      They have a very active community mostly centered on D&D/ roleplaying in general. They also have a rule of “no IRL politics or religion” and they enforce it harshly. Now, Rich himself is very Blue, and it seeps into his comic (sometimes he even admits to add characters to represent his views or for diversity), but I do not think it makes comic bad.

      Forumites themselves also seem Blue-slanted but it definitely has non-negligible population of the Reds. Who cannot voice their views lest they be banned but neither can the Blues (mostly).

      It does require significant effort in moderation and it does stifle discussion. A guy who knows a lot about medieval Japan opted to answer my question by PM, because he already had a lot of warnings and wasn’t 100% sure enumerating some facts about Shinto beliefs (not the evolution of beliefs, but practically-indisputable AFAIK content of beliefs) wouldn’t get him banned. I also stumbled on some old thread about guerilla warfare (as it applies to fictional world-building) with a lot of scrubbed posts and one poster leaving a rant that a certain disagreement cannot be resolved because his opponents are pushing some abstract theory which is disproved by the actual history, but he is censored for providing IRL counterexamples because they are political (and that was his point that guerilla warfare doesn’t work IRL as it would in some “combat simulation”).

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        It does require significant effort in moderation and it does stifle discussion. A guy who knows a lot about medieval Japan opted to answer my question by PM, because he already had a lot of warnings and wasn’t 100% sure enumerating some facts about Shinto beliefs (not the evolution of beliefs, but practically-indisputable AFAIK content of beliefs) wouldn’t get him banned.

        Burlew put Norse gods in his comic after this rule came into existence, with hilarious results.

        • Gwythyr says:

          Well, they are Norse Gods-as-imagined-by-D&D-writers. What hilarious results, may I ask? What I’ve seen is that everyone discusses them based only on D&D sources. Which is not that hilarious IMO. Or are you referring to something else?

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            Well, they are Norse Gods-as-imagined-by-D&D-writers.

            Burlew said he didn’t base them purely on D&D sources. He also personally moderates his forums and deleted posts for discussing real Norse beliefs about the characters. It’s a pretty funny tightrope!

    • AG says:

      There’s a power/responsibility angle here. A non-political space is viable so long as it does not gather sufficient status.

      Take, for example, the recent kerfuffle at food magazine / chef fandom Bon Appetit. Its presentation was wholly apolitic. Just chefs making food.
      However, BA has lots of power/status/influence. In their position as a juggernaut of food media, it does matter if they aren’t giving certain cultures and cuisines a fair shake. Assumptions of apolitical social dynamics translated into, in practice, a favoring of white employees financially. The consequence of any cultural appropriation or bias or blindspot things also eventually results in the financial favoring of white employees. It also brought into question BA’s credibility on food, since their blindspots are dings on their level of expertise. Any of the employees trying to point out those disparities got ignored as making it political. So, eventually, they embraced that. And that’s how an apparently apolitical space boiled over into very political rage.

      So your center for non-partisan X best stay under the radar. The more people that genuinely benefit from the information on the site, the more responsibility it has to unspoken political considerations, simply because power is politics.

      • rumham says:

        So your center for non-partisan X best stay under the radar. The more people that genuinely benefit from the information on the site, the more responsibility it has to unspoken political considerations, simply because power is politics.

        That is so dead-on and depressing as all get-out. I really miss the days when the internet was low-status.

    • GearRatio says:

      Lots of better responses than mine on this, but just thought I’d say: If you want a place to be right-dominated, you probably don’t have to make it explicitly right-endorsing. The average internet forum actively censors in favor of the left; just being neutral in your censorship means you will get a disproportionate amount of right-leaning people. Arguably that’s what the SSC commentor community is in a lot of ways; that’s why I’m here, anyway.

      • Matt M says:

        I guess the real question is – which group is likely to be larger:

        1. Blue/grey tribers who are sufficiently annoyed at the injection of politics into mainstream sources such that they’d be willing to abandon the mainstream sources in favor of a “non-political” unproven upstart (even if it’s reasonably clear that “non-political” would still attract more reds than greys or blues).
        OR

        2. Red tribers who would be willing to abandon the mainstream blue sources in favor of a “red tribe” alternative, but for whom the risk/switching cost wouldn’t be worth it in the case of a “non-political” alternative.

        • AG says:

          Mind you, the SSC commentariat itself got less blue and grey because many of the most prominent of them moved over to Tumblr. They then picked up a bunch of “rat-adjacent” mutuals who are SJ-critical but still very leftist, but I think that only worked because of Tumblr’s more social media structure, where everyone has their own blog/space that they have ownership of. It’s harder for a forum or comment section structure to avoid people jockeying for territory.

          • Dan L says:

            So. Elephant in the room is that I spend a lot of time staring at this data. I’m not planning on posting the bulk of it for a number of reasons, predominantly including a technical oversight w.r.t. file transferring on my part that would require a few hours’ of work to circumvent, and the more salient fact that I never found a particularly good answer to the problem listed at that link – any judgement regarding commenters is almost certain to be drowned by noise. The kind of subtle trend analysis I wanted to do is… not impossible per se, but not up to the standards I would demand of someone else.

            There are a few signals strong enough that they’re probably not coincidence, but the takeaway isn’t isn’t dramatically different from 2019’s, going back to 2017. The only thing that really jumped out at me is that there used to be a strong barrier (x2-x3 base rate) against centrists becoming frequent commenters that disappeared when the CW quarantine went into effect.

            (Feel free to be skeptical as long as I’m not posting data, but the sources are all public and I expect critics to show their work.)

            ((Okay, if Scott wants the data I’ll send him a copy directly. Hit me up however, and I’ll get it to you.))

        • Oldio says:

          The red tribe certainly seems to be a lot bigger than the blue tribe*, but I have no idea how many red tribers want magaknitting v just regular knitting.
          *If we use Clinton’s share of the white vote as a proxy for tribal affiliation, which isn’t perfect but certainly seems like the closest to a useful set of numbers that anyone can reasonably hope for, given the difficulty of measuring tribal affiliation and the blue tribe’s characteristic of really hating Trump. This also assumes that red and blue tribes are specific to white Americans; if they cross racial lines than the blue tribe is bigger.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            My lived experience is very skeptical of putting Mexican(-American) people in the Blue tribe. Not all Red-white Americans like immigration, but the culture is similar behind the language barrier.
            Last time I was in Mexico, I had some interesting conversations with a family that had fled Venezuala and the father was an anti-socialist college professor. We were on a boat and one of the crew was doing silly things with a microphone like asking Mr. Chat if he prefers beer or tequila (wine would be too unmanly to even consider!).

          • SamChevre says:

            One of my vivid memories is of going home for a visit, getting off I-40 in Cookeville TN, and heading north. A few miles north is an indoor flea market.

            In the absolutely prime real estate, front and center from the entrance door, was someone selling fleece blankets. And as the two centerpiece blankets, side by side, was a Confederate Battle Flag and the Virgin de Guadalupe.

            (I’d add that most African-Americans are far more red-tribe than blue-tribe.)

          • Matt M says:

            The topic I’m interested in is itself, very white… such that almost all of the “on-topic” political discussion is always “why are there so many white people here?”

            I’m tired of being made to feel like I’m a less valuable participant in the community because of my skin color. I suspect others might be too.

          • Oldio says:

            @Le Maistre Chat @SamChevre
            That’s why I clarified- the blue tribe may not be specific to white Americans, but “white democrats with a college degree” is probably the best description of it you’re gonna get, and my lived experiences(in Texas, so there are a lot of minorities and conservative whites) tell me that as long as politics isn’t discussed, (average)Latinos and Blacks tend to get along better with red tribers than blue. I do think the clarification is necessary though.

    • DinoNerd says:

      No idea, but there’s a set of people, including at least me, that is disgusted with the politicization of everything (TM), but has no more use for e.g. a knitting site that requires or privileges conservative shibboleths over one that does the same for liberal shibboleths. (If I have to cope with political crapola, I prefer the kind that best matches the folks in my normal environment.)

      So from a strictly conflict theory perspective, I favour (1), which is the only choice that potentially benefits me.

      From a mistake theory POV, I’ve no idea of the relative proportions of people who are:
      – eager to hang out somewhere where no one will ever challenge their blue tribe view, and they can spout it at whim
      – eager to hang out somewhere where no one will ever challenge their red tribe view, and they can spout it at whim
      – sick and tired of politics in their hobby
      – perfectly comfortable ignoring the political discussion, and find it no worse than discussion of sub-areas of their hobby that they aren’t personally into.

      I suspect it also depends on the hobby.

    • Galle says:

      If the majority of current places for people interested in X have been “fully co-opted by partisan, blue-tribe politics”, that suggests that X itself is a blue tribe signifier. That means that any community for X that tries to be politically neutral is going to wind up dominated by blue tribe members anyway.

      I think the best course of action would be to A, be expressly and explicitly apolitical, and enforce that rule even-handedly, but B, focus on red tribe cultural signifiers other than politics. “D&D for Rednecks” is far, far less likely to become a target than “D&D for Conservatives”. You will need a “no politics” rule to prevent the community from becoming a genuine hotbed of red tribe politics, though.

    • Radu Floricica says:

      What if you nominally go for 2, but enforce a strict “we do X, not politics here”? Having an official orientation cuts down on the competitivity, and visitors from the blue tribe will be welcomed with prideful tolerance instead of being seen as challengers.

  93. edmundgennings says:

    It seems like the best way to get a sense of where the social science is on some cw issue is to look at the literature more general and non controversial issue and then extrapolate from there.
    Firstly, controversial social science is bad social science. Authors have all sorts of power to alter results or not publish undesired results. This is a general problem, but it causes more problems when there is are results the author or the academic community wants.
    Secondly, there is often much less data on controversial sub questions than the uncontroversial general questions. Good natural experiments etc are quite rare and and the general questions is much more likely to have at least a few decent natural experiments.

    Now extrapolating from the general question to the particular one is not trivial, there are likely some unique circumstances around the issue, but one can generally use those to modify the general findings.

    • Radu Floricica says:

      My take is that on controversial issues the society lags anywhere between 50 and 20 years behind science. A couple of examples would be The Bell Curve, that strove to be as uncontroversial as possible and 20 years laters still gets hit with “IQ doesn’t exist”. And the blank slate theory, that should have officially died with Tooby and Cosmides in 92 but I’m pretty sure had the writing on the wall (scientifically speaking) a lot earlier.

      This isn’t murky, interpretable science – it’s “moon landings were faked” kind of pushback.

      Edit: Another example is homosexuality and mental health. Apparently there was a lag of 20 years just between US and WHO, plus a very subjective interval between it was widely accepted – but definitely not short.

  94. Jake R says:

    So apparently the Supreme Court just ruled against Trump in his case to rescind DACA, holding that “the phase-out violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that governs how agencies can establish regulations” (CNN).

    I don’t have much of an opinion on immigration one way or the other, but it seems weird to me that one president can radically alter immigration policy but the next president can’t un-alter it. It would explain a lot if it were just that much easier to create bureaucracy than to remove it. Is this case not as symmetric as it looks? Did Trump just screw up some procedural thing that he can correct and try again?

    ETA: I’m hoping for someone to explain to me why this isn’t as bad as it looks. My understanding is that after several failed attempts to pass a law, Obama instructed enforcement agencies to just enforce as if it were passed. Trump told congress they had six months to change the law or he was ordering everyone to go back to enforcing the law as written, and now the courts are saying “no, you have to keep enforcing a law that was never passed.”

    • FLWAB says:

      It’s a complicated situation. For those who have the time, I recommend reading the opinion yourself. I’ve skimmed it and here’s how it falls out as I understand it.

      When DACA and DAPA were put into place by the Obama administration, many states sued saying that the programs violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). In other words, the executive can’t just willy nilly make this program without going through proper procedures. The administrations defense was the DACA and DAPA were not executive actions per se, but were just the executive deciding not to take action, ie not enforce all the relevant immigration laws in the case of these particular people. The lower courts ended up saying “Pull the other one, it has bells on it” and the case slowly made its way up the courts on appeal. It was still being sorted out in a district court, but it looked like the courts would eventually rule that the DACA and DAPA did not follow APA procedure and must be struck down. Eventually. Give them a few years to make it to the SC.

      Then Trump gets elected and his administration says “Hey, it looks like the courts are going to strike the law down anyway. We’ll save you some trouble and get rid of it ourselves.” However, the APA requires that programs not be removed capriciously and without proper procedure, so some states sued. The Trump administration argued that they didn’t have to follow those rules because DACA and DAPA were put in place illegally, and thus shouldn’t require following APA procedures. The SC has concluded that yes, the law probably violated APA, but since it violated APA that proves that it as a program is subject to APA, and as such getting rid of it requires following APA procedure.

      It’s one of those classic paradoxes. If the program is not subject to APA then it was fine for the Obama admin to put it into place, and it would be fine for Trump to strike it down willy nilly. But if the law was subject to APA then it should have been struck down, and since it hasn’t been officially struck down by the courts yet it needs to stay in place until APA procedures for shutting it down are followed.

      I think I’ve gone cross eyed.

      • rocoulm says:

        How is it that this made it to the Supreme Court so much more quickly than the first case? Did it not have to work its way through the same district courts as well?

      • Jake R says:

        Thanks for this explanation. So there’s a ton of bureaucratic hurdles whichever way you’re pushing, but they’re on a multi-year lag because courts. I guess that’s a little less terrible than what I thought. This still seems a little disingenuous though. It sounds like it was either illegal in the first place or lawfully shut down by Trump. I assume all those cases suing Obama’s policy were dropped when Trump rescinded it, so do all those have to start up again from scratch? How long can you keep playing musical chairs with executive overreach like this?

        • MisterA says:

          The decision specifically says that Trump does have the authority to end DACA, he just did not actually do so in the lawful way here. He can still shut it down, he just has to do it legally.

          It’s very similar to the census case. The finding was essentially that it’s legal to add a citizenship question to the census, but the specific way the Trump administration did it was illegal.

        • broblawsky says:

          We don’t actually know if DACA was illegal because the people suing the Obama administration dropped their cases. This article is a pretty good breakdown of why the court decided the way it did.

        • SamChevre says:

          So there’s a ton of bureaucratic hurdles whichever way you’re pushing, but they’re on a multi-year lag because courts.

          Except that’s not what happened: there wasn’t a multi-year lag in starting the program.

          In general, that’s the case and should be the case: the government cannot make people worse off without notice, but can make them better off.

          • Jake R says:

            Except that’s not what happened: there wasn’t a multi-year lag in starting the program.

            You’re right, I missed that the initial policy change wasn’t stopped while the cases were pending, but the reversal was.

            The initial policy change went into effect while court cases were pending. The attempt to rescind the policy, despite having a 6 month sunset provision, was stopped by injunction until the case was resolved. This seems like pure politics to me, twisting procedure to produce the desired outcome.

            In general, that’s the case and should be the case: the government cannot make people worse off without notice, but can make them better off.

            Surely this is begging the question. Most things the government does make some people better off and others worse off. Figuring out which of these trade-offs are worth it and which aren’t is the whole point of democracy.

          • Noah says:

            @Jake R

            I think the relevant distinction is between sudden-onset versus slow-onset harm. If the sudden adoption of this policy cause people immediate harm, it is usually good to give them time to plan around it, even if we want to adopt the policy. If it causes more slow-rolling harm (say by slower economic growth/cultural decay/whatever), they have that time.

    • Jesse E says:

      Basically, yes, to the “incompetence” question.

      This is actually the second time that Roberts has smacked down the Trump White House, for basically not crossing the ‘t”s and dotting the i’s. What likely won’t be breathlessly reported is that the Court also ruled 8-1 that the recission DACA correctly doesn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause.

      In short, when you elect incompetent populists who drive away the competent conservatives from an administration, you end up with situations like this. I could easily see the same sort of things happening with a Sanders White House, speaking as a social democrat.

      Of course, the other dirty little secret is anytime between 2017 and 2019, the Republican controlled Senate and House could’ve passed a law repealing DACA, but didn’t want too for electoral reasons.

      • gbdub says:

        the other dirty little secret is anytime between 2017 and 2019, the Republican controlled Senate and House could’ve passed a law repealing DACA

        Could they though? How do they repeal a “law” that wasn’t really a law, just an executive decision to not enforce an already existing law under certain circumstances?

        • broblawsky says:

          Pass a law banning the executive branch from prioritizing deportations. Laws overrule executive actions in nearly every circumstance.

        • Lambert says:

          Make a law saying ‘no you have to deport people who arrived in the US as minors’. Then you could still ignore the old law, but enforce the new one.

          Not that I’m generally in favour of deporting people who have spent their entire adult life in the USA.

          • Jesse E says:

            Yup – as a SJW social democrat, I disagree with it, but Congress could pass that law. However, it’d be incredibly unpopular by all actual polling, even among Republican’s, so thus, the focus on getting rid of DACA through the Courts.

      • GravenRaven says:

        Even if such a law would have mattered (questionable given DACA was already illegal given the laws already on the book) it would need a lot of Democratic votes to clear the Senate unless Republicans abolished the filibuster. There’s no way this could have been passed through budget reconciliation.

        • BBA says:

          The Congressional Review Act allows bills revoking executive regulations to bypass the filibuster, and was successfully used 16 times in 2017-18. DACA wasn’t one of them.

          And of course the only reason why the filibuster still exists is that Mitch McConnell wants it to still exist.

        • cassander says:

          @BBA

          And of course the only reason why the filibuster still exists is that Mitch McConnell wants it to still exist.

          Change that to “Mitch McConnell’s caucus” and you’re a lot closer to the answer. McConnell is not dictator of the senate. Even Reid wasn’t dictator of the senate, and he was a lot closer to the title than McConnell.

    • Jean George says:

      This Seinfeld clip is the shortest and most digestible summary of the relationship between the Trump administration and the courts.

      • Matt M says:

        Not what I was expecting, but it checks out…

      • John Schilling says:

        Courts, civil service, military, NATO, yep. Fortunately only the courts are willing to take direct measures in response (so far).

  95. bean says:

    I just received an email from a reporter for the New York Times, asking if I was interested in being interviewed about a story he’s doing on SSC. Apparnetly he found me through the contact list for one of the meetups. Does anyone have any suggestions/insight into this? I’m not sure quite how to respond. I’m not opposed to talking to the guy, but I don’t want to be complicit in a hatchet job if that’s what he’s trying to do. Also, figured others might have gotten the same request.

    • Fahundo says:

      I don’t have any firsthand knowledge about this, but the admins of the SSC and related discord servers were also saying something about NYT reporters maybe looking into the community recently. Might be worth comparing notes with them.

    • John Schilling says:

      Interesting. Haven’t heard from any reporters myself, and I’m not that hard to find. Step one would be to read a smattering of articles by that reporter to see what you are dealing with, I would think.

      • Scott Alexander says:

        I am personally offended that the New York Times does not recognize your status as one of the all time great SSC commenters.

        EDIT: It looks like most people contacted were local meetup organizers. Serves me right for leaving the post with all of their emails up.

        • bean says:

          This was explicitly confirmed in the email I got.

        • John Schilling says:

          Makes sense. I’m already in the NYT’s collective rolodex for other reasons, but it’s a big organization and if you’re doing a quick & dirty search for non-pseudonymous SSC personalities, meetup organizers is a good way to do that.

          • b_jonas says:

            Yeah. And meetup organizers might also be more willing to give an interview than random commenters.

    • jooyous says:

      Same, I also got contacted. It is this person: https://www.nytimes.com/by/cade-metz

      What should we do?

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        Looks like lots of A.I. stuff.

      • C_B says:

        Snooping this person makes me somewhat less worried that it’ll be a hatchet job. His Twitter is, as far as I can tell, 100% links to thinkpieces about tech and AI, with 0% outrage tweets. His article history at the Times looks mostly like stuff that could have been on Ars Technica.

        There’s still a risk that getting mainstream attention will be bad, even if the article isn’t a hit piece, of course.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      I think he’s asked a few dozen people now. After talking to people who understand reporting, the consensus is he’s going to write it whether we cooperate or not, so people might as well cooperate so he doesn’t go entirely off hostile sources. I’ll probably make a thread about this sometime but I still need to check with a few more people.

      For now, people should feel free to give or not give interviews depending on whether they want to have their name in the New York Times or not, without worrying that I’ll be offended by your decision. Remember that reporters sometimes take things out of context and so you should try to speak defensively and say simple things that clearly reflect what you mean.

      • jooyous says:

        Are they trying to get comments from you? Are you cooperating?

      • Jacob says:

        Cade Metz reached out to me after reading some Putanumonit, and I agreed to talk with him after skimming through his archive. Everything he’s written seems to actually be about tech (developments, challenges, funding) and not culture war disguised as tech. We talked about how Rationalists were early on COVID, and how our style of thinking might impact Silicon Valley. There was nothing about politics or hot button issues. I could be wrong about him, but he seems so far like an honest person interested in ideas.

        In any case, this panic at “OMG the NYT might cancel Scott!” is bizarre. Our tribe is bigger and stronger than you might think, and if you think we can’t coordinate for a fight that I’m fairly sure Scott being under attack will serve nicely as a coordination point. People are already mobilizing in their hundreds on Twitter, all for a story that will probably be quite innocuous!

        I discovered LessWrong back in 2014 after a Slate.com article that mocked it. This is how it usually happens: attention brings a lot people. The people who come for the cancel theater get bored and leave, but some people become fans and remain. Every company knows that most publicity is good publicity, and the SSC community is more powerful and resilient than most companies. It’s probably wise to not do anything negative that may be associated with SSC, but there’s no reason to panic and hide either.

        • Matt M says:

          I hope you’re as right about this as you were about Covid.

          (Also your blog is pretty cool too so I hope you don’t get cancelled either.)

        • 10240 says:

          Yeah, a few people are a bit paranoid. Back when Tom Chivers was writing a book on rationalists, some people were also worried that it would be a hatchet job; it wasn’t.

        • Ninety-Three says:

          In any case, this panic at “OMG the NYT might cancel Scott!” is bizarre.

          I have some hot takes about the paranoia-prone demographics of SSC, but I think this trend is dominated by some simple vocal minority dynamics. If only 1% of SSCers think OMG, they’re much more likely to post that opinion than the 99% who heard the news and shrugged, leading to a thread where the paranoid consensus looks much bigger than it is (especially if the calm people aren’t interested in arguing with the ones freaking out).

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            My nightmare scenario isn’t “we get persecuted”, it’s “traffic goes up hugely and the place turns into Twitter”.

          • CatCube says:

            Ehhhh, I’d normally agree with you, especially given that the reporter seems to have a good head on his shoulders from previous articles, but don’t lose sight of the fact that there’s an active, ongoing witch hunt occurring at the New York Times. If that reporter’s colleagues decide that he’s insufficiently zealous in persecuting witches, what might happen to his job?

            I mean, “The NYT will persecute SSC” is kinda goofy bullshit. I acknowledge that. But do you know what else is goofy bullshit? The notion that Tom Cotton’s Op Ed was violence against NYT reporters. The fact that that was goofy bullshit didn’t seem to stop what happened next, or their management’s indulgence of that goofy bullshit.

            A fair story would show that we are a good community, with some arguments and problems, sure. Scott’s a good moderator, but he’s not God. However, the commentariat isn’t left-wing. The best we can hope for is that the story is neither helpful nor harmful. If the reporter gives us that fair story with a fairly positive bent, he’s taking his job into his hands, because we don’t toe a left-wing line.

            There’s a very real downside that the story will be a hit job, but I think the odds are much better that it will be neutral. I don’t think there’s much chance it will be positive, given the current management environment at NYT purging people who aren’t on board with a left-wing perspective.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            I’d think it likely the reporter’s story won’t delve in to politics at all.

            If it does, I’ve got SSCs back as a liberal.

          • Aapje says:

            @anonymousskimmer

            Thanks, Obama

            If you are not actually Obama or similar, I don’t how whether you having our backs will help.

          • Jacob says:

            I know that there are a lot of anons here enjoying a forum to chat with their nerdy friends. Y’all don’t want any attention on SSC, whether positive or negative, and that’s understandable.

            But the Rationalist community has a mission that goes beyond having fun chats online. Building a tribe, raising the sanity waterline, maybe saving the world. Making any progress whatsoever towards our mission will inevitably draw attention, and that attention will be both a threat and an opportunity. The more unreasonable the age, the more important is the work of promoting reason. That’s what this blog seems to be about.

            I get the sense that Scott is conflicted about this. He just likes thinking and writing and didn’t ask to be a leader or symbol of anything. But the mission chose him anyway. Writing about Effective Altruism, about how tribalism and information work, defending Aaronson and Hsu — this is all part of it.

            Now I’m not saying that everyone has to be onboard with this mission, you aren’t. But don’t discourage those who are. Don’t spread panic and drama. We’re doing important things here.

          • roflc0ptic says:

            This situation is forcing me to think through my own tribal allegiances and values, which is always deeply uncomfortable work.

            I feel like I both agree with Jacob here, and think that he’s understating the risks. The idea that people might harass Scott and do material harm to him and the community isn’t hypothetical: it’s history.

            I think that SSC and rationality are doing the lord’s work. Given that this article is likely going to happen, let’s try to make the best of the reality we’re in.

            If nothing else, after the article comes out will probably be a great moment to do another meetup thread.

            (Also, Jacob, I love put a num on it. thanks!)

          • Wrong Species says:

            There’s already a group of rationalists trying to save the world, the Effective Altruists. Why not let them do their thing and let us do our own?

          • Matt M says:

            I get the sense that Scott is conflicted about this. He just likes thinking and writing and didn’t ask to be a leader or symbol of anything. But the mission chose him anyway.

            Except that Scott is still a free individual and a rational actor, who can (and very well might) shut this place down in an instant if it looks like keeping it open is going to cause severe disruptions to his “real life.”

            We know this because he has told us as much, and he has already done it (in a limited fashion) over much less than what the NYT is capable of bring to bear on him.

            The cause may need martyrs, but Scott doesn’t seem to be interested in being one. And I can’t say I blame him. Were I in his shoes, I’d probably do the same…

    • FLWAB says:

      If you do decide to let him interview you, record it. That way if it is a hatchet job, you can at least release the recording so people can see how the sausage is made. You know, nice reporter is all friendly and joking and asks a million questions that put SSC in a good light, then takes one ambiguous response from you and puts it in a framing that makes SSC look horrible. If you have a recording then it’s easier to fight back against the narrative.

      • No One In Particular says:

        Even better, require the interview be live.

        See how he responds to that.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        WARNING: IANAL, but Check your state’s wiretapping laws (one vs. Two party consent, etc) before attempting this, and adjust accordingly. I think this is a very good defensive measure if you’re worried about a hostile interviewer, but not if you accidentally break the law in the process.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          This is important, but in general you can just tell he reporter you are recording it anyway. He shouldn’t mind — he’s probably recording it himself — and if he does that’s a huge red flag.

        • No One In Particular says:

          I can’t imagine a reporter doing an interview without recording it, and at least in California, once one party records a conversation, the other party doesn’t need to get consent to record it. Also, if you’re only recording your own side of the conversation, there’s no need for consent.

    • Deiseach says:

      Hmmm – given the Current Situation, I’m very much inclined to this view.

      There’s a poem for it, of course (there always is).

      I’m probably very cynical but I do feel that reporters who ring up for “just a few quick words” already have the story blocked out in their mind, know what conclusion they’re coming to, and are just hoping you’ll provide them with the requisite “why yes I do think we should burn witches!” quotes. If you do decide to talk to them, stick to the most bland and anodyne “I like good things that all good people approve of and say are good” responses you can manage.

      • but I do feel that reporters who ring up for “just a few quick words” already have the story blocked out in their mind

        He interviewed me over the phone for half an hour, apologized for stopping because he had another interview scheduled, called back a little later to talk a bit more.

        So not a few quick words.

        • Deiseach says:

          So he might be fair-minded? Depends then on what headline some sub-editor slaps on the story.

          I was concerned it might be along the lines of that infamous article but if this guy is a technical writer it might indeed be legitimate asking about ‘what is this best-written website you’ve never heard of thing?’.

          • I’m not very worried about what he will say, although I could be wrong, only about possible adverse effects of many people paying attention to SSC.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        That’s the best version I’ve heard of that song. I think the other times I’ve heard it, it was too chipper.

        I could share it on facebook, but I’m not. I hate this era.

    • Randy M says:

      At the best, they will portray you as interesting weirdos.
      More likely, they will portray you as either amusing weirdos, or dangerous weirdos.

      • anon-e-moose says:

        this.this.this. Reporters are like the police–if they’re wanting to talk with you, something bad is happening, or is about to happen. Nobody calls out of the blue for a puff piece.

      • jooyous says:

        To be fair, I AM an interesting weirdo.

        • ditto.

          I even have it confirmed by my wife. Just this morning.

          The wierdo part. The interesting part was her reaction a very long time ago, but I expect it still holds.

          • A Definite Beta Guy says:

            Yeah, I think my wife’s opinion has gone from “90% interesting, 10% weirdo” to “10% interesting, 90% weirdo, what is this bicameral mind thing he’s talking about? Westworld sucks.”

            Weirdo is almost certainly right, because I can’t think of too many people making lengthy posts about Accounts Receivable on a web log.

            I might go about live-blogging the budget creation process. Or posting. Whatever term is best?

          • Lambert says:

            A truer description would have said that Feynman was all genius and all buffoon. The deep thinking and the joyful clowning were not separate parts of a split personality. He did not do his thinking on Monday and his clowning on Tuesday. He was thinking and clowning simultaneously.

            I don’t want to go full rick and morty copypasta, but a lot of Weird Scott Fiction does seem to be about epistemology.

          • Deiseach says:

            I might go about live-blogging the budget creation process.

            Live-blog! I do it for Eurovision and it is great fun, plus this way we will get the unfettered uncensored ADBG and all the swearing and name-calling (well, that might just be me after five days trying to track down why the set of effin’ returns to our government agency paymasters that absolutely has to be in by the looming deadline wasn’t balancing with the bank reconciliations and at the last moment finding that missing €8 which fixed it all). I’m sure ADBG is more temperate 🙂

          • A Definite Beta Guy says:

            There is much swearing, that I can certainly promise. This has NOT been a fun year, and with all of our missing data, budget is going to be like flying a plane blindfolded straight into a hurricane.

      • Lambert says:

        https://www.wired.com/2016/10/dan-zigmond-buddhas-diet/
        This looks a lot like a sympathetic profile of an interesting weirdo.

        We *are* interesting weirdoes and we should be proud of it.

    • Wrong Species says:

      SSC getting outside attention is not a good thing.

      • Matt M says:

        +1

        While I’d be tempted to respond with something like “F-off journalist scum!” the more productive response is probably to beg and plead this guy to leave us alone and please re-consider writing the article as it will quite possibly destroy something that a lot of people really enjoy.

      • salvorhardin says:

        I’m surprised it took this long, given the number of Times op-ed and editorial columns (and Atlantic pieces, and other intelligentsia-prestige venues) in which Scott’s greatest-hits posts have been quoted favorably.

      • Scott Alexander says:

        I 100% agree with this, I’ve managed to prevent a couple of other pieces, but I probably won’t be able to prevent this one.

        • Wrong Species says:

          Since you’re seeing this, is there a way to mass delete a users comments that doesn’t place an undue burden on you? I’ve been wondering about it for a while now.

          • Scott Alexander says:

            I just installed a plugin like that but haven’t gotten a chance to test it. See if you can access it on your profile page.

          • Wrong Species says:

            I’m not seeing it. What would it say?

          • Andrew Hunter says:

            I don’t see this either.

          • Dan L says:

            Seems to be working, but note that this requires nuking an entire account and taking all comments with it. Let’s see if that wipes child comments as well….

            ETA: Confirmed. Using this option deletes the account, all user comments, and all child comments posted as replies to that comment. Thorough.

            There’s an interesting discussion to be had regarding the ethics of backing up someone else’s public posts against their express wishes, but probably best in a different thread.

          • The Pachyderminator says:

            People will have to decide for themselves, of course, but I hope everyone doesn’t start nuking their accounts pre-emptively for what might well be a false alarm. SSC is a very large archive of interesting discussions at this point, much of which has long-term value, and that would burn big holes in it.

          • Nick says:

            @The Pachyderminator
            FWIW there are archives of all the comments. Though I’m not sure now that I think about it what @The Nybbler’s search engine would do with deleted comments.

          • The Pachyderminator says:

            @Nick
            I don’t think deleted comments appear on Nybbler’s search engine. At least, I’ve had problems where a particular thread I was trying to find didn’t show up, and I later realized I was searching for a phrase from a deleted comment.

          • Nick says:

            @The Pachyderminator
            I see. I’m of two minds on this. If someone wants their stuff deleted, that should be respected. On the other hand, I wish things weren’t lost forever. I guess I’d rather an archive be in the hands of someone I trust. But I don’t trust anybody, so….

          • Randy M says:

            I don’t know if it’s possible, and it would still be confusing, but being able to label all of a posters posts as “anonymous” without removing them would be preferable to perforating the conversation.

            Doesn’t work in the case of someone accidentally doxing themselves or something.

            edit: For the record, I would still hope this was never actually used.

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            Given my druthers, if people could have their posts anonymized, I’d like the posters distinguished from each other. Anonymous1, Anonymous2, etc. but the names should be reserved for the purpose.

            Is this likely to go wrong?

          • Dan L says:

            With default anonymity plus tripcodes added to the existing couple-day thread churn you’ve invented SlateStarChan. So, debatably.

          • The Nybbler says:

            My comments search engine removes comments that are deleted and keeps only the most recent version of edited comments; it’s a search engine, not an archive. I do not how well this would work with a “remove all comments” plug-in, however — probably old comments would not be deleted until another change to the page occurred, since I doubt “remove all comments” spams the RSS feed with all the changes.

            I didn’t think it would be a wise idea to build a publicly searchable archive in general (nor do I have a private one), and when comments were only edited/removed within an hour or by Scott’s manual intervention, the downside of not doing so seemed minor. People nuking their entire account years later seems more damaging, and I may consider keeping such comments but eliding the usernames (though possibly they would still be discoverable from context).

          • Andrew Hunter says:

            @The Nybbler

            BTW, your search engine appears broken: Firefox or Chrome on MacOSX, entering a search term and hitting enter appears to do nothing.

          • Nick says:

            @Andrew Hunter
            Huh, it was working for me this morning. It’s down for me right now, too. Firefox on Windows 10.

        • Imsoindiethatmyblogdontfit says:

          I’m sorry that this is happening to you. It’s not right and it’s not fair.

      • souleater says:

        +1

      • bean says:

        I do think it’s not the end of the world. The reporter in question is apparently their AI expert, which suggests an angle I’m actually comfortable talking about. That said, yeah, it is concerning.

        • Matt M says:

          Yeah… even if the article is overwhelmingly positive, to whatever extent it drives NYT-readers here to SSC to check things out… that’s almost certainly a net negative.

    • AG says:

      Shitpost answer: agree to do the interview, and then twist all questions into excuses to plug Naval Gazing. In fact, everyone who does this interview should use it do extensively plug Naval Gazing.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        Seconded.
        “Slate Star Codex appears to be a Steve Hsu-adjacent group of Evangelical Christians, anarcho-capitalists, and other unseemly types who just want to talk about battleships.”

        • FLWAB says:

          +1, especially if you answer every single question in the form of “That’s another reason why the Iowa is the greatest battleship ever built, because…”

          • Garrett says:

            I’d *easily* pay $20 for the DVD of all the raw interview footage.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            $21 if bean manages to work in “they believe in AI risk” without going off-message.
            “… and that’s the reason the Iowa would have made the best Sea Bolo.”

          • Deiseach says:

            Oh please do work in battleship references wherever possible! The resulting article might even entice me to pay to read it! 😁

      • Scott Alexander says:

        Tell him about the meetup on the battleship, I want the national news audience’s first association with the SSC community to be “group of people with inexplicable access to 50,000 ton warships”.

        • Matt M says:

          If we can get just one question in a white house press conference like “President Trump, what do you plan to do about the rogue group of rationalists who have somehow commandeered a US battleship?” it’ll all be worth while…

          • bean says:

            To make it better, “the battleship you promised to reactivate”. He held a rally onboard less than a week before my first visit, and made some rather… silly promises about reactivating the ship. Thank goodness that hasn’t been acted on.

          • rocoulm says:

            “What are your plans to combat the growth of White Rationalism in America today?”

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            “What are your plans to combat the growth of White Rationalism in America today?”

            Christ’s wounds, what a loaded question. I can imagine a candidate who’d say “Make all Americans rational regardless of race” in a primary

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Razi party.

          • Aapje says:

            Vote for the rational-socialist party!

          • AG says:

            I went to do a portmanteau and my attempt came out to “racionalist,” oof.

            But “vote for the Rat Socks!” sure is a merchandising opportunity.

        • albatross11 says:

          +1

        • bean says:

          I’ll certainly mention that, although I would point out that our access wasn’t inexplicable in any way. Everyone paid for it, just like you can and should! (I paid in sweat and time, not money.)

          That reminds me. I know I gave you a coupon. Did you ever go visit?

          But seriously, I’m going to go with the “internet community attracted by a really good writer, nothing particularly notable to see here” angle.

    • Matt M says:

      Well crap. This was a nice community we had here, once.

      • Wrong Species says:

        Yeah, we’re about to get cancelled.

        • johan_larson says:

          How? Is there anyone who can kick SSC off the internet?

          • Wrong Species says:

            All it takes is one persistent harasser.

          • Tarpitz says:

            SSC has a rather obvious single point of failure: all anyone wishing to destroy it would have to do is make keeping it up too painful for Scott to bear. This is not, I surmise, a risk of which he is unaware.

            Individual posters, if their real identities could be discovered (and for many of us it would not be hard) could also potentially be targeted.

          • ana53294 says:

            There was a guy who was posting under his real name who got swatted.

          • Scott Alexander says:

            On SSC? I didn’t hear about that – what happened?

          • Aapje says:

            I could only find this.

          • Nick says:

            @Aapje
            I already sent him the original thread.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            I was going to write up a list of ways that SSC could be kicked off the Internet.

            But then, for once in my life, I realized it was a stupid thing to type up before posting it and stopped.

        • salvorhardin says:

          I am not quite so pessimistic, because I think you may be overestimating the degree to which people will care; this is an instance of the general rule that in any social situation, the right answer to “but what will people think of me?” will probably be “they will think much less about you one way or another than you might guess.”

          Also, Reddit has not been cancelled yet for any strong meaning of “cancelled,” and Reddit is not only much higher profile but has way more things for the cancellers to complain about, both absolutely and in proportion to the total amount of content (and including quite a lot that really is objectionable), than SSC.

          • Anteros says:

            +1
            My expectation is that very little will change as a result of SSC getting a mention on page 17 of the NYT. Especially as the journalist writes about technology and AI – it’s not like he’s a Culture War correspondent.

          • jooyous says:

            At this point, I want a prediction market where I can bet on features that this article will have. I think the people expecting doom are overconfident and I would like to take their money.

            I’m concerned about second-order effects, but if the article is getting written anyway, there isn’t much we can do about them.

          • WoollyAI says:

            @jooyous

            15% chance (say 6:1) that this will be a CW or primarily CW article. Willing to submit article to independent arbitration for disagreement.

            50% chance (1:1) this will have negative indirect effects, ie increased exposure=increased culture war. Difficult to quantify. Open to suggestions.

            90% chance (say 1:10) this will result in nothing positive. Meaning the following:
            #1 Slatestarcodex’s views will not noticeably increase over trend over a…6 month period. AND
            #2 We will not able to identify more than a dozen new quality posters from this article 3 months after the article is published. AND
            #3 Neither your nor I will be able to identify anyone in meatspace/meetups who got interested as a result of this article.

            Willing to bet up to $25 per market.

            The odds of this being catastrophic are low, as are the odds of anything good coming from it are low. This is an inconvenience, there’s going to be more drama for awhile (there already kind of is) but as long as no one feeds it, it should pass without issue.

          • Garrett says:

            Reddit has taken the approach of doing its own internal cancellations. Large swaths of ideas are not allowed to be discussed there. And they still get a lot of flak for everything which isn’t removed from the site. And they have to worry about the opinion of people who place ads on the site as well.

        • souleater says:

          We should get an “reputable poster” email list now, so that if we get cancelled, Scott can start posting to a new blog, under a new name, and we can all continue on as if nothing happened..

          Also, The temporary CW ban makes more sense in hindsight

          • Hyperfocus says:

            I don’t know if I count as reputable, but I definitely want to be on that list!

          • b_jonas says:

            Agreed. Someone please volunteer with a way to contact them that they’ll tell us the secret new meeting place if SSC comment threads ever disappear.

          • noyann says:

            Scott already has all emails from the registration, so everyone who ever posted could get a pointer to the new underground SSC. But going dark that way would be a real setback. All those would be lost who prefer to remain silent but could contribute their deep competence to the discussion of a difficult matter, or have an extra fine joke, or recommendation. Going dark is a last resort in case a denial of discussion flood happens.

            An Eternal September could be mitigated by combining a registration moratorium for 2-weeks from the publishing day, plus social policing by current reputable members, plus a single page with current rules, customs and traditions that is linked from the SSC page header. No new commenters for a fortnight will dam the impulsive NYT readers while the really interested will come back later. A temporary flood of friendly admonishing will educate and train, and having a one-stop-shop for the local mores eases understanding the discussion style.

            * “Read the rules on the page top, before commenting again, please”, “Less of this, please”, “This topic/label/framing is considered Culture War and strongly frowned upon unless in a thread with decimals”, “You may be factually correct but your tone deters readers from engaging with you”.

          • 10240 says:

            @noyann I think a few obscure psychiatry posts on top would be enough to turn away most low-effort newcomers.

    • ana53294 says:

      The CW ban seems even more reasonable.

      I don’t think there is anything you can do if you decide to give an interview. You could ask for written questions (in which case, being a thoughtful guy, you’ll probably manage not to say something that can be easily misquoted). And you’ll have the full email as evidence.

      If they insist on video/phone call… Recording the conversation on your side, while absolutely necessary, won’t save you. AFAIU, right-wing intellectuals nowadays only accept interviews when they can record. And, even when both sides have a recording, when the side with the bigger platform and credibility cuts video or audio to suit their narrative, they get away with it.

      If they manage to regularly cut the President of the United States to make whatever he says much more ridiculous (and the full videos are available at C-Span), little people have no chance against the NYT.

      I’d say that if it’s by email, maybe do it: you can carefully craft your answers. If it’s video or phone call, better not.

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      I would just like to add that everything I say under this account is satire. All stories and information posted by “Conrad Honcho” are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted by “Conrad Honcho” as fact.

    • I was interviewed by him, at considerable length. Seemed like a friendly and interested person.

      • GearRatio says:

        Probably a compliment: I was considering contacting him to up the “reasonable person in most ways who is fond of the community” numbers, but in finding you had already been interviewed immediately switched to “Oh, no way I’m doing better than Dave on this one”.

      • jooyous says:

        Did you get any promises for him to show you a draft or anything? What did he want to know about?

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          That is not a thing journalists do.

          • C_B says:

            (They might occasionally do it with the primary subject of a piece, if they think that they could get more interesting material out of whatever the person says in a rebuttal. I agree that they’re not going to do it with someone who’s just “one of the people interviewed.”)

        • No promises.

          I gave my usual description of the blog as the one place I know of online where one can have civil and intelligent conversation across a very wide range of political, religious, and professional backgrounds. He seemed to find that interesting.

          No questions from him that signaled hostile intent, but obviously I couldn’t read his mind.

      • b_jonas says:

        DavidFriedman and bean: thank you for reporting back about this. I trust both of you to manage such an interview well, and it’s a good thing that you accepted rather than the interviewer having to find worse representatives.

    • Lambert says:

      Cade Metz seems like a reasonable guy. I’m expecting the format to look something roughly like this in terms of interviews: https://www.wired.com/2016/05/google-alpha-go-ai/

    • bean says:

      I did the interview a couple of hours ago. He seemed sympathetic, but I was careful to avoid any landmines I could think of. The one thing he did ask me about was female voices, which he said he wanted, but didn’t really have. If anyone wants to volunteer (Deiseach?) I can put you in touch.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        You seriously didn’t say “My wife, Lord Nelson, posts a lot there”?
        Did you miss battleship opportunities too? 😛

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          Ouch. Somebody’s getting kicked out the captain’s quarters and sleeping in the brig tonight.

          ETA: I don’t think it’s any deal or anything, I just wanted to make a joke where I get to pretend bean and Lord Nelson literally live on a battleship.

        • bean says:

          I tried not to miss battleship opportunities. As for Lord Nelson, I had mentioned it to her ahead of time, and (correctly) believed she wouldn’t be interested.

      • Mark V Anderson says:

        You didn’t offer up Lord Nelson? 🙂

      • Lambert says:

        @Nancy Lebovitz perhaps?

        She’s been saying interesting things here for a while and doesn’t seem to openly hold Problematic opinions.
        Also I get the impression that she comes from quite an old-school part of computer nerd culture. Middle-aged technology reporters don’t spring fully-formed from the ground, so I’d not be surprised if Metz had a similar past.

        • Nancy Lebovitz says:

          I appreciate the kind words, but my opinions are more problematic than you’re noticed– on the level that I say things here that I wouldn’t say openly on facebook.

          Maybe Rebecca Friedman?

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            sees Deiseach’s refusal below
            Well one of us has to volunteer. “No women” looks worse than “this woman has Problematic beliefs”… right?

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            One of my problematic beliefs is that Ayn Rand wasn’t entirely wrong, and I’m not that altruistic.

            How would “not one woman trusts your good will and the good will of the public enough to do an interview” look?

          • One of my problematic beliefs is that Ayn Rand wasn’t entirely wrong

            Indeed, parts of The Fountainhead are looking practically prophetic just now.

          • Rebecca Friedman says:

            Maybe Rebecca Friedman?

            No no! He already interviewed my dad, two in one family would look weird. And you’re much more actually part of the commentariat than I am; I was thinking you!

            (And Deiseach, but even before reading her refusal I doubted she’d go for it. Pity.)

            … Le Maistre Chat is right though. I’m pretty sure people are much more likely to see it as “this place has no women” than “no women associated with this place trust the press.”

            So… if absolutely no one else steps up? But I don’t think I’m a very good choice – two in one family – and um, I’m somewhat amused by the idea that I would have less problematic opinions than you do. I’m conflict-averse, I don’t generally talk politics, even on SlateStarCodex! But if you think of me as “an extreme libertarian, maybe a hair less extreme than Dad but agreeing with him on most issues” you’ll be about right.

            (Thank you for thinking of me, though! I’m flattered. I thought I was invisible.)

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            No no! He already interviewed my dad, two in one family would look weird.

            This was my unstated concern too.

          • Aapje says:

            @Nancy Lebovitz

            I doubt that he would ask about them and if he does, can’t you simply avoid answering them? You can always say something like: ‘My thoughts on that topic haven’t crystallized, so I don’t feel comfortable talking about it.’

            I think that you would be a very good spokesperson.

      • Deiseach says:

        If anyone wants to volunteer (Deiseach?) I can put you in touch.

        Sorry, just had to wipe away the tears of laughter there. First question from him would be “I’m from the New York Times, are you familiar with our work?” and first answer from me would be “No, I deliberately refuse to read your fish-wrapper” and it would only go downhill from there 🙂

        We do have sensible lady commenters on here, if one of them wishes to come forward!

        • C_B says:

          I regret not getting to read the hypothetical version of this article where he interviews you, but sadly it is probably for the best.

      • oriscratch says:

        Canyon Fern is technically both male and female, interview them!

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        The one thing he did ask me about was female voices, which he said he wanted, but didn’t really have.

        I think it’s really important to signal-boost this. It could make or break the article. We have the following refusals:

        @Nancy Lebovitz
        @Deiseach
        @Lord Nelson

        How about @ana53294 , @Rebecca Friedman ?
        (My only saving grace as an option is that I wouldn’t call the NYT “fish wrapper” like Deiseach said she would. I’d be maximally polite to him while going dangerously off-message.)

        • Nancy Lebovitz says:

          You know, it took me a bit to get annoyed at possibly being a recipient of affirmative action, but maybe I should be.

          • Rebecca Friedman says:

            You mean because he’s asking for female voices? I honestly considered it a good sign; it means he’s not taking one of the obvious routes to a stereotype.

        • ana53294 says:

          There’s a reason I post pseudonymously. I wouldn’t want to give my real name to a reporter, and my name is fairly unique and easily searchable (I’m the only person on Facebook with my name). There aren’t that many Basque-Russian females living in the UK. And that is probably already too much.

          • Doctor Mist says:

            These days even mainstream news articles often refer to netizens by their handles only. I think that might not be a stumbling block.

          • Aapje says:

            @ana53294

            You could demand a written promise that they will only use your handle or first name.

        • Rebecca Friedman says:

          Answered above. Not counting minor hobby things, I’ve never been interviewed by a reporter, would expect given my skills that I’d sound good in a friendly interview, bad in a hostile one – I’m very bad at social manipulation. Also, he already interviewed my father.

          The latter objection goes for my mother too, the former I’m not as sure, and she probably reads more SSC than I do. Other than that you’ve nominated almost all the people I had thought of, but so many people post under gender-neutral names – it’s an internet forum, after all. So in general, I wouldn’t expect to know.

        • L (Zero) says:

          How the turn tables…

          I highly doubt that I count as active enough to be desirable anyway (even though I technically have years of history and verifiable meetup presence).

          But, like, the main reason I bothered to come back in the first place is because of a recent “words are violence” allegation about certain speech of women specifically. So, get tangled up with a publication, no matter how carefully hidden the paper trail? I’d rather die.

        • Deiseach says:

          This could be a problem?

          “Do you have any women contributors?”

          “Oh yes!”

          “Great, could I talk to them?”

          “Ah, sorry, no?”

          “That’s a shame, why not?”

          “Um – they don’t want to do an interview”

          “I promise this will be done on terms of strict anonymity if that’s what is worrying them”

          “No… not as such”

          “So what is the problem?”

          “Ahhhh – ooops, is that the time, have to dash!” 😂

    • Erusian says:

      Serious suggestion: If you don’t have it, get something that protects against DDoS or other common, low effort “ruin your day” attacks.

    • Etoile says:

      I suspect it will be much more negative in the article than the reporter appears in person.
      I was discussing this with someone today, and they pointed out that I haven’t seen anything from the New York Times that hasn’t perverted or tried to tar something I’ve liked or respected lately.

    • samboy says:

      I am a long time lurker of SSC (4-5 years) and have only very recently created an account and become a more active member of this community.

      I have, ever since they forced James Bennet to resign over the Tom Cotton piece [1], have come to realize that The New York Times has become pretty darn partisan. The news section has become more and more biased (e.g. they forgot about the COVID-19 crisis for a few days as the George Floyd protests took over the front page while complaining that Trump rallies will become “super spreader” events[2]; they wrote long articles about George Floyd without once mentioning his previous history as a felon [3]) to the point I feel I’m reading political advocacy, not unbiased news.

      The opinion section is quickly veering as far left as rags like Common Dreams [4] They haven’t gone as far as celebrating businesses burning in the riots the way the guy who is leading the movement to cancel Stephen Hsu does, [5] but they’re moving that directions.

      While I retain my subscription to the NY Times for now, I have decided to cancel my Kindle subscription of their content. Instead, I read the front page articles of The Wall Street Journal which, while dry, are neutral and keep me up to date with current events (The opinion section of WSJ is quite a bit to the right from where I stand, so I tend to only read their news reporting).

      [1] I do not agree with what Tom Cotton wrote. However, I do not think an editor should be pushed out of a job for publishing the opinion of a current US senator.

      [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/politics/tulsa-rally-trump.html complains about how many people will get COVID-19 at a Trump rally

      [3] As a strong opponent of cancel culture, I don’t think we should hold Floyd’s history of committing felonies against him, since he did his time and was trying to restart his life when it was tragically cut short. But not mentioning it at all in articles like https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/us/floyd-memorial-funeral.html came off as partisan biased white washing; [6] to be fair, they did mention it as an aside in https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd-who-is.html

      [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html “Yes, we literally mean abolish the police” made it to the NYT opinion section this week. Yes, I know, diversity of views and all that, but that ship left shore when they fired James Bennet for allowing an opinion some (including myself) found offensive to be published.

      [5] Over at https://twitter.com/itsbirdemic/status/1266972132401205250 the leading guy who is trying to fire Stephen Hsu says that “Seeing banks and monuments to white supremacy burn is the proudest I’ve been of America in a long time”.

      [7] To be fair, there is something to be said of not stating any ill of someone at their funeral. I felt it was tasteless to bring up Kobe Bryant’s rape accusation the day he died, so this is more of the same — except, I did not become aware of Floyd’s criminal history from reading NYT, but from reading other sources.

      • No One In Particular says:

        How was it tasteless to bring up the accusation of Bryant’s accusation, especially considering the lionization he was getting?

      • original-internet-explorer says:

        It’s an optical trick. They have their own unique stupid ideas that if prodded in the right way under the right conditions would reveal the camouflage. This is what got Ron Unz hung up on the Iraq war – it’s a plot hole in the NYT world that can not be explained by gesturing at political models like the spectrum or political compass. If you venture back far enough into the history of liberalism you start to discover they have their own skeletons – which isn’t foreign to me since their political orientation promoted a vicious conflict between the Irish and the English. People have forgotten Edmund Burke was an Irish Tory. Before the Holodomor and the Holocaust was the Irish Famine and of course the wars of religion.

        Liberals are a unique faction with its own highs and lows – I refer you to Sniffnoy’s and other Scott’s comments on Scott 2 blog.

        https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4859#comment-1845421
        https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4859#comment-1845605

        Their role in society is in information processing.

    • Imsoindiethatmyblogdontfit says:

      Everyone I know who has talked to a reporter about something non-trivial (n=3) has said that the final piece twisted their words into something they didn’t agree with and that they regretted doing the interview. Might just be bad luck, but I’m skeptical.

      • silver_swift says:

        My experience (n=1) is words being misunderstood/twisted into something obvious nonsense to anyone that knows anything about the subject matter, but ultimately non-harmful.

    • roflc0ptic says:

      Metz also reached out to me. Which feels silly because I’m largely a non-entity here, but also I’m a non-entity who really really loves SSC and occasionally proselytizes it.

      I independently felt some of the concern that’s being voiced in this thread, and rather than spending a lot of time speculating about it, I raised it with Metz directly:

      Hi Cade,

      I’m noticing that I feel very cautious about the potential for harms and misunderstanding such an article might cause. Indeed, this email reads pretty ominously, particularly at this time.

      Looking at your recent headlines, you seem more interested in futurism than muck raking, so perhaps the wariness is unwarranted. But it seems like even hagiography might primarily harm the community.

      Could you give me more words about what you’re doing?

      Warm regards,

      He described the story he’s doing like so:

      The story is this. SSC is a hugely influential voice, not only with the tight-knit community you are part of, but with some very influential figures in Silicon Valley and beyond: This includes figures like Marc Andressen, Sam Altman, Paul Graham, and Patrick Collison. But the affect is larger than that. One of the beauties of SSC is that it touches so many disparate areas, from “AI” to psychology to genetics — the list goes on. This tweet illustrates part of the phenomenon:

      https://twitter.com/matthewckeller/status/1126380891243188224

      I just spoke to Matt Keller about this. And he is just one example.

      SSC is a place where people can read about and discuss a wide range of (important) topics in a way that doesn’t not always happen, say, on Facebook or in the “real world.”

      This response is as notable for what it omits as what it includes. If one shitreads it, it leaves a wide birth for savaging Scott and the community. If read generously, Metz is writing a reasonable article about a modern intellectual movement. At any rate, he sounds like an outsider making an honest effort to understand the inside view of SSC. That doesn’t preclude a hatchet job, but it’s not evidence for it, either.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        genetics

        Uh oh.

        • roflc0ptic says:

          … he says, with a performative yet artistic air.

        • Matt M says:

          Yeah, count me as someone who does not find that email at all encouraging.

          • Randy M says:

            It will be an interesting test case, in any event.

          • roflc0ptic says:

            Yes, it is an interesting test case. Part of my intent here is to pre-register Metz’s stated intent, so that beliefs can be updated accordingly.

            The other, larger intent is that people have implied that he’s acting in bad faith (e.g. in reaching out to peripheral members such as myself), and other than our priors, I don’t think we actually have evidence of that. Defaulting into fear and antagonism towards the media is bad and wrong.

            Like. SSC and the rationality sphere are a place where complex, important ideas can be considered, to the best of human ability, without letting our tribal affiliations delude us. The principles at play preclude hate-based positions (indeed, ideological positions generally) because they’re fundamentally tribal. We’re an embodiment of the principles of liberal democracy. And if there’s any way out of this current cultural moment that isn’t massively destructive, it’s going to have to include learning as a society how to have respectful disagreements.

            SSC is fucking cool. Being categorically hostile towards people who help influence what is cool is some real foot-gun kind of behavior.

            Worst case scenario here is that we all get sent to the gulags. Best case, Metz’s article starts a movement that leads to global democracy and ushers in a golden age of peace, love and bayesian understanding.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            The other, larger intent is that people have implied that he’s acting in bad faith

            I don’t think he’s operating in bad faith. My concern (low probability) is that he will publish an article about a low-profile yet disproportionately influential group of people who talk about things like “genetics,” isn’t this grand? And the mob will say, “that sounds like secret racists” and out come the torches and pitchforks.

            I think this is low probability. 5%. Probably no one will notice or care. But all things considered it would be best if SSC just kept on sailing as it has been without the NYT shining a spotlight on it saying “hey, hey, everybody, look what these people are doing!”

          • Matt M says:

            Yeah, even if he’s operating entirely in good faith, imagine an article with the following major topic sentences:

            1. SSC is a relatively anonymous community of weird people you might not know about.

            2. SSC and its community actually have a lot of influence among some pretty important people.

            3. SSC is a place where people actively debate all kinds of topics from catholic theology, to battleships, to racial IQ differences.

            Such a piece would be a disaster. Even though it would all be technically true. Lots of people would focus in on the last three words and quickly jump to “this community of racial IQ difference believers has significant influence among the rich and powerful! This is horrible! What can we do to stop it!”

          • Deiseach says:

            SSC is a place where people actively debate all kinds of topics from catholic theology, to battleships, to racial IQ differences. Such a piece would be a disaster. Even though it would all be technically true.

            Matt M., I note your concern but also have to state that this made my mind immediately jump to “the threat of Catholics with battleships!” and damn it, now I am convinced that we need to re-instate the Papal Navy. bean can consult on what we should have by way of a fleet 🙂

          • roflc0ptic says:

            +1 to all of that, esp. the papal navy. To be clear, I’m pushing back against the narrow claim of bad faith, not against potential harms. As I wrote in my email,

            it seems like even hagiography might primarily harm the community

            Lots of ways for it to inflict harms in the short and long term – thus, flagging to the potential author. If I thought I could’ve talked him out of it, I’d have tried that instead.

            It still stands that humans tend to reciprocate hostility and distrust, and journalists are humans.

          • Nick says:

            @Deiseach
            Let’s combine integralism with seasteading and have a Papal States on the Sea.

      • Paul Zrimsek says:

        Seeing someone who writes for a living stumble over affect/effect makes me feel better about my own typos.

      • Nick says:

        I’m not sure whether to be more worried or less now. I’m inclined to believe, looking over his other reporting and what he’s said here, that he will try to be fair to SSC. That’s a very good sign. I’m worried, though, that we’re apparently the primary focus of the piece, not an incidental part of a larger piece on AI or something. And as you say, such a piece could be willfully misread, something that to be honest I doubt he can do anything to prevent.

      • Deiseach says:

        SSC is a hugely influential voice, not only with the tight-knit community you are part of, but with some very influential figures in Silicon Valley and beyond

        Well, I am positively dizzy from the altitude at these rarefied heights where I am lucky to be touching the hem of greatness! Little did I know, when I was a barefoot* cáilín living on sea-air and goat’s milk while I accompanied my aunt to the pump to draw water, that one day I would be privileged to rub pixels with those who rub pixels with the influential! 😀

        Honestly, though, Scott does deserve compliments and niceness, if I could only be sure that was all that happened, I’d love to see this going ahead. But all it takes is one tomnoddy to go off about “why is this site not signal-boosting the plight of left-handed Minoan silphium growers, are they Problematic?” and there’s your storm in a teacup.

        Though heavily mentioning the EA stuff might deflect some of that by pre-empting the “yes, these people aren’t simply a bunch of robots, they do care about helping the less fortunate” queries.

        *Some rhetorical exaggeration there, I did have shoes, we just didn’t have running water or indoor plumbing at that point of my childhood.

        • original-internet-explorer says:

          Don’t feel sorry for Deiseach today – we can walk outside with mouths open as Baleen Whales do.

      • AG says:

        Adding one more vote for “this article sounds like it will raise a bunch of unwanted hostile awareness even if it is written in a benevolent way.”

      • Doctor Mist says:

        Wow, suddenly I realize he’s probably reading this whole thread. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me until now.

        • roflc0ptic says:

          I also mentioned to him that I was posting it here, so he’s got every reason to at least be aware this convo is occurring.

      • b_jonas says:

        Is this a reporter who writes for NYT and can’t spell “effect”? Or do they not need that skill because their editing process automatically fixes that mistake anyway (possibly even in a computer-automated way)?

        • CatCube says:

          I used affect/effect in a post about a week ago, and screwed it up. I had to go back about 5 minutes after posting to correct it with an edit. It might be worth assuming that the guy made an easy mistake and moving on with our lives.

          • roflc0ptic says:

            Yeah, I think even mentioning it feels petty. This is an email he wrote, in haste (the turnaround time was 20 minutes from when sent mine), in response to a potential interviewee’s concerns about the article he’s writing. I felt grateful for the prompt communication.

    • Null42 says:

      I’m a longtime lurker, so my standing isn’t all that high around here, but I’d like to add my voice to those urging extreme caution. Maybe he’s just interested in AI as lots of people have said below, but even an article that isn’t intended as a hatchet job could become catastrophic if the extreme-bad-faith wing of lefty Twitter gets a hold of it. I can totally see him writing an article on AI and then someone with 1000 followers posts “NYT reporter gives platform to alt-right white nationalist Scott Alexander.” You can imagine the rest.

      I would seriously consider reaching out to any libertarian/center-right/few-remaining-honest-liberal media figures you are friendly with as to how to handle this sort of thing–recording the interview sounds like a good countermeasure but I am sure there are countless others I or other people here have not thought of. If at all possible you need to talk to someone who has dealt with this sort of thing before.

      You’ve got a following on the non-fascist right, BTW. I know you don’t think of yourself that way, but Douthat’s cited you two or three times, and I recently read Ed West’s ‘Small Men on the Wrong Side of History’ (about why the Tories are flopping in England), and the dude cites you *seven times*.

  96. Deiseach says:

    Collaborative writing is really fun, especially when you can shove the actual writing part off on your partner and your contribution is confined to stupid jokes, extravagant plot points, and snippets of ridiculous dialogue.

    This has been a very recent but happy discovery 😀

  97. salvorhardin says:

    I just read an article on a COVID outbreak at a nearby prison. It discussed several proposed sets of prisoner releases based on different criteria, and also quoted an inmate to the effect that he was afraid for the large concentration of elderly and frail prisoners.

    Which was sort of a WTF moment for me, because I would have thought the obvious optimal COVID-emergency-prisoner release algorithm is: if you are >65 years old, and you have served either more than X years total or more than Y% of your sentence, we release you immediately, unless you have some very exceptional circumstance like you are literally Charles Manson. Isn’t this about the best cost/benefit tradeoff we can do? After all, elderly prisoners are both by far the least likely to commit violent crime if released AND by far the most likely to die if they get COVID, so this saves most of the prisoner lives you could possibly save while imposing minimal safety cost on non-prisoners.

    Right? Why haven’t we just done this nationwide and called it a day (or have we, and it hasn’t been reported)? Is there something I’m missing here?

    • Randy M says:

      Your suggestion seems most reasonable to me, possibly with an exception for people showing symptoms. Assuming we need to release anyone, and this isn’t an excuse to get policy enacted under emergency authority.

    • FLWAB says:

      Because if you do that then there’s a chance the local newspaper will say something along the lines of “psychopath who brutally murdered 6 innocent old ladies in 1962 released from jail despite his three life sentences” or “elderly pedophile released from jail after serving only two years, victims say they are ‘shocked.'”

      Meanwhile, if you don’t release them you may get a newspaper article complaining that too many of your prisoners died of COVID, but those articles are less likely to lead to protests demeaning your job.

      EDIT: I didn’t read your post carefully enough, and I now recognize you specifically said not to release those particular people. My overall point is more on the fact that the person whose job it is to decide what prisoners to release has more of an incentive not to release any than to release the wrong ones.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      There are very reasonable prison-release algorithms, but lots of places didn’t do them.

    • No One In Particular says:

      I would have thought the obvious optimal COVID-emergency-prisoner release algorithm is:

      Optimal with respect to what objective function?

      • salvorhardin says:

        Minimized overall risk to humanity. It’s not optimal if e.g. you think that even a very high level of risk to a prisoner’s life is worth it to avoid even a very small risk to public safety, but short of that is reasonably robust to variation in trade-off valuations– to put it another way, it is a keyhole solution.

  98. BPC says:

    “They point an interview he did on an alt-right podcast (he says he didn’t know it was alt-right)”

    I wonder who that was. Surely it wouldn’t be the guy whose wikipedia page said this all the way back in 2017:

    “Molyneux was a panelist at a 2014 Detroit conference held by the men’s rights movement and manosphere organization, A Voice for Men. According to Jessica Roy of Time magazine, Molyneux argued that violence in the world is the result of how women treat their children, and that “If we could just get people to be nice to their babies for five years straight, that would be it for war, drug abuse, addiction, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, … Almost all would be completely eliminated, because they all arise from dysfunctional early childhood experiences, which are all run by women.”[16]”

    I dunno, if I was looking into who I agreed to a long interview with and saw that, I might pause for a second, and also maybe consider not arguing that racism isn’t a big deal. Especially if I had said some kinda questionable stuff about women in the past. And it’s not like Molyneux wasn’t kinda known for weird neo-nazi shit before his big mask-off documentary in 2018 – there’s a reason most people’s response to him saying he had been skeptical of white nationalism in the past was, “No, you really obviously weren’t”.

    I tip my hat to your defense of yet another person involved with some incredibly weird racist and misogynistic shit. I won’t be joining you for the next one, but, y’know, good on you for maintaining your principles I guess. By the way, you picked an incredible time to defend someone who has been getting flack for about a decade for eugenics research. Really, just, couldn’t be much better timing on this.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      I’m not going to delete this comment because deleting things critical of me is a bad look, but please nobody respond in some way that starts a giant unproductive fight, because I will delete that.

    • LudwigNagasena says:

      It is common for public pundits and officals to say over the top stuff all the time; Obama once said that if women ran every country in the world there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes, and that women are better than men.

      And I often see criticism of modern and traditional parenting practices. And it is true that parenting is mostly done by women even in double income families. So this passage seems more mild than most stuff that is getting published nowadays. Especially if you take into account that most people aren’t extremly online and they don’t follow the latest news on who is racist and what is alt-right, and they don’t see everything as a dog whistle.

      • No One In Particular says:

        The quote appears to be saying “dysfunctional early childhood experiences … are all run by women”, which is quite a bit stronger than merely saying that there would be a general improvement if women ran the world. There is a huge difference between saying that one gender causes more of the problems than the other, versus, that one gender causes all of the problems.

        • LudwigNagasena says:

          And the Obama quote “appears” to be saying

          I’m absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything

          Which statement sounds more sexist everyone can decide for themself. But thinking that the gap between them is as large as being cancelled and being a president is ridiculous.

          Honestly, it just looks like you try to fill in the gaps to make your tribe look better. What is worse, you probably believe it in earnest.

          • No One In Particular says:

            I don’t see how reposting a quote you already posted, and in response to me summarizing it, is useful. Obama said men cause slightly more problems than women. Molyneux said women cause all of the problems. As much as I respect people to make their own decisions, I don’t see how there’s a serious question which one is more sexist.

            And your personal attacks and accusations of tribalism are uncivil.

          • LudwigNagasena says:

            Obama said men cause slightly more problems than women.

            This is the exact opposite of what he said. I stand by my conclusion.

          • No One In Particular says:

            So you’re claiming that Obama said that men cause slightly fewer problems than women?

          • Aapje says:

            a significant improvement across the board on just about everything

            I can’t see how you can equate this with “men cause slightly fewer problems than women.”

        • Aapje says:

          @No One In Particular

          It seems to me that Obama’s statement is unquestionably sexist, since he argues that women are inherently better than men, while Molyneux argues that women are the only ones who care for children, so their behavior is what harms children.

          Molyneux’s statement is perfectly compatible with the idea that men and women are equally shitty at parenting or that men are worse parents, but that gender roles cause only women to parent. I don’t see how a claim that one gender’s behavior has more negative impact due to opportunity, rather than innate differences, is necessarily sexist.

          You can call it sexist to make a descriptive (and not prescriptive) claim that only women do parenting, when that is not the case; or you can argue that people are allowed to make hyperbolic statements that exaggerate the differences between the genders. However, by the former standard, very, very many feminists would be guilty of sexism too…

          • No One In Particular says:

            It seems to me that Obama’s statement is unquestionably sexist, since he argues that women are inherently better than men

            We don’t have the original phrasing here to evaluate whether he was saying “inherent”. While there are definitions of “sexist” that include simlpy asserting that sex differences exists, I think that “sexist” has denotations that require more than just asserting sex differences.

            Molyneux’s statement is perfectly compatible with the idea that men and women are equally shitty at parenting or that men are worse parents, but that gender roles cause only women to parent.

            Grammatically, it’s ambiguous whether “which” refers to “dysfunctional early childhood experiences” or ” “early childhood experiences” in general. The latter is an absurd claim. Defending him by saying that he’s making the absurd claim that children have absolutely no childhood experiences with men is not much of an argument.

          • Aapje says:

            ‘Inherent’ is not the same as biological. It can also be encultured (including in a way that is permanent and/or cannot be encultured upon other people who are above a certain age or who were encultured differently).

            My claim is that Obama argued that replacing men with women would make the world better, so he thinks that women are better than men. In contrast, Molyneux’s argument is perfectly compatible with him believing that replacing women as primary carers with men, is not going to improve things or make them worse.

            Defending him by saying that he’s making the absurd claim that children have absolutely no childhood experiences with men is not much of an argument.

            I already addressed this with my comment on hyperbolic statements, which you ignored…

      • Deiseach says:

        I had no idea Obama was a fan of Margaret Thatcher! 🙂

        There’s a long, long tradition in psychiatry of “blame the mother” for every damn thing, Molyneux seems to be using a traditional choice for his hobbyhorse. All I know about him is the impression I picked up from r/Drama posts about his obsession with women’s fertility, so my uninformed view is “the guy is weird” in the same way as “UFO nut weird”.

        Does this mean that he is marked with the sign of evil and that everyone who associates with him, even to the extent of being interviewed by him, is likewise marked? Beats me, but if all I know of Steve Hsu is that “he did an interview with that guy who is weird about women’s ova” I’d be inclined to eye-roll, not break out the torches and pitchforks.

    • Ninety-Three says:

      Long before his shtick was generic alt-right stuff, Molyneux’s defining characteristic was having weird opinions about parenting and a surprisingly broad definition of abuse. This was certainly a warning sign for something, but if we’re using the description from his 2017 Wikipedia page as our standard, Molyneux comes off looking way more like a novel weirdo than a member of the alt-right, and it seems like hindsight bias to imply that he was obviously the sort of person who should be prevented from talking about race in particular (though I suppose you could argue that fringe weirdos should be prevented from talking full stop).

      • Viliam says:

        Molyneux’s defining characteristic was having weird opinions about parenting and a surprisingly broad definition of abuse

        Yep, this is how I remember him, too. This, mixed with libertarianism, something like: “if you believe it is okay to hit your child under certain circumstances, how can you consistently complain about state sending the cops to beat you when the state believes it is okay?”

  99. Telomerase says:

    I don’t have an opinion on this professor, and I’m not going to waste time learning about him.

    But I will say that maybe we should hire professors for their knowledge in their subject and not try to have them have “perfect” viewpoints in all fields. Von Braun built a decent rocket, and he was in an alt-Reich group.

    As far as genetics goes, I was using lenti vectors back in 2003, and we have AAV now… your genes are up to you. If you think you’re being discriminated against for your color, just get Sirius… Sirius N-1, to be specific.

    https://www.addgene.org/fluorescent-proteins/plasmid-backbones/

    BTW, your television nanny mistaught you… it IS easy being green.

    • Lambert says:

      How easy is it to get the GFP plasmids through the layers of deas skin cells etc?
      I know you can just take a pill to put a lactase gene with a secretion tag in your small intestines, but that sort of epithelial tissue is expressly designed to absorb stuff.

      • metacelsus says:

        Not very easy.

        But, if you made an HPV viral vector, then you might get somewhere. Fluorescent green warts for everyone!

  100. Wrong Species says:

    Scott, I know why you made this open thread visible but I would recommend hiding it soon. If SSC gets on the NYT, then a bunch of their readers are going to come here and this is the first thing they will see. You would be better off just completely nuking it, but at the very least, hide this thread by the time we get to the next open thread.

    • Anteros says:

      Seems like a good idea.

      • Tarpitz says:

        Thirded. Presumably whatever helpful extra attention was going to be called to Hsu’s situation now pretty much has been.

    • 10240 says:

      Nuking it can also be spun as a story, as it implies we have something to hide. Left-wing partisans would specifically fish it, if they can access it. It also costs sympathy from right-wingers, as it’s caving.

      • CatCube says:

        Agreed. Just make it hidden, like typical 0.25 threads.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        +1. It looks like this particular journalist doesn’t have an axe to grind, so to the extent this results in more visibility and thus the risk of some third party deciding to go after Scott or some other poster, that sort of behavior is utterly counterproductive.

    • oriscratch says:

      I say he should hide this thread and repost the My Immortal post to the front page the day the NYT article comes out. That should be enough to confuse the heck out of incoming readers from the NYT.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        Seconded.

      • Nick says:

        Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person is another good choice.

        • Aftagley says:

          I’m always shocked when people at meetups say they haven’t read this one. That’s kind of my go-to post here for explaining the site to people.

          • Nick says:

            For a few months after that post, the way to describe SSC was that it was about a psychedelic cactus person. Rather like how the way to refer to David Friedman for a while was jokes about medieval Iceland.

          • b_jonas says:

            Nick: yeah. “https://slatestarcodex.com/about/” claims that the cactus person post is “not representative”, but it totally is, as Scott posts something like that once every year.

      • Matt M says:

        Heh. I was in a COVID argument on a different forum awhile back, and I linked to one of the graphs Scott used in one of his recent COVID posts.

        The first response I got back was “You really expect me to take this chart seriously when you ripped it from some blog whose top post is about Harry Potter fanfic?”

      • Imsoindiethatmyblogdontfit says:

        Bad idea. Those posts are interesting and entertaining to a somewhat broad audience. Better to post a couple of “dense” niche psychiatry posts like the resent The Vision Of Vilazodone And Vortioxetine, or SSC Journal Club Cipriani On Antidepressants. The goal is to fill the “recent posts” tab with things that are uninteresting to the kind of people who would stir trouble.

        It would also be good to crowd out any open thread from the “recent posts”.

        If I were Scott, I would also consider having a strategic technical error in the comment function so that no-one can comment for a week or so. Or maybe turn off the spam filter so that everything gets drowned out by bots shilling Cialis.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          Would also give us all a chance to score some cheap Cialis.

          • Garrett says:

            Unless you are risk-positive and want to save pennies at the cost of lots of your time, you can already do so using a coupon from GoodRX. Per my web browser at this very instant in the US, you can get 30 tablets for $9.31 at CostCo (you can use the pharmacy even if you aren’t a member). Less than $24 at Walmart.
            So you’d have to be willing to risk your health to save at most $24. The biggest benefit you’d get is being able to skip seeing a provider to get the prescription.

        • oriscratch says:

          I agree with the psychiatry posts idea; my previous comment was mostly a joke.

          • Randy M says:

            You will note that controversial posts are usually followed by more obscure or jovial posts within the same day to deter or confuse casual browsers.

        • b_jonas says:

          I guess that’s the one advantage of WordPress. Scott can break the comment function and plausibly deny that it was deliberate.

      • AG says:

        So, we’re still missing a B, G and two Is to be able to get a Tara Gilesbie anagram out of Scott Alexander, so Scott’s first name is clearly Biggie. Dr. Biggie Scott Alexander.

    • 10240 says:

      Actually this thread would’t be the first thing they see, it would currently be Systems of Government post.

    • bean says:

      I really doubt the article is going to be published today, or even next week. Everything involved strikes me as a slow story, and not the sort of thing that they’re rushing to press. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was off the front page by the time the article is published.

  101. Dan L says:

    This is the second post in a chain.

  102. Estera clare says:

    I don’t know much about computers, but I think mine will give out soon, and the one thing that I would really like is a computer with the ability to run several applications at once with minimal lag. What enables a computer to do this? I suspect it’s RAM, but I’d like to check.

    • Statismagician says:

      That’s the one. Plus a good video card if the applications are graphically intensive.

    • GearRatio says:

      Ram is a good start and the most common bottleneck.

      The most money you’d want to spend on a processor for most things is an I5, and most people wouldn’t really notice the difference between an I3 and an I5 in a blind taste-test. The I7 is for people who want really specific niche things out of it and people with too much money.

      An SSD is a relatively cheap upgrade that makes every single thing you do better/faster; I think it’s the biggest dollar-for-dollar improvement you can make to your lifestyle if you spend a lot of time on a computer.

      If your lifestyle permits, get a tower rather than a laptop. Besides portability, laptops are more expensive while being inferior in every way.

      • ItsGiusto says:

        +1 to SSD. I pooh-poohed it before I stumbled across one, and then I was like, “why not copy my drive over onto the SSD if I happen to have acquired one?” Once I copied everything onto the SSD, it blew my mind how fast my computer was running.

      • noyann says:

        How is AMD in the same price range?

        • DarkTigger says:

          Don’t have the time to write an lenghty post about this, but I changed completely to red team this year. AMD’s Ryzen CPU are just way ahead atm.
          And also way cheaper in the consumer segment, an Core i7 costs something like 400$ while an Ryzen 7 cost 300$.

        • GearRatio says:

          I would go with anyone else’s opinion on this – I haven’t touched an AMD in at least a dozen years, so I know a minimal amount about them.

    • Iago the Yerfdog says:

      As others have commented, RAM and an SSD are the two most important components. I’d recommend 16 GB of RAM if you can afford it, but definitely no less than 8 GB.

    • No One In Particular says:

      There’s a variety of factors. If a computer runs out of RAM, it will often do virtual memory on the hard drive, which is slower than RAM, so getting more RAM will reduce that, but increasing hard drive read/write speed will also help. In some cases, getting more cores helps, in other cases more cache. If your computer is lagging, you can look at RAM, CPU, etc. usage to see if you can figure out the bottleneck.

      • Iago the Yerfdog says:

        Even with an SSD I wouldn’t recommend less than 8 GB of RAM these days. My current PC has 4 GB and an SSD (it’s a tiny Beelink that wasn’t intended to become my primary but things happen) and the lack of RAM hurts. (Granted, it also has an Atom processor, so that doesn’t help.)

    • noyann says:

      Do you want to buy a new one or replace the parts that show signs of dying?

      Is mobility a requirement? For a laptop: Will you need to lug it yourself or will it travel mostly in a vehicle? There is a tradeoff between screen estate (the usefulness of a bigger screen is often underestimated!) and weight. Generally the ergonomics of a laptop are bad, if it is to be the sole machine you should have a stand (or external screen), mouse and keyboard to prevent backaches later in life (but this depends of how intense you use the computer), a dock is convenient.

      An SSD for mass storage is of the magnitude of 100 times faster (random comparison, note the log scale) than a magnetic drive. That is also nice if you run out of RAM, but see below.

      Take a large SSD if you want all your data to load fast. If you have huge amounts of data and a desktop (or laptop with a bay for a second drive) you can decide for a smaller SSD for the fast access stuff, plus a magnetic drive for data where slow access doesn’t hurt (e.g. collections of photos, music, videos (to play only, not if you are editing)).

      RAM: 8GB will allow you to run several applications at a time, or a virtual machine with a big modern operating system, but with not too much RAM for either guest nor host machine (for occasional use that is tolerable). Go for 16GBG and, as a consumer, don’t worry again for the foreseeable future. If the system allows it (and if there are no speed penalties, IDK) keep a RAM slot free for future upgrades.

      The need for a powerful graphics card depends very much on what you do with your computer — email, web and office on the one end, high-resolution games on the other.

      Also depending on your usage it may pay over the years if you included energy consumption in the buying criteria.

    • a real dog says:

      If you don’t have an SSD buy one. Now. It’s the biggest improvement in day-to-day computer use you can have and costs under $100 for a 512GB drive. You can clone your existing HDD there, no need to reinstall anything – ask some computer savvy person how.

      Other than that, some RAM might indeed help (you can check usage via ctrl+shift+esc -> performance). CPU helps to some extent as well, especially if you’re on a cheap laptop.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        An SSD is less important if you keep the same programs open all the time and rarely reboot.

        I find the most important thing personally is Firefox’s “about:memory” which allows the user to minimize memory usage (important for website that leak memory).

        Upgrading from 8GB to 16GB of RAM really helped though. I have much more headroom before having to clear up memory by closing closing Chromium or Firefox.

    • Estera clare says:

      Thanks for all the responses!
      I have a laptop and move around a lot, so a tower isn’t in the cards, but I’ll look for one with 16gb of RAM. (I checked and my current one has 4. And it’s five years old, poor thing.) I’ll look into an SSD if I have problems but I don’t think I’ll need one, since even now the lagging is fairly minor. (As for ergonomics—I do have a wireless keyboard and mouse. The issue is remembering to use them.)

      • MilesM says:

        SSDs are a pretty common thing these days so unless you buy a custom-built laptop, one that has 16GB of RAM will almost certainly have an SSD.

        But you really should get an SSD anyway. 🙂

        It makes a huge difference to how fast stuff loads – but more importantly, especially for a laptop, to how quickly the computer starts up, shuts down and “wakes up” from sleep mode.

        My laptop died, I got a marginally newer version (but with an SSD) and my startup/shutdown times decreased by a factor of 3-5.

        • acymetric says:

          My ~$300 SSD laptop boots almost instantly. It is crazy what a difference it makes for startup time (I also make sure to have barely anything run on startup which helps).

          • Matt M says:

            Yeah, an SSD big enough to store all of your system and common application files is no longer a luxury, it’s a must-have.

            You don’t necessarily need a huge one to store huge games or video files or anything like that.

    • Gray Ice says:

      With all the comments about the value of a SSD:
      Does anyone have a strong preference or recommendation for a brand or specific model of SSD?

      My application would be buying a new SSD to use as the primary drive while I use the old HDD as a backup.

      • AG says:

        Not an answer, sorry, but a different question: I’ve heard that SSDs don’t last as long as HDDs, and degrade in ways harder to recover data. Is this true, or are the recommendations assuming that people will continue to upgrade every few years? 5 years still feels short to me.

        • matkoniecz says:

          degrade in ways harder to recover data

          Why it is relevant at all? You should have backups, rather than hope to recover ruined disk. It is both much more expensive and much more risky to recover data from failed disks.

          I’ve heard that SSDs don’t last as long as HDDs

          I heard that degradation time is similar – but HDD usually fails catastrophically, with little to no warning while SSD degradation can be measured.

        • Kir says:

          Regarding HDDs vs SSDs… you are really looking at two different failure modes.

          HDDs almost always fail due to mechanical damage to one of the read/write heads. Occasionally you can see serious surface damage that somehow got through QC and is slowly “eating” the drive, but that’s relatively rare. If you didn’t get spectacularly unlucky on your HDD platters, and don’t periodically thwack the side of your computer with a mallet, a HDD should last longer than the capacity will be useful. The downside is that if you do suffer a head failure, it’s usually immediately catastrophic, as most HDDs will simply stop functioning if they lose a head for a platter containing data needed for running the drive internally. (replace any drive sounding the “click of death” immediately)

          Unlike HDD’s magnetic media, the flash in SSDs inherently degrades as you write to it. The internal controller will have some mechanism to “spread the writes around”, to maximize the useful life of the drive, but all SSDs come out of the factory with a more or less fixed lifespan (measured in “writes”). Some vendors are more honest than others in their marketing information, but the warranty can be used as a reasonable proxy for the “overprovisioning” level. This extra flash, usually between 10% and 100% extra, beyond the published capacity extends the life of the drive.

          In both cases, I’m only talking about major brands. Although there are no “small” HDD companies left, there are some extremely shady SSD brands out there.

          • AG says:

            So, basically, the moment I upgrade to SSD, I consign myself to upgrading on a schedule, not allowed to stubbornly hold out?
            Sounds like having at least one HDD in a tower is viable, while SSD is the way to go for a portable.

          • noyann says:

            @AG
            Get the manufacturer specs and independent stress tests of the SSDs you consider and compare their MTBF to the amount of data you write on average per day. Current SSDs are likely to last longer than you will keep your computer.

          • matkoniecz says:

            @AG

            So, basically, the moment I upgrade to SSD, I consign myself to upgrading on a schedule, not allowed to stubbornly hold out?

            Not a significant change compared to HDD. Good SSD will last as long as good HDD (but will be both more expensive and smaller, or vastly more expensive).

            See MTBF and other relevant stats, HDD are quite fragile and the most likely point of failure anyway.

      • Thomas Jorgensen says:

        Samsung is the market dominant player for a reason.

  103. Sikandar says:

    I am a long time lurker. I decided to make an account and comment in an open thread before the NYT eternal September. I’ve been reading the blog for ~ 3 years. The first post I ever read was the graduation speech. I’m not sure I will have much to offer to the community but hopefully, my meager knowledge will allow me to contribute.

    • Hermes Cthonius says:

      Same here. My general policy with online spaces has been to lurk, but I figure I might want to start changing that soon. I’ve been aware of this blog for about 5 or 6 years and hope to do what I can to help it (and the adjacent community) weather the storm that’s apparently coming, since Scott’s writings have greatly aided my intellectual development over the years.

      Plus, y’know, cactus people and universal love and all that jazz.

    • No One In Particular says:

      What’s the NYT Eternal September?

      • Iago the Yerfdog says:

        “Eternal September” refers to a sudden influx of new users into a community, overwhelming it and, since there’s no way to properly initiate them all, replacing the existing culture with their own.

        • Clutzy says:

          This is unlikely unless Scott himself allows it, because as many of our left wing commentators have pointed out, lefties that read the blog don’t engage with the comments nearly as much as they read Scotts OP.

          In other words, the NYT migrants will be easily turned away by our noncompliance with “the narrative” unless Scott is adequately bullied.

        • 10240 says:

          Pedantry: That’s a regular September. Eternal September is when new users keep coming indefinitely. That won’t happen unless the NYT puts a permanent link to SSC on their front page.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            Scot should disable new user registration for a day when the article comes out. “Want to join? Great, please come back tomorrow.”

          • Anteros says:

            Or ‘SSC appears to be full at the moment. Some vacancies may become available next month. Thank you for your patience’

          • No One In Particular says:

            It would be Eternal September except that “sudden” implies acute rather than chronic.

        • No One In Particular says:

          I didn’t ask what an Eternal September is. That is information quite easily obtained from Google.

      • bullseye says:

        Sikandar apparently believes the NYT article will flood the blog with new commenters, lowering the quality of the discourse.

        Wikipedia article on “Eternal September”

        *edit* Ninjaed! And Iago phrased it better.

        • Pepe says:

          What’s the NYT article?

          EDIT: Nevermind, just saw the thread.

          • albatross11 says:

            “The internet is full! Go away!”

          • souleater says:

            A NYTs (New York Times, A major US newspaper in case you’re non-American) reporter is planning to write an article involving SSC, causing a great deal of distress among the commentators here.

          • keaswaran says:

            What thread did you see? I haven’t seen anything yet, just people making oblique references to “the NYT article”.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            Search ” NYT ” on this page. Bean started the conversation here.

        • Deiseach says:

          Sikandar apparently believes the NYT article will flood the blog with new commenters, lowering the quality of the discourse.

          I know! We probably won’t be able to have pleasant discussions about “can you licitly and validly baptise dog-headed people?” if that happens! 😁

      • zero says:

        The idea is when an article about this place is published in the NYT, this place will be flooded with new commenters.

  104. Iago the Yerfdog says:

    Economics question: What would be the likely results of replacing government assistance programs with “matching-funds”-style subsidies for private charities?

    What I have in mind is either that the charities report their revenues and receive matching funds from the government, or alternatively the government issues a tax credit to anyone who contributes to such a charity for 50% of the value of their contributions (thus the contributor and the government each pay half of the total contribution).

    It seems like this should be a significantly more efficient system, but likely to have some unfortunate side-effects; among others, the first alternative seems like it would provide an incentive for the charities to misreport their revenues, and the latter option seems like it would be confusing enough for most people that it might backfire.

    • voso says:

      What’s to stop rich people from establishing a “charity”, donating to their own charity (or otherwise donating to their rich friends’ charities in a scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine thing), having their charity hire themselves as a consultant or something, and paying themselves back the money?

      (Not that these kinds of things don’t happen in the current system, but this would push these abuses even further, no?)

      • Iago the Yerfdog says:

        That’s a fair point, and the sort of obvious-to-someone-else issues I’m fishing for.

      • 10240 says:

        1. No donation under this system can amount to more than 1% of the income of a charity.
        2. Those who donate don’t get a receipt that would allow them to prove that they have donated. Donations must be made in the fashion of a secret ballot, and are not allowed to be recorded.

        You would need 100+ people to set up a charity that donates to themselves. But none of them individually have an incentive to donate: they can claim that they’ve donated, and receive funds, even if they haven’t. The scheme could protect against this by instructing all 100 members to donate (say) $1000, and only paying out if it receives $100,000. But if even one out of the 100 people opposes this scheme on principle, they can defeat it by failing to donate; hence the 1% requirement. Adjust the threshold if required.

        • b_jonas says:

          That’s not enough. There have been sham charities that convinced thousands of people to donate thinking that it’s a real charity. Someone who wants to make a charity to donate to themselves will have a suitable cover story, with advertisments showing either cute children or cute animals who’ll benefit from the charity.

    • ECD says:

      Infinite funds for the local opera house, no funds for the local homeless shelter.

      • matkoniecz says:

        If you go further: funds for renovations of houses of poor millionairesses (hide it as “city beautification fund” or something), 0 for actually poor people.

      • Iago the Yerfdog says:

        True, although that seems fairly easily-addressed: the funds only go toward certain types of charities.

        • ECD says:

          I’m sorry, haven’t you just recreated federal funding then, only at half the needed level?

    • SamChevre says:

      Prior to tax reform, the tax deduction for charitable contributions had this effect to some degree. (It still does for people with very high incomes.)

      Trying to replace government programs with subsidized private charity would have a mixture of effects–among them:
      1) Much more variance in what people in need get depending on who and how they seek help–the more aggressive and con artists would be advantaged, and random chance would play a larger role
      2) Spending would be even less directed to need–charities includes everything from Harvard through the Symphony and churches all the way to homeless shelters
      3) Probably less stabilizing effect than the current entitlement system–the fact that people who lose their jobs are automatically eligible for benefits and the capacity to pay those benefits doesn’t run out avoids some of the vicious circle effects that historically plagued the economy

    • No One In Particular says:

      What counts as a charity? Anything that qualifies as a “nonprofit”? Could Westboro Baptist Church qualify?

  105. No One In Particular says:

    It’s not a hoax, exactly. Just imprecision, jumping to conclusions, and blaming others for one’s own oversensitivity: the word “noose” properly refers to a loop of rope that can be tightened around a neck, but has expanded to mean any loop of rope, and correcting people on this matter tends to garner accusations along the lines of being a concern troll. Add in the affirming the consequent of “people who want to communicate racist threats sometimes hang loops of rope, someone hanged loops of ropes, therefore someone is communicating racist threats”, and there’s a kerfuffle.

  106. ECD says:

    And “all” cardiologists are murderous child molesters.

    Less of this please.

    • Clutzy says:

      Disagree. This is a problematic media obsession that needs fisking by someone here. Someone hopefully of greater skill than me at database and keyword searches. Because the “great white defendant” and “hate crime hoax” problem is real, and needs full vetting. Or am I imagining that Nick Sandman got CNN to settle a lawsuit, and Lebron James’ fence vandalizer were never caught?

      • ECD says:

        Gee, I’m not sure. Are the 11 people murdered in the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting still dead? What about the nine who died in the Charleston Church shooting?

        Your argument (which I disagree with) does not support the statement:

        All “hate crimes” are hoaxes

        which is what I am objecting to and will continue to do so.

  107. BBA says:

    Between the man who put up the ropes as exercise equipment being Black and the mayor who literally said “intentions don’t matter” being white, this whole story is a bit too on-the-nose. If it had been a fictional story meant to satirize our current discourse, any half-decent editor would’ve asked the author to tone it down a bit.

  108. ECD says:

    I can’t quite find it, but there’s something interesting to say about the contrast between the general SSC commentators view of how reasonable the NYT employees were who were upset about what was published by their employer and its potential impacts on their lives and the moderately hysterical reaction to the notion of the NYT publishing something which might effect SSC.

    • cassander says:

      As someone who tries to operate on the assumption that almost all news is less important than people think it is, I got to feel smug about both reactions!

    • Trofim_Lysenko says:

      Not really, just different priors and subsequent analysis. “Cancellation is low risk, doesn’t really hurt the targets, etc” is an argument that has been made most times someone here has said something like “of course I’m not using my real name here, are you crazy?”. I don’t think they’ve been convincing to anyone who didn’t already think the phenomenon is either a minor trend or an active force for justice.

      If you’d like to reprise those arguments, they’re what you appear to be trying to find.

    • Aapje says:

      @ECD

      That is not at all comparable.

      One reason why people are worried is that the media have a reputation of depicting groups that most people don’t know in a very unfair way, especially when that group is considered the outgroup.

      Another reason is simply that a niche site can be overrun with/destroyed by people with a different culture.

      Both are completely different to being upset that an opinion that is shared by about half the population is published. If the NYT had published a hit job on someone, NYT employees had revolted and many SSC commenters had sided with the NYT and against the employees, you would have a point. However, that is not actually what happened.

    • Deiseach says:

      how reasonable the NYT employees were who were upset about what was published by their employer and its potential impacts on their lives

      When you can find someplace any of us said “By participating in this interview we will be in fear of our lives about being shot by the cops/white supremacists when it is published”, then the comparison will be valid.

      Mostly we’re cautious that “this will make us out to be a bunch of weirdoes (true), but weirdoes in a bad way, a ‘let all us normal people laugh at the geeks and freaks’ way, even a ‘weirdoes who are tolerant of or even sympathetic towards Badthink’ and that’s something some of us are concerned about because we’re in jobs/environments where accusations of Badthink by a reputable (ahem) source will get us into trouble”.

      Myself, I don’t give a damn, but I also don’t think you should volunteer to stick your head into the noose someone is helpfully dangling before you. David Friedman has given me some reassurance on this, that the reporter in question is not out to do a hit-piece, but I am still wary of this in general (in 1995 a particular local story went viral nationally, and hordes of reporters from the capital and even a news crew from our neighbouring island descended on our town, and some of ’em were definitely searching for a ‘shock!horror!’ angle to fit the story they had already written in their minds. Another local story went even bigger and crazier in 1999, I don’t know what it was about the 90s and my home town).

      • AG says:

        I mean, you do have people here saying they’re so afraid of getting violently canceled that they want to move out of the US/start an Underground Railroad couch surfing network or something, and that’s even without NYT publicity, so.

        • Randy M says:

          Was there more than one?

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          And I believe the universal response was, “maybe you should talk to a therapist..?”

        • matkoniecz says:

          Why you use plural form?

        • AG says:

          The couch surfing thing was specific to one person, but there have been other people who expressed fear about more violent things than cancellation, such as getting SWATted, or in the Nazi-Punching discussion days.

          Part of the reason that many reacted to the recent case with skepticism is because the feared Nazi-Punch-Fest did not come to pass.

          Some of the people who expressed those fears don’t comment anymore.

          • Randy M says:

            There is an order of magnitude difference in “Need to flee the country” and “might get punched occasionally with twitter cheering it on”. I think the latter was a not absurd suspicion in response to some actual events and a lot of sloppy rhetoric that fortunately never came to pass. The former is a paranoid extrapolation of the latter.

            Not accounting for the difference will probably give you a skewed perception of the level of paranoia, like looking at the number of arrests and assuming they are all murderers will make a city seem much more dangerous.

          • Christophe Biocca says:

            such as getting SWATted

            IIRC the person in question said they actually got SWATted (thankfully a failed attempt, the police sent one regular patrol car and the cop was aware it might not be a real situation). The big question mark was whether the targeting had been completely random or due to something they’d said on SSC.

          • Evan Þ says:

            @Christophe Biocca, thanks for the details – until you gave the details, I thought people were talking about the time someone sent the police to do an unwanted mental health check on a poster who had been sounding more depressed than his normal. Said poster posted that he was extremely upset about this, and then never posted again.

    • zoozoc says:

      Can you explain how the two situations are comparable or similar? I don’t see how the situations are comparable at all. The NYT is suppose to publish opinions for wide circulation. This blog, while technically available to anyone just due to how the internet works, is not “distributed” except by word of mouth or links from other places. This blog is not publishing something that Scott or the commentators find objectionable, but an outside place is investigating and going to write about the blog. So to me the most comparable situation would be another media outlet investigating NYT’s journalists’ personal lives and writing an article on that. And that situation ignores the power discrepancy angle between the NYT and this blog. So maybe if all other media outlets in the USA all published articles about any employees (not just journalists, maybe the janitor gets targeted) at the NYT’s personal lives? That seems most comparable to me.

      • ECD says:

        I’m not sure they are, but at a certain level of abstraction, the majority (by my recollection) opinion locally was that the NYT employees and others who objected to Senator Cotton’s piece were massively over-reacting, because after all the opinion piece didn’t actually put anyone in danger and wasn’t really that bad, anyway. Certainly not as bad as his call for the US military to commit war crimes against US citizens.

        Now, the general theory seems to be that any piece in the Times has the potential to do irreparable damage to SSC.

        • albatross11 says:

          ECD:

          Well, personally, I think the United States, with its first amendment, constitution, independent courts, federalism, heavily armed population, etc., is quite robust to the harms of allowing fools to write op-eds proposing to do evil things. So when people offered the justification for pushing the editor out over allowing the op-ed that reporters and newsroom employees believed their lives to be endangered by allowing it to be published, I thought that was bullshit. Among other things, it seems almost certain that an editorial or op-ed criticizing the NYPD is probably several orders of magnitude greater actual risk of getting reporters killed. Or an editorial criticizing the Saudi or Chinese or Russian government, which plausibly could get their local reporters in those places hassled or killed. I do not believe that those editorials or op-eds would, in fact, be opposed by an uprising in the newsroom and lead to the editor being forced to resign.

          By contrast, SSC is a blog run as a hobby by a California psychiatrist. It is not all that hard to imagine ways that a hostile NYT piece could make our host’s life difficult enough that he just decided to abandon SSC and go back to the actual career he spent a decade or so being trained to do, and the community of rationalists he already lives in. This does not require a senator and a president to overcome all the laws, customs, and formal and informal mechanisms that keep them from deploying the military to bust heads and terrorize protesters and journalists, a few months before an election.

          • ECD says:

            Yeah, I see that argument, but at the same time, you’re also comparing the risk of death to the risk of a blog shutting down.

          • albatross11 says:

            ECD:

            I think I’m allowed to care about both life-and-death issues and smaller issues where someone destroys beautiful or useful things out of malice or inattention. And it’s reasonable to assess the probability both of someone getting killed and also of someone wrecking a nice community.

          • Matt M says:

            Give me CW-allowed hidden open threads or give me death!!!

          • ECD says:

            @albatross11

            Since, for once in my life, I actually agree with Cassander and think that both sets of worries are massively overblown, I may be doing the math wrong, but to me the risk looks very low of either.

            However, I do recognize that this is clearly honestly stressing a lot of folks out and it is unkind to make fun of that. I sort of wish that same courtesy would be extended to others who are stressed out on other points.

          • sourcreamus says:

            Given that Scott has already made significant changes to his blog in response to criticism, and the chance of a Times’ employee being killed as a result of Cotton’s op ed is about the same as being struck by lightning with a winning lottery ticket in your pocket. One fear seems more rational than the other.

  109. Ketil says:

    Am I the only person who think it doesn’t matter? What it boils down to is whether MSU is going to cave to Twitter outrage mobs, that is, are they concerned enough about their public image being smeared by allegations of ‘racism’ and the like, and the risk of becoming a high-visibility target in the Culture Wars to fire an employee (and possibly settle with him for some undisclosed amount later).

    Nobody is going to care much about the facts in the matter, SJWs will find (rather, they already have found) enough dog whistle material to convince themselves and a sufficient number of sympathizers of the righteousness of their case regardless. The storm is happening, and the downside of unjust termination is probably much less than the downside of weathering it. Even if a significant number of signatories support Hsu, they aren’t likely to cause the same magnitude of trouble.

    • 10240 says:

      I doubt anything significant would happen to the university if they completely ignored the demands, including any criticism for ignoring them. The question is how much inconvenience would happen to the persons who make the decision to ignore them.

      • Matt M says:

        I can think of a couple examples where a university was in the news for CW reasons like this, and suffered significant enrollment declines in the years following (Evergreen and Missouri, specifically).

        But the causality was never really clear, so both sides claim it vindicates their own POV. The left says “enrollment is down because we exposed this place as a racist institution” and the right says “enrollment is down because the school caved to an outrage mob and exposed itself as a progressive tyranny” and nobody can really prove which is correct.

        • albatross11 says:

          I think for both Evergreen and Mizzou, there was a massive visible education-disrupting chaotic mess going on, and that made a lot of parents and prospective students decide to choose another option that looked to have more {actual education, hot girls ready to experiment with their newfound freedom} rather than stern indoctrination and mob violence.

        • Matt M says:

          Right, but what was the cause of the chaos? Was it “too much racism” or was it “university enabling/caving to outrage mob”?

          It’s a classic dilemma. Like, why are cities on fire today? Is it because of police brutality, or because the government refuses to crack down on rioters? Your answer depends entirely upon your tribal affiliation and there is no “evidence” that can prove or disprove either position.

        • Deiseach says:

          Whatever about Missouri, I think the Evergreen student protesters/activists ended up looking so batshit insane, any parent looking at the stories would immediately go “I don’t care where you go but not there“.

        • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

          Which cities are on fire today?

        • Ninety-Three says:

          But the causality was never really clear, so both sides claim it vindicates their own POV. The left says “enrollment is down because we exposed this place as a racist institution” and the right says “enrollment is down because the school caved to an outrage mob and exposed itself as a progressive tyranny” and nobody can really prove which is correct.

          One could if one did a little polling. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out the enrollment demographics from 4 years ago, and see whether the drop represents the absence of people most concerned about racism, or most concerned about progressive tyranny.

        • Doctor Mist says:

          One could if one did a little polling.

          It is an unfortunate property of the zeitgeist that neither side is interested in the question. Any likely answer can serve only to undermine the current talking points.

        • Ninety-Three says:

          It is an unfortunate property of the zeitgeist that neither side is interested in the question. Any likely answer can serve only to undermine the current talking points.

          Well no, it’s not implausible that one side finds evidence which supports their narrative. The real problem is that such evidence isn’t valuable to them, because most people already signed on to the narrative without needing any evidence.

  110. [Thing] says:

    On the subject of academics being canceled, apparently it’s now Robin Hanson’s turn in the woodshed:

    A message from George Mason University leadership
    June 17, 2020
    We have learned that George Mason University Professor, Robin Hanson, posted a tweet that is highly objectionable.
    As leaders of George Mason University, we express our profound reaction of repugnance about this posting. The posting by Professor Hanson is offensive. It does not represent the views of our university and is inconsistent with our values. His words are hurtful.
    The tweet is under review.
    Anne Holton, Interim President
    Mark R. Ginsberg, Interim Provost and Executive Vice President
    Ann Ardis, Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
    Daniel Houser, Chair, Department of Economics

    I was able to find the Google cache of what I assume was the offending tweet, which has since been deleted, and yeah, I can understand why people would interpret it as barely concealed dog-whistle racism. Although from what I know of Hanson it still seems much more likely to me that he was just being oblivious, rather than trying to insult anyone. No idea how it will play out. He’s survived previous kerfuffles over his tweets, but that looks like a pretty strong condemnation from the GMU administration.

    • AlesZiegler says:

      I wonder what it will take for intelligent people to learn that they should not use twitter unless forced at gunpoint.

      • Well... says:

        +1

        The best is seeing intelligent people use “on Twitter” as shorthand for “cesspool of dumbfuckery” and then turn around and use Twitter.

    • a real dog says:

      Speaking of which… how is Nassim Taleb not canceled yet, and comparatively chill Robin Hanson or Steve Hsu are under attack?

      Is it just that once you have enough independent income streams your default response is “lol, f- you” as suggested downthread, and everyone knows that and doesn’t bother?

      • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

        What’s he done that’s cancellable? I thought he was known for obnoxiously arguing that IQ don’t real.

      • albatross11 says:

        Taleb is independently wealthy, so cancelling him would mean what? Calling him bad names?

        • Paul Zrimsek says:

          Taleb presumably likes having his books published by Random House. For the time being.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            People who can do powerful things in the future are cancel-proof.

            I’m sure lots of people want to cancel JK Rowling right now, but as long as her books fly off the shelves, her publisher is sticking with her, merely issuing statements like “we don’t necessarily support everything said by people we publish, but we believe in vigorous debate of ideas.” The kind of statement that should be universal.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            Rowling’s a good counterexample, sure, but she may be sui generis. If I were in Taleb’s shoes I wouldn’t care to bet that I’m in the same class. On the other hand, by all accounts Taleb is not acting like someone who’s afraid to take the bet, so who knows?

          • Nick says:

            If you ask me, we’re still testing the theory that rich people are immune. Last year, when Rowling first started saying these things and getting dragged for it, it was an open question whether she would cave. I mean, don’t forget we were all confident that Chik-fil-A had no reason whatsoever to cave right up until it did. One point that came up in both cases is that it’s hard to maintain your views when your whole elite circle is against you.

          • Matt M says:

            Rowling is also a bad example because she’s really not defecting on the left entirely. She’s just choosing a different winner of the oppression olympics than the majority of her peers would.

            As far as I understand it, her argument is an appeal to women as a disadvantaged group. I don’t know if she’s full TERF or not, but that seems like a comparable analogy, and I’ve seen too many libertarians/rightists try and claim TERFs as their allies only to see it backfire spectacularly.

          • albatross11 says:

            Again, though, what’s the threat. “Cancel” NNT by refusing to publish his books, and:

            a. He will roast you mercilessly in public, as will his fans.

            b. He will find another publisher or will self-publish.

            c. None of this will affect his actual ability to live his life as he sees fit.

            So the threat boils down to some people on Twitter calling him mean names. But since NNT is a monumental confrontational asshole on Twitter already, he’s already got people on Twitter calling him mean names.

            Further, if you “cancel” him by getting mainstream media outlets to never talk to him, he can just go on podcasts and get his ideas out.

            It would be a better world if almost everyone were similarly cancel-proof.

          • b. He will find another publisher or will self-publish.

            This is an important way in which things have improved in the past decade or two. Self-publishing is easy, faster than commercial publishing, gives you control over pricing, and, if you set anything close to commercial prices, pays substantially higher royalties.

            The only downside is that you don’t have a publisher to vouch for your quality and, possibly, do some publicity. That matters for a new author, but it doesn’t matter for someone like Taleb, who is already established. As long as Amazon is willing to carry his books, he’s fine.

            For my most recent non-fiction book (Legal Systems Very Different from Ours) I applied to a few of the top academic publishers, and when none of them was interested self-published. Twenty years ago I would have spent a long time trying to find some reputable publisher who was interested.

            For my latest novel, I didn’t even bother looking, just self-published.

      • Matt M says:

        Is it just that once you have enough independent income streams your default response is “lol, f- you” as suggested downthread, and everyone knows that and doesn’t bother?

        I think there are three factors: Money, personality, and practice. You covered the money. Personality and practice can maybe be lumped in together as they correlate highly. I don’t follow NNT closely but I’ve read enough of his tweets to confidently declare that he’s a guy who has an “abrasive personality.”

        And people like that spend almost their entire lives getting into shouting (or worse) matches with their opponents. As such, they have a lot of practice dealing with this sort of thing. NNT has been fending off people on the internet calling him mean names for over a decade in a way that nicer, more modest people like Hsu almost certainly have not.

        To use an analogy of a physical fight, NNT has been training in an MMA gym for years, steadily facing progressively more difficult opponents. If he finds himself in a fight against a top fighter, he might not win, but he does know how to handle himself. Hsu and many other victims of cancellation are normal people who have never been in a fight in their lives, suddenly dropped in a ring with Mike Tyson. They aren’t prepared for this sort of conflict, and they have no chance other than to beg and plead for mercy.

        That’s not to say that nobody will ever try to cancel NNT, but he’s a “hard target” that isn’t going down without a fight…

        • albatross11 says:

          Ironically, I believe Hsu is fairly seriously into BJJ, so canceling him via Twitter mob is probably safer than trying to beat him up.

      • toastengineer says:

        It’s seemed to me recently that cancellation is sort of an opt-in thing. Academia is sort of the exception, since so many people pressed the opt-in button decades ago and it wasn’t the opt-in button until recently, but in general the rule still applies.

        I know plenty of mid-size online figures who say stuff and hang out with people that would get them “cancelled” all the time, but they just never courted that kind of audience in the first place. Cancelly-types just bounce off instead of getting inside and burning things down. One of them even has an audience consisting of a lot of people you would think would be cancelly-types, they like to put up pink-and-white flags everywhere, but they just… don’t.

      • Radu Floricica says:

        Fuck you money is the first reason. Experience in using said money to actually say “fuck you” whenever he feels it’s appropriate is another.

        People already like him, respect him and buy his books. Most of them wouldn’t really buy into canceling. So… what exactly could you do to him? Convince some university to not ask him to give a speech? I don’t think he’s much into giving speeches anyways.

      • Nick says:

        I just want to note that the description “brawny, bold, and obstreperous” is apt and hilarious.

      • Spot says:

        I think this is mostly right, although I’d expand the radioactive zone to race issues in general, at least in US discourse. (Which is rapidly being exported to Europe.) You can challenge feminist/MeToo talking points much more openly without endangering your job or livelihood, even if you might become unpopular in certain circles. Indeed, it’s still possible to be (a little bit of) a public misogynist without necessarily being totally shut out of mainstream society. Likewise with LGBT issues, though I admit the discourse around trans politics is getting worryingly hysterical. Still, we’ll see if that lasts.

        Basically, WEB DuBois continues to be correct – racial issues are America’s collective berserk button.

    • samboy says:

      I presume we are talking about this tweet, which I did not consider offensive in the least. But, apparently, it is—but Robin Hanson would not be the first person who thought eating friend chicken to respect and honor black people was perfectly innocent.

      • A Definite Beta Guy says:

        Something can be innocent and offensive. I would be pretty peeved if I felt the dominant culture spent the last several centuries oppressing me and then caricaturized my culture.

        Yeah, I know everyone does it on St. Patrick’s Day, but no one feels that Black and Irish have the same history in the US.

        OTOH, I don’t know how to tell if you solved racism if you do not effectively commercialize and caricaturize an ethnic-based holiday, because that’s basically what America does to all of its holidays eventually.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          Specifically with respect to Black Americans, the historically ate chicken, watermelon, chitterlings, etc… because that’s all they could afford or all that was offered to them.

          • SamChevre says:

            No No No.

            Watermelon and chitterlings, yes–but chicken was a huge luxury: it is the most luxurious meat until after World War 2.

            African-Americans eating chicken in the late 1800’s is the same class of showy consumption that drinking Cristal and Hennessey is today.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            +1 to Sam. “The blacks are going to eat fried chicken” was fear of them getting uppity and eating luxury foods. “Birth of a Nation” used it as a fear symbol.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            And Thomas Carlyle used “The soil is so rich, Caribbean blacks can just eat cheap pumpkins!” as a fear symbol (Occasional Discourse).
            Racist speech could get weird.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Now I know. 🙂

      • Radu Floricica says:

        From waay outside this particular CW, this is incredibly funny. The kind of laughter that keeps bubbling from inside. What do you eat on Juneteenth?

        • Matt M says:

          I mean, you can’t eat anything “too black” because that’s stereotypical and offensive.

          And I suppose you can’t eat anything “too white” because then you wouldn’t really be in the spirit of the holiday.

          Perhaps Trump had the right idea, just the wrong timing…

        • Randy M says:

          Probably whichever corporate chain has the biggest ad supporting it.

        • gbdub says:

          If you’re not black, your best bet is to not make a big deal of your food choices for Juneteenth.

          From the outside view I can see why this is a particularly silly CW issue. Pretty much everybody agrees that “Afro American Cuisine” is a thing, pretty much everybody agrees on what it includes, most black people genuinely seem to enjoy it and / or have it in their family food culture, etc. Heck, Popeye’s fried chicken (and many other purveyors of black/southern/“soul” cuisine) not-so-subtly advertises itself as “black food” and no one gives a damn, because who really wants to be mad at tasty fried chicken? Objectively associating such foods with African Americans ought to be no more inherently offensive than associating Mexicans with tortillas, Italians with pasta, Jewish New Yorkers with pastrami and bagels, or the Irish with corned beef (this last one is not only stereotypical but inaccurate!). But rightly or wrongly, it’s a third rail and all but the most socially inept or actually racist know better than to touch it.

          As a whitey, if you feel you must make some sort of pro-Juneteenth statement in social media involving food, your best bet is find a black-owned BBQ or “soul food” joint and eat fried chicken to your heart’s content, just frame it as “supporting a local black-owned business”. As a bonus the food will probably be really good. (This is not snark – seriously this is the only way I can think of to walk the tightrope)

          • AG says:

            I think that it’s more that the people who made Juneteenth a thing have not conceded it to the usual pantheon of holidays.

            Chinese immigrants signed off on celebrating Chinese New Years’ in such a way. Mexican immigrants don’t use Cinco de Mayo to insult the French. And veterans and armed service members are fine with Meorial Day barbecues.

            Black people somewhat signed off on MLK Jr. Day becoming a “regular” holiday like the others, but not yet Juneteenth. And MLK Day was signed off not as a culturally black holiday, but a more universal American one, so eating soul food on MLK Day is also not an obvious practice.

            Very much agree with your third paragraph.

          • zzzzort says:

            The true singularity will come when a group’s holiday goes from obscurity to mattress store sales with nothing in the middle.

          • Matt M says:

            I can’t wait to get a good deal on a used car next year during Crazy Eddie’s Juneteeth Sales Blowout Extravaganza!

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @Matt M: How racist of him to choose Juneteenth for focusing on clearing out cars that blowout. 🙁

          • albatross11 says:

            To be fair, he’s just trying to end the Cycles.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            But doesn’t any typical car have 4-8 cylinders each on a different Turchin cycle?

        • Plumber says:

          Tty@Radu Floricica says:

          “…What do you eat on Juneteenth?”

          Same as on the 4th of July: banh mi and gyros. 

          I’m only partially kidding, for 17 years I lived a half mile up the street from the intersection on the Berkeley and Oakland, California border that was closed for a Juneteenth celebration each year and it was pretty much the same volunteer musicians, taco trucks, and trinket (“crafts”) sellers as for the 4th of July celebration. Not full St. “Paddy’s” Day (except as a substitute Labor day) irreverence, or full on San Francisco Chinese New Year’s big dealness, but more like Cinco de Mayo (or Columbus Day used to be for Italians until the ’90’s).

          This year though the official celebration is cancelled because of Covid-19, and unofficial demonstrations are planned to make it a big deal.

          Otherwise @gbdub advice is good.

          On “Popeye’s”: northern “Soul food” and the food long eaten by also by southern whites seems indistinguishable (and tasty!) to me (but old “blues’ and “country” songs sound a lot similar to me as well), and a year or three ago it even got into a New York Times (“the newspaper or record”) piece that many black Americans regarded Popeye’s as “more like grandma’s” than Wendy’s or KFC (FWLIW I like Church’s best myself), in some linked Facebook or Twitter thread someone pointed out that Popeye’s was founded by a white man and then a bunch of black commenters said “Yeah but he was from Louisiana so it still counts!”, and on that note from all the way in your continent I imagine it would be easiest to put on some Jazz and get something American-ish from McDonald’s and is probably as close as you need to go (same rules as chicken apply over here though, McDonald’s markets to black Americans a lot, at least in my area, but calling it distinctly black would be a no go, Jazz though went from being considered “low culture” to “high culture” a little bit before the ’70’s so even though it has lots of white performers calling it “distinctly black” probably wouldn’t be considered insulting, though not sure where the line is between “appreciate” and “appropriate” is supposed to be now, testy times).

        • b_jonas says:

          Eat fish and chocolate cake, they work well as a safe default food for any holiday.

    • Ninety-Three says:

      My reaction upon reading the announcement was “Just a tweet”? Hanson steps on way too many landmines for his “I’m just a poor autistic nerd” defense to be plausible, the rate at which he attracts controversy only makes sense to me if you assume he knows what controversy is and seeks it out deliberately. Of all the people who’ve ever been canceled, Hanson might be the one I have the least sympathy for: he ought to know better, and the way he acts like we can’t see what he’s doing is just insulting.

      • albatross11 says:

        Dumb jokes in bad taste are also dumb things to fire a professor over.

        • Ninety-Three says:

          Sure, and someone who goes around poking bears doesn’t deserve to get mauled, but I can’t bring myself to feel sympathy for either case when the obvious thing finally happens.

          • albatross11 says:

            I can agree it’s imprudent to flash big wads of cash when hanging around in a bad neighborhood, but I still think the guy who robs you is the one at fault.

          • Ninety-Three says:

            @albatross11

            “Fault” does not need to be conserved. If a guy gets mauled after poking a literal bear, it seems he is clearly the one at fault, because who else are you going to blame, the bear? If a guy gets punched after walking into a bar and insulting the meanest biker in there, there is an obvious fault that lies with the biker, but our provocateur is not acting any smarter than the man with the bear so it seems odd to suggest that switching out bears for bikers renders him faultless.

          • Randy M says:

            “Fault” does not need to be conserved.

            That’s one of my mottos too. It’s possible for several individuals to each be wholly to blame for an act.

          • albatross11 says:

            Fair enough.

        • salvorhardin says:

          Is there any serious danger of his being fired, given that he has tenure?

          • Spot says:

            There’s no way this is anywhere near bad (or high-profile) enough to put Hanson’s actual job in jeopardy. There are literally open Holocaust deniers who remain tenured in 2020.

        • keaswaran says:

          There’s zero suggestion that he’s anywhere close to being fired. University presidents love to throw faculty under the bus for saying controversial things.

          My own university president said that my colleague Tommy Curry was “vile and reprehensible” for saying that Black people might want to use the second amendment to protect themselves from police, and fantasize about the killing of white people like in the movie Django Unchained, and that there is a double-standard between the evaluation of these sorts of ideas and white people fantasizing about using the second amendment to kill criminals.

          http://www.thebatt.com/news/president-young-responds-to-controversial-comments-made-by-a-m-professor-tommy-curry/article_36b06da6-35ff-11e7-96ff-137c02893705.html

          The university did nothing to actually threaten Curry (they did install bulletproof glass in our department office after he started receiving death threats), but he decided that they weren’t supportive enough, and moved to University of Edinburgh.

      • [Thing] says:

        I don’t see the way he has responded to this & previous controversies as him saying “I’m just a poor autistic nerd.” That’s a plea for sympathy, whereas Robin is more like “I will respond to the people yelling at me in the most literal-minded and emotionally flat manner possible, then go back to my very secure tenured job, thank you very much.” He just doesn’t seem to care what people think.

        And while he may well be deliberately courting controversy with some of his statements, probing aspects of public opinion that he sees as hypocritical, sanctimonious, or whatever, I don’t think that’s what’s going in this case, because the only ways to read the relevant tweet are as an innocent but accidentally offensive question, or as a brazenly racist provocation, and why would he want to do the latter? It would be as if he tweeted “Hey everyone, I just joined the KKK. Check out my sweet robe & hood!” Just a senselessly self-destructive thing for someone in his position to do.

        Of course, if it was just a misunderstanding, the proper thing to do would be to apologize profusely, but he’s already burned so many bridges with the sort of people who would demand an apology that they probably won’t be satisfied with any he could offer. In the end, this may just come down to a simple question of whether anyone has the power to punish him in a way he would actually care about.

        ETA: I think part of the problem is that the normal human reaction to making a faux pas is embarrassment, and that can provide motivation to apologize and try to smooth things over with the offended party, but Robin doesn’t seem to experience embarrassment the way most people do, and that just makes people angrier at him.

        • Ninety-Three says:

          I don’t think that’s what’s going in this case, because the only ways to read the relevant tweet are as an innocent but accidentally offensive question, or as a brazenly racist provocation, and why would he want to do the latter?

          Hanson endorses a very Vulcan set of discourse norms, and when people get offended at whatever latest thing he’s done he often brings up how this wouldn’t be a problem if everyone just used his norms. His behaviour is perfectly explained if you assume he either enjoys provoking normies, or is on some kind of crusade about the virtues of talking like an evil robot (I think it’s a mix of both).

          Hanson doesn’t seem to experience contrition, and I think that is what makes people angrier at him. In this case for example, he deleted the offending tweet (a rare move for him) but made a bunch of further tweets defending it, never even acknowledging why people were upset. His attitude generally comes off as either “I don’t see what the problem is” or “There should be no problem”, which naturally frustrates the people having a problem.

          • albatross11 says:

            I doubt that any public apology would help w.r.t. a Twitter outrage mob. But like most people, Hanson would probably benefit from deleting his Twitter account.

          • BBA says:

            It’s the utter rigidity that I find off-putting, and the refusal to ever consider that he’s in the wrong or he ought to avoid offending others.

            It reminds me of Richard Stallman, and like Stallman, Hanson may find that there’s nobody left willing to defend him when the reckoning comes, as his behavior drives all potential allies away.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            This might be a good test of the “never apologize” strategy.

            If Hanson had shown me the Tweet before posting it, I would have smashed his phone before letting him submit it. It’s conceivably defendable but given the public attitude right now? Just don’t.

        • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

          When people do irrational seeming things, we should consider the possibility that they are signalling.

          • keaswaran says:

            Yes, it seems like a prime example of virtue signaling, where the virtue he wants to signal is his commitment to saying unpopular things.

          • Ninety-Three says:

            Yes, it seems like a prime example of virtue signaling, where the virtue he wants to signal is his commitment to saying unpopular things.

            Or more specifically, the virtue of not being a politically correct lefty.

        • Talexander Urok says:

          Of course, if it was just a misunderstanding, the proper thing to do would be to apologize profusely,

          It depends on how much respect you have for the people being angered.

          As far as what’s in your personal best interest, I know of one study on the issue which recommends against apologizing:

          https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2654465

        • Of course, if it was just a misunderstanding, the proper thing to do would be to apologize profusely

          Why should he apologize? He believes, I think correctly, that there was nothing wrong with what he said, and apologizing would be pretending that he thought the opposite.

          It’s the people who are looking for an excuse to attack someone who ought to be apologizing.

          • [Thing] says:

            I don’t think there’s anything wrong with apologizing for accidentally giving offense. It’s like apologizing for accidentally stepping on someone’s toes; it’s not an admission of acting with malice.

          • Ninety-Three says:

            @[Thing]

            True in general, but I suspect Hanson’s thought process is somewhere between “Have you considered wearing steel-toed boots?” and “Serves you right for having such fragile toes.” His issue often seems to be not that he failed to anticipate offense, but thinks people shouldn’t be offended.

          • No One In Particular says:

            @[Thing]
            It can be taken as an admission of malice. And how warranted an apology is depends on the situation. There are cases where someone is offended, and not only is an apology not warranted, but sanction against the person who asserts offense is warranted. For instance, if someone expresses offense at me not standing for the national anthem, they owe me an apology. If that happened at work, I would file an HR complaint.

      • No One In Particular says:

        Something being the only thing that makes to you is not the same as it being the only thing that makes sense.

    • Deiseach says:

      Getting this out of the way first: that was a stupid tweet. However, people are allowed be stupid in public. (Does he recommend green beer on St Patrick’s Day? Worse, does he call it Patty’s Day? That’s a horrible offence!)

      Because this is the kind of vindictive bitch that I am, I looked up who these signatories were (I’m always interested to know exactly who is calling for heads on spikes) and found that:

      (1) Anne Holton is Tim Kaine’s missus. Tim Kaine as in Hillary’s VP running mate.

      (2) Mark R. Ginsberg is nobody in particular that I could find out, so an ordinary bureaucratic academic (most exciting thing I’ve seen in the potted bios online: in 2015 he was named to the list of 30 most influential deans of education in the US! I know this fact has you all sitting on the edge of your seats with excitement).

      (3) Ann Ardis, another administrative bureaucrat academic, though a bit heavier on the academic side than Dean Ginsberg: “She is known for her interdisciplinary research on late nineteenth and early twentieth-century British literature and culture. That work focused on the formation of the modernist canon, and the voices, particularly women’s voices, that were often left out of the traditional definitions and literary forms of modernism.” Par for the course.

      (4) Daniel Houser, academic economist.

      And all of them as white as Robin Hanson. So I’m thinking some virtuous showing-off going on here.

      • [Thing] says:

        It looked to me as though the signatories to the statement are just the people listed above Hanson in GMU’s org chart. I read it as them speaking for GMU as an institution, to reassure the aggrieved parties that Action Is Being Taken, not speaking as the aggrieved parties themselves, or allies signing on to show support for same.

    • James Miller says:

      My brain doesn’t process “offensive” the way other people’s brains do. Several times after we had finished talking to people, my wife has pointed out that I had just deeply offended one of the participants in the conversation, and I had been literally clueless about their destress. For me, determining what is offensive is an intellectual exercise, not an emotional one but since the rules for offensiveness are not always logical, I often make mistakes. Please don’t assume because you, and most other people, immediately and effortlessly processed the Tweet as offensive that Robin Hanson’s brain did this as well. Neurodiversity is real, and when you punish those of us with weird brains for not having the same “feelings” as most of the rest of you, you make it hard for us to function in society.

      • Anteros says:

        Good point – I read the tweet and assumed Hanson must have known exactly how offended a lot of people would be. But maybe not, and another reason to indulge in some tolerance.

      • AlesZiegler says:

        On a slight tangent, I think that discovering what is offensive for other people is an intellectual, and not an emotional process for everyone, including “normal people”. While feeling offended is an emotion, figuring out what triggers this emotion in other people and sometimes even in ourselves is an intellectual process.

    • Wrong Species says:

      I hope Hanson doesn’t get cancelled. He’s the only person who can tweet what he did and you honestly don’t know if he understands what he’s doing. It’s the ambiguity that sends certain people in to a rage. It’s hilarious.

    • Spot says:

      Yeah, I was surprised to see that tweet from Hanson, if for no other reason than I would have thought he’d have more sense than to post something like that at this particular moment. (I mean, I certainly don’t think the tweet warrants serious professional repercussions, but it’s not about what I think.)

      It’s odd because usually Hanson’s Twitter provocations have some kind of clear point, but honestly it’s hard for me to see this as anything other than, basically, trolling. Perhaps this is something that might be defused by a genuine apology. He doesn’t need to grovel, but a notice on Overcoming Bias acknowledging that his tweet was stupid and thoughtless could go a long way here.

      Anyway, I hope he doesn’t get (ugh) “cancelled.” Hanson is a) a productive thinker and b) ultimately not a malicious person.

  111. AlesZiegler says:

    Well, this is what could be charitably called blatantly factually incorrect statement, which also happens to be higly inflammatory.

    Surely some hate crimes are hoaxes, but that does not mean all of them are.

  112. Chalid says:

    Is there any non-US country where mask wearing is controversial?

    • AlesZiegler says:

      All of them, probably outside Asia? Certainly Europe falls into controversial category. It turns out people have hugely varying levels of being comfortable with masks.

      • Chalid says:

        Controversial in the sense of being a culture war issue?

        I googled and found some controversies over whether masks should be worn by the general public or whether they should be reserved for health care workers, for example. And there was genuine confusion about how useful they are. But that’s nothing like what’s going on in the US.

        Spot-checking France‘s Wikipedia article, there is a section on mask controversy, but it’s all about shortages.

        What’s a country where it’s especially controversial? What form does it take?

        • AlesZiegler says:

          I do not mean in CW sense, just in that people resist wearing them in places where they are strongly advised or even required to so.

          Or sometimes they resist wearing them properly. I cannot count how many masked people with their noses sticking out I have met. They say that it is because they feel terribly uncomfortable with them.

          • Chalid says:

            Okay, but noncompliance isn’t controversial unless it’s accompanied by a certain attitude. There’s lots of things that we all “should” do that we don’t. Lots of us don’t exercise as much as official recommendations, or floss our teeth daily, but that doesn’t make exercise or flossing controversial.

          • John Schilling says:

            I cannot count how many masked people with their noses sticking out I have met.

            Honest question: Does it matter, and if so how much? I have read many academic studies on the effectiveness of improvised masks vs COVID or similar diseases, and they all identify speaking and coughing as the major risk areas. Uncovering the nose may not significantly increase the risk, and since we’re obviously not getting high compliance with masking in general, tolerating that comfort enhancement may be the winning move.

            Or maybe not, but I’d rather that be decided on the basis of data.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            @John Schilling

            I did not bother to research that, and I bet that most of those people with their noses out of the masks also didn´t do any review of academic literature on masks.

            My point was only that here, as in the US, also exists widespread resistance to an official recommendations on mask wearing, and those recommendations most definitely include covering your mouth. I mean, regular announcements broadcasted on metro stations via loudspeakers are almost verbatim “It is still necessary to cover your nose and mouth when using public transport”, in three languages.

            It is perhaps relevant that compliance dropped significantly with reopenings of businesses, and or with improvements in general Covid situation – since those two are correlated, it is hard to disentangle what is more important for this fall in mask-wearing discipline.

          • Matt M says:

            I mean, it seems pretty clear that people in the “wearing a mask, but improperly” group almost certainly do have comfort issues and are not just social defectors. Their willingness to wear one at all betrays a feeling of needing to be a social cooperator.

          • Chalid says:

            Yeah, so in other countries the attitude is “I should wear a mask but I’m too lazy/it’s too hard/I can’t get one/it’s no big deal/etc,” e.g. similar excuses for why many people don’t exercise.

            Whereas in the US you have a sizeable number of people who have the attitude that masks are actively bad and the people who wear them are bad too.

          • albatross11 says:

            The nose sticking out intuitively seems like it’s not going to benefit from whatever good the mask is doing when the wearer sneezes or sniffles. However, it seems hard enough to get good data on more-or-less properly worn masks, let alone people wearing them improperly.

          • b_jonas says:

            Yes, there are a lot of people who wear a mask only on their mouth. There are also ones who only wear the mask on their chin, covering neither the mouth or the nose. I believe that in both cases, the people don’t want to wear a mask, perhaps because they find it uncomfortable (I can certainly understand that, I find it uncomfortable too even while the mask is clean and dry). But they know that they may be asked to wear a mask at some point, so they have to carry a mask, and putting it on their mouth or chin makes it clear that if anyone asks them to wear a mask, they’ll put it on for a few minutes and take it off again when they’re out of sight, so they signal this clearly to make it less likely that they’re bothered. And yes, I also saw people remove the mask from their mouth to speak, because the mask does make it harder to understand their speech.

        • AlesZiegler says:

          @Matt M

          I agree that they have comfort issues (of course; evil intent to spread Covid is not a plausible explanation), but it is not like them wearing a mask at all is some act of voluntary social cooperation. We are talking about situations where mask wearing is mandatory and without it, they could be fined (although enforcement is weak).

          @Chalid

          Pretty much. At least “people wearing masks are bad” is mercifully not an attitude I´ve ever encountered.

          • Matt M says:

            We are talking about situations where mask wearing is mandatory and without it, they could be fined (although enforcement is weak).

            I’m pretty sure that any place with a mask rule actually has a “mask properly worn” rule.

            So if you’re not wearing it properly, you are in violation of the rule. Maybe you don’t know that and maybe nobody will bother to enforce it upon you, but yeah…

          • AlesZiegler says:

            @Matt M

            It is far easier to avoid catching a fine when you have mask on your face prepared to cover yourself when you see a police approaching.

    • Radu Floricica says:

      Subscribe to “probably all of them”. Here it’s debated on facebook and already ignored in institutions, even if wearing them is technically mandatory. It is however respected by everybody working with the public, with a high degree a compliance (I gave 4 stars to an uber driver a few days ago for not wearing a mask – that’s the only example I can think of).

    • liskantope says:

      In Turkmenistan, last I heard, wearing a mask in public can get you thrown in jail. So to some degree it must be controversial among the people of Turkmenistan, but this probably isn’t the type of answer you were looking for.

  113. George3d6 says:

    I believe my disdain for censorship and state-mandated though control, being a drug advocate, borderline libertarian, and coming from a post-communist country, is greater than that of most people even on SSC.

    That being said, it might be that “Let’s make a letter asking the censor to be nice this ONE time” is not the correct approach here. Communism didn’t get overthrown because some intellectuals were allowed to barely-operate as long as they heavily censored their views, even though that may have helped, but regardless of that the outcome was quite the same (see Poland, where smart people were still allowed to exist vs Romania&Hungary, where close to all people worthwhile of being called scientists were killed or fled during the 30s-50s period), it took for Russia to loss it’s internal cohesion and thus military might for them to be liberated.

    Is it good to keep people in Academic institutions that castrate their intelligence and ability to think critically, or is it better to let those institutions shot themselves in the foot as quickly and violently as they can in order for a different edifice to arise.

    I don’t know, so I signed the petition, but I tend to learn towards the “let them disolve as soon as possible” path, though this is a bias I can only justify annecdotally at the moment.

    • Lambert says:

      > Poland, where smart people were still allowed to exist

      What about Operation Tannenberg?

      • matkoniecz says:

        George3d6 is writing about communism, Operation Tannenberg was during German occupation.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenberg

        Operation Tannenberg (German: Unternehmen Tannenberg) was a codename for one of the anti-Polish extermination actions by Nazi Germany that was directed at the Poles during the opening stages of World War II in Europe, as part of the Generalplan Ost for the German colonization of the East. The shootings were conducted with the use of a proscription list (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen), compiled by the Gestapo in the span of two years before the 1939 invasion.[1]

        The top secret lists identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, clergy, actors, former officers and others, who were to be interned or shot. Members of the German minority living in Poland assisted in preparing the lists.[1] It is estimated that up to 20,000 Germans living in Poland belonged to organizations involved in various forms of subversion.[2]

        Operation Tannenberg was followed by the Intelligenzaktion, a second phase of the Unternehmen Tannenberg directed by Heydrich’s Sonderreferat from Berlin, which lasted until January 1940. In Pomerania alone, 36,000–42,000 Poles, including children, were killed before the end of 1939.[3]

    • Viliam says:

      @George3d6:
      I am also a communism surviror and in my darker moments I believe that killing communists is a form of effective altruism. I try to keep quiet about this at SSC, so that Scott is not forced to ban me, and I mostly lose temper when facing a shameless “Stalin did nothing wrong” kind of comment.

      I agree with you. The proper response to being punched by evil isn’t to beg “please, don’t punch this one specific person, he is harmless to you and provides useful services”. The proper response to being punched is to punch back. Live by the sword, die by the sword; preferably sooner rather than later. If you organize a Twitter mob to fire people from their jobs for trivial reasons, expect revenge.

      However, living on the opposite side of the planet, I can hardly burn down an American university, and strong words on internet mean nothing. Think globally, act locally, as they say.

      Nonviolent resistance doesn’t work against Nazis or Commies. Being nice is merely a weakness in their eyes. “A capitalist will sell you the rope you want to hang him with” is Lenin’s traditional response to the idea of cooperation with people you don’t agree with. “I drink X tears” is the modern reaction to pleas for empathy.

      We should not beg for nonviolent people not getting fired from their jobs. The proper response would be e.g. to accuse the mob organizer of rape, and sign a public petition to get him fired. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”, right? Nope, we are too nice to do something like that. We respond to punches by arguments, which only attract laughter and more punches.

      (EDIT: Or perhaps the university should be accused of wanting to fire Prof. Hsu because they are racists. I mean, a white mob trying to get an Asian teacher fired, and white administration siding with the mob, that’s an interesting story, isn’t it?)

      Oh shit, I could get fired for writing this comment, right?! Should wear a Che Guevara shirt and tweet about how Stalin did nothing wrong instead. That would be perfectly socially appropriate and safe.

        • toastengineer says:

          Yeah, sometimes I find myself on a similar train of thought, but looking at recent history, it really looks like the best way to beat these people is what free speech absolutists have said from the start – encourage them to speak, as loudly and openly as possible, and let everyone see how deeply horrible they are.

          People aren’t stupid, they just don’t pay much attention, they have their own stuff going on. Get their attention, and they can notice the obvious bait-and-switch and historical comparisons just fine.

          I would also like to get started on the whole “coordinating unkindness” thing as a stop-gap to limit the long-term damage they’ll do before they fizzle, but, yanno, coordination is hard.

      • Garrett says:

        > is a form of effective altruism

        I don’t disagree.

      • matkoniecz says:

        The proper response would be e.g. to accuse the mob organizer of rape, and sign a public petition to get him fired.

        That is going too far (assuming that accusation was fake) and I refuse to participate in something like that.

    • Matt M says:

      it took for Russia to loss it’s internal cohesion and thus military might for them to be liberated.

      How do you propose we might replicate and expedite this process in the modern US?

      • viVI_IViv says:

        The US certainly looks like it’s already losing its internal cohesion. The bad news is that once it collapses, it will be replaced by China as the world hegemon.

        • Matt M says:

          I’m not afraid of China. The average Chinese person hates me less than many of my neighbors (and is far less equipped to actually do anything bad to me). And yes, I am being serious and honestly do believe that.

      • Radu Floricica says:

        Pretty much every attempt to burn down the old order and build an utopia on the ruins gets stuck on the second step.

        Electing somebody like Trump is pretty much on the edge of what I’d advocate for. Might (and probably will) turn out to be a success/not-failure, in which case I’ll probably update towards an even more disruptive approach. But to go from the start towards dismantling things… nah. Can’t think of any place where it worked. Entropy to manage.

        • Matt M says:

          I guess I’m taking the Hari Seldon view of things. That this is going to collapse. It’s inevitable. Even if everyone did exactly what I said right now, we couldn’t stop it.

          But what we can do is try and minimize the length and depth of the intermediate “chaos and destruction” period. So what I’m asking is – how do we do that?

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      Understand that here in the US lots of people died because of draconian policies of corporations (this is why OSHA and disability insurance exist). And, like Nazi Germany, academics have done horrific things to people (the Milgram experiment is relatively nice given no one died).

      There are things out there just as bad as communism (how many people have died in the non-communist totalitarian state of North Korea? In Rwanda?).

      • matkoniecz says:

        North Korea is a predictable result of establishing communist state and a described as a communist state, so I am confused why it appears as “non-communist totalitarian state”.

        • John Schilling says:

          21st century North Korea is “communist” in roughly the way post-Deng China was “communist”. Perhaps more so; the 1990s famine was brutally efficient in naturally selecting for people willing to dirty their hands in the market.

          But, it was roughly as bloody when it was as communist as communist gets, so it’s still a damning indictment. Not only does communism produce mountains of skulls, it produces institutions that keep adding to the mountain under the “communist” label even as the actual economy transitions to something different.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          What John said, also in my eyes “Hereditary Absolute Monarchy” trumps “Communism” or “Capitalism” when describing a state, though your interpretation may vary.

      • No One In Particular says:

        I’ve read that most of the participants in the Milgram experiment said it was a positive experience.

    • AlexOfUrals says:

      I believe my disdain for censorship and state-mandated though control, being a drug advocate, borderline libertarian, and coming from a post-communist country, is greater than that of most people even on SSC.

      You’re not alone in all this! And I also largely agree with the rest of your post, especially the “don’t know” and “signed the petition” parts.

  114. Viliam says:

    There are many specific things to be angry about, but more generally, I am concerned how the boundary of “this is my employer’s business” is expanding into our lives outside of working hours.

    When I was a kid, I already disliked when someone had a problem at school e.g. because a teacher caught them smoking outside of school. Like, it’s outside of the school, so it’s not your f-ing business anymore!

    Of course, internet made things difficult. It’s no longer “at school/job” or “away from school/job”. It’s “online”, and that includes both your school/job and your friends and millions of anonymous people. Not sure what is proper solution… but I hate the fact that anything you do anywhere online (unless you take paranoid precautions) can become a topic your boss might want to punish you for. Especially in a corporate setting, when the boss may understand that it is bullshit, but still would want to punish you just to protect his own ass in case someone would consequently complain about him for not having punished you.

    (Also, isn’t it ironic how “let’s get more people fired from their jobs” became politically Left wing? Where are the unions? Oh yeah, we smart people don’t need unions, and you wouldn’t want to be in the same union as some Trump-voter anyway, would you?)

    • Matt M says:

      Not sure what is proper solution…

      Small business/entrepreneurship for the upper class, gig economy “below the algorithm” work (where you are effectively anonymous) for the underclass.

      • ksdale says:

        It’s interesting you mention small business, my parents owned a small business while I was growing up and they reminded me regularly that my behavior everywhere, all the time, would reflect on the family business, so I’ve always associated small business ownership with greater restrictions on personal autonomy (in certain respects anyway).

        • Matt M says:

          My impression is that in the internet-era, it’s easier to be anonymous and keep your business and personal activity separately. I know quite a few radical libertarians who run successful completely non-political e-commerce businesses and have managed to avoid cancellation.

          Although I have no experience with this myself, so I may be wrong.

          • ksdale says:

            That’s a very good point about the internet and anonymity. I wonder how many small businesses are successful because of the reputation of the owner, though… I actually do taxes for a lot of small businesses, and my wife is something of a serial online entrepreneur, and if I had to put a number on it, I’d guess that at least a majority of small businesses are reliant on the owner’s reputation. But I also think that that may change in the future.

    • Plumber says:

      @Viliam says: 

      “…isn’t it ironic how “let’s get more people fired from their jobs” became politically Left wing? Where are the unions? Oh yeah, we smart people don’t need unions, and you wouldn’t want to be in the same union as some Trump-voter anyway, would you?”

      IIRC an organizer trying to unionize a Silicon Valley company was asked by a young lady tech employee “But what if an alt-right guy wants to join the union?”, and she found his answer of “If the alt-right guy’s want to join the union too than we’ve won!’ unsatisfactory. 

      • Randy M says:

        Perhaps they had different goals.

      • J Mann says:

        That’s pretty good.

        I wonder, though, if unions will protect people from being fired for offensive opinions. If so, maybe we’ll see a resurgence?

        • Matt M says:

          The second unions start explicitly and publicly protecting such people is the second that whatever remaining public support for unions exists shrivels up.

          If you want proof, look at the general view of police unions and how it has changed over the last ~2 weeks.

          • cassander says:

            You’re confusing temporary outrage with real shifts. Government unions are the backbone of the modern democratic party, as long as that’s the case the party will continue to support them, and activists will continue to ignore the problem, just like climate activists ignore nuclear power.

          • Nick says:

            I think @J Mann is suggesting a resurgence of private sector unions, actually.

          • Matt M says:

            And I’m saying that if unions start becoming known as “those guys who stop your boss from firing the nazis” then California and New York will pass right to work laws really damn quick…

          • cassander says:

            @matt m

            And I’m saying that won’t happen. we already have the unions protecting cops, in every single one of these incidents, and nothing is ever done against them because the democrats can’t destroy a core pillar of their coalition. private sector unions are less important to the party, but I think the unions will hang together.

          • Plumber says:

            @Matt M, 

            Just this last week there’s been a strong effort to purge the P.O.A. from the AFL-CIO and local labor federations (like how in decades past the ILWU were purged for being Communists and the Teamsters purged for being corrupt).

            As far as I can tell this effort is being led by the SEIU (janitors and a lot of municipal employees), the AFT (teachers), and the NEA (teachers), among my “Facebook friends” (over 9/10th people who were face-to-face friends of mine in the 1980’s) this month my black guy friends are more neutral (“I know some good cops, others scare me”) , but the school teachers (who are overwhelmingly white women) are now vehemently anti-police; one gleefully posted “Defund them, have them hold back sales for a change!” (I don’t remember her being like that when we were teenagers!), and there’s suddenly “[local small business] is a racist, don’t patronize him!’ messages (a judgement based on something the guy supposedly tweeted that she didn’t repeat), which now has me worried about another friend (one of the few who I met in the ’90’s instead of the ’80’s) who owns a local shop that was getting looted until he chased them away with a firearm (he described the looters as “mostly white, all young and with cars”), and he’s now posting images of mostly non-white female cops that have been beaten by rioters this last month and I worry about him being boycotted now. 

            From the polls opinions about less or more policing are far less divided by race in the U.S.A. than they are by age (youngsters want less, those who remember the crimes of the ’70’s and ’80’s don’t want less), I haven’t seen any polls reflecting this (they just broke down opinions by age and race) but in my social circle the division is by sex and education, almost all are close to 50 years old, the guys I know mostly didn’t go to college, a few own businesses, and they’re more anti-looting, the women mostly did go to college, are overwhelmingly school teachers now and are pro protests, with one re-posting a school office administrator”s long essay about watching looting and finding it “beautiful” (other ladies instead re-post stuff saying that the looters are right-wing “agent provocateurs”). As a counterpoint to the “graduate girls are pro-protest” my wife went to college and is very anti-protest and was terrified of looters (she got out our revolver and had me sleep by the front door and windows despite my telling her “They’re not coming here, don’t worry!”), but she’s closer to 60 than 50, and isn’t a white school-teacher.

            Unlike the Iraq war, Prop. 8, and the Kavanaugh hearings, at work no one talks about this (including me), even when a television is on reporting on this, for example this week (maybe because I was there installing a waterline to a cooler) a room full of (mostly black) traffic cops suddenly went silent, and looked away from the TV when the news ran headlines on these events.

            My forecasting confidence is gone, I’ve no idea what comes next.

          • albatross11 says:

            I think the pushback against police unions is due to some vivid examples of places where they have protected violent, corrupt, or inept policemen from being fired, negotiated deals or campaigned for laws that gave the police way more rights in any criminal investigation against them than normal citizens, etc. I’m sure there are people who want to also be able to cancel policemen for posting the wrong political sentiments on their Facebook walls or having worn blackface to a party a few years ago, but that’s not where most of the push is coming from.

          • Matt M says:

            cassander,

            Get back to me in a year. As of today, it certainly looks like more than a couple large cities are gearing up to bust their police unions. Due to overwhelming popular demand.

          • cassander says:

            @Matt M says:

            I’d be delighted if that happened, but don’t expect it. Minneapolis maybe if they have a big shakeup, but I’d be shocked if happened anywhere else.

          • BBA says:

            In my experience, police unions have never really been supported on the left and are at best tolerated as a necessary evil – if collective bargaining for other government employees means cops are entitled to a union too, so be it.

            Police aren’t part of the labor movement – they have a history of being on the other side – so movements against police unions don’t mean anything about the rest of organized labor. And vice versa – the big Wisconsin union-busting law did away with collective bargaining except for police and firefighters.

      • Nick says:

        Plumber, you might be thinking of Amber A’Lee Frost’s piece in American Affairs, which we’ve discussed on SSC previously. Frost recounts just such an exchange:

        The evening culminated during the Q and A, wherein a woman earnestly asked, “What do I do if some alt-right guy wants to be in the union?”

        Visibly vexed, I replied that if an alt-right guy wants to be in your union, you won.

        This statement was met with noticeable consternation, so I went on to explain that you want everyone in the union because the end goal is a closed shop. I explained that this is the very premise of a union: it is not a social club for people of shared progressive values; it’s a shared struggle, and collective politics are the only thing that can actually break down all that office bigotry you’re so concerned about. She did not appear convinced.

        I also recommended the piece; maybe that’s where you read it.

        • Plumber says:

          @Nick,
          There it is, thanks (and you have an impressively and frightening eidedic memory)!

        • viVI_IViv says:

          Cognitive workers (e.g. tech, academia) unions are dominated by the IDpol woke left, which makes them unattractive to the majority of the workforce.

          E.g. one place I used to work at had a union that gave out leafleats which always listed as their first point the gender gap or LGBT representation or something like that. Why would a straight white man like me and like the majority of the people who worked there join an organization whose stated goal is to make our career prospects worse? No wonder why few people joined, even among the generally left-leaning workforce.

          The few unions that haven’t gone IDpol are those for really working class professions, like the police, which in fact are under attack by the left.

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            Equal pay for equal work has been a union talking point for as long as unions have been a thing, for the very simple reason that it is not in the interest of the union for there to be any cheaper alternative to their labor.

            This is why some (but not all) unions have been quite extremely inclusive basically forever. Maybe the membership of the house painter local 309 in the year 1908 was both racist and sexist as all hell, but the leadership still damn well wanted anyone capable of wielding a brush signed up and paid union rates before they went anywhere near a house in need of painting.

            There were, of course, also unions that did not get this point, or worse, actually listened to members that wanted to kick all the women and coloreds out – that never goes well for said union, because it creates a pool of labor management can hire, exploit, and be confident that the union wont organize. Maybe management is also sexist and racist enough it does not happen right away, but it damn well will happen pretty soon, because there is a million dollar bearer bond lying on the sidewalk for the first firm to get over itself.

            This creates a huge survivor bias. If a union still, you know, exists, it is on the inclusive end of things, and that bleeds over to eras other than “We welcome all creeds, colors, ect as members”.

          • AG says:

            Ironically, lots of minority members got a dim view of unions to begin with because they always seemed to be vehicles of success for white men and no one else, so it goes both ways. There were plenty of unions who historically tried to keep closed shop by more strongly excluding others, including black workers and immigrant workers.

            Many modern US unions aren’t even that beneficial to workers, especially compared to the success of EU unions, but it varies from location to location.

          • viVI_IViv says:

            Equal pay for equal work

            Which is already implemented and is in fact antithetical to gender gap activism.

            Being undercut by cheap female labor because of wage discrimination is not a problem that the cognitive workers have.

          • @Thomas:

            I think you are missing the tension in the union’s situation between the advantages and disadvantages of exclusion.

            A labor union wants to push up wages. That increases the cost of its particular sort of labor, decreasing the quantity demanded and increasing the quantity supplied, so it has a problem of rationing jobs.

            If it lets everyone in, either it leaves wages at their quantity supplied = quantity demanded equilibrium level and works on other margins or it ends up with a lot of unemployed union members.

            An alternative, followed in the past by the craft unions, is to sharply limit membership and find some way of keeping firms from employing non-union members. That could be getting the government to support the union by refusing to purchase services from non-union firms, it could be low level violence, such as picket lines that don’t let people cross them.

            In the more extreme case, membership is limited to relatives of present union members. In a less extreme, it’s limited by excluding groups that are sufficiently disfavored in the society, such as blacks, so they can get away with excluding them from both joining the union and competing with it.

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            … David. Literally every single person I know in real life. I do not just mean my friends, I mean everyone I know well enough to know this about – my entire Dunbar Number, is either Union, a child, or a pensioner.
            This includes a fair number of independent contractors, minor business owners because Denmark is rabid enough about this that they have a union too.

            It has not exactly stopped the country from having a very high employment to population ratio.

            Universal union membership is not in any sort of tension with employment levels, this is quite comprehensively refuted by Reality.

          • Lambert says:

            Does Denmark do unions on the sort of ordoliberal model (like the german betriebsräte)?

            If so, I’d say that’s a rather different thing from anglophone unions.

            But I agree that unions can increase wages in ways other than increasing unemployment. Essentially, it’s the cartelisation of labour. And I think the disparity between the average employer and employee means it’s a net good thing, even though I’m against price-fixing by firms.

          • But I agree that unions can increase wages in ways other than increasing unemployment.

            How do you increase the price of an input without increasing its supply, decreasing its demand, and so increasing the difference?

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            Congratulations, you just “proved” economic growth is impossible.

            Seriously, you obviously can have generally increasing wages and rising employment at the same time. This is, in fact, a perfectly normal state of affairs.

          • Redland Jack says:

            If the demand curve shifts out, you get an increase in wages and an increase in employment, but I don’t think unions cause the demand curve to shift.

            They cause the quantity supplied to be restricted, which causes an increase in the wage and a decrease in employment.

            At least, so far as I understand it.

          • b_jonas says:

            DavidFriedman: Lambert says so right in the next sentence. The unions get a majority of the workers on their side, and that way they force the employee to pay the wages that they demand, even when that’s higher than what some people outside the union would accept. Your free market model fails because there are not enough workers who are willing to independently optimize for their own benefit and undercut the prices. Plus there’s sometimes government regulations supporting the union’s demands too.

          • Seriously, you obviously can have generally increasing wages and rising employment at the same time. This is, in fact, a perfectly normal state of affairs.

            Yes.

            But I was not discussing a case where the union persuades the company to produce in a more efficient fashion, getting more output per input. We were discussing a union functioning as a labor cartel, as someone just put it, forcing up the price of the labor it is selling without doing anything that makes the economy more productive.

          • No One In Particular says:

            @DavidFriedman

            How do you increase the price of an input without increasing its supply, decreasing its demand, and so increasing the difference?

            Do you have those backwards?

          • No One In Particular says:

            @Thomas Jorgensen

            Exclusivity is the whole point of a union. If an industry had no barriers to entry, there’s not much way of increasing wages for that industry other than increasing the opportunity cost of working for that industry (i.e. increasing wages across the board). So citing a society in which everyone is in a union doesn’t contradict that.

            So a union wants to restrict its membership somehow. It can do that by increasing barriers to entry, such as credential requirements, and it can also do it by pushing some classes of people out of the labor supply.

            Your “racism will be competed away” proves too much, as it predicts the demise of racism in general, not just in union membership. The forces that allow racism to survive in general allow it survive in union membership. A black person who tries to take a job away from union workers is going to have to deal with not only the lack of social power that comes with being black, but with stigma of being a scab. The person who replaces white workers with black ones will have to worry about angry mobs burning their place down. And the same anti-competition tactics that work for monopolies for unions: if you hire non-union workers, you won’t be able to hire union workers.

          • viVI_IViv says:

            We were discussing a union functioning as a labor cartel, as someone just put it, forcing up the price of the labor it is selling without doing anything that makes the economy more productive.

            And similarly companies are emplyment cartels.
            Or conversely, you could say that unions are companies where the members are the shareholders who collectively sell their services.

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            .. Higher wages, in and of themselves, cause firms to make more efficient use of labor. Preempting a predictable response: I am aware this should not theoretically happen.

            A firm which is not making optimal use of labor regardless of the cost of said labor is walking past a dollar bill on the floor every 2 minutes, but what can I tell you, pretty obviously, the fact of the matter is, management is lazy, human and not a relentless optimizer.

            If labor can be had for a dollar an hour, it will be expended doing very low priority and easily automated tasks and not accounted as wasteful as long as said labor produces 2 dollars an hour of value.

            If labor is 20 dollars an hour, suddenly management will spend oceans of effort and resources getting it the right tools and optimizing worker productivity.

          • No One In Particular says:

            @Thomas Jorgensen
            In economic terms, the price of labor not being its true cost causes inefficient use of labor. If the price is too low, it will be overconsume, if it’s too high, it will be underconsumed.

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      Yes, my concern is that the public square becomes the exclusive domain of the wealthy and the desperate. The wealthy can say what they want because you can’t fire them: they own the company. The destitute can say what they want because they have nothing to lose. The middle and working classes, though, will be tightly controlled. Disagree with the wealthy and they will be fired, disagree with the destitute and they will be mobbed in the street while the authorities “monitor the situation.” This is not healthy.

      • albatross11 says:

        +1

        The endpoint of adopting the norm that says “all your off-the-job political activity and public expression is legitimate grounds for firing you” is a huge decrease in actual political freedom for most of the country. Most of us rely on our jobs to pay our bills and support our families.

        People who are pushing for that norm are mostly trying to win current battles today, and are not concerned with future. But the future they are helping along is one in which most people dare not become politically involved, for fear of losing their job and having their lives wrecked. Look at the way various companies silenced people talking about Hong Kong for a vision of what this will look like in the future.

      • Matt M says:

        I think we’ve already been here, for several years at least.

      • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

        How many people were fired because of cancellation/mobbed in the street last year? A rough estimate is fine.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          What is a chilling effect?

          Cancellation, beats me, probably a few hundred?

          As for mobbed in the street, that would be stuff like this.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            If approximately three people get cancelled each year, anyone being chilled by that would clearly be either very silly (because the risk is so low) or very racist. In either case I don’t think we would be losing much. So a chilling effect that’s worth considering must affect a significant number of people (exactly what number is significant is obviously debatable).

            What’s your basis for for that number? “A few hundred” suggests about one a day, which seems extraordinarily high to me.

          • Radu Floricica says:

            @thisheavenlyconjugation

            Most people here are anonymous and would not be comfortable being doxxed (I’m a small business owner, for what’s worth, with clients very unlikely to care). So whatever the actual number is, the chilling effect is already real.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            If approximately three people get cancelled each year, anyone being chilled by that would clearly be either very silly (because the risk is so low) or very racist. In either case I don’t think we would be losing much.

            Well, I guess I’m either silly or very racist. Hell, why not both? I closed my twitter account 7 or 8 years ago and have posted on FaceBook maybe five times in the last three years, and only completely tepid stuff about my kids or whatever because of the chance that were I to say something politically unacceptable like “I dunno I don’t think the police are that bad” an outrage mob might descend upon me. And maybe not even now, but years later. Anyway, I’m sure you’d agree, society is not losing much by my silence.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            The KKK didn’t need to hang a lot of people to effectively terrorize black citizens.

            And the more random the better.

            Like, just yesterday the Washington Post cancelled some total rando who wore stupidly wore blackface (to mock Megyn Kelly for saying blackface was no big deal) to a Tom Toles halloween party, in 2018.

            A Palestinian restaurant is being harassed to hoy fuck because the guy’s teenage daughter posted ugly shit on Twitter.

            The stepmother of the Atlanta cop who killed the Wendy’s guy has been fired, for being the stepmother of today’s monster.

          • AG says:

            Wait, so on the one hand y’all are going on and on about how black people have a distorted view on how much people and police hate them, and how they aren’t actually getting killed more than they deserve, and then talk about how a teeny bit of cancellation has chilling effects?

            Meanwhile, 4 black men have been found hung from trees just last week.

            What happened to having an accurate view of reality informed by statistics?

          • matkoniecz says:

            then talk about

            Is it the same group of people? (AFAIK I have not commented but chilling effects are obvious to me in both cases)

            Meanwhile, 3 black men and a latino man have been found hung from trees just last week.

            Is it a metaphor or something that actually happened? Or is it referring to actual deaths cause by police, but not via hanging?

          • albatross11 says:

            That Washington Post story is really extraordinary, as a use of the power of a major media organ to destroy someone’s life just to demonstrate that they can. It’s like a school bully dunking some kid’s head in the toilet just to show everyone they should be afraid of him.

            Please, tell me more about your role of speaking truth to power. I’m intrigued.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            and how they aren’t actually getting killed more than they deserve, and then talk about how a teeny bit of cancellation has chilling effects?

            Because these things are completely different? Nobody wants black people killed by cops, and we’ve got all kinds of institutions and rules trying to prevent it and they seem to be doing pretty well. I’m also definitely open to suggestions about how we can get the extremely, extremely small number of people, black or otherwise, mistakenly killed by cops down even lower.

            But people absolutely do want wrong-thinkers cancelled and are going about it gleefully and with reckless abandon.

            So these things are nothing alike.

            Meanwhile, 4 black men have been found hung from trees just last week.

            My guess is suicides? Any word otherwise?

          • albatross11 says:

            Is there a good repository for people who’ve been cancelled in this way? Statistics would be pretty interesting.

          • Randy M says:

            @albatross11
            There was a list on a blog, handel haus. Hasn’t been updated since Damore.
            And of course any such list is going to be fairly subjective in it’s inclusion criteria. (Read: I don’t feel like arguing over every entry)

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            I’m pretty sure that I’ve said, sometime in the past month or two, that even if blacks are not killed in high numbers, the fact that cops do it and get away with it is the basis for a pretty good terror campaign.

            And the more random and petty, the better.

            Y’all.

          • AG says:

            Suicide is also evidence of a chilling effect. A rather dire one.

            Many of them have been ruled suicides, but in a few cases, family close to the dead have called for stronger investigations. I edited my comment to remove a couple of the hanging cases where the evidence for suicide was stronger (the latino man case had family say that the man had reported feeling suicidal). But the timing, mechanism, and demographics are suspicious.

            So, black people have a strong perception that the police and greater racist society are out to get them. You have a strong perception that a greater leftist society is out to cancel right-wing people. Whose perception can be trust, and whose perception is misguided? Why does one group get waved away as “they’re getting treated apropos to what they’re doing,” and the other group gets “hold up, this is a huge threat and the perpetrators need to be stopped no matter what and none of the victims deserved it?”
            Or perhaps both groups should be treated with the same level of care or skepticism?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            So, black people have a strong perception that the police and greater racist society are out to get them.

            Because math says the police are not out to get blacks. The media and dishonest political actors are creating and amplifying their fears, however. It’s very destructive for the social fabric, and for black people. I wish they would stop.

            You have a strong perception that a greater leftist society is out to cancel right-wing people.

            Yes, because they’re doing so gleefully, openly, and bragging about it.

            You’ll notice the cops are not bragging about their body count. And society certainly isn’t cheering them on when they do happen to unjustly kill a black person. Instead “greater racist society,” which probably includes, I don’t know, every corporation big and small and all news media outlets and literally every politician agrees it was a bad thing.

            One of these things is not like the other.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            I think the story behind the Washington Post doxxing is that WaPo wrote the article at whatever the journalism equivalent of “gunpoint” is.

            Two senior editors assigned to write 3000 words. Afterwards, no one at the Washington Post tweets it out. No one wants to say anything about it. There’s been total radio silence. It’s something they felt they had to write, or else, but didn’t want to.

            It’s kind of sad that even the Washington Post felt under threat and not like they could tell the person to go away. So much for “never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel.”

            And I’m not really sure “we destroyed a rando’s life to save ourselves” is any better for WaPo than “we thought destroying a rando’s life was newsworthy.”

          • 10240 says:

            I disagree that the more random the victims the more effective the chilling effect, and that’s why I don’t believe police shootings have a chilling effect. 15 million black men, and 10 innocent ones getting killed a year, that’s not a significant risk. 80 million right-wingers, and 20 getting fired a year, that also wouldn’t be a significant risk.

            Let’s say 5000 somewhat high-profile right-wing bloggers and other public speakers who depend on employment at not-explicitely-right-wing organizations, only 500 of them touching on the most controversial issues, and 20 of those getting fired a year, now that’s a non-negligible risk. Naturally, prominent speakers have a disproportionate effect.

            Furthermore, we can only talk about chilling effects if one choice carries a significant risk, but another choice has less or no risk. (E.g. if you talk about your views, you risk getting fired, otherwise you don’t.) If you have no way to significantly affect the risk, there is no chilling effect.

          • Matt M says:

            15 million black men, and 10 innocent ones getting killed a year, that’s not a significant risk. 80 million right-wingers, and 20 getting fired a year, that also wouldn’t be a significant risk.

            Eh, I think this understates the case a bit. In both of these examples, you’re only considering the worst-case (and therefore most visible and obvious) outcome.

            But “police brutality” isn’t just about literal murder. There’s all kinds of ways corrupt cops can make your life worse. They can use more force than is necessary and “rough you up” while arresting you. They can harass you over low-priority offenses that they wouldn’t harass others for, etc. This is a non-trivial part of what BLM is complaining about, and it’s hard to prove or disprove. There are no statistics regarding how many times white cops “were rougher than they needed to be” while subduing black suspects.

            Similarly, if I say something that my boss thinks is insufficiently PC, there’s a lot he can do to make my life worse aside from firing me on the spot (in fact, he probably can’t do that). But he can informally decline to recommend me for a promotion. He can give me a lower performance review than he might otherwise have given if I kept my mouth shut. Over the long haul, stuff like this could cost me tens of thousands of dollars (or more!) over the course of my career.

            I don’t know what more to tell you other than that I am a right-winger and I do feel chilled from speaking my mind on political issues at work. Even when my co-workers are clearly speaking theirs. Now maybe that’s unreasonable of me. Maybe I shouldn’t. But I do.

          • tossrock says:

            Because math says the police are not out to get blacks. The media and dishonest political actors are creating and amplifying their fears, however.

            Really? I’d be interested in the math that says that. Because as best I can tell, black people are disproportionately arrested, incarcerated, and killed, relative to their share of the population. No doubt the response here is “but they commit a disproportionate share of the crimes!” And it’s true that FBI statistics show black people having a disproportionate share of violent crime relative to their population. However, one, their arrest rate exceeds even that share, two, those statistics are inherently unreliable because of the high rate of false imprisonment of black people and the noted police tendency to plant weapons on people they kill, and three, it completely fails to account for the generational cycles of poverty and incarceration which increase the rate of crime in the first place.

            I’d also be interested in the black people who’ve had their fears created by “the media and dishonest political actors”, and not, you know, their parents.

            The police departments in many (especially Southern) jurisdictions literally started as runaway slave catchers. This is not some kind of left wing media conspiracy to drum up black support. This is a reality of life that black people have lived with for generations.

          • Randy M says:

            and three, it completely fails to account for the generational cycles of poverty and incarceration which increase the rate of crime in the first place.

            There’s no reason for this particular issue to account for this. Once you are in a confrontation with the police that is because of a crime you committed, you are more likely to be injured regardless of the reason for you committing the crime being your poverty or your greed.

            That’s like saying “You can’t consider the Russian’s drinking as a cause for their liver problems, because they have valid reasons for being wanting to drink.” Sure, maybe, but that doesn’t make the liver disease racist.

          • AG says:

            tossrock and Matt M mostly covered it.

            The cops are not bragging about their body count, but they sure talk about how justice was done every time they’re exonerated on a shooting, and gear up to defend one of their own for a shooting, or applauding one of their own for beating a protester with a baton, and just in general get away with doing whatever, all that general disapproval failing to do much in terms of accountability.
            Meanwhile, is the number of people cancelled but still alive and making plenty of money even greater than the number of dead? How many of the cancelers have in turned been canceled, and how many in the entire ecosystem have died or gone to prison for it? One of these things sure is not like the other, and it’s in the stakes. Show me the trends of the canceled man falling into opioid addiction and eventually crime or committing suicide, and I’ll reconsider.

            @Randy M
            Scott’s postings on nature and nurture have found that abuse is one of the only things that can make nurture cause significant changes in outcome. That’s why generational cycles matter. One man goes to prison unjustly, and that highly increases the chances his children (and their children, etc.) will, too.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            A lot of “crime rates” are very, very fudgeable.

            But murders aren’t. A dead body is a dead body.

            There are about as many “white murders” as “black murders” and it doesn’t really matter whether I’m talking about the perpetrator or the victim because most murders are done by people you know. [1]

            At that stake in the ground, there should be about as many black arrests as white arrests. But there aren’t, there are more whites in prison, and more whites shot by cops, and more whites arrested, and . . .

            Wait!, you say. Maybe other crimes are different than murders. And you’re right, they are! It’s quite possible that the crime rate for areas harder to measure is different in a way that cops are unusually hard on black people. That’s not impossible to believe, not at all!

            If 2% of people are racist and 2% of cops are racist, that’s gonna suck for people of the victim race. And, cops pull over more black people during the day (when the driver’s race is clear) than they do at night (when it isn’t). Now, maybe there’s some reason in the other direction for that, and I’m listening if someone has something more than a theory that could be true.

            But, y’know, I’d rather not fight about this. Our prison system sucks. It grinds people up. Defending yourself is a bankruptcy-level event. A lot of interactions with the cops that you see on video seem like they put the time and respect of the cop ahead of the lives of the people they deal with. While “hands up don’t shoot” was a fabrication, the fact that the Ferguson police department was operating on a for-revenue problem is insane. We need reform.

            So even if BLM is quote-unquote-wrong about some stats, I’d rather focus on the chance to reform police, because I feel this is our one, best shot at doing so. Being incorrect in some core beliefs is unlikely to make our remedies incorrect. Some will likely be useless, like implicit-bias training. But we aren’t going to get actively-negative reforms because of those problems unless they get totally wacky like “let’s not investigate black murders.” And it looks like “abolish the police” was a 48-hour-fever-dream that has broken and the adults are now past that and talking about what serious reforms would be. Good. Let’s get some of that done.

            [1] You can argue that there are historical reasons for this disparity. Yes! Maybe it’s the poverty that causes the crime and murders and the racism caused the poverty. But even if we assume that’s 100% true, it still doesn’t mean cops should decline to investigate the crime and murders.

          • albatross11 says:

            From the available numbers, it does not look to me like being shot by the police is a very high probability risk for a random black guy, particularly one not engaged in some serious crime. It’s a risk, but a very small one.

            However, note that there’s a lot of police misconduct that falls short of murder but is still seriously nasty to have done to you. If the cops don’t shoot you or choke you to death, but instead beat you up or mace you or arrest you on some bullshit charge and you have to spend the night in jail. that’s not as bad as murder, but it’s still plenty bad.

          • Randy M says:

            @Randy M
            Scott’s postings on nature and nurture have found that abuse is one of the only things that can make nurture cause significant changes in outcome. That’s why generational cycles matter. One man goes to prison unjustly, and that highly increases the chances his children (and their children, etc.) will, too.

            And that’s all bad–but it doesn’t matter at the moment when a when a crime is being committed. If blacks have higher crime rate, we expect them to have more interactions with police, and subsequently more dangerous ones. Regardless of how understandable that crime rate is.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            And spending a night in jail could be catastrophic to keeping your job. A lot of white-collar jobs can handle this but blue-collar work often cannot afford random absenteeism.

            And even if the arrested guy really did rob someone? They should still be held to account for that, but the process shouldn’t be the punishment. A lot more people should get the kind of deal that Epstein got: to be able to only report to jail on the weekends (or whatever other day of the week works with their schedule). It still sucks and is a punishment but they can keep their outside life going.

          • albatross11 says:

            Matt M said:

            There are no statistics regarding how many times white cops “were rougher than they needed to be” while subduing black suspects.

            Ronald Fryer published a paper that did have statistics on that. His findings (from three big city police departments) were that:

            a. Police were NOT more likely to shoot blacks than whites. (I think he conditioned this on the situation in some way, but it’s been many years since I read the paper so I don’t remember details.)

            b, Police WERE more likely to do basically every other kind of force they were allowed to do (handcuffing, knocking down, tazing, macing, etc.) to blacks than to whites. (Again, conditioned on the situation in some way.)

            So, the best information I know says that blacks actually do get more non-lethal kicking around than whites from the police. At a guess, policemen know that shooting someone is a huge deal that will get a big investigation, so they only shoot when they’re genuinely scared. But smacking someone around for insufficient deference is much less likely to lead to any consequences.

          • Randy M says:

            @Edward Scizorhands
            If that’s to me, yeah, totally.

            My only point is that inasmuch as you are trying to determine how bad the police are, a difference in crime rates is absolutely a good reason for a difference in arrest rates, regardless of the reason for the crime–generational or poverty or whatever.

            Police might still be bad for any number of reasons, but that argument was not a good one.

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            The other thing is that if the police can get away with murder, this makes any contact with them more threatening.

          • AG says:

            Relevant to the homicide rate, though, is how much of that body count is felony murder nonsense.

          • Scott had a post where he looked pretty carefully at the evidence on police bias against blacks and concluded that it was not clear whether it existed. I just looked through the archives for this year and the last and didn’t find it, but perhaps someone else can.

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            Should the rate of exoneration be considered?

            It seems plausible that the police and justice system are getting a significant number of innocent black people convicted.

          • No One In Particular says:

            If there were only a few people subjected to capital punishment each year, could we conclude just from the low numbers that capital punishment has no deterrent value?

            @Edward Scizorhands

            The stepmother of the Atlanta cop who killed the Wendy’s guy has been fired, for being the stepmother of today’s monster.

            Cite?

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            If there were only a few people subjected to capital punishment each year, could we conclude just from the low numbers that capital punishment has no deterrent value?

            Quite probably, based on how homicide rates differ between US states that do and don’t have the death penalty, and similarly between the US and other countries.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            While the cops getting the wrong guy is an extremely important matter for criminal justice, it doesn’t mean much for the murder rate.

            Black people are mostly killed by black people. White people are mostly killed by white people. If a white guy is in a black neighborhood and kills someone, he will be remembered, and vice versa. Those tend to get caught.

            If a member of X race gets killed by a member of X race and the police frame the wrong member of X race, while a horrible injustice, it doesn’t change the statistics at play here.

            @Edward Scizorhands
            If that’s to me, yeah, totally.

            It was to albatross11, but it could work for yours as well. The justice system grinds people up, guilty or innocent, a lot more than necessary.

            The other thing is that if the police can get away with murder, this makes any contact with them more threatening.

            100%. I made a bold comment about this elsewhere. The threat that “I can kill you and get away with it” is a huge superweapon in any interaction. We need cops investigated and potentially prosecuted by external agencies.

            Cite?

            https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/06/19/rolfes-stepmother-fired-from-job-n2570934

            I’ve heard some people say she was the cop’s mother-in-law, not his stepmother. Either way, though, it’s some bullshit that people are getting fired for being related to the target of today’s mob.

          • AG says:

            Felony murder is not mentioned in Scott’s post, either.

            Felony murder is the case where if someone gets killed in a situation where a different crime was also being committed, the person committing the other crime is on the hook for it. In practice, this means that if the cops kill someone while responding to anything, they get to peg the kill on the supposed criminal.
            Example: Store robbers charged with the death of police killed by friendly fire.
            Police shoots a teenager, 4(!) of his friends are charged for it.
            11 people have been executed by the death penalty for felony murder.

            So a portion of the homicide rate is other people doing the killing.

          • No One In Particular says:

            @thisheavenlyconjugation
            I didn’t ask whether it is possible, from the totality of evidence available to us, that capital punishment is not a deterrent. I asked whether, in a world with only a few executions, the mere fact of there being only a few executions is sufficient to establish that capital punishment is not a deterrent.

            @Edward Scizorhands

            Your supposed cite says

            “As an employer, it is imperative to maintain a safe environment for all employees. Melissa Rolfe’s termination was a director result of her actions in the workplace and violation of company policy,” the company said in a statement on Twitter. “While working with Melissa as she transitioned to a leave of absence granted by our organization, we discovered she violated company policy and created an uncomfortable working environment for many of our employees.

            You may think that they are lying, but you have presented absolutely no evidence for the claim that the reason she was fired is because is Rolfe’s stepmother.

          • albatross11 says:

            AG:

            I believe only a very small minority of murder cases have multiple people charged with the murder, which I think is the usual pattern for felony murder.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            @No One In Particular
            Why is that an interesting question? We live in an actual world, not a hypothetical one.

          • No One In Particular says:

            @thisheavenlyconjugation
            You’re claiming that a rare event cannot be an effective deterrent. I am asking you to clarify that claim. It is quite legitimate to ask whether you claims applies to other cases, even if those cases don’t actually obtain in the real world. When you claim “X -> Y”, and someone else asks “If we had this other type of X, would we be able to conclude Y from that X”, and you come back “We can conclude Y from facts completely different from X”, that’s changing the subject. Either you’re not following the discussion, or you’re deliberately obfuscating the issue.

        • SamChevre says:

          I’ve heard about 2 firings for incorrect opinions in my social circle in the last week (Catholic chaplain at a University where a friend is an adjunct, teacher in a school where a friend’s children go). I don’t expect either of those to get any coverage outside the very most local news.

          • Nick says:

            Father Moloney’s case is definitely being discussed outside local news, because I’ve heard plenty about it. Shame on the archdiocese for its spinelessness.

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      We need a series of sympathetic judges who are willing to either create a new tort, or twist an existing tort (such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_infliction_of_emotional_distress or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_consortium ).

      Interference of right to participate in the public sphere? A similar right already exists in anti-SLAPP suits, so it’s not like this is made out of whole cloth.

      At least in California, as long as you both say what you say outside of the workplace, and spin it such that it has a political component, employers are barred from firing you (with exceptions for pragmatic concerns such as being elected to a full-time political office when you have a full-time job): https://www.shouselaw.com/employment/political-retaliation.html

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        Fix interference by the employer in the employees’ affairs by having the state interfere into their both affairs? Hm, sounds like a perfect plan with no possible way for things to go wrong.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          This is what every single civil law is, and no small number of criminal laws, in every country in the world.

      • No One In Particular says:

        Anti-SLAPP rules are statutes. As in, passed by the legislature, not created by judges.

    • acymetric says:

      I am concerned how the boundary of “this is my employer’s business” is expanding into our lives outside of working hours.

      Have you considered that employers caring about what people are doing outside of work isn’t new, its just that what they care about has shifted to something that might impact you instead of something that wouldn’t? I don’t think there was ever any true separation here.

      • albatross11 says:

        acymetric:

        How about if I just think there *should* be such separation, and that the push to normalize eliminating what separation there is now is making the world a much worse place?

        • acymetric says:

          I would tend to agree. I’m just pointing out that a lot of people (both sides are very guilty of this) want the things they approve of outside of work to be separate from their employment status, but are (or were in very recent memory) ok with the things they don’t approve of outside of work being used to justify firing someone, and that this isn’t new so much as the pendulum has swung in terms of which group’s non-work activities/believes are in/out of favor.

          Some obvious CW things that can or could recently have cost you your job:
          Being gay
          Being the wrong religion (including no religion)
          Being an open member of [hate group]
          Saying something overtly anti-Christian that your Christian boss finds out about
          Saying something racist that your “woke” boss finds out about

          Some (arguably) non-CW things that might have cost you your job:
          Infidelity with spouse
          Divorce
          Promiscuity
          Unwillingness to be promiscuous
          Legal or financial problems that don’t impact your job performance

          And that is just off the top of my head. The pendulum has swung and the shoe is somewhat on the other foot now, and I’m not a fan of it regardless of which direction it is currently being aimed at, but lets not pretend this is some new phenomenon that only modern day conservatives have to deal with.

          • No One In Particular says:

            It’s interesting that you consider being fired for being gay a CW issue, but being fired for being poly not.

    • Shion Arita says:

      The best solution I can think of is to introduce a law that makes it illegal to fire someone for actions they take that are not directly related to the job, and are not a crime.

      One response may be that people may just fire them anyway and make up some reason about poor performance or something, but I suspect that a few high-profile lawsuits might be enough to drive this down significantly.

      The real key here is that people who try to get people fired are only doing it because they think they will have an impact. If the equilibrium can be shifted enough that they don’t think it will work anymore, they won’t try.

      • AlesZiegler says:

        Of course such laws already exist in many countries. Libertarians generally oppose them.

      • Spookykou says:

        I think the public shaming is also a goal, and even if actually being fired was rare there would still be a strong motivation to shame publicly. I think the firing is a bigger deal obviously, I remember seeing somewhere a list of traumatic life events and ‘being fired’ was pretty high up there. Still I am generally not a fan of the public shaming component either.

      • b_jonas says:

        I agree with AlesZiegler, we in Europe already have such laws, but some people don’t like them. They’re also hard to enforce, except in cases where you can make it an efficient class action lawsuit and eventually law, where once the precedent is established, it’s easy for individual workers to enforce. Otherwise if you’re fired in an unjust way, yout face the prospect of having to do a long expensive individual lawsuit to prove that you were in the right, when you’re just out of your job and probably can’t afford a lawyer, and even if you win, other employers in the same sector may be more inclined to believe your former boss and not employ you just to be safe. The class version does work: workers are practically impossible to fire when they return from maternity leave, no matter how bad they are at their work.

      • No One In Particular says:

        But don’t people have a right to not support things they don’t like? Should it be illegal to fire someone for posting that gay people should be killed? What about things that are torts, but aren’t crimes? Should it be illegal to fire someone for posting lies about someone? Why apply this just to employers? Shouldn’t boycotts be illegal?

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          Should it be illegal to fire someone for posting that

          That’s the rub, isn’t it?

          It’s weird that this issue often sees liberals loving the right to fire at will, and conservatives bitching about it.

          I’d rather not see it become illegal to fire someone without being able to prove a bunch of nonsense. There are steps we could take short of that.

          I saw someone post (pseudonymously on Twitter, so grain of salt) that someone who worked for them several years ago (a) hadn’t updated their LinkedIn, and (b) posted something anti-BLM. The poster got a shitload of hate mail for (supposedly) just employing the guy. It seems a lot of employers just panic under the threat of an Internet mob and toss the guy out.

          Giving the person a job protection would be a defense against this. But maybe there are steps we can take short of this, like trying to disarm Internet mobs or giving people who have been targeted some kind of support network.

  115. Garrett says:

    > actually hurting him

    Wait … can you be a bit more specific? Is this a discussion about whether the mob can have an effect on his career/position/title/tenure? Or is this a suggestion that if MSU doesn’t take their desired action(s) that they should show up with pitchforks and cause him physical harm?

  116. JohnNV says:

    Site question: Every post is tagged, but how to I view which tags have been used and see a list of postings by tag? I see how to do that if I’m already looking at a post that has certain tags but what if I just want a list of all the tags that have ever been used? Am I missing something obvious?

  117. Anteros says:

    I’m not particularly familiar with the three day rule here on SSC, but perhaps it should be amended to ‘three days or whenever something is established on Wikipedia, whichever comes first’

    I say that because the Robin Hanson tweet plus the condemnation from George Mason Uni is already part of Hanson’s Wikipedia entry, under ‘controversies’.

    • Nancy Lebovitz says:

      I think the three day rule is for (controversial?) tragedies, not for controversies.

      • Anteros says:

        That makes sense, thanks. I’m just left bemused by the impression that everything is becoming instantaneous. And much the poorer for being so.

  118. I had a conversation on here a while back about population growth and the fermi paradox, but I’m not really math savvy, so I had to look into it. This is the relevant formula, I believe; P = P0 * e^rt (P = ending population, P0 = starting population, e = Euler’s number, r = decimal rate of growth, and t = time). However, what if I want to solve for t? I only know how to rearrange equations if it’s multiplication to division or squaring to square roots. I’m not sure how you separate the rate of growth from time when they are a exponent?

  119. matkoniecz says:

    A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry completed analysis of Saruman plan in the LOTR!

    Highly recommended: https://acoup.blog/2020/06/19/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-viii-the-mind-of-saruman/

    Summary in https://acoupdotblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/sarumans-planning-tree.png

  120. Ninety-Three says:

    A lot of old-timey democracies only allowed landowners to vote, but as far as I’m aware they largely stuck to the principle of “one man, one vote”. Are there any nations where a citizen’s voting power was in some way proportionate to how much land he owned? If so I’d appreciate references on what to read up about, because the idea occurred to me recently and it seems like an interestingly unconventional form of government.

    • Deiseach says:

      Are there any nations where a citizen’s voting power was in some way proportionate to how much land he owned?

      Maintaining my tradition answering the question you didn’t ask, in Britain there were the rotten boroughs where the town that originally had the right to send representatives to parliament had so declined in fortunes and size, or the boundaries otherwise changed, that the number of electors was small enough to be within the control of the local patron, big-wig, or richest man: he decided who he would like to have elected and bribed or coerced the electors into following his choice.

      As a side note, technically British MPs cannot resign (seemingly this dates from the 17th century when holding political office was a burdensome duty people sought to avoid, so once elected the powers that be wanted to make sure they wouldn’t immediately quit) and hence, if they have to/want to resign, they promulgate the legal fiction that they have been assigned Crown office and so are heading off to take the Chiltern Hundreds.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        As a side note, technically British MPs cannot resign (seemingly this dates from the 17th century when holding political office was a burdensome duty people sought to avoid, so once elected the powers that be wanted to make sure they wouldn’t immediately quit)

        What a great system of government, whose like we may not see again. 😛

        • cassander says:

          Gather the ~500 most important people in the country in a room then have them elect the wittiest among them to run things. It was genius.

      • BBA says:

        Before the reform of 1832, the franchise varied from borough to borough, and in “burgage” boroughs the right to vote was tied to ownership of specific plots of land. If you bought all the burgage properties, you had the sole vote and absolute control of the borough’s seats in Parliament.

        What’s not clear is if the owner of some but not all of the properties was allowed multiple votes. The article refers to the legal fiction of temporarily transferring the burgages to friends or relatives in order to control the election, so I’m guessing not.

    • Matt M says:

      I don’t have an answer to your question – but I have proposed before that votes should be awarded in proportion to net taxes paid (with the option to donate to the treasury to buy more votes if you want).

      • Ninety-Three says:

        Taking this to its logical conclusion, we end up with a slightly skew system of government where people who are net tax-consumers get negative votes. Advanced technology allows the state to discern people’s true preferences, and penalize any candidate popular among the lower classes. Negative votes came to an end after decades of cutting welfare spending when someone had the idea to run on a platform of “Kill the poor”.

      • Jiro says:

        Should people in danger of sent to jail be conaisered to pay taxes equal to the harm to them caused by a jail sentence? For instance, if you have no income, but you have a statistical 50% chance of being put in jail for a year for using marijuana, you get to vote in proportion to 50% of the damage caused by being put in jail for a year.

        Likewise for other sorts of harm. If you have a blog, and some politician wants to regulate blogs, you figure the chance of his regulation succeeding, multiply by the harm to yourself for having your blog regulated, and for the purpose of voting you are considered to pay “taxes” equivalent to that.

        This is a general problem with schemes of this sort–votes are not just used to vote away tax money, votes are there to ensure your rights. You don’t need to pay taxes in order to get fined or arrested.

    • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

      This is a thing in Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series, I would guess it’s at least partly based on a real system but I don’t know what.

    • keaswaran says:

      Shareholder democracy in most corporations is like this, except instead of land, it’s shares of the corporation. And as thisheavenlyconjugation mentioned, it’s how Mitsubishi is governed in Ada Palmer’s novels (they actually use land ownership, not shares – and in her books, Mitsubishi is one of the seven world governments that still exist, that people can freely choose between, the others including a dictatorship descended from the Freemasons, a strict one-person-one-vote democracy descended from the International Olympics Committee, and a weird kludgeocracy descended from the European Union, and three other totally fictional organizations with very different government systems – Mitsubishi itself merged with Greenpeace a few decades before the start of the novel).

    • AlesZiegler says:

      Something similar existed in Austria-Hungary. Voters were divided into several “curias” Roman style (come to think of it, Roman republic is another example), with varying levels of voting power. It was based on some sort of property slash taxation criteria but mixed with others; system was complicated. For the Austrian parliament (one of several bodies based on curia voting system existing in the empire), there were initially four curias, one for large landowners, another “urban”, next one for commercial chambers, and last “rural”. “General” curia for all-males above 24 regardless of property slash taxes was added later.

      • Noah says:

        IIRC, Russia from 1905 to 1917 also had this (or rather, various versions of this because the original version led to the Duma being dominated by radical parties, so it was disbanded and the electoral weights modified).

    • cassander says:

      The short answer is yes. For more details, see Perfecting Parliament, which is about how modern parliaments and their selection methods evolved from older representative institutions.

    • No One In Particular says:

      I don’t know if it’s still the case, but at one point in Britain, it was possible to vote in any jurisdiction you owned land in. So you could buy property in several counties, and vote in elections for each county. But presumably, they didn’t have vote by mail, so I assume you would have to make your way to precincts in each of the county all on election day, which would be quite a chore without a car.

      My understanding is that many HOAs give a vote to each property.

      Under feudalism, one’s political power was tied to amount of land owned (although the cause and effect went both ways).

      As a side note, there is a bit of perverse incentives when allowing non-landowners to vote. Good municipal government means that people want to move to that city, people moving to the city means property prices and rents go up, and rent going up means angry voters.

    • markus says:

      After 1866 the elections to the higher parliamentary chamber in Sweden was based on yearly income. The maximum number of votes for a single person with high income ranged from 5000 in the countryside to 100 in towns.

      In some local elections the majority of the votes was in the hand of a single individual.

      Two of the most cited lines in Swedish poetry deals with this:

      Det är skam, det är fläck på Sveriges banér,
      att medborgarrätt heter pengar.

  121. ItsGiusto says:

    Is anyone aware of some sort of wordpress plugin that allows you to collapse threads in the comments? It’d make my reading of comments much more efficient, since there are so many branching subthreads.

    • Fahundo says:

      Just click the hide button bro

      • ItsGiusto says:

        Cool, thanks, never noticed it

      • CatCube says:

        There’s also a plugin that automatically executes the “hide” function on any thread that doesn’t have new comments (the ones highlighted with the “xx comments since yy” box in the upper right). You can find it here:
        https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/09/ot73-i-lik-the-thred/#comment-486219

        • bottlerocket says:

          Woah, thanks for resurfacing this. I’ve been doing some thinking about the various ways to mitigate WordPress’s awful comment system, and this helps some. Now if only I could make the experience on Android (the real bottleneck) less bad…

          • CatCube says:

            I guess while I’m talking about that, I may as well mention the service that will e-mail you when somebody posts a reply to one of your comments (i.e., underneath it in the post tree structure), or @ you. You can find the link to it here:
            https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/25/open-thread-76-25/#comment-504989

          • bottlerocket says:

            This is also great (not that I comment very much, but when I do, it’s pretty hard to find out with the default spammy WordPress notification system).

            As perhaps an indicator of how little I comment, apparently I can’t reply to a post that’s deep enough to be shrunk to the minimum UI size? Your post just has no “Reply” button, and the same seems true for other maximum depth replies elsewhere in the comments here. I just replied to myself as a kludge. Hope you’re not relying on the e-mail notification thing too much!

          • CatCube says:

            @bottlerocket

            Yeah, it doesn’t do anything different when you hit the commenting depth limit, so if you’re signed up you probably got an email about your response to yourself.

            You *should* also get one for this, since I used “@bottlerocket” in it.

            You can’t rely on the e-mail widget, but it does help a bit by letting you know if somebody has replied to you without hitting the tree, and some people do use @ tagging.

          • No One In Particular says:

            @CatCube
            Is that different from what happens if you click the “Notify me of follow-up comments by email” box?

          • CatCube says:

            @No One In Particular

            The last time I used that checkbox (and it’s been a number of years, so the behavior could have been changed), checking it would send you an e-mail for. Every. Single. Comment. In the thread post you used it in. Not super useful when we regularly have 800-1000 comment threads posts.

            The e-mail widget only e-mails you for 1) comments that are posted as a reply to one of yours, using the “Reply” button, or 2) that contain “@username” somewhere in them.

            It’s not perfect. For example, I only got an e-mail because you used the “@CatCube”, because we’re at the max nesting depth and you can’t directly reply to me. Also, if bottlerocket signed up for it, he’s going to get e-mails about both of our comments, because they’re both replies to his comment. *I’m* also going to get an e-mail about *this* comment, because I used “@CatCube” in it. The algorithm it uses is really simple.

            It’s still *way* more convenient to follow conversations you’re in, and I’m an evangelist for it.

            * Edited to clarify that I meant the “Open Thread” posts by “thread”–not just the actual comment thread in the comment area.

          • No One In Particular says:

            @CatCube

            It’s not perfect. For example, I only got an e-mail because you used the “@CatCube”, because we’re at the max nesting depth and you can’t directly reply to me.

            That’s more of a flaw of wordpress than the widget. And really, there should be a social norm of indicating who you’re responding to. And what you’re responding to, if it’s not completely obvious. There are too many people just talking about “that”, and not indicating what “that” is.

    • What I want is a big arrow next to the little arrow that lets me go to the top comment, so that if I come across a new comment on a subject of no interest to me I can go to the top and hide the whole thread. At present it requires multiple clicks as I work up the hierarchy.

      • keaswaran says:

        Oh, I had never known what that little arrow did before! It’s a feature I had been looking for! (I had assumed it was part of the “Hide” feature, because I think one of the Reddit plugins makes a hide button that uses something like the arrow as the icon.)

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          As a general UI rule, if you put your mouse over an unfamiliar control, it should tell you what it does.

          (I don’t know the equivalent for touch screens.)

          • Randy M says:

            I don’t know if you mean that normative or descriptive, but doing so here reads “parent comment” which is succinct and almost descriptive.

  122. Wrong Species says:

    Nikita Khrushchev: Political realist or opportunistic coward?

    • FLWAB says:

      Anyone who comes out on top after Stalin’s death is no coward. He went toe to toe with Beria and won. That takes cajones.

    • cassander says:

      Neither, just someone with a vast capacity to believe his own bullshit who wasn’t that bright.

      • Wrong Species says:

        What makes you say that?

        • cassander says:

          He seems to have been a genuine believer in the superiority of the soviet system, broadly speaking, that Stalin had committed excesses but was basically on the right path. His foreign policy was a series of blunders that culminated in the cuban missile crisis, where he had to endure an absolutely humiliating climb down over a strategic disadvantage that would be remedied in a couple years by proper ICBMS that made the presence of absence of missiles in cuba irrelevant. Frankly, he must have had SOMETHING going for him to win out after the death of stalin, but I’ve never seen what it was.

    • Bobobob says:

      One thing often unappreciated about Khrushchev is how many (possibly hundreds of thousands) of Ukrainians he was directly responsible for exterminating. Yes, he was only following Stalin’s orders, and his own life was undoubtedly on the line, but still.

      There’s a story from a Khrushchev biography about about the aftermath of his speech denouncing Stalin (three years after Stalin died). Someone from the audience shouted, “Why didn’t you do anything to stop it?”

      At which point Khrushchev grabbed the mike and shouted, “Who said that? Who said that? I demand that you identify yourself!”

      Complete silence in the audience, white faces, no raised hands.

      Khrushchev: “That’s why I didn’t do anything.”

  123. Edward Scizorhands says:

    Reparations are put in place to settle an issue.

    Do you think they would settle this issue?

  124. zooid says:

    I met Steve Hsu as a prospective graduate student in the physics department at University of Oregon, where he used to work. I respect him as a scientist and he was polite to me but I do not think he should be in a leadership role. He was at the time advocating that humans be genetically optimized for IQ, and that the qualifying exams should be replaced with a hard physics GRE cutoff. Certainly he is smart enough to understand that intelligence is more than IQ, and that scientific aptitude cannot be perfectly measured by how many basic questions you can answer correctly in a short amount of time. The concerning thing is that he doesn’t care; if the correlation is good enough you can just ignore the cost of neglecting what it fails to capture. Besides the whole ugly history of eugenics, I think this kind of preoccupation with performance metrics and failure to properly value cognitive diversity are bad for science and disqualifying for leading a research institution.

    • AnteriorMotive says:

      Interview, CVs, or GPAs also fail to “perfectly measure” scientific aptitude. That’s not a realistic standard to hold anyone to. Aptitude at solving the sort of problems which physicists encounter has got to be up there as a method of identifying promising physicists.

      I agree that it’s good to promote cognitive diversity, but one of the best ways to do that is to promote diversity in recruitment practices. Let every lab manager choose their own idiosyncratic set of criteria. That way there’s a team somewhere out there for both the guy who’s expert at standardized tests but can’t give an interview, and the girl who dropped out of high school to tinker with the centrifuge in her garage.

    • Briefling says:

      I actually partially agree — to this distant observer, he seems to like IQ to a slightly ridiculous extent, perhaps even to a degree that is generically undesirable in an administrator.

      But I continue to be firm in believing that academics should only be fired for (1) poor performance, evaluated directly, or (2) breaking a clearly-defined code of conduct. If you’re firing a guy out of a vague sense that his opinions and rhetoric are wrong, you’re completely undermining academic freedom.

      Of course, Hsu is merely being threatened with removal from an administrative position, and that is plausibly relevant to the calculus here — I mean, if you’re the Director of Student Life and all the students hate you for your opinions and rhetoric, that’s an issue even if they really “shouldn’t.” But in this case I don’t see a justification for compromising one of the core principles of the academy.

      (Some in this thread have claimed that, since it’s only an administrative appointment at stake, there is no real threat to academic freedom at all. Those arguments seem absurd to me.)

      • Briefling says:

        All right, after reading and reflecting on some of the comments in this thread, a few revisions to my stance:

        – The fact that we’re talking about removal from an administrative position, and not firing outright, is significantly more relevant than I’ve acknowledged in my existing posts.

        – I’m pretty sure I still oppose the Hsu demotion itself, but the debate may hinge on details that I’m not willing to fully dig into.

        – Additionally, even if the demotion is “wrong,” it may not be as serious a break with precedent as I initially thought.

        In spite of this softening of my position, I do think that appearing to give in to internet activism of this nature is pretty bad, and could have lasting ramifications.

    • The Red Foliot says:

      I disagree that eugenics has an ugly history. Hitler deciding that Jews need to be destroyed doesn’t consistute eugenics, or it does but only in the same way that USSR depredations constitute nannystate socialism.

      Eugenics could take the form of making it more attractive for middle class women to reproduce, for instance, or coming up with gene-selection technologies for couples wanting to reproduce.

      The immense benefits of eugenics are that they spare people from having to be born with innate dysfunctions and also create, for society as a whole, a more productive and socially adjusted population.

      It’s also a good that compounds itself across generations, as not only the people who were selected for good genes get to benefit, their descendents do as well.

      • matkoniecz says:

        I disagree that eugenics has an ugly history.

        More than 400,000 people were sterilized against their will, while up to 300,000 were killed under Action T4, a mass murder program.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics

        Hitler deciding that Jews need to be destroyed

        Nazis did also other evil things.

        • The Red Foliot says:

          I did not realize that the non-holocaust related killings were as extensive as that; I had usually heard them characterized in a way that downplayed their numerosity. However, I think it’s still pertinent to note that not all things that share the same class are meaningfully similar. Based on what’s been said about Hsu I don’t think his idea of eugenics is likely to be similar to Nazi Germany’s practice, so criticizing him for the ugly history of eugenics does not seem fair. At the very least a distinction should be made between eugenic practices that utilize coercion and eugenic practices that do not, as that is where the main difference seems to lie.

          • albatross11 says:

            Yeah, killing or forcibly sterilizing people or forcing people to have abortions are evil all by themselves. They don’t become *more* evil because their goal is some kind of improvement of the human genepool. They don’t become *less* evil when done for a different goal, like population control or punishing political dissent.

            The goal of eugenics is probably not actually workable (because human generations are long and it’s hard to imagine keeping a selective breeding program going for enough generations at a large enough scale to matter much), but the goal isn’t evil. But the methods used in the name of eugenics have often been genuinely awful.

          • matkoniecz says:

            However, I think it’s still pertinent to note that not all things that share the same class are meaningfully similar.

            Oh, I agree. Not everything done by nazis was evil – national motorway construction plans etc.

            “Hitler liked dogs. He was evil. Therefore, liking dogs is evil. Q.E.D.” is not a sound logic.

            I was just disputing “no ugly history part”, once $BIGNUM are murdered in name of $SOMETHING, given topic or concept has an ugly history.

            For example rocketry or Apollo 11 is not evil by itself, but it has its direct roots in a nazi slavery terror weapon project (more people were killed by V2 production than its use). See Wernher von Braun and Operation Paperclip.

            the attacks from V-2s resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel, and a further 12,000 forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners died as a result of their forced participation in the production of the weapons

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket

            It does not mean that rocketry is evil and anyone who works at NASA is evil.

            BTW, even Operation Paperclip was not evil/bad idea – this rocket scientists worked for one Evil Empire, letting them work for next Evil Empire would not be a smart idea. Working for Mildly Evil Empire was probably the best outcome that was viable.

            ———

            I did not realize that the non-holocaust related killings were as extensive as that; I had usually heard them characterized in a way that downplayed their numerosity.

            Thanks for this reply!

            It is quite interesting that while presenting Nazis as demonic and ironically often dehumanizing them, often people underestimate what they did and their plans. It is hard to find any kind of evil that was not done as an official state policy.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wola_massacre – just one week in one part of a single city, during Warsaw Uprising. For comparison total UK civilian deaths in entire WW II were about 67 200.

            systematic killing of between 40,000 and 50,000 Poles in the Wola suburb of Poland’s capital city Warsaw by German Wehrmacht and fellow Axis collaborators in the Russian RONA forces during the early phase of the Warsaw Uprising

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_occupied_Poland_during_World_War_II

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost

            The plan was attempted during the war, resulting indirectly and directly in millions of deaths of ethnic Slavs by shootings, starvation, disease, or extermination through labor. But its full implementation was not considered practicable during the major military operations, and was prevented by Germany’s defeat.

            In 1941 it was decided to destroy the Polish nation completely and the German leadership decided that in 15–20 years the Polish state under German occupation was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists.[29]:32 A majority of them, now deprived of their leaders and most of their intelligentsia (through mass murder, destruction of culture, the ban on education above the absolutely basic level, and kidnapping of children for Germanization), would have to be deported to regions in the East and scattered over as wide an area of Western Siberia as possible. According to the plan this would result in their assimilation by the local populations, which would cause the Poles to vanish as a nation.

      • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

        When people talk about the ugly history of eugenics, they don’t just mean Hitler but also things like the compulsory sterilisation programmes in the US and this:

        a mental institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk infected with tuberculosis (reasoning that genetically fit individuals would be resistant), resulting in 30–40% annual death rates

        .

  125. Conrad Honcho says:

    Do we get any credit for welfare, public housing, food stamps, etc for the past 50-odd years? That’s got to all add up to a few trillion in payments to the black community by now.

  126. JayT says:

    Does anyone have opinions on pellet grills? I think I want to get one, but haven’t done the research yet. is Traeger still the best option? If so, which model is the best value? I saw that Weber has gotten into the pellet grill game, how are those? Any other things I should know before jumping in?

    • bja009 says:

      It’s not a pellet smoker, but I recently bought a Pit Barrel Cooker and if you’re looking for consistent temperature over long cook times with very little fuss, but still want the flavor you get from wood and charcoal, it is absolutely the way to go. I made the best smoked ribs of my life the very first time I used it, and while I’m no chef, you could call me a talented amateur.
      You can also grill on it quite effectively, though I don’t plan to get rid of my Weber kettle.

      Edit: fixed link.

    • gojiban says:

      I think they’re great. My family pitched in and bought a traeger for my brother’s birthday 5+ year’s ago and it was the best gift we ever gave ourselves.

      Ease of use is one of the top reasons to prefer the pellet grills. Cranking a dial to the temperature you want and having it stay there seems magical when done outdoors, and made me appreciate the indoor oven a little more.

      I’m not up to date on what the latest designs have to offer, but a feature I’d look for would be an easy or somewhat easy to remove auger; mine my brother’s gets jammed with swollen pellets in humid months if it sits for more than a week. Being able to remove the pellets from the auger without having to wait for them to burn out (the pellet grill does nothing to improve lazy tendencies) is a huge plus. A grill that can hold 3 racks of ribs is a good sweet spot for size; I rarely need more, but couldn’t do with less.

      The pit barrel cooker bja009 mentions is definitely something to consider, though. I really want one to have the option of charcoal flavor and whatever wood chunks I want to experiment with, all the while still being a consistent low fuss smoker and, as mentioned, a decent griller (high heat/searing is pretty much not an option on the pellet grills, unless technology progressed when I wasn’t looking).

  127. Randy M says:

    edit: This is not the comment I started my reply to…
    Probably better anyway.

  128. FLWAB says:

    Over and over through the last five months or so I have heard Trump criticized for his “lack of leadership.” I’ve heard people say that the coronavirus requires “leadership” that Trump is not providing, and now I’m hearing right wing pundits complaining that in the face of riot and disorder Trump is not providing “leadership.” After hearing this complaint so many times and mulling it over I have come to the conclusion that I have no clear idea what people mean when they say “leadership.” What exactly do they want Trump to do? Make a speech? If they want Trump to do a specific action, why aren’t they complaining about that? I’m not trying to make any political point here, I’m just honestly confused.

    So I’m asking around. What do you think people mean when they complain that Trump is not providing “leadership?”

    • Randy M says:

      A lot of it is probably “make a speech.” With a side of “don’t say some of the things he is saying.”

      • Matt M says:

        Yeah, I definitely think it’s “make a speech” but also “have consistent messaging over your speeches.”

        Trump has said a lot about COVID, but at various times, he’s taken pretty much every position including “this is a huge threat that necessitates an extreme response” to “this is a Democrat hoax” and everything in between.

        I don’t agree that it’s necessarily positive – but I think in the American mind, “leadership” is someone who plants a stake in the ground and defends their position, no matter what. Taking a cautious approach, updating your priors based on new evidence… all of these things that rationalists might value are seen as signs of weakness at best or incompetence at worst within the context of American politics.

        • Thomas Jorgensen says:

          No. You can have leadership that updates on evidence.

          One of the mid-century Danish prime ministers had a biting one liner about that “When the evidence changes, I change my mind. Is that not what you do?” (it scans better in danish. Sorry).

          It just needs to be clear that this is, in fact, what said leadership is doing.

          Trump is failing at providing leadership because it is abundantly clear there is no underlying reasoning beneath his stances at all, merely chaos. It is not difficult to get people to follow a leader with the level of institutional mystique the US president has, but there does have to be something there to follow.

          • Matt M says:

            It’s technically possible but it’s very difficult to successfully execute (at least in the context of American politics).

            Recall that John Kerry’s presidential campaign was almost completely derailed by his inability to adequately reconcile his former support for the Iraq war with his current opposition to it.

            Republicans successfully labeled him a “flip-flopper,” a smear that implies one has no solid ideological commitments and will support or abandon any cause depending on what the current poll numbers are showing.

            2016 Trump didn’t have this problem. He would plant himself on an extreme position (build the wall!) and refuse to back down, even as massive media criticism insisted he must. 2020 Trump has it in spades. He can no longer be relied upon to consistently stick with anything. He’s a leaf, twisting in the wind.

          • Juanita del Valle says:

            That one-liner is often attributed to John Maynard Keynes. Some discussion here.

          • mtl1882 says:

            One of the mid-century Danish prime ministers had a biting one liner about that “When the evidence changes, I change my mind. Is that not what you do?” (it scans better in danish. Sorry).

            It just needs to be clear that this is, in fact, what said leadership is doing.

            Yes. People get labeled as flip-floppers more when they don’t acknowledge the change in a matter-of-fact way, I think, and, perhaps more importantly, when they came on too strong initially. Politicians often speak as though their positions are beyond question, with a dose of self-righteousness. Once you do that, changing your mind based on evidence doesn’t really come across as “rational” and “responsible”–it tends to smack of rationalization or dishonesty. It’s a trust thing. (As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become freaked out by just how frequently rational arguments are picked up merely to justify something already decided upon for other reasons. I now feel like my desire to engage with them in good faith is a huge weakness 90% of the time. Mistake v. conflict theory, etc.)

            That’s why I love this line in Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley, who was furious that Lincoln had not yet begun applying contraband laws to seize slaves from southerners and free them:

            I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

            Lincoln’s extreme care in qualifying his positions and explicitly laying out his reasoning (or, if this was unwise, staying silent) was key to his success as a leader.

      • zzzzort says:

        Make a speech covers a lot. I think more specifically people want him to take responsibility/’buck stops here’ (which he has famously refused to do) and play a pastoral, mourner-in-chief role.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      Lots of orgs, including the US, can run just fine on automatic, but when you need some big change to happen, or a crisis is causing a change and you need to get past it, you need leadership so that everyone sees the common end and keeps on working towards it.

      Part of Steve Jobs’s leadership was his reality distortion field, where he would insist something crazy would happen (like, “people want phones without physical keyboards”), and et everyone to follow that goal instead of trying to save their own skin when this touchscreen thing fails. And in the end, because he kept everyone on that goal, the crazy thing ends up being true! We’d probably never have iterated our way to touchscreen phones.

      With things like covid and the protests, people feel better if they see there is an endgame we are working towards, and they can stay on the task. It’s not easy, and you need to understand what’s going on at a fundamental level to keep the various ironies straight in your head.

      I used to laugh at the concept of “leadership” but it’s a real skill, and a rare one.

      • FLWAB says:

        Doesn’t it…doesn’t it seem like Trump has a reality distortion field? He’s always giving speeches about how the economy is going to come back better than ever, no problem. Like, I don’t know if his distortion field works, but when I think of presidents who insist something crazy is going to happen, Trump tops the list. He’s constantly predicting huge success, the best ever. Economically that arguably worked up until COVID. I guess we’ll see if it does anything for the recovery.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          In Scott’s review of “The Art of the Deal” he suspected this was what Trump’s value-add was for property development.

          The entire process was so mucked up that you need someone to solve the coordination issue and lie to various parties. “Yes, construction firm, I have 500 people that have agreed to lease” and “yes, mortgage company, I have a construction firm that has already signed the papers to build” and “yes, lessees, the city department has already approved all the permits.” These start out as lies, but someone comes through and lies to each group, and by the time it all shakes out at the end, it’s all perfectly true.

          I think his reality distortion field was well-tuned for that domain. And if one of the people necessary to stop things from imploding wavered, he had family members working for him who would fix it or try to swap in a new partner.

          And like you said, it worked just fine when the economy was booming. I think the good economy was inevitable — not in the sense that I predicted it, but it was going to largely happen regardless of Jeb or Clinton or Trump or Cruz was president. But, I dunno, maybe his constant boosterism helped it along. A lot of the economy is just keeping up confidence.

          But part of people believing you is that you have to stay believable. Once the reality distortion field collapses everything fails. When you say coronavirus will disappear in April and it doesn’t, that’s a breach in your reality drive.

          Keeping credibility going is a tough thing, and it doesn’t just mean that what you say can’t be proven wrong in a court of law. For example, over the past two months our public health community has taken a serious blow in believability, not necessarily because they’ve said wrong things, but because they [1] lent out their credibility to places where it didn’t belong. In New York, de Blasio praised the protests while welding shut the gates of outdoor Jewish playgrounds. This is total loss of credibility.

          [1] It’s possible this was the media’s doing, like promoting that silly health-care-petition as representative. Maybe the public health officials were screaming at the top of their lungs about the dangers and just couldn’t get it out. Whatever the failure was, a leader for them would have figured out a way to make sure their message got out and wasn’t co-opted by others.

          • mtl1882 says:

            Excellent posts—especially these points:

            And in the end, because he kept everyone on that goal, the crazy thing ends up being true!

            These start out as lies, but someone comes through and lies to each group, and by the time it all shakes out at the end, it’s all perfectly true.

            As much as many people hate the idea of this being true, a lot of things we see as valuable probably wouldn’t happen without this dynamic.

            But part of people believing you is that you have to stay believable. Once the reality distortion field collapses everything fails. When you say coronavirus will disappear in April and it doesn’t, that’s a breach in your reality drive.

            And this is the “check” on what otherwise seems like a behavior that can’t be defeated once it really gets going, and therefore can’t ever be tolerated. The ability to distort reality is certainly dangerous, but it doesn’t actually abolish reality and convey unlimited power on any one person. It has to stay within certain bounds to even have a chance of holding together.

      • cassander says:

        it’s also way more possible in a private company where you can drop 70% of your current products and focus those resources on other problems. With large organizations, the hard part of innovation isn’t doing new things, it’s abandoning old ones that are sucking down time and energy.

    • broblawsky says:

      Wear a goddamn mask.

    • albatross11 says:

      One place I think Trump’s leadership has really fallen short is in trying to help Americans unite. I feel like his whole strategy and superpower is in sowing ever more division and discord, in a country that already has way the hell too much. One part of the job of a leader is to find a message that gets scared, angry, divided people to be at least somewhat willing to listen and maybe work together.

      No politician ever gets *everyone* listening and pointed in the same direction. But I think Reagan did a pretty good job with this part of the job. W and Obama made honest efforts in this direction, though neither one with as much success or ability at it as Reagan.

      This isn’t the same as consistent pro-social messaging–something like modeling good behavior by wearing a mask, and not undermining state efforts to address C19 by his erratic Twitter messages and policies and public statements.

      It’s also not the same as maintaining a properly functioning administration by *not* undermining your own employees to score on someone on Twitter or head off some kind of criticism, but that would probably lead to a better-functioning administration.

      C19 and the mass protests/riots both showed off many of Trump’s failures in this part of leadership.

      • cassander says:

        One place I think Trump’s leadership has really fallen short is in trying to help Americans unite.

        How should he have done this, exactly? From where I’m sitting, people will get outraged at trump basically no matter what he does. We had a scandal about him calling haiti a shithole in a private conversation. They tried to impeach him over collusion with russia that never happened.

        I feel like his whole strategy and superpower is in sowing ever more division and discord, in a country that already has way the hell too much.

        Do you think Obama tried to unite the country or sowed discord? Because I imagine that if you polled republicans in 2011, you’d about the same percentage saying the latter about him as democrats saying it about trump to day.

        >C19 and the mass protests/riots both showed off many of Trump’s failures in this part of leadership.

        Did the riots under the obama administration do the same for him?

        • suntory time says:

          From where I’m sitting, people will get outraged at trump basically no matter what he does.

          This wasn’t necessarily the default position. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of his presidency. He’s earned his outrage through years of sowing division.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Me as well.

            I still wouldn’t have liked him.

          • cassander says:

            He’s earned his outrage through years of sowing division.

            What has he done to sow division that is different from what his predecessors have done? Because every president I can remember has been accused of sowing division by the opposite party.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @cassander

            Calling people names and whataboutism (not we are all sinners, so forgive, but we are all sinners so screw the people who say I’m bad for they have gone beyond the pale).

            albatross11’s point B here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/#comment-919105

            Obama at least signaled that he was trying: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/32210408/ns/politics-white_house/t/cop-scholar-meet-again-after-obama-chat/#.Xu6A2JZ7mq8

            Sheer amount matters here too. If he threw out a couple of barbs no more than once a month that wouldn’t be too noticeable, and understandable given his personality. But he rarely ever pauses.

          • cassander says:

            @anonymousskimmer says:

            Calling people names and whataboutism (not we are all sinners, so forgive, but we are all sinners so screw the people who say I’m bad for they have gone beyond the pale).

            Person A says “Trump does [thing], unlike other people!”

            Person B asks “Um, what about when these people did [thing]?”

            Person A says “Why do you always engage in whataboutism instead of debating honestly?”

            this is a silly game. You can’t make the claim that trump is unique and then decree that comparing trump to others is illegitimate. Whatboutism is bringing up IRRELEVANT comparisons, not responding to claims that are comparative by their nature.

          • John Schilling says:

            Because every president I can remember has been accused of sowing division by the opposite party.

            You’ll find someone to say any possible bad thing about any possible sitting president; “has been accused of” is a pretty low bar.

            But Bush The Younger, the pre-Trump poster boy for “Worse than Hitler”, saw his approval ratings go from ~40% to ~80% in the aftermath of 9/11. And his plan involved getting the United States involved in a land war in Asia. That Trump got only the slightest twitch in his ~40% approval during the COVID-19 pandemic is pretty damning.

            This isn’t rocket surgery. Give lots of speeches, yes. Make sure there’s a consistent message in those speeches. Make sure the message is heavy on “this is a Serious Problem that we will all have to Work Together to overcome”. And not one little bit of pointing to a particular group of people likely to be recognized as Americans and saying “It’s your fault!”.

            Also, direct the Federal government to do visibly useful things to help solve the problem. And if possible, tell the state governments, even the ones run by the Other Party, that this is the plan for dealing with the problem and you want them all on board with it.

          • cassander says:

            @John Schilling says:

            But Bush The Younger, the pre-Trump poster boy for “Worse than Hitler”, saw his approval ratings go from ~40% to ~80% in the aftermath of 9/11. And his plan involved getting the United States involved in a land war in Asia. That Trump got only the slightest twitch in his ~40% approval during the COVID-19 pandemic is pretty damning.

            Eh, foreign attack will do that for you.

            This isn’t rocket surgery. Give lots of speeches, yes. Make sure there’s a consistent message in those speeches. Make sure the message is heavy on “this is a Serious Problem that we will all have to Work Together to overcome”

            If he had before did, he’d be accused of fear mongering. Hell, he WAS accused of fear mongering.

            Also, direct the Federal government to do visibly useful things to help solve the problem.

            this is accurate. But given the degree to which the CDC and others have beclowned themselves over this crisis, how much do you think would have been accomplished by going to those agencies with 12 figure checks?

            And if possible, tell the state governments, even the ones run by the Other Party, that this is the plan for dealing with the problem and you want them all on board with it.

            And how well do you think that would have gone over with them? Don’t get me wrong, the other party governors would have loved it, it would have given them a platform for a public anti-trump stance, but do you really think it would have changed policy?

          • John Schilling says:

            Eh, foreign attack will do that for you.

            And a foreign plague won’t? Italy’s Giuseppe Conte had a Trumpian ~40% approval rating in 2019, now up to 60%.

            If he had before did, he’d be accused of fear mongering. Hell, he WAS accused of fear mongering.

            Again, “accused of” is an exceedingly low bar. It doesn’t matter what you’re accused of, if 60-80% of the population supports you anyway.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            Italy’s Giuseppe Conte had a Trumpian ~40% approval rating in 2019, now up to 60%.

            This is exactly right. The problem isn’t Right-wing elected rulers: it’s Donald Trump.
            I wish it was possible for American politics to sneeze without Europe catching a cold. I’m strongly in favor of more EU states electing Parties like Fidesz and Law & Justice, and I predict Biden’s election will reverse that trend. But Trump screwed up.

          • cassander says:

            @john Schilling and le Maistre Chat

            This is exactly right. The problem isn’t Right-wing elected rulers: it’s Donald Trump.

            every republican president and candidate in my life has been called a divisive fascist, so I’m inured to the claim. But this is a question we can actually check empirically. What’s been the change in approval rating for the average western head of state/PM in the last 6 months? I’ve got no idea.

          • matkoniecz says:

            I wish it was possible for American politics to sneeze without Europe catching a cold. I’m strongly in favor of more EU states electing Parties like Fidesz and Law & Justice, and I predict Biden’s election will reverse that trend. But Trump screwed up.

            I am not convinced that election results in USA had any real impact on election results in Poland. USA is not SO important.

            Main strength of Law & Justice is that opposition is really weak.

            For example main opposition party nominated Kidawa-Błońską for a president, final polls were giving her 2% of support. Luckily for them election was postponed and they managed to replace her. (yes, it was an extreme failure – but main opposition party candidate managing to go from 50% support to 2%?).

          • John Schilling says:

            What’s been the change in approval rating for the average western head of state/PM in the last 6 months? I’ve got no idea.

            This is the best I’ve been able to find on short notice. It’s not comprehensive, but it suggests most Western leaders managed a 10-20 point gain through the end of April. Shinzo Abe, if we count Japan as “Western”, is the only one to come in worse than Trump.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            Narendra Modi has jumped to 82%? I’m really surprised that the Indian Left isn’t more entrenched than that.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @cassander

            Trump isn’t unique, but it has been decades since we’ve had someone as President with his temperament. Every temperament has pitfalls, but they aren’t the same pitfalls.

            and then decree that comparing trump to others is illegitimate.

            I wasn’t trying to, I was trying to answer your question: “What has he done to sow division that is different from what his predecessors have done?”

          • Spookykou says:

            What did Abe do??

          • Aapje says:

            @John Schilling

            And a foreign plague won’t?

            Apparently not.

            A major mechanism by which high approval ratings happen is when media that normally is very critical, becomes a bunch of ass kissers. See how the NYT backed the ‘chemical weapons in Iraq’-narrative after 9/11. They wanted blood and it was more important for their bloodlust to be sated than to go against the Republicans.

            Just now, I saw Dutch lefty journalists talk about how to get people to follow the rules that ‘we agreed upon’. There was actually no referendum, but it was a decision by the government, which is dominated by center-right parties. If that government makes decisions that the journalists disagree with, they won’t say that ‘we agreed on’ that decision.

            Propaganda works.

            Apparently, the NYT et al either truly disagree with what Trump does, or their hatred of him is stronger than their agreements on policy and/or their desire for a united front.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            When you elect somebody thinking “ha ha, this will shake things up, take that squares!” or “finally, someone who is going to undo the massive problems that both parties have contributed to for decades” it’s not surprising that lots of people will find him greatly unacceptable.

            And if there were any President that I would expect to be immune to “he didn’t do the right thing because (he was afraid) people called him names” it would be Trump. He was supposed to not give a shit about all that.

        • No One In Particular says:

          From where I’m sitting, people will get outraged at trump basically no matter what he does.

          I find this a pathetic excuse for whatever Trump does. “Well, in this hypothetical world in my head where Trump did something different, you’re still criticizing him, so I’m going to just dismiss your criticism in this world.”

          They tried to impeach him over collusion with russia that never happened.

          Who is “they”, and what did they do, exactly?

          Because I imagine that if you polled republicans in 2011, you’d about the same percentage saying the latter about him as democrats saying it about trump to day.

          Argumentum ad populum.

          Did the riots under the obama administration do the same for him?

          No, because he didn’t do things like respond to a neo-Nazi by saying “there are good people on both sides”.

          • S_J says:

            @NoOneInParticular

            …respond to a neo-Nazi by saying “there are good people on both sides”.

            Interestingly, it looks like what Trump said was

            Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people who were very fine people on both sides….

            I’m not talking about neo-nazis and white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has tested them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them with the black outfits and with the helmets and baseball bats – you had lots of bad people in the other group, too.

            I’m taking this from a transcript posted on Twitter by Scott Adams, and commented on by Ann Althouse.

            Maybe Trump should have prepared his remarks more carefully.

            But it seems that he was misquoted in a way that made his remarks seem much worse than they were… And that misquote loves on in popular memory, when it is inaccurate.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Just to follow up with what S_J says, this is the kind of thing that makes me frustrated by people who talk about Trump “sowing discord.” And then someone brings up that as an example when literally Trump did not sow discord, he condemned the people everyone agrees are bad (nazis and white nationalists) and tried to bring together the good people on both sides of the “statues should come down or not” issue. Trump did the opposite of sowing discord. His opponents, however, choose discord instead, and then lie about what Trump said so they can blame him for the discord, that they are freely choosing over unity.

            It’s the equivalent of holding your little brother down, grabbing his wrists, slapping his own hands against his face while yelling “stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself!”

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @Conrad Honcho

            So “both sides” had baskets of deplorables is not sowing discord?

            English Wikipedia has an SJW bias, but claims that the actual organizers of the rally: “stated goals included unifying the American white nationalist movement”

            If this is actually true, then how can “good people” join a rally with this as a purpose?

            At the very least Trump isn’t contrasting except to divide people into two groups: “good” and “bad”. In (non-limbo) Christian eschatology this makes sense as you’re either saved or damned, but most legal systems (and people in general) sub-divide good and bad into levels of goodness or badness.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I think insisting only one side had good people and only one side had bad people is definitely sowing discord instead of unity. There are good people on the side of taking down Confederate statues, who believe these statues represent oppression, and there are good people on the side of keeping statues up, who believe they represent tragic figures who fought honorably for their people, even when their people were wrong. A constructive dialogue would be admitting the people who think either thing are not moral monsters, and trying to find a way to compromise. Move statues, and replace them with those of people everyone likes. Something like that. Instead we get the whole “do what I say or else you’re being divisive” thing. The people accusing Trump of sowing discord are the most discordant.

          • Matt M says:

            I think it is entirely possible for good people to believe that specifically excluding white nationalists from the broader conservative movement in general is counter-productive to the end-goal of improving society, yes.

            The rally was called “unite the right,” not “unite the white nationalists.” It wasn’t about unifying white nationalists… it was about unifying the entire right which, for better or for worse, white nationalists are in fact part of (an incredibly small part in number, power, and influence, but a part nonetheless).

          • No One In Particular says:

            @Conrad Honcho

            And then someone brings up that as an example when literally Trump did not sow discord

            That’s simply begging the question.

            and tried to bring together the good people on both sides of the “statues should come down or not” issue.

            Telling the pro-statues-come-down people that there were very fine people at a pro-alt-right demonstration isn’t bringing them together.

            Trump did the opposite of sowing discord. His opponents, however, choose discord instead, and then lie about what Trump said so they can blame him for the discord, that they are freely choosing over unity.

            The discord they are choosing is condemning alt-righters. You haven’t identified anything they lied about, and your claim that Trump did the opposite of sowing discord is just your opinion, one that is not well supported by the facts. When there’s a bunch of people marching with Nazi flags, pointing out that they weren’t all carrying Nazi flags, and some of those marching-with-people-carrying-Nazi-flags-but-not-actually-carrying-Nazi-flags-themselves people were very fine is, for most people, sowing discord.

          • albatross11 says:

            There is no contradiction between the two statements:

            a. The painstakingly excerpted quote from Trump that leaves out the context is dishonest as hell. Media sources often do this to Trump and many other people–sometimes they change their words around, sometimes they painstakingly edit them, sometimes they even just make shit up. Occasionally they get caught, but often even then it doesn’t seem to affect their social credibility unless it was a really high-profile story and for some reason the whole world was watching.

            b. Trump’s own words, as seen in his tweets and public statements, are very often intentionally divisive. The fact that many people will lie about him doesn’t change the fact that he often tweets stuff that undermines both his enemies and his allies, and that stirs up shit. As best I can tell, this is an intentional and effective tactic for him–whatever actual story was leading in the news falls away, and instead everyone online and most of the traditional media jump on the new outrage bait and stop paying any attention to whatever actual story there was.

          • cassander says:

            @No One In Particular

            Telling the pro-statues-come-down people that there were very fine people at a pro-alt-right demonstration isn’t bringing them together.

            Would you say that there are some fine people among the current protesters? If so, wouldn’t that be sowing discord, by your definition?

            When there’s a bunch of people marching with Nazi flags, pointing out that they weren’t all carrying Nazi flags, and some of those marching-with-people-carrying-Nazi-flags-but-not-actually-carrying-Nazi-flags-themselves people were very fine is, for most people, sowing discord.

            So there are some looters at the current floyd protests. I assume you’d agree with the statement “they’re not all looters”. So again I have to ask why you’re sowing discord?

          • No One In Particular says:

            @cassander

            Would you say that there are some fine people among the current protesters? If so, wouldn’t that be sowing discord, by your definition?

            No, it wouldn’t. I really don’t see how you could think it is, and this like a rather bad faith response.

          • cassander says:

            @No One In Particular says:

            I fail to see any meaningful difference. You claimed that:

            Telling the pro-statues-come-down people that there were very fine people at a pro-alt-right demonstration isn’t bringing them together.

            How is that any different from telling people whose businesses were smashed by looters that there were good people at the Floyd protests?

          • No One In Particular says:

            @cassander
            If you have an argument to make, then make it. Simply pointing to random things and demanding that I explain how they differ is not good faith behavior, especially when you claim, with no justification, that they are the same according to “my definition”.

          • cassander says:

            @No One In Particular says:

            I’ve made my argument, that things trump did that you call divisive you wouldn’t call divisive when your side does them. Then I gave examples. And you behaved as I predicted, saying “not all protesters” wasn’t divisive, but “not all right wingers” was. So I asked you what the difference, besides the obvious one that you’re in sympathy with the protesters but not trump and the right. So are you going to explain what the argument you’ve made actually is or are you just going to keep accusing me of things? Because from where I’m sitting, your position looks like pure tribalism and I’m hoping there’s more to it than that.

        • LT says:

          Because I imagine that if you polled republicans in 2011, you’d about the same percentage

          I spent a couple minutes Googling (caveat, polling isn’t perfect, etc, etc):
          In how people saw Trump in 2016 you were approximately right:
          https://news.gallup.com/poll/197828/record-high-americans-perceive-nation-divided.aspx
          But recent polling suggests Trump is now seen as more divisive than he was in 2016, and so more divisive than Republicans found Obama:
          https://apnews.com/5418c069582d3c894af00c635f697ffd

    • chrisminor0008 says:

      I don’t know what other people mean when they say leadership, but a concrete thing I think he should have been doing is telling everyone to wear masks and “leading” by example by as prominently as possible wearing a mask. Same with distancing. All of these press conferences he’s doing, he should have been figuring out how to get everybody 6 feet apart, himself, his cabinet, the reporters, the camera crews, and make it obvious to the viewing public that that’s what’s going on. And get that dullard Pence to do the same thing rather than refusing to wear masks in f!@#ing hospitals. Very noisily announce cancellations of some meetings or planned events because they’re nonessential and it’s not safe.

      And start talking to people about their health. Age isn’t something that can be helped, but vitamin C and D deficiency is. Same with obesity and hypertension.

      He could literally have saved tens of thousands of American lives if he cared about that sort of thing. That’s what it means to lead.

      But for all I know if he did that in this hyperpolarized culture war, wearing a mask would then have become a conservative shibboleth instead of a liberal one.

      • suntory time says:

        I fully agree with you. This absolutely would have happened under a more reasonable presidency, democratic or republican. It would have been, frankly, an obvious course of action to do the sensible thing and save lives.

    • valleyofthekings says:

      I think good leadership would mean trying to minimize the number of cases of plague that we have.
      The sense I get is that Trump only cares about minimizing the amount that we are thinking about the plague.

      For example I found these quotes: “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, actually” and “by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”

    • mtl1882 says:

      I can’t get over how focused on appearance our definition of leadership has become. I’m not saying appearance isn’t important–presentation matters, and in some instances, it is very, very important, where the goal is mostly about persuasion or keeping calm. But it is different from, and secondary to, taking appropriate action and leading the country in a particular direction. Arguably, the latter requires being good at presentation, and people will offer this as evidence of its controlling importance, but that still doesn’t justify exclusive focus on presentation. Evaluate whether the person actually leads the country effectively–if so, you can assume they had the presentation thing down. If not, then it is worth examining it, among other possible factors for the failure.

      I would say that Trump has not led the country in a constructive direction, so it’s fair to talk about the role his “approach” has played in this failure, though I think its impact was smaller than most people do. It plays a role in everything, but it is too intertwined with other factors to be separated out as “the problem” in many cases. As much as people find it hard to take, the behavior complained of is often fundamental to his appeal among those who do support him, or incidents of better performance among the public in general, so it’s not always an obvious addition of value to eliminate it, even though it would remove some negative effects. It could unintentionally lessen positive effects (which often go unrecognized), or start a feedback loop of negative effects, like if backing off on one issue was portrayed as an admission of guilt or packaged into some other narrative that led to even more damaging criticism.

      This is also why it’s not totally ridiculous to say “well, even if Trump did everything right, he’d be criticized for something else.” If the particular criticism is coming mostly from the subset of people who would criticize him regardless, and especially if the criticism is made in bad faith, then it doesn’t make any sense to modify his behavior in response to it. At best, it would be a neutral move. At not even close to worst, it looks needlessly weak and empowers bad faith actors. If the criticism is broadly made by a portion of the public in good faith, then this of course doesn’t apply and he should take that into account.

      I believe basically all traits or behaviors are part of a spectrum and have a flipside. Being combative has benefits and costs—being conflict-averse has benefits and costs—trying to look combative but also conflict-averse has benefits and costs, although the benefits of such an awkward strategy probably aren’t net benefits, just trading one cost for another. And there are other more nuanced positions on the spectrum, but there is no “perfect for all situations” or “neutral.” This is true for many other things that define a president—abstract v. concrete, regular guy v. elite, technocrat v. hands-off, visionary v. placeholder, invigorating v. stable, action-prone v. cautious. The best strategy varies by the person, era, and circumstance, but it tends to be fairly consistent and instinctual for individual presidents, not something that shifts with each news cycle.

      Someone elected president can’t be indifferent to or miserably bad at presentation. However, the kind of presentation judged acceptable when weighed against other considerations by at least half the population can vary greatly. “Presidential behavior” is a thing, but the common thread isn’t “civil tone.” It’s projecting a dignity rooted in self-assurance, familiarity with the complexities of a wide range of people and situations, and broader vision–a feeling that one understands the world. This does not equate to a truly accurate and full understanding of the world–it often is more like knowing how to create a reality distortion field, guiding people towards a constructive vision. It’s kind of a bizarre thing to want to be president and feel capable of fulfilling the role. Our greatest presidents weren’t just nice guys with a pleasant tone, to say the least. Maybe that’s bad and people want it to change, but, if so, we should acknowledge that.

      It is true that if Trump is perceived as needlessly divisive, as I think he is, this will be the reality he is judged upon at the polls. But that’s different from saying he could have easily been much more successful. I think the bigger problem is that he failed to impose a vision of unity, and it’s not an easy thing to pull off right now. It isn’t going to be easy for anyone. Trump has many flaws, but there’s a reason he was elected in this era. It won’t go away with him. I doubt Biden will be needlessly divisive, but the only available alternative for him may be the flipside—entirely passive. Maybe it will be an improvement, but if the divisiveness is largely rooted in pre-existing intense conflict, passivity won’t be enough to unify the sides. And it’s not clear that unification is possible–at best, probably a realignment. I think it is more likely that, eventually, many of the conflicts we’re dealing with will be settled, for the time being, one way or the other, not really reconciled and or compromised.

      But the focus on whether or not leaders “model” mask-wearing is confusing to me. This is not just a Trump thing. Is that the most people can bring themselves to expect of their leaders? It also makes the assumption that seems so prevalent now: symbols, words, or rituals automatically induce action in others. I understand these things tend to have an effect, but it’s a hell of a lot more complicated than that. I think it is especially faulty reasoning that Trump supporters would see a huge spike in mask-wearing if he were to do so. I don’t think they copy his behavior so much as they are attracted to it because of existing traits and beliefs. Plenty of them just aren’t going to wear masks. But plenty of them do–yet if they see it as a capitulation or obvious ploy, they might become resentful about it. And with all the craziness going on, I worry a bit that Trump’s decision to wear a mask would cause his opponents to abandon theirs (mostly a joke, but I’m not sure it won’t happen–the whole thing with masks has been weird!)

      Most importantly, I don’t think most Americans make their mask decisions based on whether Trump wears one. They don’t view him as the standard. Not even supporters copy his hairstyle. He has to speak on television, which makes mask-wearing clunky (if he looked too goofy, it could backfire), and his contact with others is more controlled. We should be aiming for a society where people wear masks because it makes sense to them and is easy to do, because there is community pressure to do so, or because it is required, not because people’s Twitter icons, statues, or Trump “model” it for them. That creeps me out. I attribute my tolerance for Trump’s grating style and “poor example” to my aversion to our seemingly near-exclusive focus on style and modeling behavior, as though concrete reality doesn’t exist or can be “reimagined” through such modeling.

    • AlesZiegler says:

      I think that it is pretty simple. Good leadership can be recognized by sucess. Low death rate from Covid, economy doing ok. Now, on what is reasonable to expect in current adverse circumstances, opinions will vary widely. But e.g. Shinzo Abe clearly seems like good leader right now, whatever he is doing. Trump not so much.

    • Dack says:

      Funny, I don’t hear a call to action. I hear condemnation. My interpretation of generic “lack of leadership” criticism is “something bad happened on your watch, and I want to hold you to account for it.”

      • Matt M says:

        Indeed. It’s a very general and ill-defined criticism that is levied when someone wants to express disapproval but is unsure exactly what should have been done differently…

    • Not all speeches are equal. Some speakers can get the audience to take up or lay down arms with a speech. Trump doesn’t even reach comprehensibility, let alone influence.

  129. AG says:

    Is it just me, or have we lost the male tenor voice in modern music genres?

    Ladies have gotten to expand out from falsetto to belting at all pitch ranges. Guys can sing baritone and bass, but at the higher end, you either get weird screeching, falsetto (countertenor), or backing down on the volume. There’s no more projecting higher pitches with a clear tone in head voice.
    This brought to you by my watching a Rossini opera and thinking “huh, I can’t think of any popular male artists that sing like this.”

    Or am I just ignorant of what kind of genres American Idol / X Factor guys are doing? Vocal belting adlibs are still a thing in Kpop. Are there secret One Direction songs with adlibs?

    • Not current, but Richard Dyer-Bennet was a tenor.

    • Bobobob says:

      It’s a higher register than tenor, but have you listened to Sigur Ros?

    • Well... says:

      It’s probably just you.

      • AG says:

        Can you recommend me a modern music genre tenor?

        • Well... says:

          Depending on what you mean by “modern” (last 10 years? last 30 years? last 70 years?), and by “recommend” (someone who’s undeniably popular? someone who’s popular AND whose music I’d recommend?)…and, do these men have to sing exclusively in the tenor range, or can it be more like they sang in many ranges but are perhaps well-known for their ability to sing in the tenor range?

          • AG says:

            I’m talking about music genres developed after, let’s say, the late 40s or so. As below, I consider the crooners to be about the last group of artists where singing with that kind of projection was the norm.
            We’re also excluding any current opera or theater singers, of course.

            They don’t have to still be alive. They don’t have to exclusively sing as tenors, but it should be a notable part of whatever song it is, not just a few belted notes during the bridge.

            I might count Josh Groban?

            Like, we have undeniable lady belters, like Lady Gaga or Christina Aguilera or Whitney Houston. I’m looking for male equivalents.

          • Well... says:

            I don’t know if these are “equivalents” to the ladies you mentioned, but off the top of my head here are some noteworthy men who sing (or sang) very popular music in what I’m pretty sure is the tenor range, for at least a significant portion of many of their songs:

            Chris Cornell
            Stevie Wonder
            Dave Matthews
            Layne Staley
            Thom Yorke
            That guy from Coldplay who was basically ripping off Thom Yorke
            Al Green
            James Brown
            Maynard James Keenan
            Hank Williams III
            Randy Travis
            Donald Fagen
            Billy Corgan
            Perry Farrel

          • AG says:

            A lot of these may sing in the range, but they don’t have the projection. When they go for a loud note, either the timbre gets gravelly, or they don’t go for loud notes at all.
            But thanks for the suggestions, I’ll check the ones I don’t know out.

    • Dino says:

      One possible factor is that good tenors are relatively scarce compared to other pitch ranges.

    • Rebecca Friedman says:

      Freddie Mercury was a tenor – er, wait, Wikipedia says… four-octave vocal range, that’s… OK, he often performed in the tenor range, how’s that? And there’s a bunch of the Italian popular operatic stuff that stars tenors – some of the Italian rock, too. I don’t know a lot about modern American popular music, I’m afraid – most of my other examples are people like Billy Joel (judging “tenor” by “can I match pitch with him” please do not take this as definitive at all), so a little dated.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        It has been scientifically determined (via vocal analysis) that Freddie Mercury was a baritone: https://reverb.com/news/scientific-study-confirms-freddie-mercury-voice-was-one-of-a-kind

        quote from classical soprano Montserrat Caballé, who once said, “He had a baritone voice. I told him one day, ‘Let’s do a small duet of baritone and soprano,’ and he said, ‘No, no, my fans only know me as a rock singer and they will not recognize my voice if I sing in baritone.’”

        While on this thread I want to drop this great contralto/countertenor duet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y85DCKKJTBc

        • Deiseach says:

          Ah, if we’re recommending duets – soprano/countertenor for the final aria from “L’incoronazione di Poppea”, where the two Baddies get the most beautiful finale 🙂 and mezzo/soprano for Caesar and Cleopatra’s final aria from “Giulio Cesare in Egitto”.

          And the exquisite English contralto, Kathleen Ferrier.

      • AG says:

        Tenor isn’t strictly about pitch range. There are lots of music artists who can sing upper pitch. I’m talking about the style of projection. I’m looking for a depth in the timbre, a projection style. Crooners (a la Sinatra, though he is not a tenor) would be the most modern music genre I consider to have this singing style, and the height of that era had several people who overlapped with opera, such as Vic Damone and Mario Lanza.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          So you’re looking for chest singing? I don’t know that that exists much in popular music.

          What about Nick Jonas?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw04QD1LaB0

          • AG says:

            Yes, I would consider Nick a tenor. He’s theater-trained, did some Broadway. That said, I do not consider his singing in that song to be tenor-like. It’s aping the Justin Timberlake style. More nasal, less resonance, and the higher notes are done in falsetto. Nick sings differently in his theater roles.

            A good rule of thumb is “can I imagine this vocal timbre being used to sing an opera aria?” For example, Aretha singing Nessun Dorma.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Listening to your Josh Groban possible example (the song “River”) it reminds me of Country and Christian music. Perhaps you can find examples in those genres?

            When it comes to music I’m a wiseacre; sorry I can’t help. 🙂

    • ana53294 says:

      There is Andrea Bocelli, an italian singer who sings more popular music with a classical bent (but popular). Con te partiro is super famous (at least in Spain, everybody has heard the Spanish version). I was familiar with it even though I didn’t know the singer. You can see his songs have millions of views in Youtube. Him singing with Celine Dion (he’s blind, that’s why he looks a bit awkward).

    • Dack says:

      Is it just me, or have we lost the male tenor voice in modern music genres?

      It’s just you. I have a bass-baritone voice, and it is pretty rare to encounter modern music that I can sing along to (matching pitch) without going above my range.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tenors_in_non-classical_music

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        Here’s one you can sing along to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

      • AG says:

        See above. I’m not talking about pitch range, I’m talking about projection style. Justin Timberlake clearly is in upper pitch ranges, but he doesn’t sing like a tenor.

        Aretha Franklin could sing Nessun Dorma. Justin Bieber most definitely could not.

        • Dack says:

          Tenor, etc are literally defined by their range. Bass, baritone, and tenor are all basically shorthand for “a voice in this pitch range.”

          I think what you are talking about is belting, a technique that a singer in any range can learn.

          Why don’t more modern tenors learn to belt? No idea.

    • Gwythyr says:

      I’ve just read a Rossini biography! One notable quotations from there is Rossini’s opinion that “a true art of bel canto disappeared with male sopranos” (aka castrati). Not because male soprano is necessary for that but because castrati usually lived and breathed their art to a degree that no other singers did.

      • AG says:

        Well, Rossini should be happy that falsetto-ish voices are back with a vengeance for R&B styles.

        Also, I was thinking about how Kpop was one area I thought might still have tenors, and it occurred to me that Asia is one of the last few places where a shamelessly soppy ballad (in the style of Whitney’s Houston’s AND IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII) is still viable as mainstream pop. And, in turn, those songs are somewhat close to an opera aria, in composition. Example
        (And while picking an example I did indeed find out that one of the Kpop boys performed a cover of Nessun Dorma lol)

    • mingyuan says:

      I agree, and I wish there were more of it! This song (which I know about because my a cappella group covered it) has some of it I think? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyy1vdOrsOs

  130. WoollyAI says:

    So the idea of cancellation insurance that @Reasoner brought up downthread has stuck in my mind, as has all the recent discussion of cancellation, and I want to explore it.

    So let’s imagine tomorrow you receive an email from the Icelandic Cancellation Insurance company offering you the following deal:

    A. For $5/month, they will offer cancellation insurance.

    B. This will cover 18 months of your income, provided you’ve been fired from your job for culture war issues/cancellation.

    C. To get your payout, you will need to provide some documentation of a cancellation effort. It could be documented in your termination, it could be copies of correspondence from your managers regarding calls/tweets, it could be a massive Twitter thread or newspaper article, but you will be required to show documentation.

    Would you, personally, take this deal?

    • Matt M says:

      For $5 a month? Sure, why not?

      Although I’d like a longer term deal (and would be willing to pay more for it). Like, I’d much rather pay $25 a month and be insured for 10 years of income or something.

      (Although that would probably create a moral hazard wherein I actively tried to get myself cancelled…)

    • voso says:

      Is cancellation insurance a widespread phenomenon in this hypothetical, or are you the only person who knows about it?

      If cancellation insurance is widespread, than employers will just choose to fire people based on another pretence, like the whole “we can’t fire you in retaliation because of the current laws so we’ll just fire you for some other reason, good luck proving anything” that seems to currently exist.

      (I’m also worried that this directly incentivizes the insurance companies to dig through your online presence and determine how cancellable you are)

    • AlexOfUrals says:

      Definitely. But I have a feeling I’d be refused…

    • suntory time says:

      There’s no way $5 a month would cover this, since it’s possible to actively try to get cancelled.

      • haroldedmurray says:

        It’s possible to try to burn your house down too, but that doesn’t stop fire-insurance being a thing. They could have investigators who try to determine how much you attempted to provoke said cancellation, or something.

      • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

        I think you would want to structure the payout as something like “we pay 70% of your previous income until you get a new job” to discourage this.

    • b_jonas says:

      I suggest that you rewview the full contract very carefully. Insurance terms usually have so many exclusions that when you actually read them, half of the time you find out that you don’t want the insurace because it doesn’t cover for the most likely event that you wanted to cover anyway. The price of 60 dollars a month makes this extra suspicious. They probably have serious restrictions on what kind of things you’re not allowed to say publicly or you lose the benefits.

      • matkoniecz says:

        My favorite is excluding damage caused by firefighting, AKA most of costs in case of fire actually happening.

  131. BBA says:

    The first generation of neocons were ex-leftists disillusioned with how the 1960s protest movements went awry.

    The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

  132. AlexOfUrals says:

    Content warning: about as controversial, uncharitable and culture-warry as it gets. For which I’m sorry, but today’s Juneteenth craziness at work has been a bit too much so I need some advice or at least a way to let it out.

    What attitude does one take to avoid being constantly frustrated with the insane hypocrisy of near-everything going on with anti-racism lately? In other terms, what’s the charitable way to think about it?

    By hypocrisy I mean – I totally understand the position where every human being is equal and none is worth more or less because of their skin color or where they were born or the language they speak or whatelse – I was brought up in this view. And (with certain caveats) I also can tolerate – although don’t share – the position of “This is my country and I care only about my fellow citizens, everyone else are welcome to suck it off”. What I can’t take and what completely pisses me off is when people do the latter with the face of doing the former. I.e. pretty much all the anti-racism I’ve encountered personally. Yeah yeah, I get it the blacks in America have it much worse than whites and that is awful. But by any reasonable metric they do it far better than people of any color in e.g. Russia, where I was born and where most of my best friends and all of my family still lives. So when people around me are expecting me to be concerned and angered and politically active about the US blacks, I can’t see it as anything other than shameless hypocritical status signaling of well-off people who have no other problems but to show how virtuous they are, which just drives me mad.

    Ok, nevermind Russia, it’s not like us Slavs ever suffered from slavery and in any case our skin color is completely out of fashion this season, so generally fuck us. (To think about it, I’d rather have the things the way they are, at least I can tolerate this, if barely. If this merciless display of virtue were targeted to any group I belong to, it’d be waaay more condescension than I can bear). But, surprising as it may come for some people, the USA isn’t the only place on Earth where black people live. One can also find them in, you know, Africa. And I don’t even need to google the statistics to tell that in every country on the entire continent the black population have lower standard of living than the US blacks, in most of them vastly lower. What about those guys? Shouldn’t the movement be called American Black Lives Matter? I mean, I can totally accept that someone who grown up in the US would care more about the [black] people from their country on this basis. But these same people proclaim someone who opposes immigration to the US as “beyond repair”, and loudly tell how they are against discrimination on “any basis”, not “any basis except being born in the wrong place”. And the gist of their moral argument is “you have privilege over these people, so it’s morally imperative to help them”. The part where it’s stil ok to disregard anyone over whom your privilege is sufficiently large is conspicuously missing.

    Of course this argument equally applies to most other mainstream social justice topics. Gays, transgenders, women and most other minorities in the most of the world have it far worse than in the US. I’m talking about race only because that were anti-racism talks at work that driven me to writing this post today.

    Or maybe it’s all just a load of bullshit and what it really is about is my natural contrarianism. You can probably make me hate any movement or organization including SSC itself, if you shoved it down my throat forcefully for long enough. Anyway, I apologize for dumping this all out here. Hopefully someone of nice and intelligent people here can provide a less frustrating way of looking at these things.

    • zero says:

      All slogans bear little relation to the policies being advocated by those slogans.

    • ECD says:

      Isn’t this a fully general counterargument against ever caring about anything or anyone except the eventual victor (?) of the oppression Olympics?

      ETA: Actually, isn’t this just playing in the oppression Olympics?

      • matkoniecz says:

        No. “American Black Lives Matter” would be resistant, similarly “American Whatever Foundation”.

        Though for me it seems clearly implied anyway.

        • ECD says:

          Does it likewise infuriate people that Games for Heroes doesn’t literally send games to all heroes?

          No?

          Then I’m going to take the little diversion into ‘you have to care about what I care about and prioritize it over what you want to discuss or you’re secretly a traitor to your own alleged ideals’ (paraphrase) as an attempt to at whataboutism.

          • AlexOfUrals says:

            you have to care about what I care about and prioritize it over what you want to discuss or you’re secretly a traitor

            Funny you said that, because that phrase (with omission admittedly important part about your own ideals) is exactly the position I can’t stand and am complaining about. In case it’s not clear, as it probably isn’t – I absolutely do not expect everyone to care about Russian or African or whatever problems. No do I lose too much sleep over them myself, frankly. My point is that there’s a shitton of problems that almost nobody cares about, so people should be a little less smug and aggressive to somebody not caring about their petty issue, and not attempt to guilt-trip other people into caring about it, because, well, there can be only one winner in this game and it sure as hell is not the US blacks (nor any of the Russian citizen groups).

          • ECD says:

            My point is that there’s a shitton of problems that almost nobody cares about, so people should be a little less smug and aggressive to somebody not caring about their petty issue, and not attempt to guilt-trip other people into caring about it, because, well, there can be only one winner in this game and it sure as hell is not the US blacks (nor any of the Russian citizen groups).

            I don’t know what happened at your work, but this sounds an awful lot like mind reading to me. “This is why I care about this and so should you” =/= “This is the most important thing and the only thing you should worry about.”

          • CatCube says:

            @ECD

            Let’s run that out for another two iterations: “This is why I care about this and so should you” –> “I don’t care about that, because what you’re saying lacks perspective and is therefore a little bit dumb.” –> “You’re a filthy racist who shouldn’t work here anymore.”

            That basically rounds to “This is the most important thing and the only thing you should worry about.”

            If you’re not on the “right side” of these alleged “conversations” this is all just hunting heretics and forcing people to speak falsehood. If you don’t understand why this is a problem, consider how you’d feel on Monday if your boss made you say the Nicene Creed to him over Zoom at the beginning of every workday. It’s just words, right? So just say them and move on with your day, right?

          • AlexOfUrals says:

            @ECD

            May I suggest you not to put words in my mouth “paraphrase” my words, and then when I do exactly the same with, in fact, the same words toward my colleagues, accuse me of mind-reading? I really appreciated your effort to be less of a dick in the comments below, and tried my best to reply with the same, so let us keep it up.

          • ECD says:

            @AlexofUrals

            Not trying to put words in your mouth, but here’s how you describe it below:

            “X is bad and everyone should feel sad and scared about it”

            That says nothing at all about Y, or its badness. People can care about multiple things. Unless they said something very much else, which I’m not seeing anywhere in your comments, then yes, it looks to me like mind reading and/or oppression olympics (or just good old fashioned story topping).

            @Catcube

            Let’s run that out for another two iterations: “This is why I care about this and so should you” –> “I don’t care about that, because what you’re saying lacks perspective and is therefore a little bit dumb.” –> “You’re a filthy racist who shouldn’t work here anymore.”

            That’s certainly a way it can go on any political topic, which is one reason why talking politics at work is a bad idea.

            But if we’re trying to figure out how to deal with it without getting pissed, let’s maybe not create a hypothetical where the person we’re working with is a giant asshole, when it’s equally likely (knowing nothing about his workplace) that the conversation would go:

            “This is why I care about this and so should you” –> “I realize that, but I’m more concerned about Y.” –> “Y is important, but we have a chance to hopefully actually do something about X, so I’m going to focus on that for the moment.”

            Even if it would end up being the first one, personally, I prefer to attempt to assume good faith on the part of people I work with and generally like. It makes for a much more pleasant working environment.

          • Spookykou says:

            Talking politics at work is only bad for a specific subset of political beliefs, which beliefs have it bad seems highly variable with regard to time. However my understanding is that the classic norm was, don’t talk politics and if you go out of your way to talk politics then you might get in trouble for talking about the wrong ones. I think at least part of AlexOfUrals complaint is that the current norm is not, don’t talk politics, it is, everyone clearly and loudly voice their active agreement and engagement with a particular set of political beliefs.

            I agree that talking politics at work is bad, I don’t want to talk about politics at work, I don’t want all my coworkers repeating their political beliefs at every opportunity, I don’t want them constantly asking me to talk about politics, but there is a current running through many organizations that is directly counter to this. The old norm is dead, and increasingly my apolitical, epistemologically helpless, outside view position seems to be something that will eventually get me in trouble. It is humiliating and unpleasant to lie about what you believe, even if you don’t really believe in much of anything.

          • Belisaurus Rex says:

            “This is why I care about this and so should you” –> “I realize that, but I’m more concerned about Y.” –> “Y is important, but we have a chance to hopefully actually do something about X, so I’m going to focus on that for the moment.”

            If we’re going from easiest to solve to hardest (“a chance to actually do something”), X isn’t even close to where we should be starting. Why pick X as the thing to go all-in for right now?

            Edit: And if assuming good faith gets you fired or ostracized, then it is probably not the smart thing to do.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @Spookykou

            The old norm is dead, and increasingly my apolitical, epistemologically helpless, outside view position seems to be something that will eventually get me in trouble.

            As a last-case scenario you could go to HR and tell them that the sheet amount of political speech is making your workplace seem like a hostile place, and could they please ask people to tone it down.

          • ECD says:

            @Belisarius Rex

            If we’re going from easiest to solve to hardest (“a chance to actually do something”), X isn’t even close to where we should be starting. Why pick X as the thing to go all-in for right now?

            Because X is in the zeitgeist right now and as a result, for the first time in a very long time some sort of national police reform is being discussed and acted upon. If you want to have influence on this, this is your moment to do so.

            Edit: And if assuming good faith gets you fired or ostracized, then it is probably not the smart thing to do.

            If only I had repeatedly and explicitly said don’t talk politics at work.

            No, the question is how do you deal with people who do? You can be infuriated at them, or not. How you interpret their comments (unless they really are saying ‘this is the worst thing in the world and the only thing you can care about,’ in which case they’ve revealed themselves as ignorant assholes who need to be handled with kid gloves) is up to you. If you want to assume your colleagues are ignorant assholes, you are free to do so.

            Neither of these are actual conversations which should be had at work. Both are perfectly valid interpretations of the actions described. I know which one makes it easier for me to work with people and choose that interpretation.

      • Chalid says:

        The argument is more general yet.

        e.g. “American conservatives sure get upset about American taxes, but they don’t seem interested in complaining about the still-greater taxes paid by Scandinavians.”

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Hold their beer.
          (Or to speak more clearly, I’ve seen a variety of complaints about Scandinavian taxes by conservatives online, though as you might surmise, not all by Americans.)

          • Chalid says:

            Sure, and you definitely see American antiracists complaining about other countries too. No one is saying that the discussions about other countries’ policies literally don’t exist.

            I don’t think it’s at all obvious that tax complaints are less locally biased than the race complaints.

        • viVI_IViv says:

          It’s not just about caring more about what happens in your country, it’s about being dishonest about the facts and morals behind your reasoning.

          If we accept the BLM/SJW dottrine of collective historical responsibility, then the logical conclusion is that African Americans should be paying reparations to white Americans and erecting statues to the slave traders because the slavery of their ancestors is what caused their standard of life to be much better than anybody in Africa. Present day African Americans are the primary beneficiaries of the Atlantic slave trade.

          Of course, this conclusion so morally repugnant that is blasphemous to even entertain as a thought, which implies that the doctrine of collective historical responsibility is morally abhorrent. But If you accept it, that’s the conclusion.

          The BLM and SJW types play dumb by ignoring the basic observation that the US is indeed the only country with a native black population that doesn’t have Third World standards of living.

          • matkoniecz says:

            to the slave traders

            That is collective historical responsibility in consequentialism version, not just “collective historical responsibility”.

            “collective historical responsibility” has problems, but consequentialism adds more.

          • samboy says:

            This is getting pretty far down the CW rabbit hole, and I know Scott Alexander doesn’t like going there. But, since we have gone there: The African nations suffered abominations during the era of European colonial rule

          • viVI_IViv says:

            That is collective historical responsibility in consequentialism version, not just “collective historical responsibility”.

            If you remove consequentialism the whole theory falls apart.
            The typical SJW argument is “Blacks are underreresented in [good group] and overrepresented in [bad group] because of systemic racism, therefore white people need to pay reparations, implement affirmative action, and so on”. Without consequentialism outcomes don’t matter.

          • matkoniecz says:

            If you remove consequentialism the whole theory falls apart. (…) Without consequentialism outcomes don’t matter.

            You can have “your ancestors did evil things, we should be compensated” without any consequentialism but based on a moral guilt.

            (no idea how it is usually presented and is it focusing on bad outcomes or also “you need to repent for a evil in your past”)

        • No One In Particular says:

          I’m sure than many American conservatives would be perfectly fine with the IRS charging Scandinavians more taxes.

          • Monkey See says:

            Not sure I’d call those people conservative, per se, but that does seem intuitively right.

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        No, it’s a nearly-general counterargument against telling the other people what they’re supposed to be concerned about.

    • albatross11 says:

      I guess I find the current wave of being So Very Concerned About Black Lives a little annoying, because:

      a. I think many of the issues they’re concerned with are real issues we ought to try to do something about.

      b. I think their broad approach to understanding those issues is not very useful or informative.

      c. A huge amount more media/social media energy seems to be being spent on prosthelitizing for an overarching ideology of race relations in the US than on actually working out how to solve the real problems. (And I think this ideology isn’t actually very helpful in understanding or solving those problems.)

      d. Much of the movement affiliated with this push is intensely opposed to open discussions of the kind that might help us try to address those problems, or even the open publication of data that seem off-message this week.

    • cassander says:

      What attitude does one take to avoid being constantly frustrated with the insane hypocrisy of near-everything going on with anti-racism lately? In other terms, what’s the charitable way to think about it?

      I’d suggest realizing that people are insanely hypocritical about most political matters, and either accepting that as par for the course or deciding to ignore politics as much as possible.

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        That’s been mostly my approach up until now, but on the current workplace it seems to be very difficult to practice – we’re a very small startup team and when everyone suddenly became very upset about racism ignoring is rather conspicuous. Which is a pity because I like the position and the team in every other regard, hence the frustration.

        • suntory time says:

          Are you not upset about racism? Or just want to solve every other problem in the world first?

          • AlexOfUrals says:

            Nope, only the ones which are more pressing and damaging – i.e. kill or have potential to kill more people. Which, I admit, a fairly long list.

            To your first question, depends on your definition of “upset” I guess, but likely not. There’s too many evils in the world to be upset about each one. Acknowledging something as a problem is one thing. Constantly experiencing (or claiming to experience) negative emotions about it is another.

    • DinoNerd says:

      I’m not in the same situation as you, but I’ve been handling this by reminding themselves that many of the most enthusiastic are very young. They really are discovering things that the rest of us feel as if we’ve known for all our lives. And they are prone to believing in easy fixes – now that we know there’s a problem, we can defeat any opposition, and trivially solve it. (Past generations were either too stupid to see the problem, or actively in favour of it, being evil/selfish/etc.) I felt that way in the ’60s. I no longer feel that way in my 60s ;-(

      I strongly suspect that even in Russia, some people are more equal than others, and the differences may persist over multiple generations. A halfway sensible local movement, inspired or triggered by the US’ Black Lives Matter, would focus on those differences. But that’s much more difficult, and potentially dangerous – someone might have to give up their local privilege, or they might get targetted by local law enforcement, elites, etc. A less risky version would focus on how Russia was so much better than the US, because Mother Russia doesn’t have these particular injustices. (Never mind what injustices it does have ;-()

      Other than that, I’m susprised you are experiencing anti-racism talks at work, assuming you are a Russian living in Russia, rather than living in the US. I’d guess you must be working for a multinational based in the US, but perhaps I’m just naive about how far imitation of the US – and confusion about the extent to which US cultural tropes apply locally – actually stretches.

      FWIW – I am experiencing a certain amount of anti-racist fervor at work, but I’m in California, working for a large multinational.

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        Oh so sorry for the misunderstanding, I am a Russian living in the US, in California in fact. So what I’m saying is that it’s hard for me to be shocked or angered by learning what the blacks in America are experiencing if I myself seen much worse and many of the people I care about still live in the conditions much worse. I’m saying this very much not as an attempt to play the Oppression Olympics, as ECD above suggested, but just to explain how these emotions which I’m expected to express are completely fake and unnatural to me. And it’s not just me, we have folks from China and Balkans on the team, who I’m sure also have reasons to feel the same (and have been mostly missing from the “discussions” of this topic).

        Thank you for your support! I’m probably not quite the right age myself to apply the way of thinking you suggest directly, but substituting “very young” for stupid sheltered naive, it can be helpful.

        • DinoNerd says:

          I got fairly upset about this whole thing early on, because I was afraid I was going to get into interpersonal trouble for failing to show the proper emotions – I’m on the autistic spectrum, and so not much good at figuring out how to appear to be a right thinking, acceptable person, particularly at any time when the social definition of acceptable is changing.

          Fortunately, the discussion at work has been channeled into forms where I can listen politely but say nothing; of course it helps that covid-19 has most of us working from home, with no lunch time conversations or similar.

          But I may have caused a couple of people outside of work to distance from me, by expressing these concerns on my personal blog, readable only by people known to me. (Aka “friends-locked”.)

      • Plumber says:

        “…I’ve been handling this by reminding…”

        It’s past my bedtime so I won’t do a full proper response but I wanted to compliment your post @DinoNerd as it seems like truth and wisdom to me!

    • ECD says:

      In an effort to be less of a dick:

      What attitude does one take to avoid being constantly frustrated with the insane hypocrisy of near-everything going on with anti-racism lately? In other terms, what’s the charitable way to think about it?

      While at work–don’t engage. Seriously, if this is happening at work, just do your work. Talking politics at work is almost never worth it, regardless of what the politics are. Usually ‘I have to get back to work,’ ends that coversation in my experience (may vary by local custom).

      For stuff you overhear or can’t avoid, a little humility can really help here. They’re talking about how terrible it is for blacks in the US. That doesn’t actually say, or mean anything about how good or bad Russians have it. I think Guy in TN had a great quote on this a while back, but I can’t find it at the moment. My worse example is, if you hear someone talking about how much his daughter’s recital and how much he loves her, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love his son, it’s just not what he’s talking about at the moment.

      That plus a bit of a reminder that we always know all the shit we’re going through, but we never know all the shit anyone else is going through, so try to remember a time when you had just heard about something that really upset you and were sharing it with someone. How would you want them to react? As a story topper or as a friend?

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        While at work–don’t engage.

        A very reasonable suggestion and I’m trying to follow it as much as possible. The problem is that it’s hard to stay completely clean in a small team working closely together (socially I mean, we all still WFH of course) with a couple of politically active members eager to “get everyone involved in the discussion”.

        They’re talking about how terrible it is for blacks in the US. That doesn’t actually say, or mean anything about how good or bad Russians have it.

        I agree with what you’re saying, but there’s a thin line here. If you say “X is bad”, that doesn’t imply anything about how bad Y is. But when you say “X is bad and everyone should feel sad and scared about it”, that can cause people who know of Y[1] raise an eyebrow. Especially if the list of Y’s is ten pages long. Like, you can’t experience emotions proportional to your X over all those Y’s, because no human can. If you’re picking the one you like more to emote about, don’t act like I’m some kind of monster for not picking the same. If you genuinely believe this is the only one that matters… well you have very weird preferences and definitely don’t act like I’m some kind of monster for not sharing them.

        That plus a bit of a reminder that we always know all the shit we’re going through, but we never know all the shit anyone else is going through

        Sure. Except for first-world born straight cis-male able-bodied well-off whites. We all know they don’t have anything to complain about. [2]

        [1] – Not necessarily from personal experience! To use SJW jargon, I’m not claiming any oppression points for myself or saying that the whole concept is a good idea. Just saying the world is generally full of horrifying ugly shit, and some of us have happened to notice.

        [2] – Just being generally sarcastic here, I don’t imply you personally said anything to this meaning.

        • albatross11 says:

          One thing that’s worth remembering here: Americans mostly have no f–king idea that there’s a world outside the US. When we do, we often have only the most cartoonish of understandings of what foreign countries look like. Mexico is just all drug gangs all the time, China is a nightmare police state + Apple sweatshops, Russia is Putin and probably some kind of scary Commies or something, Germany is BMW and beer-drinking guys in liederhosen, Africa is a whole continent of starving children lying around listlessly in a cloud of flies+elephants and lions, etc.

          Most Americans have never been outside the US, speak no languages other than English, consume no foreign media (at least traditional media–maybe this is different now online, but I doubt it), and mostly have no friends who live in other countries. That’s not so true in more educated circles, but our culture is still extremely insular and given to knowing almost nothing about the rest of the world.

          So, when Americans talk about how terrible things are for blacks in the US, they mostly haven’t given any thought at all to how much worse things are for, say, blacks in Haiti or Nigeria, or for poor people in Venezuela, or for tons of people in Syria or Libya, or….

          Now, it’s perfectly sensible for Americans to be concerned with fixing broken stuff in the US first, IMO. (And there’s plenty broken here, much of which screws over blacks disproportionately because blacks tend to be on the bottom in our society, and our society seems bent on taking all the people from the bottom and grinding them up in the gears.) Most of the rhetoric and ideology of antiracism seems unlikely to me to fix any of that stuff, though….

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            One of the most heartwarming things that ever came to my attention, re: American parochialism, was conservative Americans in the Anglican Communion noticing that the entire Third World had their back against heresies copied & pasted from secular leftism in the Episcopal Church. It dawned on a significant number of conservatives that they were in a mostly black and brown Church, and they liked it.

          • AlexOfUrals says:

            This is a good point. Because in Russia roughly one third of political discourse and people’s thoughts on politics are about the US or tied to the US in some way (and another 20% about the rest of the First World). Obviously I understand perfectly well that it’s a one way street, but maybe on the emotional level there’s some lingering feeling that people know about how things are elsewhere and choose to ignore, as opposed to genuinely having no idea.

            Now, it’s perfectly sensible for Americans to be concerned with fixing broken stuff in the US first, IMO.

            No arguing with that, as long as it’s framed as such.

            our society seems bent on taking all the people from the bottom and grinding them up in the gears

            Sadly, no arguing with that either. Much as I love this country, I’m a software engineer and have come here already being one. Being poor sucks in any country, but certain things in America look as if they were deliberately designed to keep poor people poor.

          • Cliff says:

            certain things in America look as if they were deliberately designed to keep poor people poor.

            What are you thinking of?

          • Viliam says:

            I am just guessing, but the following policies seem to me as if they were designed to keep the poor people poor:

            * At-will employment, and health insurance that depends on your employer. In other words, your employer can take your health insurance away at any moment, for whatever reason. That contributes nicely to the power imbalance, I guess.

            * For-profit prisons. Like, seriously, there are people with a huge financial incentive to keep people behind the bars as much as possible? They decide how the prisons are organized, and I would be surprised if they optimized it towards reducing future criminality. They also lobby for huge punishments for everything. That makes the country a better place, I guess.

            * Plea bargaining. If you are too poor to have a good lawyer, and you are accused of a crime you didn’t do, it makes sense to admit to a crime anyway and take the short sentence, rather than insting on your innocence and get the long sentence with some two-digit probability. Also, the process itself is the punishment; while you are kept in jail, you can lose your job. That makes you believe in justice, I guess.

            Just the three things that came to my mind immediately.

            Just in case it is not obvious how this relates to wealth: If you are rich, you don’t need a job or you have enough savings to pay your own health insurance; you also have a good lawyer, so you are unlikely to end up in prison even if you do the same thing as the poor person.

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            Health insurance depending your job was a historical accident.

            During WW2 there were wage caps, so employers offered fringe benefits, one of which was health insurance. I don’t know the history of why this wasn’t changed.

          • John Schilling says:

            I am just guessing, but the following policies seem to me as if they were designed to keep the poor people poor:

            All of these may seem like they were designed to keep the poor people were, but none of them actually were. As Nancy notes for your first example, the historic cause and intent of these policies is not hard to find. Increased poverty is an unintended consequence.

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            It’s conceivable that keeping insiders comfortable is why those policies are so hard to change.

          • albatross11 says:

            What are you thinking of?

            My own list (off the top of my head):

            a. Basically every part of the justice system that is run at a profit is incredibly destructive. People get into some small legal trouble that involves fines and fees they can’t pay, and then they keep getting into more trouble because they couldn’t pay those fines and fees. They get put in jail (a strategy to extract money from otherwise-unwilling targets) and lose their jobs, and then when they get out they owe still more money. (Many places bill you for your jail stay.) The whole system is vastly corrupt, in classically American ways–the judges will follow the legal rules but make decisions knowing they are required to bring in revenue, private companies get sweetheart deals for providing “services” to small-time criminals (prison phone systems, those awful systems where you pay per day for monitoring bracelets that let you stay out of jail so you can keep your job, private prisons and treatment facilities, etc).

            I mean, I’d like to see the justice system working better along several axes (quality of evidence, speed, eliminating bias, etc.), but just getting it to stop being run as a way to fund the city/county budget or enrich the mayor’s cronies would be an immense improvement. And a big part of that would be getting rid of this financial/legal quicksand where someone gets further and further in debt by not being able to pay their fines.

            b. Immigration policy in the US has operated in such a way as to bring in a lot of competition for unskilled labor. I strongly suspect this has kept wages depressed at the bottom, in ways that have really screwed over people at the bottom. Construction sites and work crews in my youth were mostly white and black Americans; now they’re mostly hispanic. The hispanics are doing the work and adding value to the world, but these are jobs that were once available for the kind of people who dropped out of high school because it was too confusing, and now many of those jobs are taken. That has combined with technological change to make life a hell of a lot harder for people who got a shitty roll on their INT score.

            c. Occupational licensing across hundreds of different fields, along with various other kinds of dumb local regulation, have added barriers to poor low-skill people getting jobs or starting businesses for themselves. This especially screws over blacks, but it’s a cancelling-offense to point out why: The group with the much lower average IQ turns out to have extra trouble jumping through hoops involving formal schooling and tests.

            d. The construction of welfare program poverty traps, where the kind of behavior that would help you get out of poverty is often bad for you to do now, lest you lose (say) the medicaid eligibility that makes sure your asthmatic kid can get some kind of care.

            e. Minimum wage laws, which basically just make it illegal to hire someone below a certain level of productivity. This makes everything worse in terms of labor markets. Further, any minimum wage that makes sense in high-cost-of-living parts of your nation/state/county/city prices a lot of people out of the market in the low-cost-of-living parts.

            f. Child support obligations create a fairly large class of men who, thanks to imprudent and socially destructive decisions in their youth, now have a permanent outflow from their income they are required to pay. If they lose their job, typically, the debt accumulates. In some states, they will lose their drivers’ license, occupational licenses, etc. In some cases, getting a new above-ground job will immediately lead to half their wages being taken to pay that debt. (Obviously you should be responsible for your own actions including kids you’ve fathered, but this definitely creates another kind of poverty trap.).

            g. Housing policy that seeks to make it very hard to find affordable housing anywhere close to jobs. This just makes everything harder all around.

            h. Basically everything about how we pay for healthcare. This is a disaster from beginning to end, and in some places, people have been put in jail for nonpayment of these debts. (I think technically for not obeying the judge’s order to repay them and not jumping through the legal hoops to avoid getting in trouble.)

            i. Generically, all this is made way worse by the fact that so much of our society involves complicated hoops that must be jumped through in the right order to stay out of trouble/get whatever help you might need. Less intelligent, less educated people, people with too much on their hands (say a single mom), etc., find this really hard to get through, and failing often screws them over royally. If the matter goes to court, then in many places that involves months or years of delays until it can be resolved.

            j. The other thing that suffuses this is that there are major problems with the culture of people at the bottom, both black and white. Unwed parenthood isn’t forced on anyone, but it’s commonplace among the underclass of all races. Similarly, involvement in small-time crime. These things are hugely socially destructive, mostly to other people on the bottom living around you.

            I think there are dozens more.

          • smocc says:

            I think albatross11 just doxxed himself as Charles Murray. Nice to have you here, I loved Coming Apart.

          • @smocc re Albatross 11

            I don’t think so.

          • smocc says:

            David, shh, I’m trying to throw them off the trail that I’m really Charles Murray.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            Very few prison are for-profit. And the non-profit state-run prisons often have the same power imbalances: over in California the CO union put $1 million into the Three Strikes Law.

            I’d tend to be against private prisons, because it’s something the government should do. One of the very few things.

            There is just one good argument for private prisons, but it’s more appropriately called “prison choice”: prisoners get to pick where they serve out their sentence. It tends to be considered an extremely radical proposal, but if prisoners could choose where they served, I expect we would rapidly find the casual rape and assaults drop to zero because the first thing prisoners would choose is safety.

          • AlexOfUrals says:

            @Cliff

            What are you thinking of?

            First of all, this all is based on my first-hand experience of coming into a country and thinking “What-the-hell, it sure is good that I’m compensated well enough to just trough money on this, and I don’t envy anyone who’s not”. It’s not a well informed political opinion so don’t hold me accountable to this, if you studied the actual relevant laws or statistics for any non-zero time and came to a different conclusion, most likely you are right and I am wrong. And second, I do understand that none of these was actually designed by someone to keep the poor people poor, and most of these things weren’t deliberately designed at all. It’s just the way they look at first to an unaccustomed eye.

            1) Everything is built around a car. Yeah I understand those can be dirt cheap, but a dirt cheap car will have all sorts of issues and you still have to pay for gas, parking etc. And when it inevitably breaks you’re incapacitated to the point even a grocery shopping or getting to work become a problem.

            2) Using credit score for anything other than getting a credit. Such as apartments rental, car rental, or even an internet connection. Usually you can pay more if you don’t have a good score, but the lack of money often is exactly the reason people don’t have it in the first place.

            3) albatross11 mentioned occupational licensing. It’s just ridiculous that it takes a license to cut hairs.

            4) Lack of low cost low quality options in general, and especially for housing. I didn’t investigate the lower end of the housing market myself, but when a student sharing pretty much the most affordable apartments they could find with 2 roommates still has a swimming pool onsite, free (therefore included in price) parking and an individual fenced backyard to their apartments, I feel like it’s not exactly the most cost-effective arrangement.

            5) Everything having to do with medicine, obviously. It suffers especially from (3), and also from the fact that everything requires a prescription, which takes a doctor visit, who will get you through all kinds of checks even if all you need is e.g. an eye exam and charge you accordingly, which is again (3). Did you know that in some countries you can even buy safer antibiotics and antivirals off-the-shelf? And of course those can be dirt cheap there, at least the lower-quality versions. Not to mention contact lenses, even after 3 years I still can’t get over the fact that those require a prescription. What the fuck, it’s much easier to damage yourself with a toothpick!

            6) The tremendous amount of hidden fees everywhere, first and foremost taxes not being included in price. For someone keeping a tight budget, that turns a grocery shopping into a math contest. Yeah you can use your phone or calculator, but that would take even more discipline than just keeping a budget, and statistically discipline and math skills isn’t something poor people have in abundance.

            7) The mockery called “secured credit card” falls into (2), but it deserves a honorary mention of its own as the most shamelessly extortionate financial product I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen loans with 900% annual rate.

            That’s the main things that come to mind.

          • and also from the fact that everything requires a prescription, which takes a doctor visit, who will get you through all kinds of checks even if all you need is e.g. an eye exam and charge you accordingly,

            I have a vague memory that one of Peltzman’s articles, or possibly a talk of his I heard, found that the introduction of prescription requirements had roughly doubled the amount spent on medical care.

        • ECD says:

          Like, you can’t experience emotions proportional to your X over all those Y’s, because no human can. If you’re picking the one you like more to emote about, don’t act like I’m some kind of monster for not picking the same.

          And here I’m going to ask, are they acting like you’re some kind of monster? If so, good God find another place to work, this one is toxic.

          If not, it may be worth considering that you’re reading condemnation into complaint.

          I’m going to strongly advise against advice you’re getting elsewhere about just thinking they’re young, or stupid, or naive. That is a recipe for a terrible working relationship.

          I recommend, even if you believe in your heart-of-hearts that this isn’t likely to be true, taking the position that what you’re seeing here is what they want to talk about right now and doesn’t say anything about their position on Y.

          Think of it this way, do you know that they don’t go home, do bunches of research and donate half their income to the worst case of Y they can find? No, right? So why assume something that infuriates you is true when it is at least possible that it is not?

          Note: This is not a recommendation for how to discover the truth about your colleagues, but it is advice about how not to have utter contempt for people you work with and very much need to not show contempt for (at least in a non-toxic workplace).

          • AlexOfUrals says:

            And here I’m going to ask, are they acting like you’re some kind of monster? If so, good God find another place to work, this one is toxic.

            No, because I’m not showing any heretical views to begin with. But the fact one of them called a taxi driver who argued against immigration “beyond repair” and another boasted how they stopped talking to an old friend because he was on the other side of the barricades, and other such stories, give me some clues.

            Think of it this way, do you know that they don’t go home, do bunches of research and donate half their income to the worst case of Y they can find?

            No, in the same way I don’t know there’s no unicorn behind by back while I’m typing this. In both cases I have reasonably good guesses.

            it is advice about how not to have utter contempt for people you work with

            It’s not the coworkers who induce anger and contempt really, it’s the SJW crowd creating this discourse. Imagine someone you know as a nice guy gets converted to a sect and starts spewing out a load of the cult propaganda periodically, but otherwise remains a nice guy. And because it’s your boss, you have to put up and nod along with it. Your contempt would likely be something like 10% to that guy, and 90% to the sect and its leaders and other members. But the whole issue would be terribly frustrating nevertheless.

      • lhudde says:

        While at work–don’t engage. Seriously, if this is happening at work, just do your work

        I think you’re underestimating the extent to which people expect active displays of lavish mood affiliation around these issues as part of the regular social cost of doing business.

        In my workplace, at least, there have been a lot of conversation circles where white coworkers compete to use the most intensely emotive language to describe their feelings around the issue (e.g.: “heartbroken” “enraged” “destroyed” “gutted” “terrified” “grieving”), then stand back and narrowly watch to see if anyone else’s lukewarm assent will out them as a secret witch. There have been specific callouts of people for not mood-affiliating enough (“I wonder why _____ hasn’t said anything yet”), presumably supported by social-media memes like “silence is violence.” If anyone claims a near connection to a person of color, there’s a whole other layer of additional requirement in place to render that person active (yet not intrusive), learning-oriented (but not question-asking), and deeply-felt (but not self-centering) support, like an endless version of the socially impossible moment where you have to figure out something to say to someone at their child’s funeral.

        The level of demand for emotionally complex, socially perceptive room-reading and signaling is so high that I seriously wonder about the implications for neurodiverse individuals: even if they genuinely agree, I can’t imagine an autistic or socially awkward person being able to convincingly perform the right kind of nuanced-yet-passionate emotional reaction to keep themselves on the right side of these discussions. I seriously doubt anyone would be satisfied with a coworker who just calmly nodded and went back to their work.

        • ECD says:

          That sounds pretty fucked up. My workplace is still mostly teleworking and (for other reasons) is unlikely to engage in this, but on other topics, I’ve had very good luck with not being part of those social circles at work.

          I agree, by the time its gotten to ritual denunciations of something, excusing yourself won’t work, but, again, my recommendation is not to be involved long before then. If you don’t stop by the watercooler (or coffee cup, or whatever) a lot of this problem is avoided. Unless these are actual formal meetings or something (in which case there’s a different set of problems, but it’s never been my experience that anyone penalizes folks for not talking in meetings. Frankly, if we could get about half the people who talk to shut up we’d be much more productive).

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          Just don’t respond appropriately and when they interrogate you as to why say it’s because you’re exhausted from caring about things like this: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/502571-four-poachers-arrested-for-killing-endangered-silverback-gorilla

          Being happy about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/d80r59/antipoachers_protecting_gorillas/

          Sad about the dead bird you saw in the street on the drive in to work. It’s emblematic of how people care about their own minor problems compared to the unnecessary deaths and maimings our convenience inflicts on animals.

          That things such as wildlife corridors give you hope, but they’re still just a drop in the bucket.

          Or pick your own favorite topic.

    • bullseye says:

      Americans have more influence over American policies than we do over Russian policies or Third World poverty. Putin wouldn’t care if Americans protested him, and who would a protest against Third World poverty even be directed at?

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        Luckily there’s another way to fight Third World poverty – just give people money.

        But, again, I’m absolutely not saying that everyone is obliged to do so, I’m completely OK with the idea of Americans caring for Americans, Kenians caring for Kenians, and Americans expecting me to care about other Americans when I come to their country – that’s all fair. What really rubs me the wrong way is the people who include in their circle of concern all the People of Color within the US (~25%), then exclude all the Trump voters and conservatives (~50%), then still keep excluded the rest of the world, and go around being smug about how inclusive they are. Or rather the fact that I’m supposed to show support to such people.

    • J.R. says:

      Is there any way you can just write this off as the “cost of doing business” in the US? That seems less frustrating than your current attitude toward things.

      As an American, slavery is this country’s Original Sin*. To be charitable to your coworkers, they may simply be sheltered — having grown up in very nice suburbs, perhaps — and feel some guilt about that. So now is the time where the legacy of slavery is germane to the National Conversation, and they are very loudly proclaiming their opinion that they are Not Racist. Which I think shows that they have good intentions. But I agree with albatross11 that the framing of the debate by BLM is likely to be counterproductive, because it shuts down the conversation about actual solutions.

      If you liked these people before they started doing this, you should continue to tolerate and maybe even enjoy their company. Try to forget about this and in a few weeks it will blow over. That’s what those of us with heterodox opinions would want from our coworkers if politics ever came up.

      * = Okay, maybe the joint Original Sin with Manifest Destiny.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        As an American, slavery is this country’s Original Sin*.

        Doesn’t the Establishment Clause protect us from establishing an official Original Sin everyone has to believe in? (see also the Free Exercise Clause?)

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        Yeah, I kind of accept that if I plan to work – and live! – in the US for the rest of my life, I need to learn to cope with such things more calmly (unless I move to Texas, which I sometimes consider). That’s why I’m asking, and your answer helps a lot actually, thank you for that.

        • Matt M says:

          Moving to Texas won’t help. All the big cities are super woke. Downtown Houston was smashed and looted, too.

          If you move to rural Texas, I suspect you’d be fine… but if you move to rural anywhere you’ll be fine. New York and California have deeply red tribe areas… just not as many of them.

          • AlexOfUrals says:

            *sighs* duly noted. I know countryside is conservative in nearly every state, but am too much of a city person to consider this option.

    • AlexOfUrals says:

      Guilty as charged, “ambivalent toward the nation-state” describes me perfectly, even as “super-intelligent” certainly does not. But if I were given a choice of what’s the “price” of living in the US for me – pledging allegiance to the US nation state or to the SJW ideals – I’d pick the nation state any day.

    • AliceToBob says:

      @AlexOfUrals

      I just wanted to say that I see this situation mostly the same way as you. Given your work situation, it sounds like you’re just going to have to grit your teeth and smile while you tolerate this behavior, and perhaps make the bare-minimum noises of support.

      Also, venting can help. But in that case, I’d pick a single person (like a spouse) who you trust a great deal. Or do so online, but under a user name that does not include any part of your real-world name, or can be tied to your biographical info (like the fact that you were born in Russia). Just my two cents.

    • AG says:

      Would you prefer that the latest thing getting crammed down your throat is the latest fashions and the hottest celebrity relationship drama and top 40 pop music?

      People are gonna do what’s popular and be hypocritical about it. You can decide if politics being the popular thing is particularly bad or not, but there will always be something that the normies around you will keep being disproportionately excited about.

      • Matt M says:

        Would you prefer that the latest thing getting crammed down your throat is the latest fashions and the hottest celebrity relationship drama and top 40 pop music?

        Yes, actually. Very much so. Celebrity gossip is vapid and pointless but at least it doesn’t try to teach my children that they are bad people because of their race, gender, and/or beliefs.

        • AG says:

          Nah, they’ll just try to teach your children that they’re bad for wearing last season’s clothing, and like the wrong music artists, and mock them as inferior for not knowing the latest gossip.

          • Matt M says:

            That’s a lot better. Those things are much easier and cheaper to quickly remedy than your skin color.

          • AG says:

            That’s fair.

            Of course, bullies probably escalated to issues with more moral weight precisely because people had learned to resist pressure on the old vapid topics.

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        Of course I’d prefer that. Even if I’d say that I don’t know and don’t care at all who’s the winner of Eurovision, there’s pretty much zero chance it’ll have a noticeable effect on my career. With these topics, even much more positive, but insufficiently positive, sentiment can cause problems.

    • Matt M says:

      I think part of the reason the American left doesn’t place “international poverty” as a high priority is that they don’t really have any viable plan for it ready. Their default plan would presumably be something like “raise taxes on Americans and give the money to Sudan”… but that’s a tough sell because we’ve already tried that on a more limited basis and it has failed massively (foreign aid). “Foreign aid doesn’t really work” is pretty much a mainstream and universally accepted position, even among blue tribe, so “foreign aid, but 100x as much” isn’t really a viable plan.

      Now personally, I don’t expect that within-US racial reparations would work any better/differently. I suspect that there is pretty much no amount of money that you could steal from whites and give to blacks that would dramatically and significantly alter noticeable patterns in test scores, crime rates, or whatever else you think justifies such a policy. But so long as we’ve “never tried it before,” people are going to keep demanding it because there’s nothing opponents can point to saying “but we already tried doing this for decades and all it did was enrich a bunch of bad actors who mostly made things worse.”

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        I think part of the reason the American left doesn’t place “international poverty” as a high priority is that they don’t really have any viable plan for it ready.

        This is the entire “fair-trade” movement.

        In the US it’s the “minority and women owned business” requirement. Which is more of a (what’s the word? “moderate”? “centrist”? “neo-liberal”?) plan.

      • Matt M says:

        I think something somewhat like “foreign aid” is effective — at least, that’s the premise of effective altruism (which you may not buy into, I don’t know).

        I buy into effective altruism precisely because it is not “foreign aid” as we have come to know and understand it. It is highly targeted towards specific ends, accountable to those ends, and organized privately and voluntarily. The entire reason effective altruism is necessary is because of how ineffective foreign aid is at achieving altruistic goals.

        If you were to come up with an intra-US race-based reparations program that met all of those criteria, I would definitely support it (although I would not donate to it myself).

    • roflc0ptic says:

      I think that many social justiced inclined people do. In my high school/college days I was radicalized reading Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, along with others who IIRC both talk about the idea of “debt colonies” and the function and role of the IMF and World Bank in the 3rd world to create unpayable debts, and use those debts to extract natural resources from those countries. (I don’t know how true that is in general, anymore – with time and further knowledge, the clarity of my definitely-correct worldview continues to get cloudier and cloudier – but certainly e.g. the history of Haiti’s poverty is a sordid, colonial affair, which the west seems complicit in causing and continuing to enforce.)

      Indeed, this was the whole “battle in seattle” anti-WTO, anti-globalization stuff that has happened and continues to happen. Certainly the more thoughtful anarchists and Earth First adjacent radical environmentalists I know are deeply motivated by those things. The wider milieu seem to have evolved more towards identity politics, but yeah, they know, and they care.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        but anti-globalization (or being pro-global South) has not been effectively politicized.

        This looks like a job for conservative Christians!

      • roflc0ptic says:

        Well. think it was pretty effectively politicized in the 90s, though maybe just in leftist circles. My sense of the overton window is certainly warped by my own history.

        I wanted to comment, though, about development – the left is deeply skeptical of international development efforts. Basically the position is that free markets and development are nice, but in practice are tools of expropriation and control. Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” lays out a pretty damning story about the liberalization of the Iraqi economy after the 2002 invasion.

        I think Shock Doctrine also talks about the Chicago Boy, who are economists notorious for their role in Pinochet’s rule – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys

        A notable tie in – they trained under Milton Friedman, who also had some role in the Chilean government. Milton is David Friedman’s father. I suspect if my leftist friends knew I posted on a forum with David Friedman (and far worse, generally like his contributions) I’d get excommunicated ASAP.

        @le maistre chat can you unpack what you mean by that joke? The humor I see is the vertigo I feel at thinking of the far left aligning with conservative christians, but realize you could mean something totally different.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        can you unpack what you mean by that joke? The humor I see is the vertigo I feel at thinking of the far left aligning with conservative christians, but realize you could mean something totally different.

        I’d be happy to!
        I’m having trouble finding data that isn’t ten years old, so look at this.
        In 2010, there were almost as many Christians in sub-Saharan Africa as in Europe. The Americas have 50% more, at 36.8%. And the poorer the country, the more conservative the theology. Philip Jenkins has been writing academic tomes for a couple of decades now on the conservative rebellion against leftist theology. A recurring theme in his research is that Global South Catholics, Anglicans, and members of all the global Protestant communions really believe in the Bible. Their beliefs about economic justice and immigration may sound leftist, but they also believe Marxism is false*, LGBT is neo-colonialism and the family is the foundation of a healthy society, the Holy Spirit and demons are active on Earth, and so on.

        *You don’t need to collect data for a utilitarian calculus or have a PhD in Economics to get this right, you can just believe atheism = false.

      • cassander says:

        @roflc0ptic says:

        Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” lays out a pretty damning story about the liberalization of the Iraqi economy after the 2002 invasion.

        Naomi Klein is a deeply ignorant person, and that book is egregiously terrible. Among its many rambling conspiracy theories tying together concepts that have nothing in common besides the word shock in the name, it strongly implies that military use of the term shock is a modern invention. Her basic these that catastrophe leads to less government is demonstrably false, and the idea that iraq was some free market paradise in 2002 is complete nonsense. There are plenty of good books criticizing the iraqi occupation, but hers is not one of them, and I wouldn’t cite it.

      • roflc0ptic says:

        @cassander your position is noted. I’m… in the process of re-evaluating a lot of beliefs – I am deep in the well of epistemic learned helplessness – so if you can refer me to more in depth criticism, I’m happy to engage with it. To be clear, this is a book I read half of over a decade ago, so I’m really pretty hazy on its contents. There might be better leftists to read, or maybe they’re all wrong and first world development of the third world is totally altruistic and never used to exploit and control, although that just doesn’t sound plausible.

      • cassander says:

        @roflc0ptic says:

        There might be better leftists to read, or maybe they’re all wrong and first world development of the third world is totally altruistic and never used to exploit and control, although that just doesn’t sound plausible.

        Those aren’t the only two options. There has been lots of aid, most of it well intentioned. It has almost always been administered by people on the left using the (then) latest theories of how to do the most good. It has often been ineffective. It has sometimes been used as tool for control, but not usually and rarely effectively. The idea that it’s all a right wing plot is laughable. That it’s responsible for the global south’s underdeveloped is absurd.

      • A notable tie in – they trained under Milton Friedman, who also had some role in the Chilean government.

        Actually, they were students of Arnold Harberger.

        My father’s “role” in the Chilean government consisted of going to Chile under private auspices and, while there, having one conversation with Pinochet in which he gave him his usual economic advice. Similar to, but rather smaller than, his role in the Chinese government, Polish government, Yugoslav government, …

        If you rely on Naomi Klein as your source of information you are likely to reach mistaken conclusions.

      • roflc0ptic says:

        @david friedman wikipedia, actually.

        The Chicago Boys were a group of Chilean economists prominent around the 1970s and 1980s, the majority of whom trained at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger

        If that’s incorrect, then it’s incorrect. I will take your word for it.

        @cassander (and @david friedman) So I’m here saying, look, I’m at a place in my life where I’m actively looking to grow my viewpoint. I’m actively soliciting reading recommendations. Neither of you are reading me especially closely, nor reacting to the things I’m actually saying.

        I’m not saying I especially trust Naomi Klein. I’m actually saying I have serious doubts about most of my historical positions. I’m also saying Klein is a place to get a lefty perspective that’s critical of globalization. I did not say that Klein’s perspective is correct, just that it’s a daming story. I’m trying hard to limit my claims to solid epistemological ground, and I’m pretty sure I’m succeeding.

        Cassander, you’re responding to a false dichotomy I didn’t pose. I didn’t say it’s all a right wing plot: that’s you extrapolating totally incorrectly.

        If either of you would like to give me reading on the reasons for the impoverishment of the global south from your perspective, I’d love to engage with them. Just making up a position for me and then dunking on it is dumb.

      • under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger

        The question is what that means.

        Graduate students end up with a thesis sponsor. I believe that for most or all of those that was Harberger, who was the relevant specialist. It’s quite likely that they at some point took a course from my father, just as they took courses from other professors in the department.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/int_alharberger.html

        This is an interview of Harberger about Latin America and the Chicago Boys. The only mentions of Milton Friedman in it are:

        1) “people use the Chicago School to represent an ideology. I think that this has a certain ring truth, but basically, Chicago was not an ideological place. Milton Friedman taught for many years at Chicago, but he didn’t teach Free to Choose [by Friedman and his wife, Rose]; he taught A Monetary History of the United States [also by Friedman, and Anna Jacobson Schwartz]. And the rest of us, in our classes, were not teaching ideology”

        2) “Oh, Milton Friedman’s visit took place in March, I believe, of 1975, and his judgment about the economy was not in any sense unique. I mean, it was what any good economist, looking at the Chilean economy at that time and seeing that kind of a mess, would say. But I think that Milton’s presence probably helped to maybe stiffen the spine of people who were trying to insist on better economic policies. Maybe his remarks convinced some people that would otherwise not be convinced that this kind of change was needed.”

        3) “INTERVIEWER: Of course Milton Friedman especially then became a kind of a kind of hated figure, didn’t he? There were demonstrations…” … HARBERGER: … “so these are the people for whom Milton Friedman then became a figure of hate. They organized demonstrations against him wherever he went, and this went on for a period of years, and I see nothing that he did to deserve that.”

        4) “INTERVIEWER: But going back to those demonstrators, still [there’s a sort of] question on Milton Friedman, because of this association. I’m not saying that it’s right or wrong, but just why do you think their people are so horrified?

        AL HARBERGER: Well, as I say, I think that the whole response picture to Chile has to be linked to somebody loving Allende and somebody being terribly disappointed when Allende was put out of office.” … “Allende is what distinguishes the Chilean case from all these others. I mean, Milton Friedman went to Chile for one week. You can take the top 100 economists in the country of that time, and probably 85 of them had been working seriously in places like Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan, Bolivia, Paraguay — you name it — and were not getting any demonstrations.”

        5) “INTERVIEWER: One of the points Friedman was making was that these kind of free-market policies ultimately lead to a freer political system. In other words, was he sort of suggesting that the free-market policies would ultimately undermine Pinochet’s [regime]?

        AL HARBERGER: Oh, I think he always said that.”

      • Mabuse7 says:

        If you want a book by a well regarded expert as to why most western foreign development efforts have failed or had negative effects then Bill Easterly is your best bet. As for the “impoverishment” of the Global South? Economic historians would say you’ve got it backwards, the Global South is closer to the historic economic steady state, the question is how did the Global North get so wealthy. And if you want the answer to that question, well that is an active and very much contested area of research, from the “History of Capitalism” literature that says that it was all slavery and colonialism to Deidre McCloskey’s Bourgeoise Trilogy that argues that it was the development and dominance of a specific culture that valued and encouraged material productiveness and delayed gratification. Here’s a good booklist to get you started.

      • cassander says:

        @roflc0ptic says:

        I’m not saying I especially trust Naomi Klein. I’m actually saying I have serious doubts about most of my historical positions.

        That’s good! She is a particular pet peeve of mine because her book was very popular when I was in college, and it’s very bad.

        I’m also saying Klein is a place to get a lefty perspective that’s critical of globalization.

        I think she does articulate the general left wing (as opposed to center left) perspective and that this does not reflect well on left even when you accept that others have argued the position more cogently.

        Cassander, you’re responding to a false dichotomy I didn’t pose. I didn’t say it’s all a right wing plot: that’s you extrapolating totally incorrectly.

        You didn’t say that, but Klein does.

        If either of you would like to give me reading on the reasons for the impoverishment of the global south from your perspective, I’d love to engage with them.

        The south was never made poor, like everywhere it started that way. the question is why did the north get rich?

        the usual left wing answer is that the north got rich by plundering the south by colonialism and exploitative capitalism.
        this does not fit the facts. Sailing around the world and colonizing places is difficult and expensive. A society that can do it almost by definition has to be far richer and more powerful than the society getting colonized. So to get the colonies in the first place the north had to already be richer. moreover, getting colonies doesn’t seem to directly lead to increased wealth. the first big colonizers were spain and portugal, but while they got immense quantities of bullion from the americas, their societies remained relatively poor, soon outstripped by the french, english, and dutch, who took their colonies from them in wars. the dutch famously had a huge maritime empire, and the far east trade made big profits for the owners, but the vast majority of dutch trade was hauling grain, ship stores, and fish around northern Europe, and that’s what made the east indies empire and trade possible. Outside of a few sugar islands and gold and silver mines, colonies were a consequence of national wealth and power, not a source.

        As you proceed into the industrial era, you see even less connection. Germany never had colonies worth a damn, but had the largest industrial output in Europe by 1913, and was richer per capita than the UK by 1970 despite losing two world wars in between. Switzerland sits quietly at the heart of europe with a pacifist foreign policy and no natural resources, and becomes one of the few places in the world that isn’t a tax haven or petro state can claim to be richer than the US.

        When we look at the south, we also clearly see that engagement with the north is correlated with wealth, not poverty. What are the richest countries in Asia? South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, all of which were militarily occupied by the US. China stays desperately poor under Mao, but starts to explode once they begin to invite foreign investment under Deng. When we look at development efforts, big infrastructure projects fail to transform economies. Loans and grants fail. Import substitution fails. What works is foreign direct investment. Engaging directly with the supposedly exploitative north produces the most wealth for developing countries.

        The reason why? Because the reason the north got rich was building productive institutions that allowed for positive sum competition. the Netherlands in the 16/17th century is the first society on the planet bigger than a city state where most people are engaged in producing goods for market exchange rather than personal consumption. Why these emerged first in the north is an open question, but they definitely did, and they are what allowed the north to get rich, no one else has gotten rich any other way. Because fundamentally, capitalism is about mutual gain, not exploitation. Western companies “exploiting” foreign labor are paying double the prevailing wage, in companies that are usually better run, less nepotistic, and less corrupt than local industry. Engaging with them transfers knowledge and institutional capital to locals AND makes money for the north. Everyone wins, except, of course, the people whose self identity is wrapped up with insisting that capitalism is exploitative regardless of the evidence. There used to be people on the left who understood this, and wanted to achieve left wing goals without killing the goose that was laying the golden eggs, but they seem to be declining in number as memories of the horrors of socialism fade. So we see countries like Venezuela pursuing the same old policies, getting the same old results, and seeing the same excuse of another failure as bad luck.

    • No One In Particular says:

      You seem to be confusing whatsaboutism with hypocrisy.

      It’s difficult to see what your argument is. People are concerned about how black people are treated, but Russians have a low standard of living. Huh?

      The fact that people are focusing on black Americans doesn’t mean that they are declaring that no concern should be shown towards nonAmericans. Should people just not protest the treatment of black Americans until Russian standard of living is brought to black American levels? Should protests be allowed, but only if they also include mentions of Russia?

      It is a premise of modern politics that a country is a preeminent unit. Even more so within the democratic context, as citizenship defines who is the “demo” in democracy. The idea of democracy is that we all get together a vote on the rules that everyone has to follow, where “we all” and “everyone” means “the people of the country”. People in Russia don’t get to vote in our elections, and our elections don’t decide what rules they have to live under. Thus, any problems that Russians have with their government is framed as problems caused by Russians, and not the responsibility of the US. That doesn’t mean we’re not concened with them, just that we are, at least to some degree, not responsible. And on top of that, people tend to prioritize harm from humans over harm from nature, and general economic conditions are generally viewed as the latter. With black people, they are living under rules that we’ve put into place, enforced by cops we pay for. This is viewed as harm from people, and we are the people. We are participating in their oppression in a way we are not with Russians.

      You seem to be expecting people to be perfect effective altruists, calculating a (increase in utility)/(resources required) score for each cause, and supporting only the one with the highest one. That’s not how humans work. Police force against black people is currently the most salient issue, and is serving as a Schelling point for social justice. Instead of thinking of all the people who aren’t getting attention, perhaps you should just be grateful that some people are?

      • AlexOfUrals says:

        My original comment was admittedly poorly phrased and structured, so it’s understandable that pretty much all of your interpretation is totally not what I was saying. However I’ve clarified what I meant in the comments above a few times, so you can check those. In two words – I am absolutely not trying to tell people what to care about, here or anywhere, and what infuriates me is when they don’t return me the same courtesy. All the mentions of Russia or Africa are just to emphasize that they have no moral grounds in doing so.

  133. suntory time says:

    He’s not ‘gone’, he’s still tenured faculty.

    • suntory time says:

      He still has a position. If anything, it’s more directly research-oriented. If you want to be mad about him losing his VP position, fine, but he’s not ‘gone’.

      • suntory time says:

        I’m not mad, but words are important. Facts are important. It’s not a distinction without a difference. He is still a member of the faculty, and his academic freedom has been preserved.

      • CatCube says:

        @suntory time

        Uh-huh. So if we bounced somebody from a VP position back to a research professor for being gay, you’d be okay with that because “his academic freedom has been preserved?” Hey, we’re not going to like, pull somebody’s tenure, but we don’t want one of those people in charge of funding research. It’s not like this hurts him in any way, so no problems?

      • suntory time says:

        As I said,

        If you want to be mad about him losing his VP position, fine

        What was unclear about that?

      • AliceToBob says:

        @suntory time

        …and his academic freedom has been preserved.

        Hsu cannot hold an administrative position at his university because of writings and speech he’s conducted regarding his research.

        Is this congruent with your notion of “academic freedom”? If so, this seems like the source of a few disagreements throughout this comments section.

  134. sharper13 says:

    The facts don’t matter in the face of the current prevailing media and academic narrative.

    He committed heresy by referring to a study which didn’t show racial bias in police brutality statistics and had to be punished for that.

  135. samboy says:

    Link: https://www.wilx.com/content/news/MSU-Vice-President-of-research-and-innovation-Stephen-Hsu-resigns-571381341.html

    I consider slippery slope arguments to be a fallacy, but we’re slipping down a pretty dangerous slope here. Right now, Stephen Hsu still has his position and, in his resignation, the president of MSU did state that “The exchange of ideas is essential to higher education, and I fully support our faculty and their academic freedom to address the most difficult and controversial issues.” But how long before we outright fire professors for publishing peer reviewed science we do not like?

    This is like the recent Washington Post article where they doxxed an otherwise non-notable woman for wearing a politically incorrect costume to a Halloween party two years ago, causing her to lose her job. This kind of doxxing used to be something only clickbait rags like Gawker would do; now Washington Post has become a clickbait doxx-the-witch rag.

    • suntory time says:

      I consider slippery slope arguments to be a fallacy,

      Ahem.

      Anyway, this is nothing like the WP article. It’s about a notable professor and VP. It’s not a doxxing, and it’s based on his own published works, not a misjudgment about how to attend a halloween party.

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      It’s more complex here, the ‘blackface’ incident was at a party held by a WAPO cartoonist, and WAPO were frightened. They could have maintained their integrity with probably little consequence, but they opted to bow to and join the witch-hunt – mostly, I think, out of fear and stupidity.

  136. Le Maistre Chat says:

    Mid-June in the Year of Our Lord 2020. It’s an election year in the United States, and the incumbent President is a first-term Republican.
    Tucker Carlson on FOX News: “Mobs can’t be sated. We thought Republicans understood that. That’s why we supported them. … now it’s time to find new leaders.”

    • ManyCookies says:

      I’m not familiar with Fox News anchors these days, is Carlson a central pundit like O’Rielly or Hannity? And is this like a bold opinion for a Fox News pundit?

      Also how did Political Youtube reverse the Conquest’s Law so hard? Like a Last Week Tonight video will be at 2:1 up/downs with a comment section shitshow, but this video is at 20:1 with circlejerk harmony in the comments. Gotta say it’s an embarrassing performance from the lefties, letting the comments of a political video on fucking Youtube not be an acrimonious shitstorm.

      • suntory time says:

        No lefty is watching Tucker Carlson, even for a chance to rebut. It’s like listening to nails on a chalkboard.
        Google up Jon Stewart’s famous appearance on Crossfire (which featured Tucker Carlson at the time) for a comedic take on Tucker and his whole schtick.

        • ManyCookies says:

          But that should cut both ways, like what righty is listening to John Oliver?

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Google up Jon Stewart’s famous appearance on Crossfire (which featured Tucker Carlson at the time) for a comedic take on Tucker and his whole schtick.

          Stewart told Tucker and Foghorn Leghorn to stop being apparatchiks and say what they really believe, don’t just barf up each Party’s talking points for a paycheck.
          You will note that Tucker is denouncing the Republican Party in the strongest terms tonight.

        • BBA says:

          Of course, that was back when Carlson’s shtick was a respectable National Review-style conservative in a bow tie. His current bomb-throwing populist shtick is only a few years old.

          • albatross11 says:

            BBA:

            Any idea whether it’s an act or he’s changed his mind? How would we tell?

          • Rob K says:

            @albatross11

            As the saying goes, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them – the first time.”

            You are, of course, free to believe that a guy who pulled a hefty salary doing one act when that act was what sold, and is now pulling a hefty salary doing a different act during that act’s moment in the sun has in fact decided to stand up for his deeply held principles.

          • Clutzy says:

            Any idea whether it’s an act or he’s changed his mind? How would we tell?

            He’s done several interviews about this. He wrote a book about it. Its pretty clear the reason Tucker went new Tucker is the same as the reason intellectual Trump voters went for Trump in the primary: They were tired of lies and incompetence. Lies on foreign wars and immigration, incompetence in the carrying out of wars and domestic policy. That’s why he still is railing on Trump. These riots are something a competent administration that had enacted proper personnel would have avoided.

          • John Schilling says:

            …the reason intellectual Trump voters went for Trump in the primary: They were tired of lies and incompetence.

            Wait, what?

            I mean, Trump wasn’t exactly going for the intellectual vote in the first place. But, OK, he must have picked up at least a few. Are these people satisfied with the degree of honesty and competence they have received from their new leader? And, where are they going to look for honesty and competence next?

          • Clutzy says:

            I mean, Trump wasn’t exactly going for the intellectual vote in the first place. But, OK, he must have picked up at least a few. Are these people satisfied with the degree of honesty and competence they have received from their new leader? And, where are they going to look for honesty and competence next?

            The Anton/Coulter types are most definitely not please with Trump. No wall. Didn’t fire Comey day 1. Hired quite a few people they considered idiotic like Bolton and Kushner. ETC ETC.

            There are also some pessimists like Victor Davis Hanson who simply thing the government is ungovernable for a proper conservative.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I mean, Trump wasn’t exactly going for the intellectual vote in the first place. But, OK, he must have picked up at least a few. Are these people satisfied with the degree of honesty and competence they have received from their new leader?

            I mean, I feel like as the sort of person who reads and posts on SSC I qualify as something adjacent to an “intellectual” (although I would consider myself an anti-intellectual intellectual…I’m smart enough to know the other intellectuals don’t know what they’re doing, either), I didn’t go for Trump because I was tired of lies and incompetence. I go for Trump because his policies are in my interests and what I believe to be the national interest while his opponents’ policies are the opposite. A version of Trump that is thoroughly lying and incompetent is vastly, vastly preferable to an impeccably honest and contempt HRC or Joe Biden.

        • AG says:

          And when the outgroup does watch, it’s not on the original video, it’s from excerpts posted to social media precisely so that the original video doesn’t get clicks.

      • albatross11 says:

        Carlson is interesting. From what I’ve seen of his output (not all that much), a fair bit is low-quality hackery and owning-the-libs and stirring up outrage/fear. But he also actually sometimes goes waaaaay off message for Fox and says something that’s maybe interesting. A year or so ago, he basically went through Elizabeth Warren’s proposed policies and more-or-less said “Why can’t we have leaders who say this stuff?” My sense is that he was in agreement with like 80% of her policies.

        • Nick says:

          As I’ve said before, Tucker’s tone when it comes to “the elites” concerns me. Even when I sorta agree with him. I guess that’s inevitable for a TV pundit, but I still wish he indulged in mistake theory a little more often instead.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          A year or so ago, he basically went through Elizabeth Warren’s proposed policies and more-or-less said “Why can’t we have leaders who say this stuff?” My sense is that he was in agreement with like 80% of her policies.

          He’s pretty explicit that his ideal President would be someone who implemented 80% of Elizabeth Warren’s policies while protecting us from progressive mobs.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        I’m not familiar with Fox News, is Carlson a premier pundit like O’Rielly or Hannity?

        He’s a premier pundit who draws about 120,000 more viewers than Hannity. He’s the most-viewed original cable telecast, ranked #3 with viewers 18-49 (behind Jersey Shore and Double Shot at Love, whatever that is), tied for #5 with Millennials (people born in 1986 are Millennials, right?) behind, in addition, The Misery Index and… softcore porn?

      • No One In Particular says:

        By “central”, do you mean “major”, rather than “centrist”?

  137. theredsheep says:

    Anybody else concerned that actually defunding the police would lead to a massive upsurge in domestic terrorism? Here I’m thinking of the aftermath of the Iraq war, where we basically fired the entire Iraqi army and trusted that matters would take care of themselves. This, you may recall, did not happen; the ex-soldiers had no means of supporting themselves and only knew how to do one thing, plus they were understandably a bit ticked off at America and anyone who cooperated with it, so they all joined the nearest militia and everything went straight to hell.

    Many of the same variables apply here. Being a cop is one of the few decent-paying jobs you can get without a degree, and if lots of cops got fired at once they wouldn’t really have a lot of viable options for maintaining themselves and their families at an acceptable standard of living. They would see themselves as the humiliated victims of an injustice which they lacked any feasible peaceful means to rectify, which is more or less perfect conditions for producing a terrorist movement–shame is a very powerful drug. Most of them have guns already, apart from their police-issue weapons, and all of them know how to use those guns. They were increasingly tending towards a warrior mentality in recent years, from what I have read. Even if only a few surrendered to the temptation to take up arms at the next protest march, they could make an awful lot of trouble.

    For the record, I don’t have any especially strong positive or negative feelings about the police themselves, and plead agnostic about the question of “structural racism,” since I’m still not totally sure what that’s meant to imply. Would be pleased to see qualified immunity, asset forfeiture, and the rest of the abominations die. I don’t mean to imply that police officers are natural terrorists, but there are limits to how hard your life can come crashing down due to forces outside your control before you surrender to the desire to just set everything else on fire too.

    • suntory time says:

      It all comes down to what ‘defund the police’ means in practice. If it’s literally get rid of all police and replace them with nothing at all, that’s not going to work.
      In a realistic situation where the police are either reformed significantly or replaced by a different structure, then officers that were let go will do what just about anyone else does that is let go – find a new job.

      • John Schilling says:

        then officers that were let go will do what just about anyone else does that is let go – find a new job.

        Right, just like all the demobilized officers and men of the Iraqi army went and found new jobs.

        The new jobs that ex-cops will wind up taking, will not involve cleaning bedpans at the local nursing home, and they will not involve learning to code. Probably the best we can hope for is that they all go on long-term disability, costing the taxpayer close to a hundred billion dollars a year, and as often as not becoming political gadflies in their new spare time. Next-least-bad option is working as private security for corporations or gated communities that think (poor) Black Lives need to Matter someplace out of sight, and with their colleagues still on the job and in the DA’s office covering for them as always. Then there’s the exciting new employment option of using their professional connections with the criminal community to take a leading position in that community – note that one of Mexico’s biggest drug cartels was formed by members of one of Mexico’s elite military anti-drug task forces.

        Then there are the really ugly options.

        • suntory time says:

          All due respect, but the US is not Iraq. There are other jobs that exist for an ex-cop, and not all are dystopian fiction.
          If done in the least sensible manner, ‘defunding the police’ would be a disaster, but it doesn’t have to be done that way.

          • John Schilling says:

            All due respect, but the US is not Iraq. There are other jobs that exist for an ex-cop, and not all are dystopian fiction.

            The mere existence of other jobs is a necessary but not sufficient condition for all of our hypothetical newly-ex cops being happily employed elsewhere. They also have to take the jobs, and like them.

            In the United States, nobody is required to take a job if they don’t want to. We don’t lock people up for refusing their labor assignment, and we don’t let them die in the street. If they’ve got a decent social support network (most cops do), they won’t even drop more than one rung on the status level.

            And, the observed behavior of Americans is that once they’ve spent a decade or so climbing the ladder in one industry, they tend to be very reluctant to start over in a new one. Collecting unemployment or disability, looking fruitlessly for work in their old industry, and taking “temporary” jobs while being very disgruntled about it, are common alternatives.

            However you implement “Defund the Police”, you need to be prepared for maybe half the cops you “defund” to be up to no good in your brave new world. I’ve given you fair warning of the sorts of nogoodness to expect. Do with that what you will.

        • albatross11 says:

          I gather it’s often hard to find enough policemen to fill out the needs now, so I expect that abolishing (say) the Minneapolis police department will just cause most of those policemen to go find somewhere else to ply their trade.

          My other guess is that there’s a subset of policemen who impose very high costs on both the citizens and the city budget. If they could find a way to move those guys on to some other job (or even disability), it would be a big win.

          Abolishing police all over the US, well, they’d all be back on the job one way or another come the next election. If we were very, very lucky, that would end up with Trump as president and a lot of Guiliani types as mayors in big cities. Probably the people who’d get elected after a year or two of chaos and unchecked crime would be much worse, and we’d get that high-tech police state we’ve always wanted a few years early.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            Trying to find the studies, but the last time I looked the evidence was that the supermajority of complaints in a lot of departments could be traced to a literal handful (5 or fewer) of officers, so that’s always been my model unless there was fairly strong evidence of systematic corruption of the entire force (e.g. NOPD, Chicago PD)

      • albatross11 says:

        Note that when Camden shut down their police department, they basically used that as a way to bust the police union. They rehired most of the police, but at lower salaries and with different terms. I assume they avoided rehiring the biggest troublemakers from before, but I’m not sure.

        One qualm I have with the slogan is that a lot of the police reforms I think would do some good (body cameras, better training, maybe some people with some kind of psychology or social working training to help deal with people having a mental breakdown, being more selective about whom they hire) cost money.

        • Nick says:

          One qualm I have with the slogan is that a lot of the police reforms I think would do some good (body cameras, better training, maybe some people with some kind of psychology or social working training to help deal with people having a mental breakdown, being more selective about whom they hire) cost money.

          I’ve found it weird that body cameras don’t come up more often in these conversations. Wasn’t it the reform du jour a few years ago? I get the emphasis on choke holds given the way Floyd died, but body cameras seem to me like a solid choice, too.

          • albatross11 says:

            I think they’ve had mixed results on police brutality complaints overall.

            I think one basic problem here is that the police turn out to have a lot of control over what gets recorded, and often over what gets turned over to anyone outside the PD. That needs to change. This story is recent but there are a bunch of similar ones–the police were (illegally) raiding a journalist to figure out who’d leak some document to him, and were ordered by a captain to turn their body cameras off during the raid.

            I propose two simple rules:

            a. If you are supposed to have your body camera with you and turned on, you don’t, and any question is raised about your conduct while that body camera is off or missing or taped over or whatever, you’re automatically fired and barred from police work within the state ever again.

            b. If the body or dash cam footage that is supposed to be there is missing, due to being turned off or having a malfunction or accidental erasure or misfiling or whatever excuse, then any civil suit against the police should start with the rebuttable presumption that the complaints that led to the civil case are true, and the police department have to disprove those claims to win the case. This seems reasonable, since the PD was in the position to make sure the evidence that was supposed to be there actually showed up. If they either erased it or couldn’t be troubled to keep that equipment working, well, I guess they can afford the payout in the lawsuit.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            They’ve tended to reduce the number of complaints made officers and the number of complaints sustained and turned into disciplinary actions. Choose your own narrative or combination of narratives from the options below

            Narrative A: This is because the knowledge they are being recorded deters police from committing abuses they were otherwise inclined to commit. The cameras work.

            Narrative B: This is because many complaints are spurious, and the recordings prove it. The cameras work.

            Narrative C: Police commit just as many illegal acts as before and simply turn off the camera every time. Thus you only THINK you have Narrative B, but in reality the police are controlling what you see. The cameras are a total failure.

            My money is on a mix of B and C, but that rather than argue about what individual cases tell us to think about the ratio of truth in those two narratives, we should be working on making recordings cover 100% of an officer’s time on patrol and creating robust medium-term storage while having a very permissive FOIA-style release system.

            The biggest issues there are cost and data storage capacity, especially given that often arguments are going to hinge on relatively fine details. That’s another aspect, actually, call it narrative D: “The Camera Never Lies” is itself a lie. Cameras never tell you EVERYTHING, and reconstructing details later from video evidence is at best a tricky business. Cams work-ish, but not as well as their proponents wanted because low res shakycam footage of a traffic stop at 2AM on an unlighted back road does not produce material that’s easy to analyze.

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            The early pilot programs were extremely promising. The issue is that once more widely adopted, it became really clear that they only help police departments that want to be helped.

            If the local IA and prosecutor do not consider a turned off or disabled body cam and a complaining, injured or dead citizen overwhelming evidence of Mens Rea, then the camera just does not do anything. Which means that cameras can make departments which already had very clean records start smelling of actual roses, but..

          • CatCube says:

            Yeah, people are relying on “oh, just record it on bodycams!!” way too much.

            My section got some GoPro Hero 8 Blacks about two months ago for us to use during inspections. I used one for a dam inspection a month ago, recording the whole thing in 4K, to maximize my ability to go back and grab screen captures that would be useful as figures.

            I was recording for maybe two hours, and the files are consuming about 40% of my hard drive. If I were to upload the entire files to our permanent repository, I expect I’d get immediate hate-mail from our system administrators, who six months ago were sending out e-mails about 2 GB files (I have some of those as data captures over a period of a few years from strain gages). I’m probably going to have to upload these files anyway, because according to our lawyers, these may now constitute records that we can’t destroy and have to archive according to recordkeeping laws. This is for one engineer, recording a couple hours, over a couple of days. Can you imagine the sheer amount of money spent to handle hundreds of people 24/7?

            Sure, you can crank down the resolution, but you start to eat into your ability to distinguish fine details quickly. 1080p is only, what, 2.1 megapixel? That’s pathetic these days for photos I expect to archive. I don’t know if people really understand what “oh, let’s just keep all the videos” really means. There’s going to be a really, really, big burden on just maintaining hard drive space to do that. That’s aside from any quirks like two-party consent and all of that.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            @CatCube

            I did a rough napkin calculation for the NYPD, based on the average ratio of patrol to non-patrol officers, 40 hours per patrol officer per week, storage for 1 or 2 years, and 1920×1080 resolution.

            It came out to either 5x or 10x (for 1 or 2 years storage) 2019 Facebook Inc’s total data storage capacity.

            So when I say “there are cost and data storage issues” I am perhaps underselling that portion. However, I want to make clear that I am not a computer science guy, I went with a middle of the range MP4 codec “byes per minute” estimate, so I may have been either grossly pessimistic OR optimistic.

          • Vitor says:

            @CatCube, @Trofim_Lysenko,

            you’re both being extremely pessimistic. 4k video is incredibly detailed, even 1080p is way overkill. People could watch movies on DVD just fine, and that’s 720×480 or thereabouts. Nowadays we record video at huge bitrates because we can, and because storage is cheap (for the casual GoPro consumer usage profile and similar). We’re waay past the point of diminishing returns here.

            I think a reasonable resolution for this application would be 360p with around 1 Mbit/s. That’s not enough to unambiguously identify everyone who appears on the video, and you won’t be able to see fine details like licence plate numbers etc, but it will give you the broad strokes of what happened. Typical security camera footage is probably worse than this. A quick estimate: 1 Mbit/s, 8 hours a day, for 250 days = 900 GB. So 1 hard drive per officer per year of storage. Totally doable.

            You can also do mildly smart things like keeping higher resolution video from any time window where a police engagement happened. This could be auto-triggered whenever a police report is filed. Still roughly the same order of magnitude of total storage, but now the critical moments most likely to be scrutinized can be 10-100 times more detailed.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            @Vltor

            I was thinking about things like storing high res only for incidents where force was used or for specific callouts, but I think you’re overly sanguine about the utility of low res video. I agree that it can work for broad strokes, but often the disputes can hinge on small details like the exact movement of someone’s hands against their body, facial expressions, etc.

          • No One In Particular says:

            Trofim_Lysenko

            I did a rough napkin calculation for the NYPD, based on the average ratio of patrol to non-patrol officers, 40 hours per patrol officer per week, storage for 1 or 2 years, and 1920×1080 resolution.

            It came out to either 5x or 10x (for 1 or 2 years storage) 2019 Facebook Inc’s total data storage capacity.

            It’s interesting how different framings can tell completely different stories. If we figure somewhere around 1gb/hr, and we pay $100 for a 1tb hard drive (it’s government, so they’ll likely overpay), that’s 10 cents/gb. So we’ll have to budget an extra 10 cents per hour into our payroll budget. And that’s if we keep everything forever.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          Reforming the police, like reforming the schools, almost will certainly require pouring more money in.

          If you think the entire institution is rotten, this generates a lot of disgust. “Why should they be rewarded with more money for screwing things up?”

          And I totally get that disgust. There are lots of corrupt institutions that use their failures to keep on absorbing money like a sponge.

          But other times people really do fail because they simply are not given the resources needed to do the job right, and they keep on being punished by their budgets being reduced and they can never get out of the hole.

          I’m not sure of any easy heuristics to apply here. I suspect institutions filled with un-fire-able people are prime candidates for being money-sponging failures, but I want to be careful because this is a hard problem.

          So we have to do the hard work. Look at where the money is going. Figure out who is responsible. Examine feedback mechanisms. Is it good money after bad? Is the new money changing things?

          • AG says:

            Way more money is going to buying (militarizing) equipment than there should be. A bunch of money is also about paying off settlements. So low hanging fruit is to divert the money buying military equipment into other things, and stop behavior that gets the police sued.

          • John Schilling says:

            Do you have any idea what fraction of the typical police budget is spent buying militarizing equipment? I believe that it is fairly small, as they are getting much of it free or for pennies on the dollar as military hand-me-downs. But hard data would be appreciated.

            Also, would you consider the problem solved if the Army said, “To help out our brothers in law enforcement, we’re going to make these M-16s and MRAPs and whatever else they want available to them at no cost whatsoever”?

          • L (Zero) says:

            You’ve kind of reverse-engineered this widely circulated chart.

          • AG says:

            @John Schilling.
            We can compare budgets/headcount for police departments vs. other departments. Are there as many police as there are teachers and administrative staff, and who is getting more funding? Where does the rest of that money go?

          • cassander says:

            There might government agencies somewhere that are squeezing every possible util out of their budgets and are still failing largely for lack of funds, but I doubt any of them is an american police department. Certainly not any big city PD.

          • John Schilling says:

            We can compare budgets/headcount for police departments vs. other departments.

            How does that answer or even address the question? We’re talking specifically about spending on militarization, not total budget. Police departments have lots of expenses, unique expenses even, that are not part of any plausible definition of “militarization”.

          • AG says:

            It answers the question because it compares equipment expenditure for , say, education vs. policing. I don’t believe that equipment expenditures for policing should be so completely different. They should have proportional IT upgrade expenses, so what remains would be either car upgrades (fair), or…militarized equipment.
            In contrast, most of the costs of regular supplies are not even covered by the education budget, and are pushed on to the teachers and students’ families to provide.

          • Reforming the police, like reforming the schools, almost will certainly require pouring more money in.

            We did that experiment with the schools, and it didn’t work. Real per pupil expenditure has increased sharply, roughly doubling during the thirty years after 1965, with essentially no improvement on outcome measures.

            We could improve educational outcomes with no increase in spending by switching to a competitive system, a voucher for the per pupil amount spent on the public schools.

            I wouldn’t be surprised if we could do it by just reversing the increase in size of school districts that occurred in the post-war decades; number of students per district increased by more than an order of magnitude between 1946 and 1974 — and educational outcomes declined. The larger the district, the less the ability of individual parents to affect things.

            But we won’t do either.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            Hence, “there are lots of corrupt institutions that use their failures to keep on absorbing money like a sponge.”

          • No One In Particular says:

            John Schilling

            Also, would you consider the problem solved if the Army said, “To help out our brothers in law enforcement, we’re going to make these M-16s and MRAPs and whatever else they want available to them at no cost whatsoever”?

            The is a different between price and cost. Just because the military is not charging money doesn’t mean there’s no cost. If the military isn’t charging what it costs, then that’s just transferring money from the military budget to the police.

        • Monkey See says:

          This Twitter thread is probably worthwhile:
          https://twitter.com/samswey/status/1180655701271732224

    • BBA says:

      The good news, as it were, is that there are thousands of police departments in the country, and although a few cities might jump on the defund/abolish bandwagon, it’s unlikely to spread to the suburbs, let alone the boonies. State and federal police agencies are also unlikely to go anywhere.

      The bad news is that every city, county, and state agency is getting defunded anyway, thanks to COVID destroying the tax base and almost every nonfederal government being required to run a balanced budget. The proverbial money printer will only go brrr for the feds. Maybe Congress will pass a relief package, but I’m not holding my breath. If they don’t the police are getting defunded, and so are the schools and the roads and the fire departments and the DMV and so on.

      • Matt M says:

        The proverbial money printer will only go brrr for the feds. Maybe Congress will pass a relief package, but I’m not holding my breath.

        Congress absolutely will bail out every state and locality that needs it. Donald Trump himself has spent the last month bragging on Twitter about how much money he’s sending to keep the Portland transit system afloat.

    • Nancy Lebovitz says:

      They would probably end up as security guards. Defunding the police could increase the market for security guards whether there’s an uptick in crime or not.

      They’d have jobs but not be as well paid, so it’s not that much like disbanding the Iraqi army.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      I’ve seen calls from cop-reform people I respect that cops should require a college degree.

      It might solve the cop problem, but I suspect it will cause other problems. We all know about the credentialism craze here.

      A good compromise may be requiring cops to be at least 24 years old to be hired.

      • Oldio says:

        I doubt it would solve the cop problem at all. “Require a college degree” just happens to be a common American non-solution to problems we choose not to ignore.

        • AG says:

          I mean, a cop that’s willing to jump through a year of resume-building for applications and then another 3-4 years of paperwork seems less likely to me to be trigger happy. Almost by definition, our current system filters out people who couldn’t hack it into college as those who become cops.

      • John Schilling says:

        I’ve seen calls from cop-reform people I respect that cops should require a college degree.

        I believe most cops already have a college degree. Maybe only from a two-year college, but four years is not rare. Usually in a degree program that’s effectively “Pre-Cop”. And the exceptions are mostly people who have four-plus years in military law enforcement (MPs, Coast Guard, etc). Is the intent that military veterans should be mostly barred from working in law enforcement?

        If you want to complain about American police being inadequately trained, you can point to the fact that there isn’t literally a federal law saying “all policemen must have college degrees”, and hope that nobody notices how little this has to do with the facts on the ground.

        The facts on the ground are that most cops are trained at the college-graduate level, but it’s the wrong training.

      • BBA says:

        Minnesota (to pick a state entirely at random) requires police officers to hold at least an associate’s degree as a condition of licensure. There are reciprocity exemptions for people with five years’ experience as police officers in other states or four years as military police.

        So I looked up Derek Chauvin, the cop at the center of the current fracas. He qualified for the Minneapolis PD through the military route, but earned a degree while a police officer. And he was 25 years old when he was first hired. He’s 44 now.

        Any other One Neat Tricks that need to be debunked?

        • BBA says:

          Just two off the top of my head:

          “Police should have the same racial makeup as the cities they serve.” They tried that in Baltimore, and it’s as bad as ever there.

          “Police should be required to live in their cities.” There are obvious ways around this, like renting a small apartment as one’s official address and commuting in every day from the “vacation home” in the suburbs. Also, Staten Island is in the same city as the Bronx, but they’re worlds apart.

          • Clutzy says:

            TBH the only proposal that seems to me to be plausible is that, if your PD sucks, bust it like they did in Camden. Then hire the appropriate amount of non-corrupted officers. Also you move all investigations of officers from the local level to the state level so as to avoid the situation where prosecutors know the cops they are prosecuting.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            I suspect busting and re-hiring a police department is the kind of thing you can’t do in multiple places at once all over the country.

            Camden could rely on the state to take over for things while it was happening, and the state only had Camden and not 5 other cities doing it, and the ability to draw on a workforce depends on the good people not having 200 other PDs also bidding for them.

  138. I have seen a variety of news stories claiming that Covid infection rates have risen. Some blame it on states reopening. None that I have seen blame it on the demonstrations.

    That suggests a possible research project. States have varied with regard to the size of demonstrations. States have varied in whether and how much they have opened up. States surely vary in what has happened to the infection rates.

    So it should be possible, by seeing which factor is more closely related to changes in infection rates, to get some idea of which, if either, of the two potential causes is more responsible for increases.

    I haven’t tried doing it. Has anyone else?

    • albatross11 says:

      One complication: If most of the protesters were young and healthy, then it might take a couple hops before we see cases getting tested, because probably you’re only going to get tested if you’re feeling pretty sick, and young healthy people often don’t get very sick from C19. But yeah, I think this would be a really good thing to research. Most of the protests were outside, so if little transmission happened, then we can probably do outdoor concerts and church services without a huge amount of risks.

    • samboy says:

      Well, as a quick and dirty study, I have looked at the COVID-19 rates in Hennepin, Minnesota—the county where George Floyd died, and where a good deal of protests happened. There isn’t any real spike in the number of COVID-19 cases since the day Floyd died (May 25). Indeed, Hennepin had 253 new cases on the day after George Floyd died, a record which it has not matched, much less surpassed.

      It could be because the protests were outside and a lot of people were wearing masks at the protests. It could be any of a lot of things.

      As an aside, The New York Times has COVID-19 data available at https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data

    • lhudde says:

      I’d think the weather would be an important confounder, though. Uncomfortable weather conditions like rain and heat should lessen protest participation (so: lower COVID risk from protests), but also drive people indoors (so: higher COVID risk from other contacts), reducing the extent to which protest-driven transmission would be visible in the data. Not sure if you could control for that by assigning some sort of subjective discomfort score to different weather conditions?

      • No One In Particular says:

        I wonder how many people are willing to risk tear gas, but won’t go out in the rain.

    • DinoNerd says:

      I suspect that state level data obscures as much as it reveals. Locally, the reopening is at least partly controlled at the county level. I’m not sure there’d be enough signal left in the noise if this research was done at a state level. (Note: concluding “yes, there was some impact from both causes, complete with wide error bars,” seems both most likely to me, and least useful; smaller areas [with consistent reopening policies] might get the error bars down to halfway reasonable sizes. Meanwhile, it seems that like everything else in this country, which explanation one favours seems mostly based on one’s political outlook.)

      • Evan Þ says:

        We’ve just started seeing increases here in Seattle in the last couple days. They might be due to the protests, or maybe not.

        But I’m starting to get worried.

        • samboy says:

          I am seeing that, for the last two days: 94 new cases on 6-18 and 109 new cases on 6-19. But, keep in mine, Kings county had 105 new cases on May 5-31 but that spike quickly went away.

          Regardless, Kings county is actually doing quite well. Doubling time is 68 days (actual; i.e. you guys had half the number of total cases you have now 68 days ago) and 95 days theoretical (based on the last seven days growth, it would take 95 days for cases to double). Even if this spike remained, doubling time would be around 60 days, and if only 10% of actual infected people have been tested, it would take about nine months for everyone to get the virus up there. But the doubling time has been going up and it doesn’t look like this spike will remain.

    • salvorhardin says:

      Are there readily available graphs anywhere in changes in the age mix of reported cases over time by locality? If reopening is causing a spike you’d expect to see that reflected in new cases skewing more toward young people who are (arguably, could be convinced otherwise) more likely to take advantage of the reopening. And in places which have had major protests and seen no spike, you’d want to check and see whether a redistribution of cases toward young people might reflect that they went out to protests and got infected more, while everyone else stayed in more and got infected less, resulting in no overall total change but only a mix shift.

  139. INH5 says:

    After looking more into the Steven Hsu thing, I’ve changed my mind on the issue.

    Hsu didn’t just host Ron Unz on his own podcast to talk about unrelated subjects. The title and description of the podcast prominently promoted the Unz Review as “a controversial, but widely read, alternative media site hosting opinion outside of the mainstream.” He allowed Unz to promote his own column, “American Pravda” without any pushback whatsoever. Here’s what Unz’s column archives looked like only a few days before the podcast was published. The most recent article is “American Pravda: How Hitler Saved the Allies,” which as the title suggests, includes historical revisionism and blatant apologetics for Nazi Germany. You only have to scroll down a little bit to see American Pravda articles espousing Holocaust denial and other serious antisemitism.

    To my knowledge, Hsu has not responded to the accusations involving Unz in any public statements since this thing began.

    The Stefan Molyneux stuff seems pretty mild by comparison, but for the record, the idea that Stefan Molyneux was not a “controversial figure” in 2017, as Hsu stated in a blog post, is complete nonsense, as shown by even a casual glance at Molyneux’s Wikipedia page in early 2017 Even Joe Rogan was aware that Molyneus had been accused of running a cult all the way back in 2014.

    I’m not a big fan of cancel culture, but I don’t think it’s crazy to question if someone who lends his platform to a Holocaust denier, allows that person to promote Holocaust denial publications unimpeded, and does not admit fault when other people bring this up, is qualified to hold a position that involves deciding which research projects should get funding. Especially when this is part of a repeat pattern of, at best, failing to recognize obvious and even potentially dangerous cranks and failing to admit fault when those issues are brought to his attention.

    • Marlowe says:

      Does this mean that Hsu’s hosts for seminars he’s given at UCLA, Google, Cold Spring Harbor, UC Berkeley, etc., should similarly be canceled (or stripped of any positions of responsibility)? How many degrees of separation from odious people are enough?

      My main objection to this argument, though, is that we really should mean it when we claim to support free inquiry, especially among academics. I don’t like everything Hsu does, though his work on prediction of polygenic traits is really good (see talks or papers), but I’m really impressed that a great fraction of his work is imaginative, and pushes the limits of possibility. (It’s also potentially highly beneficial, e.g. polygenic prediction of cancer risks — again see papers.) So much of academic science is the opposite: even with the amazing freedom of tenure so many people do dull, milquetoast work, writing yet another paper that one knows no one will ever read, never pushing any envelopes. I think we need more people who explore, think, and write freely. We’re going to get fewer, however, with mob-driven denigration like this.

      • INH5 says:

        I just re-read the “How Hitler Saved the Allies” article, and it’s even worse than I had remembered. It promotes a number of antisemitic canards, including but not limited to: Jews had an “overwhelming role” in Soviet Communism, and that Jews control media and finance in modern America and had a “strangehold” on media and finance in Weimar Germany. It claims that Hitler was merely trying to “run the country in the best interests of the 99% German majority.”

        So to be clear here, this isn’t a case of merely associating with an unsavory person, this is allowing an unsavory person to use a platform that you control to promote explicit antisemitic propaganda and Nazi apologetics without any pushback at all. The most charitable possible interpretation is that Hsu displayed an appalling failure of due diligence when he invited Ron Unz on his podcast, and failed to acknowledge this when other people brought it up. This goes well beyond Guilt By Association.

        With regards to the issue of free inquiry, Hsu is still a tenured professor. But I wouldn’t want someone who has, at best, repeatedly failed to recognize cult leaders and Holocaust deniers that could have been uncovered with just a bit of due diligence managing my university’s limited research budget either.

        • [Thing] says:

          without any pushback at all … failure of due diligence

          I haven’t listened to the Unz interview, but this characterization of it reminded me of Steve & his cohost Corey Washington’s Manifold podcast interview with David Skrbina, the philosopher who had a long correspondence with Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), and published a book of Kaczynski’s writings elaborating their shared anti-technology thesis. I thought it was weird that Steve & Corey just sort of politely nodded along while Skrbina went on about how humanity needs to revert to, IIRC, a late Medieval or early Renaissance level of technological development, in order to avert some vaguely specified catastrophe. From other things I’ve read & heard by Steve & Corey, they obviously don’t share that belief, but they didn’t make much of an effort to question Skrbina’s premises, or interrogate the implications for politics or human welfare of his call to reverse several centuries’ worth of technological development. After a certain point they almost sounded like call-in radio-show hosts politely humoring an obviously nutty caller, trying to run out the clock to avoid an unpleasantly confrontational tone. Skrbina was a philosophy professor in the UMich. system at the time, so maybe they underprepared for the interview on the assumption that they wouldn’t be dealing with something so far out on the fringe? Although the connection with the Unabomber should have been a tip-off …

          Anyway, I’m still more sympathetic to Hsu overall than his antagonists, because I worry that the successful campaign against him will have a chilling effect on research like the intelligence & police-violence research that the campaigners objected to for nakedly political reasons. That seems like a more important issue than Steve’s eccentric proclivity for palling around with crackpots.

      • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

        Two degrees suffice.

        • silver_swift says:

          A problem with that is that in practice it is going to be really hard to draw the line at two degrees. Once someone gets fired for going on a podcast with known bad people, it makes it really easy to frame them as a known bad person themselves, which then opens the doors to attack other people for hanging out with them, etc.

          Now, this is unlikely to go literally infinite as blameworthiness probably does dissipate a little with each hop, but with the level of nuance that is used in these kinds of situations (ie. none) I don’t see how you’re going to be able to make a firm stand on exactly two degrees of separation.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        is that we really should mean it when we claim to support free inquiry, especially among academics.

        How can having any human intermediary with respect to directing academic funding be “supporting free inquiry”? The only use I can see is in calling BS on absurd funding requests (i.e. gaming the system by asking for way more or way less than you need). Anything else is a Valkyrie choosing the saved.

      • I also read the Hitler article, although not all of it — I didn’t get to the antisemitic part. What I found interesting was that it felt like a fraud, an attempt to put something over on the reader. I’m not entirely sure about all the reasons it felt that way, but it wasn’t just that I found its claims implausible — the author pretended that he found them implausible until he in various ways confirmed them.

        I have been saying for a long time that a critical intellectual skill not taught, to some degree anti-taught, in the conventional K-12 program is the ability to evaluate sources of information on internal evidence, how something is written, and this seemed like a good example.

        • roflc0ptic says:

          In my k-12 education, I had an English teacher who made us read this book of essays both for and against various positions – e.g. universal health insurance. This is the only instance I remember in which I was even *presented* opposing views.

          I do know that our local IB had an epistemology course, but I didn’t breathe that rarified air.

          • Lambert says:

            Wow, your history teachers were not doing their jobs.

            We spent a couple of years looking at various sources that took different positions on questions like ‘how competant were the generals of WWI?’

    • viVI_IViv says:

      I’m not a big fan of cancel culture, but I don’t think it’s crazy to question if someone who lends his platform to a Holocaust denier, allows that person to promote Holocaust denial publications unimpeded, and does not admit fault when other people bring this up, is qualified to hold a position that involves deciding which research projects should get funding.

      You mean like when Columbia University hosted the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give a speech?

      • INH5 says:

        Your own link shows the university President arguing against Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and so on, demonstrating that he had prepared for the occasion by researching Ahmadinejad’s previous statements and actions. If Hsu had done the same when he had Unz on, I wouldn’t have objected.

    • outis says:

      I’ve listened for about five minutes, and Unz talks in a somewhat meandering and entirely generic way about finding flaws in mainstream narratives until they begin to unravel, while also mentioning that “90-95%” of conspiracy theories are bunk. They say nothing about Hitler, the Allies, the Holocaust, or any specific historical event or figure. There is nothing for Hsu to object to.

      Now, you might say that if this were a TV program the staff would have been expected to look through Unz’s output and find things to actively bring up and challenge him on, or just to determine that he is a bad person not to be “given a platform”. But these are just two academics recording a niche podcasts. They don’t have the time, the staff, or the responsibility to do any of that.

      We’re talking about a YouTube channel run by two professors who have very dry conversations on a range of intellectual topics. It has fewer than 1500 subscribers at this time. The Unz video has around 3200 views, probably inflated by the SSC traffic now. The audience consists of a small number of highly educated people, who, after listening for 47 minutes, are exposed to a reference to Unz’s American Pravda series of articles “from ten years ago”.

      I want to ask you exactly what danger we are supposed to be fighting here. What is the threat model? Are we concerned that a handful of nerds with PhDs are going to end up reading Unz’s articles and be intellectually defenseless before their supreme persuasiveness? That such materials are so devastatingly powerful that no level of education or intellectual capacity can make them safe to handle?

      Are we concerned that one of those 3K views is going to be the snowflake that starts the avalanche that overturns the popular understanding of World War II, which is the foundational narrative of the contemporary world, and which is taught and re-taught to every citizen throughout their life by school, books, newspapers, movies, comics, songs, videogames, websites, board games, public art, and pretty much any other form of human expression? All of this, overwhelmed by one fateful mention of Unz’s articles?

      And in the wreckage of the American Age, we will look back and say, “if only we had cancelled Steven Hsu sooner, all this could have been saved?”

      • outis says:

        Was this too sarcastic? I’d like to adjust my tone to the community’s expectations, so please let me know.

        I do honestly think that we need to weigh the harms of cancellation against the concrete benefits, and I don’t see people doing that. I’m not talking about cancelling Unz, but cancelling Hsu for talking to him before a small audience, and further degrees of separation (after all, people have to cut ties with Hsu because they would be punished otherwise).

        The harms are often discussed, but what about the supposed benefits? We all agree that holocaust denial is wrong, of course. But what, concretely, would happen if we didn’t cancel Hsu for talking to Unz without bringing it up?

        • roflc0ptic says:

          I don’t know if this is “too sarcastic” for community norms, but since this is a moment to promote some norms I cherish: generally sarcasm and irony are tools for indirectly enforcing social norms and/or dunking on people, and aren’t really value add. It’s just a low signal to noise ratio, because you’re not making any claims. You’re just dismissing other people’s claims. Some people get away with it (Deiseach is the notable example), but she’s regularly skirting the line, and IMO only reason she isn’t banned is because she’s so danged likeable.

          I think your second comment is more succinct, represents mostly the same position, and is easier to engage with than your first.

          I think you’re making a good point. I certainly know people who, if you disagree with them about some point of orthodoxy, they’ll say manipulative stuff like “This may be intellectual to you, but actual lives are at stake.”

          Taking that at face value, those same people being silent on COVID-19 and the incompetence of the US government’s response is fucking baffling. If our authentic concern is people literally dying, which kills more people: police brutality, or the incompetence of the CDC and the Trump admin?

          Individually and collectively, we do not rationally allocate our attention.

          That said, somewhere Scott has an essay where he talks about how, when you have limited ability to enforce social norms, a somewhat random, terroristic, and overzealous enforcement strategy can be effective. The function it serves to maintain a permanent chilling effect on holocaust deniers, which is a goal I’m pretty down with. Should we as a society sacrifice Hsu to that particular idol? Idk. I guess we answered yes.

          (If someone could let me know what that esssay called or link to it, I’d be grateful.)

          • Deiseach says:

            IMO only reason she isn’t banned is because she’s so danged likeable.

            I think this is the first time I’ve been called likeable, so take this disparaging grunt of acknowledgement in return! 🙂

          • AG says:

            I’d like to say here that, in my estimation, the reason Deiseach is allowed to be snarky and sarcastic is that when people take issue with said snark and sarcasm, Deiseach doesn’t take it personally, and will genuinely engage with any points raised by those disagreeing with her.

            Usually snark and sarcasm are predictors of a conversation quality already in the dumpster and not going to get any better, but a response to a Deiseach comment full of salt and vinegar can be quite productive!

    • Anonymous Bosch says:

      Hsu didn’t just host Ron Unz on his own podcast to talk about unrelated subjects. The title and description of the podcast prominently promoted the Unz Review as “a controversial, but widely read, alternative media site hosting opinion outside of the mainstream.” He allowed Unz to promote his own column, “American Pravda” without any pushback whatsoever.

      I have the same opinion as you. I was still ambivalent when I finally got around to finishing the Molyneux appearance. The Unz appearance was him being more chummy with a worse guy and zero pushback, and on Hsu’s show at that.

      To my knowledge, Hsu has not responded to the accusations involving Unz in any public statements since this thing began.

      To my knowledge, none of Hsu’s defenders has. Not even Scott when I directly pointed it out.

      His defenders are, of course, free to ignore the most damning detail and pretend it’s just about some dry posts regarding genetic variation, the same way Hsu breezily refers to Unz as “alternative.” Not even acknowledging it, let alone addressing it, makes me infer the operating principle here is closer to “no enemies to the right” than it is some commitment to open scientific inquiry and education (which I can see in the Molyneux appearance if I squint, but not the Unz one). If you want to spend your podcast having a friendly kvetch with a guest about media bias and plugging their website, there’s eleventy jillion conservatives you can book who don’t deal in Holocaust denial ✌️revisionism✌️.

      And if your position on university veeps getting chummy with Hitler apologists is one of those “Yes” memes, then I’m not terribly interested in what you have to say about the anti-intellectual leftward drift of campus politics.

      • zero says:

        https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b2SrChAlAeSfn5rXg2YJtwW8L1-bT9Kv/view This letter specifically addresses Ron Unz. Take from it what you will.

        • Anonymous Bosch says:

          For the episode I was the Ombudsman. I believe that criticism is made because of Ron’s views on the Holocaust. I was unaware Ron had unusual views on the Holocaust before the show; we did not discuss them during the show; and I have not bothered to read about them since.

          The show’s ombudsman did not know Ron had “unusual views” about the Holocaust? And has gone out of their way not to find out? And then praises him for being “a remarkably successful conservative social entrepreneur” and repeatedly cites the popularity and traffic stats of Unz Review, the website whose contents he claims to be ignorant of (and indeed would have to have never looked at to truthfully claim ignorance about Unz’s “unusual views about the Holocaust,” as virtually every article’s sidebar of suggested reading has at least one eyebrow-raiser) and yet still felt was worthy of Hsu’s praise?

          🙈

          If you are an academic, you may want, and want others, to ignore the likes of Ron Unz and Edward Blum, but bear in mind: they are paying attention to you. In fact, it could be argued that it is this intentional ignorance of their divergent view, that has allowed them to chip away at the long-standing traditions of the education system from the outside without much resistance.

          But the show offered no resistance either! He didn’t platform him in order to challenge him, he platformed him to offer a a full-throated endorsement of his website and studiously ignore all the Nazi shit! This is manifestly worse than ignoring him entirely unless you feel our institutions are suffering for lack of “was Hitler really all that bad” perspectives.

          Well, thanks, I guess. This defense makes me feel a hell of a lot better about Hsu getting shitcanned.

          • [Thing] says:

            From the letter:

            We have a division of labor on Manifold. One person invites the guest and reads
            background material, the other person goes in “cold”, generally unprepared and acts as
            the audience “ombudsman”, seeking to ask questions from the point of view of the
            listeners.

            So Washington didn’t know about Unz’s Nazi-adjacent beliefs going into the show specifically because he was the “ombudsman.” I don’t know why he hadn’t looked into it before writing the letter. Maybe he rushed it out because Hsu said things were moving fast? Anyway, none of that excuses Hsu.

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            That’s a weird and almost auto-antonymic usage of “ombudsman” but I’ll cop to it being a legitimate reason Washington didn’t know about Unz ahead of time (EDIT: just missed the edit window on my above post but consider the first sentence struck).

            The deliberate ignorance afterward (especially contrasted with his detailed, specific defense of Cesario, which is one of Hsu’s critics’ weaker points and IMO fully justified by the defense) is still a terrible look for him, which honestly makes me suspect he has looked at Unz since and knows better than to try.

          • And then praises him for being “a remarkably successful conservative social entrepreneur”

            Adolf Hitler was a remarkably successful political entrepreneur.

            That isn’t praise. But it was a good reason to pay attention to him, and similarly is a reason to pay attention to Unz. That, pretty clearly, is the point being made.

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            Adolf Hitler was a remarkably successful political entrepreneur.

            That isn’t praise.

            The podcast was.

            “We have to engage Holocaust denial” is an argument for debate. I don’t fully buy it for reasons laid out elsethread, but it utterly fails as a defense of this podcast since it was a hugfest, not a debate.

        • Very interesting letter.

      • salvorhardin says:

        Yeah, this. I’d respect as consistent (while still disagreeing with) those who think Hsu’s poor associational judgment disqualifies him for a leadership position *if* they also wanted to disqualify everyone in similar leadership positions who, say, interviewed Angela Davis about prison abolitionism without pushing back on her history of literal-not-exaggerated unrepentant advocacy for Soviet Communism. But I’m skeptical that such people exist.

      • Guy in TN says:

        @Atlas
        @salvorhardin

        I’d appreciate it if you could elaborate a bit on what your position is here. Are you saying that anyone employed by a university who associates with someone with extreme or dangerous views without challenging them ought to be fired from their position?

        I don’t know how many times we have to reiterate this.

        When our criticism of Hsu is “he gave a platform to a Holocaust denialist, unconditionally praised his work, and has a pattern of lending his scientific expertise to give credence to people promoting racial nationalism”, and you respond with “oh, so you’re saying it is bad to associate with people with radical viewpoints”, at some point you are fundamentally no longer engaging with our argument.

        I don’t think a single person has said that the problem is that Hsu merely associated with these people. Yet how many times has this word been used throughout this thread?

        And the issue has never been that Unz and Molyneux’s views are radical. It’s been that they are white nationalist. The counter-arguments of “Well, if you are against him promoting radical positions, what about Marxism?” doesn’t move anyone, because you are assuming our problem is that Unz’s ideas are outside the mainstream, when the issue is actually that Unz’s ideas are bad. If you insist on us to articulate a meta-level rule here, it’s “don’t promote ideologies that make the world a very bad place”.

        Atlas:
        If Hsu’s allowing Unz to have a platform is beyond the pale and thus grounds for his removal, it is difficult to see why anyone who has expressed sympathy for Marxism, or indeed, by the standards of this case, allowed Marxists to express their ideas without immediate challenge, is allowed to keep their position.

        salvorhardin:
        Yeah, this. I’d respect as consistent (while still disagreeing with) those who think Hsu’s poor associational judgment disqualifies him for a leadership position *if* they also wanted to disqualify everyone in similar leadership positions who, say, interviewed Angela Davis about prison abolitionism without pushing back on her history of literal-not-exaggerated unrepentant advocacy for Soviet Communism. But I’m skeptical that such people exist.

        Are you two unaware that the belief of “Marxism is worse than the racial nationalism espoused by Unz and Molyneux” is highly idiosyncratic, particularly in academia? At the very least, few enough people believe it to be assumed like it is some fact-of-reality. You are aware of the modern resurgence of socialist viewpoints in the US, no?

        “If my opponents were sincere, they’d actually be doing things that conform to all my priors and values. That they don’t is evidence of their duplicativeness!”

        • outis says:

          Guy in TN:
          When our criticism of Hsu is “he gave a platform to a Holocaust denialist, unconditionally praised his work, and has a pattern of lending his scientific expertise to give credence to people promoting racial nationalism”, and you respond with “oh, so you’re saying it is bad to associate with people with radical viewpoints”, at some point you are fundamentally no longer engaging with our argument.

          I don’t think a single person has said that the problem is that Hsu merely associated with these people. Yet how many times has this word been used throughout this thread?

          Thank you, I think we’re getting somewhere here. Let’s try to approach the gap from the other side: what would constitute mere association with Unz?

          If the only interaction one is allowed to have with person X is actively attacking them for their bad positions, even when they have not being brought up in the conversation, that very much sounds to me like “you may not associate with person X”.

        • CatCube says:

          Are you two unaware that the belief of “Marxism is worse than the racial nationalism espoused by Unz and Molyneux” is highly idiosyncratic, particularly in academia?

          I can’t speak to the awareness of @Atlas or @salvorhardin, but not only am I aware of it, the fact that this view is “highly idiosyncratic” is the problem to which I’m objecting. This is the core of raging hypocrisy of the people pushing “cancel” bullshit.

          “Oh, we can’t let somebody who is adjacent to monstrous ideology responsible for historical evil have a bigger platform in academia!” “So we’ll be firing the Commies, then?” “No, you see, that’s different!”

          It really, really, isn’t different. It’s just excuse-making for the monsters on one side. I’d mind a lot less about Hsu if this alleged “rule” was applied in anything approaching a fair fashion.

        • salvorhardin says:

          I’m perfectly aware that most people in academia don’t believe that aiding and abetting Soviet Communism (as e.g. Angela Davis did for years and has not to my knowledge ever apologized for doing) is on roughly the same moral level with aiding and abetting white nationalism. And so likewise they don’t believe that associating with and legitimizing unrepentant Communists is on the same moral level with associating with and legitimizing unrepentant white nationalists.

          That doesn’t make it any less obviously true, at least to those who actually know the history of both. And indeed much of the fear of cancel culture springs from its being spearheaded by people who are either so historically ignorant, or so bereft of moral compass, that they don’t think Communism was all that bad. I’m not claiming they’re not consistent with respect to a viewpoint that says that white nationalism is a terrible evil ideology but Communism isn’t. I’m saying that they’re inconsistent with respect to any humane general principles for determining what ideologies are terrible evil ones.

        • Nick says:

          @salvorhardin
          Couldn’t have said it better if I tried!

        • Guy in TN says:

          @CatCube

          This is the core of raging hypocrisy of the people pushing “cancel” bullshit.

          Can you spell out the hypocrisy for me here? What are the things they say they believe, and the actions they take that betray the sincerity of this belief?

          If one of the priors necessary for their hypocrisy is “Marxism is worse than white nationalism”, I’m going to have to stop you right there: you’ve already agreed that they don’t share this belief.

          If you just want to say that they are wrong, then say it. Don’t baselessly imply that they are insincere, hypocrites, duplicative, lying about their intentions, ect.

        • roflc0ptic says:

          I know about some of the horrors of Russian and Chinese communism, but I haven’t ever read a book about it. Do y’all have recommendations for relatively objective explorations?

          Also, do y’all have evidence of the academic consensus on soviet Russia being “not that bad”? Are there faculty studies? (I know there’s that recurring philosophy survey that asks philosophers what they believe. ) Or can you point to academics saying this? I personally knew some communists who are soviet apologists, but they generally weren’t employed, and not as academics. I don’t know any academics who take that position.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          @salvorhardin

          I completely agree with what you said.

          That said, what I find concerning about the cancelers is that I don’t think they’re really mad about Nazis. The Nazis are dead. Have been for 75 years. I think they’re really after regular old conservative schmucks like me and are just using the generally agreed upon contempt for nazis as cover.

        • The Conspiracy of Silence by Weissberg.

          The author was an Austrian physicist, a communist who went to the Soviet Union, got caught up in the Great Purge, eventually turned over to the Nazis (he was Jewish), survived it all, and wrote a book describing his experiences in the Purge and trying to make sense of it, to understand what had happened and why.

          It’s apparently out of print (and shouldn’t be), so you may have difficulty finding a copy.

        • CatCube says:

          @Guy in TN

          Why do they hate white nationalism? I’m presuming they have a better reason than that one day they said, “Hey, we need to pick something to hate on,” reached into a Scrabble bag, and got an “A”, an “I”, an “N”, an “M”, an “S”, and the “Z”.

          I know why they should, and why I think they do, but I’m curious what you think their reasons are.

        • rogerc says:

          @salvorhardin @Nick @Conrad

          I’m curious to understand your viewpoint on the equivalence you mean when you say “on roughly the same moral level”.

          To be more specific, do you think that
          1. An individual, today, who defends the Nazi government of Germany overall
          2. An individual who defends Soviet communism overall
          are equally deserving of condemnation?

          Even more specifically:
          1. Someone today who argues that the Jewish population is shadowy and dangerous, and that Nazis did a lot of good things for Germans
          2. Someone today who says that there may be some validity to a centralized command economy, and the USSR made a valid attempt at it.
          deserve the same amount of condemnation?

          Note that I don’t necessarily mean de-platforming, or any particular sanction. Just on a moral level, as you say.

          If you do think they are equally bad, why?

          PS. I’m not referring to Angela Davis in particular with individual #2. She seems to have done some fairly abhorrent other stuff that is beyond Marxism, I think.

        • Guy in TN says:

          @CatCube

          Why do they hate white nationalism? I’m presuming they have a better reason than that one day they said, “Hey, we need to pick something to hate on,” reached into a Scrabble bag, and got an “A”, an “I”, an “N”, an “M”, an “S”, and the “Z”.

          I can’t speak for other people, but I can tell you why I’m against white nationalism, although I’m afraid the answer will be rather dull and unsurprising. The basic rationale is that I believe the benefits of society should not be distributed according to race. This is because my terminal goal is to increase the well-being of humanity, not increase the well-being of only some subset. I see racial nationalism as a form of amoral egoism, with “I want things that benefit my race (at the exclusion of other races)” as no more justifiable than saying “I want things that benefit me (at the exclusion of other people)”.

          As for the question of “why focus on white nationalism right now?”, the answer is that it’s at the following intersections:
          1. Quite dangerous in content, for a political ideology
          2. Appears to be increasing in popularity in the late 2010’s- I’m not just talking about the Trump/alt-right crowd but also in “respectable techie” circles that are pushing a “scientific” form of it (yes, I’m talking about a certain subsection of Rationalists)
          3. As of 2020, there is a growing backlash against white nationalism and racism in general, due to the George Floyd protests and a general “awokening”, with a lot of anger to harness for purposes such as this.

        • cassander says:

          @Guy in TN

          1. Quite dangerous in content, for a political ideology

          When’s the last time white nationalism wrecked a society? When’s the last time socialism did?

          2. Appears to be increasing in popularity in the late 2010’s- I’m not just talking about the Trump/alt-right crowd but also in “respectable techie” circles that are pushing a “scientific” form of it

          has there ever been a more anti-racist society than the modern US? the groups you’re talking about are utterly marginal, and mainstream culture gets more anti-racist every year (as you seem to think in point 3). you sound like a protestant worried about papist conspiracies…in the 1800s UK.

        • matkoniecz says:

          1. An individual, today, who defends the Nazi government of Germany overall
          2. An individual who defends Soviet communism overall
          are equally deserving of condemnation?

          For me someone who overall defends either Nazi government or Soviet communism government is on on roughly the same moral level.

          Discussion about which one was more evil may be entertaining but for me both states are with North Korea, Mao’s China, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Congo Free State and Sparta in one category.

          1. Someone today who argues that the Jewish population is shadowy and dangerous, and that Nazis did a lot of good things for Germans
          2. Someone today who says that there may be some validity to a centralized command economy, and the USSR made a valid attempt at it.
          deserve the same amount of condemnation?

          Not on the same level. Centralized command economy works on a small scale and in theory may work on larger so it is not completely invalid and works on small scale (family/company/tribe).

          Though USSR attempt went so bad that repeating this particular experiment should require ridiculous amount of safety and demonstration that new attempt is not going to end with a new pile of skulls.

          “Jewish population is shadowy and dangerous” is not useful/true even on such limited scale and was used solely to justify evil things.

          Also, “Nazis did a lot of good things for Germans” is lying by omission, while “USSR made a valid attempt at it” is true as in “and it went so bad that we should wait several centuries before trying again”.

          Mostly because “Nazis did a lot of good things for Germans” is claiming good outcomes while “USSR made a valid attempt at it” is claiming that they attempted to do something.

          Equivalent would be “USSR made a valid attempt at centralized command economy” and “Germany made a valid attempt to exterminate several nations” and both would be true.

          Or “Nazis did a lot of good things for Germans” and “USSR did a lot of good things for Russians” with both being technically true while being a complete lies (primarily by omission – it is hard to be a state for longer time and avoid doing any good things, even if overall outcome is horrible)

        • roflc0ptic says:

          @cassander @DavidFriedman thanks for taking the time to make those recommendations.

          and @cassander I get the sense that tribes always work to minimize things that are unhelpful in the current moment, including/especially atrocities. I gave a cursory look at Chomsky’s Khmer Rouge “denialist” stuff that Friedman is pointing at, and it looks pretty bad. If I assume good faith on Chomsky’s part, the only thing I can imagine is that he was so ideologically blinkered that he just blindly trusted the Khmer government. Which would be pretty insane when there are refugees alleging a genocide. I think I would grant the point that “denying atrocities is terrible behavior” isn’t an evenly applied principle.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          @rogerc

          To be more specific, do you think that
          1. An individual, today, who defends the Nazi government of Germany overall
          2. An individual who defends Soviet communism overall
          are equally deserving of condemnation?

          Pretty much. “Mass murder because class” isn’t any better than “mass murder because race.”

          That’s at an intellectual level, though. On a gut feeling, I’m more repulsed by a hammer and sickle than I am a swastika, but this is an animalistic self-preservation response. I’m a productive white guy. The problem with the Nazis is that they like me too much. Guys, I totally agree, I am pretty awesome, but you don’t need to go around killing anybody else on my behalf, everything’s fine. Calm down. The problem with the communists is that they want to either put me up against the wall and shoot me, or send me to gulag and work/starve me to death. When I see a swastika I think “what’s wrong with you? Don’t be like this.” but when I see a hammer & sickle I think “danger! Threat of imminent violence!” I would imagine the opposite is probably true for someone who would be a target of Nazis, like Jews.

          Even more specifically:
          1. Someone today who argues that the Jewish population is shadowy and dangerous, and that Nazis did a lot of good things for Germans
          2. Someone today who says that there may be some validity to a centralized command economy, and the USSR made a valid attempt at it.

          Those don’t seem to be on the same level. The first one is arguing “is” and the second is arguing “may be.” One of these is musing, the other is certain. Perhaps instead of “Jewish population is shadowy and dangerous” say something like “Jews may have outsized influence in hollywood or finance.” Or maybe criticism of AIPAC.

          As for “what about the good things Hitler/Stalin did,” I think that’s fair to speculate on. Autobahn was pretty good. I’m not sure what if anything was good about Stalin except he helped fight Hitler, though.

        • roflc0ptic says:

          @conrad honcho I just want to comment that the actual, real life communists (marxist-leninists, maoists, trotskyists) I know expressed deep skepticism about identity politics. I’ve heard them refer to it disparagingly as “the oppression olympics.” While I know for a fact that some of the early members of the formal Black Lives Matter organization were communists, it’s not a communist organization. The cultural movement that is ascendant in this moment is not ideologically communist. While I get that you might feel threatened – the threat of physical harm is just unrealistic. I know people that I personally believe might want to build a system that ultimately puts us both against a wall and shoots us – but they ain’t running this show. It really feels like a fear based misread.

          Perhaps some of the misunderstanding stems from the fact that taxonomically speaking, Political marxism isn’t the same as communism. It encompasses communism. Academic marxism also isn’t the same as political marxism. Academic marxism is about analysis rooted in the historical materialist perspective. While state communism is objectively pretty terrible, academic marxism does not, as far as I can tell, lead to state communism.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          (Someone asked deep below, in a thread about BLM, if executives really believed it, and would there ever be a leak saying otherwise. I was going to comment but got distracted and didn’t bother, but I was reminded of it here.)

          There will never be a leak from the NBA, or any other organization, where they argue “1 million Uighurs in a concentration camp is worth X billion dollars in revenue by the following moral calculus.” It’s not that it’s not something important: it’s that no one involved wants to think about it. At all. And if no one in your circle talks about it, you can pretend it doesn’t exist. Lots of organizations of all kinds of different factions have let great evil persist this way.

          Similarly, we will never find the email leak that “the outgroup’s philosophy caused 23 million skulls. Our philosophy only caused 21 million skulls, and it turns out that 22 million skulls is the magic threshold where you can openly support the philosophy versus flushing out people who invite proponents of the philosophy on their podcast.”

          And it’s not that the millions of skulls aren’t important.

        • Academic Marxism is about analysis rooted in the historical materialist perspective.

          Is that really an adequate definition?

          A very long time ago, when almost all Japanese economists were either Marxists or Moderns, my father asked a Marxist economist to define what that meant. The answer was along the lines of “believing that the nature of a society is largely determined by the structure of the means of production.”

          My father made the obvious response — that he agreed with that. He thought a system where the means of production were owned and controlled by the state would be tyrannical, poor, … in contrast to one where they were controlled by market institutions. (From memory of a long ago conversation, so not very precise)

          Hence my skepticism of your definition. It seems to me that when an academic describes himself as a Marxist, that signals a bunch of beliefs that go far beyond historical materialism.

          For example, I think one can predict with high confidence that someone who calls himself a Marxist won’t vote for Republicans. Does that follow from historical materialism?

          One could also predict, back when Stalin was in power, that someone who called himself a Marxist was much more likely to have a sympathetic view of Stalin than someone who didn’t, and the exceptions were mostly Trotskyites. Later, more likely to have a positive view of the USSR and Maoist China.

        • CatCube says:

          @Guy in TN

          “Quite dangerous in content, for a political ideology” is a phrase. Let’s unpack what makes it “dangerous”–my personal objection to it, and one that seems to be shared pretty widely based on what I see on Twitter, is all of the murder and slavery. Do you know what else had an awful lot of murder and slavery?

          The argument about whether Nazism or Communism had a bigger pile of skulls in tendentious, so I won’t rehash it here, but I think that even if Communism’s pile was smaller, it was still big enough to justify a “quite dangerous” label. And, note, it’s still being used to justify repression to this day, so you can’t appeal to it being of historical interest, and it has adherents who’d like to apply it here.

          @roflc0ptic

          Perhaps some of the misunderstanding stems from the fact that taxonomically speaking, Political marxism isn’t the same as communism. It encompasses communism. Academic marxism also isn’t the same as political marxism. Academic marxism is about analysis rooted in the historical materialist perspective. While state communism is objectively pretty terrible, academic marxism does not, as far as I can tell, lead to state communism.

          This is part of what I’m talking about. Your insistence that we have to very thinly slice your side’s monsters into tiny movements with their own precisely-defined names and very carefully evaluate what they’re saying with the maximum level of charity, but that this arrow only points one way.

          I don’t bother to keep up with the degrees and kinds of white nationalists, nor do I care enough to DDG the issue now, but I do know there’s a strain (white separatists, I think?) that insist that, yes while they think that whites are better than other races, they don’t advocate any actual violence, just a peaceful separation into their own countries where they can see to their own affairs. Do you think their view is still problematic? I sure do, because the notion that you could execute this plan without violence is bonkers–to start with, who gets what piece of the US is going to be, shall we say, controversial.

          I think at least some are likely to actually be genuine about wanting this to go without violence, through some very wishful thinking. If you have a VP at a university who believes this, do you give him the same charity you do to your “academic Marxists” about how they don’t believe in actual violence, and let him remain? Or do we note that both are going to result in actual, physical violence when it escapes the academy.

          I’m not actually all that interested in protecting white nationalists here. I just demand that the standards be applied equally. If you want to go on a witch hunt for WNs, then all of the people you discuss I’ve quoted above also need to be tied in a bag, stamped “Commies” and thrown out as well.

          The reason for this is that I frankly don’t trust your side to actually fairly make judgements so that we can just throw out whoever you consider to be a “white nationalist”. Let me be even franker: as far as I’m concerned, “white nationalist/fascist/Nazi” is just the mouth-noises left-wingers make when they’re mad about something, and the accusation from the left carries no informational content.

          Not to say that these people don’t exist! Heck, I agree that Unz probably qualifies. But the left is very, very free with this accusation. Remember “Bushitler?” Pepperidge Farm remembers. Same thing with people whining about how could anybody be against a movement called “Anti-fascist”. While I’m against fascism, I note that the people who call themselves “Anti-fascist” aren’t super-careful with who they call “fascists”, and it’s mostly just “right-wing stance we don’t like, even if it’s not repressive or connected to historical or current fascist movements in any way.”

          Whenever I see these accusations, I have to check sources myself, because more often than not it ends up with something as anodyne as Charles Murray’s stances. I’ll be frank, though, I usually don’t bother and just ignore the accusations.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          I’m not talking about BLM, though, I’m talking about literal Hammer & Sickle Communists. The difference between them and theoretical Marxists is like the difference between “we’re not anti-black/Jew we’re just pro-white” white nationalists and literal swastika flag waving Nazis. They know the horror of their system and they like it.

        • Possibly relevant to the Marxist/Communist discussion, an old post on my blog about my interaction with Robert Wolff, who published a (left wing) anarchist book a year or two before I published my (libertarian) anarchist book.

        • Monkey See says:

          Replying to CatCube:
          ” The reason for this is that I frankly don’t trust your side to actually fairly make judgements so that we can just throw out whoever you consider to be a “white nationalist”. Let me be even franker: as far as I’m concerned, “white nationalist/fascist/Nazi” is just the mouth-noises left-wingers make when they’re mad about something, and the accusation from the left carries no informational content.”

          I legit thought Bolsonaro was some random schmuck when I heard Brazil had elected a far-right crackpot as president.

          Then I saw Bolsonaro quotes. I wish words meant something anymore, because some folks do deserve to be called nasty names.

        • CatCube says:

          @Monkey See

          I’ve not made a deep dive into Bolsarno, but from what I’ve seen, I’d tentatively agree with your assessment.

          It’s not that these terms are bad (well, they describe bad things, but the terms themselves are appropriate), or that the people they describe don’t exist, it’s that there’s a large contingent out there that can’t be trusted with them.

          They fling them around with abandon because it’s in their political interests to slime their opponents with terms that would be bad, if they actually applied to the opponents in question. It’s just that the terms usually don’t apply.

          If you read somebody’s writings and they’re advocating the 14 words, or they’re a Grand Dragon in the KKK, etc., you should use the term “white supremacist.” But if somebody else tells you that so-and-so is a white supremacist, you should actually go check for yourself before telling others.

        • outis says:

          Why do they hate white nationalism? I’m presuming they have a better reason than that one day they said, “Hey, we need to pick something to hate on,” reached into a Scrabble bag, and got an “A”, an “I”, an “N”, an “M”, an “S”, and the “Z”.

          I’m picking this quote because it’s the most concise, but the whole thread is hopelessly confused. The nation in Hitler’s National-Socialism was the German nation, not some mythical “nation of whites”. “White nationalism” is an American concept which may not even have existed at the time, and certainly didn’t exist in Europe. The fact that they continent self-destructed in two vicious wars between white nations can serve as a useful reminder.

        • Aapje says:

          @outis

          I don’t think that’s entirely right. There definitely was the concept of a superior Aryan race, based in part on ‘superior’ exterior features. However, this superior Aryan or ‘Nordic’ race was seen as a subset of Caucasians.

          In practice, it was more centered around Germans, but that was also because Naziism wasn’t all that popular in the other ‘Aryan nations.’ For example, In The Netherlands, the local national-socialist party never got more than 8% of the votes and that was during their ‘Italian’ period, when they weren’t yet anti-semitic and racist. Once they adopted much more of a Nazi agenda, the support dropped to 4%.

          This is a far cry from the NSDAP, which peaked at 44%.

        • matkoniecz says:

          This is a far cry from the NSDAP, which peaked at 44%.

          AFAIK during war (at least before things started to get bad also for Germans) they had even higher support, though it is all estimate – not a hard reliable data.

      • Anonymous Bosch says:

        I’ve tried to reply to you twice below and once here. Something in my reply is hitting a comment ingest key word and I don’t care to test what it is infinitely. Here is a very brief gist with every possible swear word censored.

        I’m not opposed to cancellation from the left either but “M*rxist” is too broad for me to buy your reflection given the specificity of Unz’s defenses of the Th*rd Re*ch and the an-c*m leanings of most M*rxist profs. Show me a prof praising a website that directly denies specific C*mmunist atrocities like the C*ltural R*volution and I’ll sign the petition.

        Hey that finally worked!

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        @Catcube & @salvorhardin have it exactly right. The ethical consensus in academia is objectively wrong (you could defeat that argument that by going Full Hume, but that would cover neo-Nazis as much ad Communists).

      • INH5 says:

        The equivalent to Unz wouldn’t be a generic “Marxist,” it would be a hardcore Soviet apologist or “tanky” who outright denied that, for example, the Holodomor ever happened. And is prominent enough that the fact that they hold these views has caught the attention of the mainstream media. And Hsu didn’t just “associate on friendly terms” with Unz, he helped Unz actively promote his website in general and Unz’s column series in particular, both of which regularly publish Holocaust denial, antisemitic claims, and Nazi apologetics.

        Find me a professor who promoted a website and series of articles that prominently deny the well-documented atrocities of Stalin or Mao, and is in a leadership position where he manages the allocation of research funds, and does not admit fault when this is brought up to them, and I’ll say that the same standard should apply.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Find me a professor who promoted a website and series of articles that prominently deny the well-documented atrocities of Stalin or Mao, and is in a leadership position where he manages the allocation of research funds, and does not admit fault when this is brought up to them, and I’ll say that the same standard should apply.

          I don’t know if Grover Furr manages the allocation of Medieval English literature research funds, but he checks all other boxes abundantly.

        • Will someone who actively promoted Chomsky do? Chomsky wrote apologetics for the Khmer Rouge, the most murderous of the communist states.

          Not a web site, but a book chapter and I think articles as well.

        • w40nsk1 says:

          Chomsky was involved in a few scrapes that at least come close. With regards holocaust denialism, his defense of Fuarisand is arguably similar to Hsu’s involvement with Unz.

          A bit different, but arguably more damning, is Chomsky’s praise for, than equivocation for, than outright retrospective ass-covering regarding, the Khmer Rouge regime.

          Chomsky does not come out of either affair looking very good, but it would be hard to say his hypothetical dismissal (even if just from some ancillary academic role) would not have had a chilling effect on academic speech. What, after all, would be the limiting principle(s) involved? if you read his defense of Faurisand (mostly on free speech grounds), there is something that doesn’t quite feel right. Similarly, I imagine one could develop a suspicion that Hsu is more sympathetic to some of Unz’s ideas than he lets on. But even your take on academic freedom is less liberal than Chomsky’s, ‘feelings’ and ‘suspicions’ are subjective and easy fodder for demagoguery. There is a reason academic freedom is meant to be robust.

          Aside the hypocrisy of those who would criticize one prof. but not the other, Hsu’s firing is indefensible on open inquiry grounds. It makes sense in some totalizing view whereby academia is meant primarily to provide the intellectual muscle for the ‘right’ side on a political debate. It may also makes sense in the careerist calculus of academic politics, or in terms of reputational risk for administrators.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          @DavidFriedman

          I agree with your general point, but to make the comparison exact: Is Chomsky doing this now?

        • Clutzy says:

          I mean, tankies are, sadly, incredibly common. One of my professors in law school denied that the Red Guard existed and terrorized the local population with tacit party approval. Another class had The State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin as required reading, the professor obviously loved it as it was tangential to the actual class. In a Psych class we had to discuss the writings of Marx and the professor discussed how Tianeman square was an illegal protest.

          Even expanding just slightly we see that Bernie Sanders is Tankie-Adjacent being an apologist for nearly all the Latin American Dictatorial Marxist regimes.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          I don’t know how tankie Bernie Sanders himself is, but there have been news stories like “Second Bernie Sanders Staffer Praises Gulags“.

          Martin Weissgerber, Sanders Field Organizer: “What will help is when we send all the Republicans to the re-education camps.”

          All the Republicans. That’s about 29% of registered voters. There were 157.6 million registered voters in the last big election.
          How many Stalins is a Gulag Archipelago for 45.7 million people?

        • INH5 says:

          Was Chomsky ever in an administrative role similar to Hsu’s position as Vice President for research and graduate studies? I can’t find any evidence that he ever was. If he wasn’t, then he’s irrelevant to the question.

          @cassander:

          And for a more recent example, we have the uncountable number of people who praised hugo chavez’ Venezuela. We have legions of left wing holocaust deniers among us.

          Most of those people aren’t even academics.

          @DavidFriedman:

          Will someone who actively promoted Chomsky do? Chomsky wrote apologetics for the Khmer Rouge, the most murderous of the communist states.

          If someone actively promoted his apologetics for the Khmer Rouge, especially decades after the fog of war was lifted and the atrocity stories were proven to be true, then yes. I’d say no for Chomsky’s general work, because most of it is on unrelated subjects.

        • If someone actively promoted his apologetics for the Khmer Rouge, especially decades after the fog of war was lifted and the atrocity stories were proven to be true, then yes. I’d say no for Chomsky’s general work, because most of it is on unrelated subjects.

          Chomsky is the equivalent of Unz, not of Hsu. Hsu didn’t actively promote Unz’s apologetics for the Nazis, he just had him on his blog. Lots of people have promoted Chomsky, had him on their blogs or equivalent, in contexts unrelated to his linguistics work.

          Is it your view that any administrator who does so who manages the allocation of research funds should be fired?

          I should add that writing apologetics for the Khmer Rouge when they were still in power and killing people is, in my view, a much more serious offense than writing apologetics for the Nazis seventy some years after they were defeated.

          If you think what Chomsky wrote can be explained by fog of war, I suggest that you read the chapter on Cambodia in the book he coauthored with Herman, and take a look at his sources. He was treating as reliable a book based entirely on what the KR told the authors, and never hinted at that fact in the chapter.

          That’s what convinced me that he was being deliberately dishonest, not merely mistaken.

        • INH5 says:

          @DavidFriedman:

          Hsu didn’t actively promote Unz’s apologetics for the Nazis, he just had him on his blog.

          Hsu had Unz on his podcast specifically to promote Unz’s website, among other things. Just look at the title and description. The Unz Review regularly publishes antisemitic content and Nazi apologetics.

          Hsu also allowed Unz to specifically promote his “American Pravda” series of articles, which had included explicit antisemitic content, Holocaust denial, and Nazi apologetics for more than a year when the podcast was published, including in an article that had been published only 3 days prior. I think the context is pretty damning:

          Steve: So Ron, I want to switch topics, but before we switch topics I want to ask you the following question. If you have a skeptical guy like Corey who…

          Ron: Sure.

          Steve: …I’m joking here, but blindly trusts what the media says to him, what’s the way for him to awaken from his slumber? What things should he read, what facts should he check? How would you awaken him from his slumber?

          Ron: Okay, I think probably a reasonably good starting point is actually my article “American Pravda.”

          [Unz goes on to describe his series of articles, Hsu does not object at any point.]

          This is close enough to actively promoting Nazi apologetics that I see no practical difference.

        • outis says:

          Here is the American Pravda article discussed in Hsu’s show. Although Unz later used the same name for a series of article, the transcript you posted explicitly talks about this one article.

          Please quote the parts of this article Hsu should have objected to.

        • @Outis:

          That’s very interesting. If I correctly understand you, the basis for claiming that Hsu was promoting antisemitic material by Unz was the confusion between two articles with the same title, where the one Hsu actually referred to had nothing anti-semitic or Nazi in it.

          If that is correct, people here who were convinced by seeing the other article that Hsu was at fault should revise their conclusion.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      To my knowledge, Hsu has not responded to the accusations involving Unz in any public statements since this thing began.

      You can take that as you will, but there’s a mentality in cancel-culture that keeps on raising hoops and insisting you jump through each one, so I see the point in never starting. It’s the same as never apologizing to a mob.

    • webnaut says:

      It gets much darker – the true crime of Hsu is he has the RSS logo up for the Manifold podcast but it is a link to obnoxious Google nonsense. I’ll email-shame him until he repents or adds me to his spam filter.

      Update: I was wrong – WordPress dressed up the Google link to make it look like an RSS feed and the true RSS feed was there all along.

      https://manifoldlearning.com/feed/podcast/

    • Clutzy says:

      whatever extent that you find anti-Semitism concerning, I think the most efficacious response is to point out flaws and fallacies in anti-Semitic arguments, as Nathan Cofnas is doing and as I have occasionally done.

      As with slavery, for many people, they only understand that these things are bad because of indoctrination and cannot derive the reasons from first principles. They need to go an read the 1850s abolitionists and other such writers to actually articulate why slavery is bad, because they honestly don’t know.

  140. Trofim_Lysenko says:

    So, I want to propose a radical (and also not very radical) alternative to “Defund The Police”. If you are an American in your 20s or early 30s, fit and healthy, intelligent, and passionately believe that systematic change in the way law enforcement is conducted in America is one of the greatest issues facing us today, there’s an obvious measure I haven’t seen anyone suggest: Become a Cop.

    No, seriously.

    1) Puts you in a prime position to become a whistleblower on bad officers in your department, if any.

    2) The not-so-long march through the institution. Columbus, OH has ~1,800 sworn officers. Seattle, WA has ~1,400. Minneapolis has (had) 840. These are big cities and these are NOT big numbers. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that every last one of the cops on these forces are unethical thugs, 92 Seattle PD Cops quit in 2018 and 64 were hired. Those numbers aren’t all that unusual for a metro PD as far as I can tell. Get a real entryist campaign going, and how many years at that rate of exchange before you have a critical mass of people who share your values in place?

    3) You prevent abuse of power at 100% of the dispatch calls you answer. You’re confident in your moral compass on the issues of police use of force. Who better to be entrusted with that responsibility?

    4) You will be directly helping your community: You will be literally serving and protecting the men and women you share a city or town with. Police work is, at its core, altruistic and about helping people.

    Possible downsides:

    1) Increased risk of injury/death: If you don’t think policing is particularly dangerous (see the arguments about it being safer than being a landscaper elsewhere), then great! Feel free to ignore this one. Otherwise, yes, you’re probably going to be exposed to the risk of injury both from negligence on the road and malice.

    2) Mental Health: Police officers have to deal with a lot of shit. I don’t mean just the public attitude towards police (though that can be part of it), but exposure to a lot of the ugliness that most people will either never encounter or will only see once in their lives. Finding suicides, responding to car wrecks, etc.

    3) Possible infohazard: That is, exposure to the culture and values of police training, and the experience of serving as an officer might threaten to change your views on the appropriate way to deal with police abuses of power. To which I’d say first that to the extent the new perspective offers legimately new and better data that you didn’t have before, that’s not losing your way, that’s changing your mind on the basis of new evidence, and second that forewarned is forearmed and precommitments are a powerful thing.

    SSC is probably the wrong audience to make this pitch to. Most of us are either older, already settled into alternate careers, or are passionate about pursuing other goals. But it’s absolutely the pitch I’d make (and have made, along with my one about independent investigations and refinements to bodycam systems) to any BLM supporters who seemed the right demographic.

    • lhudde says:

      There’s a strong current of classist contempt for working-class men running through ACAB/ Defund the Police measures. I would not expect that the college-educated women who largely populate these movements would wish to lower themselves to such a position.

      • leadbelly says:

        There’s a strong current of classist contempt for working-class men running through ACAB/ Defund the Police measures

        What evidence do you have for this? In my experience, those advocating to defund the police are leftists who are wholly supportive of the working class, especially those that are black or minority ethnic, but also white. Just not cops.

        Also, are you seriously suggesting that the majority of the ACAB type are “college-educated women”?

        • sharper13 says:

          Proportionally, besides black men, “college-educated women” appears to be the primary demographic supporting the idea on Facebook judging by my feed. There may be some availability bias at work there, but I’ve also heard that mentioned by others elsewhere.

          It may also be that one of those groups just happens to be more about intensive virtue signaling online than some other groups, though.

        • lhudde says:

          I mean, missionaries would doubtless declare sincerely that they were “supportive of” the welfare of indigenous tribes, and British industrialists that they were “supporting” the best interests of workhouse inhabitants. When Group A benevolently lobbies for (public-funded!) programs for Group B, but only at A’s discretion, promoting A’s values and strengthening A’s structures of social authority, then I think it’s fair to ask whose interests are really being served. Leftists should be extra super aware of this, given Marx and Engels’s very dim view of bourgeois humanitarian and philanthropic movements.

          I obviously haven’t done an exhaustive demographic survey of the “abolish the police” movement, but to take a couple central examples:

          –Rolling Stone compliments the Minneapolis lobbying groups Black Visions Collective and Reclaim the Block for “lobbying for $45 million worth of MPD’s budget – $193 million in 2020 — be redirected into violence prevention programs, youth homelessness programs, an opioid taskforce and mental health response team.” The organizations have overlapping leadership, but all the major figures appear to be college-educated women. In this press release for the orgs, every single blurbed person is a college-educated woman, mostly in arts fields (recall: culture & education are middle-class strongholds).

          — All of the city council members who voted to defund the police are also college-educated professionals, including a couple lawyers and the son of a Congressman.

          — MPD employs 840 officers. Assuming budget cuts translate to redundancies, you’re talking about removing ~200 jobs for working-class people (mostly men). These will apparently be replaced by jobs for healthcare workers, social workers and psychologists. Guess what class and gender mostly occupy those positions? Guess whose class values are served by a broader pivot away from strict rules and physical strength and toward a medical/therapeutic/caring/ talky-oriented approach to crime?

          — If you want to help the residents of Minneapolis, left-leaning sources frequently recommend you donate to the “grassroots” We Love Lake Street. The committee members who will determine how this money is disbursed? All professionals, most with impressive advanced degrees.

          I think I’d take a more charitable view if any of these initiatives appeared to be genuinely led by the working class folks they’ll affect, or indeed if there was any active role envisioned for working-class men in the restructurings– beyond being the guinea pigs, mascots or passive clients of bougie-designed-staffed-and-run social services.

          Serious question: of the working-class-supportive leftists you know, how many of them have a ton of actual working-class friends that they hang out with on the regular?

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            I think I’d take a more charitable view if any of these initiatives appeared to be genuinely led by the working class folks they’ll affect, or indeed if there was any active role envisioned for working-class men in the restructurings– beyond being the guinea pigs, mascots or passive clients of bougie-designed-staffed-and-run social services.

            +1

    • Viliam says:

      Question is, how do the rotten cops deal with whistleblowers. If they protect each other, it would be easy to frame you for something, or get you accidentally killed.

    • Are you assuming the closed shop no longer exists?

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        All the entryist argument for becoming a sworn officer go double for joining the union. See Plumber’s frequent posts on the advantages of joining unions. Police academy slots are basically available via a civil service process.

        And no, in most states there aren’t closed shops. Instead there are agreements where non-union employees get a chunk of their paycheck deducted for “Fair shair fees” regardless (this sort of thing is why I am less than fond of unions in general, but that’s orthogonal to the point of this thread).

        • All the entryist argument for becoming a sworn officer go double for joining the union. See Plumber’s frequent posts on the advantages of joining unions.

          Assuming you reform the union, not vice-versa.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            I mentioned that concern in my OP. The third of possible downsides/risks to the choice.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      I brought this up a few OTs ago, and I can’t find it right now.

      We got one commenter (Well?) here who said they were becoming a cop (not because of my comment). There are also lots of difficulties in becoming a cop, because they make it really hard to apply unless you have someone on the inside, which seems like a violation of civil service guidelines. Someone else reminded me that people have been rejected from being cops for having an IQ too high.

      • Anonymous Bosch says:

        There are also lots of difficulties in becoming a cop, because they make it really hard to apply unless you have someone on the inside,

        This may be one of the most pernicious effects of cop unions. Having more cops on the street is trivially better than paying fewer cops 150-200% of their salary in OT, but it’s way more lucrative to bullshit your buddy’s time cards. Plus rookies needing friends on the inside means they start out loyal and less willing to cross that thin blue line when their superiors start doing some Training Day shit.

        One of the reasons you’re seeing “defund the police” is because funding has rarely made its way to the populace in the form of better trained and more responsive policing.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        I was going to mention this too.

        In 1996 the New London police would only interview people who scored between 100 and 114 IQ on the Wonderlic.

        https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836

        This is only one department though.

        • digbyforever says:

          This is only one department though.

          I’ve been wondering this myself. I know it’s popular to reference this case, but, it’s just one police department out of thousands. Has there been any research into how many other — really, if any — police departments do anything like this? My sense currently is it’s popular to cite but it’s currently a one-department example which seems like a poor basis for a broad criticism.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        they make it really hard to apply unless you have someone on the inside

        This is vastly exaggerated. As with any job, knowing people you’re going to be working with gives you an in, but most departments are short-handed and looking really hard for new people, almost to the point of desperation.

        Having more cops on the street is trivially better than paying fewer cops 150-200% of their salary in OT, but it’s way more lucrative to bullshit your buddy’s time cards.

        Citation very much needed, because that does not accord with literally any police officer you can speak with on the subject, or any EX police officer who quit due to overwork. Police departments are desperately trying to find people, the trouble is finding people who will A) jump through the hoops created to ensure that police are of sufficient quality AND B) can handle the rigors of the profession without quitting in the first few years (again, note the Seattle PD numbers, those were JUST voluntary resignations).

        A lot of departments use non-standard work periods specifically to minimize payments of overtime despite working extra hours. For example, a popular one follows the pattern “3 On, 2 Off, 2 On, 3 Off” where “on” are 12-13 hour shifts.

        As anonymousskimmer said, New London PD is one department. So my suggestion is withdrawn to anyone who only wants to be a cop if they can work in New London, Connecticut.

        EDIT: One of the basic principles of policing is that the police are supposed to be a PART of and representatives of the community they are policing. So I would suggest that any citations regarding the requirements for entry, OT, etc refer specifically to the agencies in your local area or the area where you would actually like to join. Alternately if you’re willing to say where you live, I’ll look up the local requirements and hiring pages myself.

        • AG says:

          people who will A) jump through the hoops created to ensure that police are of sufficient quality

          Which is yet somehow way fewer hoops than basically any other profession requires, by training/education hours, as well as fewer hoops than most non-US nations.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            If by any other profession you mean college, sure. On the other hand, I think there are some obvious reasons why 12-14 weeks in a law enforcement academy are less attractive for a lot of young people than 4 years in a liberal arts college setting.

            You might find “defund the police while providing adequate law enforcement” and “make police jobs require a 4 year liberal arts degree” cut against each other a little bit.

          • AG says:

            Not just college. Licensing requirements for several non-degree professions also far outstrip police training.

        • Anonymous Bosch says:

          Citation very much needed, because that does not accord with literally any police officer you can speak with on the subject, or any EX police officer who quit due to overwork.

          Overtime scandals have been extensively documented in Chicago, Boston, Louisville, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Baltimore (The Wire was a documentary).

          Comment thread seems to be eating my posts though so this might not show up until several days later.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            To review, your original claim is that police unions deliberately make it hard to become a cop so that they can increase union members’s salaries via falsified overtime.

            So, of those links, 5 of them simply discuss that there’s a lot of overtime going on. No evidence is presented that there is falsification of time cards going on, although two of them frames the most extreme individual examples as suspicious, one of them while noting that the majority of OT is accounted for and legitimate, and one (Chicago) noting that the OT is NOT accounted for (unsurprising, you’ll note I’ve called out Chicago PD for being one of the cases where there actually is unquestioned institutional corruption in other posts). See previous comments and other threads regarding almost every local law enforcement agency in the US hurting for patrol officers, in some cases hurting really badly.

            One of the stories (Louisville) cites three officers who WERE busted for, as you put it “bullshit[ing] your buddy’s time cards”, who defended their actions with “everybody does it” but provides no substantiation of that claim beyond “there’s a lot of overtime in general, and for a few individuals there’s so much it’s suspicious”.

            That gives you 1 Department out of the six you linked that actually support your original claim (Chicago), and that only if we assume that the lack of documentation is presumptive evidence of fraud. Then we have 1 clear-cut example of abuse by individuals (who were in fact caught and punished), and 4 articles that describe disproportionate overtime but have no evidence of falsification.

            This is, at best, weak evidence for the sweeping generalization of your original argument. Would you like to try again?

            EDIT: Or even better, consider a more modest claim like “The conditions of widespread and chronic manpower shortage create an opportunity for bad cops to game the system for their benefit and at the taxpayers expense, and police unions and leadership have the same problem rooting those bad actors out they do with the ones using excessive and/or inappropriate force”?

          • Anonymous Bosch says:

            No evidence is presented that there is falsification of time cards going on, although two of them frames the most extreme individual examples as suspicious,

            Because they are. The top OT earners in a given police department are massively more likely to be bullshitting. For example, the Baltimore story notes that the top OT earner is in trouble for falsifying arrest reports and the second place OT earner is literally banned from being a court witness; you think their misconduct stopped short of time theft? For a more systemic example, the Cincy story specifically notes that overtime fell 47% after the audit was announced; this is not the behavior of a department going by the book. That is not “no evidence,” it’s evidence short of a deductive slam dunk that you chose to ignore.

          • Spookykou says:

            FWIW I worked for a while in conjunction with a union(non-police) and overtime abuse was rampant.

            Eight people on the clock, a silent shop, not a soul in sight, was a normal night.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            Because they are. The top OT earners in a given police department are massively more likely to be bullshitting.

            I think you don’t have the evidentiary support to back up that “massively”, but I’ll certainly agree that there are some examples of suspicious individuals. Except that this doesn’t actually provide any particular weight to your original claim regarding labor unions and provides equal support to your claim and to my suggested alternate formulation.

            For a more systemic example, the Cincy story specifically notes that overtime fell 47% after the audit was announced; this is not the behavior of a department going by the book.

            Did you miss the part where the report also specifically concluded there were no criminal acts, and no recoverable wages? “Bosses announced that rules that were previously ignored were being examined closely, and everyone suddenly becomes a stickler for those rules” Is an almost universal pattern, and given the audit’s conclusions that there was no evidence of fraud, again I think my model fits the data better than yours does.

            How many jobs have you worked where hourly labor shortages and OT were a recurring issue? I’ve worked a few now, and been a front line supervisor in them, and the pattern I’ve observed in multiple industries is exactly what we see here: If you need to get a job done and you’re short, you don’t give a shit about controlling overtime unless:

            A) the people working it complain to HR, or
            B) The big bosses above you who actually worry about the budget crack the whip and announce they’re cracking down/auditing.

            Again, I actually AGREE that this is a prime opportunity for abuse by bad actors, that such bad actors exist, and that a combination of police unions and institutional culture cover for and excuse those bad actors. But your logic chain so far is:

            “Most Police Departments rack up a lot of overtime”
            “In some of these departments, the top couple of OT workers are racking up SO much overtime it is suspicious.”
            “In one police department, 3 officers were caught falsifying time cards.”
            “In Chicago PD, infamous in the US for institutional corruption for decades as part of the larger problem of Chicago and IL political corruption, there is also systematic failure do correctly document OT so it’s impossible to tell if there is fraud or not.”
            ____
            “Therefore we can conclude that the general rule in the United States is that police unions deliberately create and maintain manpower shortages in order to enrich their members via widespread overtime fraud”

            I’m not ignoring your evidence, I just think it fails to support the leap from “we have evidence of bad individuals and one example of a corrupt department” to “it’s a national epidemic of institutional corruption”, ESPECIALLY when we have the alternate narrative which actually fits more of the facts.

            @Spookykou

            I believe you, and I’ve already argued in the past few threads -against- public sector unions, specifically to include police unions. But your anecdote doesn’t actually support Anonymous Bosch’s narrative either in more than a very weak “It’s plausible this could be happening” sense.

      • TK-421 says:

        That was me. As an update I’ve completed the initial multiple choice exam for one department and am scheduled for another. The hiring process – at best – is months long but I’ll keep people updated if there’s any interest.
        For context I’m in my mid 30s and switching from a career in software engineering.

      • Dack says:

        This was a few years back, but I applied to a small town PD. They said they had 1 opening. ~100 people paid $20 up front to apply and take an “aptitude” test. Maybe a week or 2 later they started doing interviews. I’m not sure how many of the ~100 made it that far, but I was interviewed. Next would have been the physical fitness test, but a couple weeks after my interview they announced that they decided not to hire anyone because “budget issues”. I didn’t get my $20 back.

    • AG says:

      As other people have pointed out, non-white who join the police aren’t any better than their white counterparts, by the statistics. This is part of why ACAB has staying power as a meme.

      The few cases of successful police reform have required police union leadership change. NPR interviewed the Camden chief a few days ago, and they noted that while it’s actually the same union, with many of the same members, the real change when they disbanded and re-formed the department was a change in union leadership, who negotiate hard on pay, but cooperate on IA and procedural reform.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        The few cases of successful police reform have required police union leadership change.

        And you don’t think a concerted influx of entryist BLM supporters into police departments could produce leadership (and union leadership) changes?

        • AG says:

          No, because union leadership influences who gets to climb up the ladder and risk becoming union leadership. And much of old union culture is about seniority.

        • Trofim_Lysenko says:

          Which is why entryism never works? I don’t find this a plausible counter-argument, certainly not long-term. Police unions have more control than teacher’s unions, media, academia?

          • AG says:

            I mean, it hasn’t worked, has it? Union leadership is extremely not diverse.

          • Trofim_Lysenko says:

            I’m not aware of any concerted attempt by conservative entryists to change labor unions.

            I AM aware of the way progressive and liberal entryism radically shifted the composition of the examples I gave between about 1960 and 1980-90.

            The irony is that a big part of what made that work was that it wasn’t actually coordinated “entryism” in a lot of cases. It was multiple generations of young liberals and progressives who were told and believed that the best jobs to get to move the levers of power and change the national conversation were as teachers (defining the values and overton window of the next generation) and media (framing the narrative, drawing the public’s attention to injustices and corruption, spreading inspiring and energizing stories to sway people on the big issues of the day, etc).

            Telling a whole bunch of young, idealistic, and passionate baby boomers that journalism, academia, and unions were the careers to fight the good fight completely changed the political makeup and orientation of these fields over the course of a few decades. I’m saying that telling a whole bunch of young, idealistic, and passionate millenials and post-millenials that the place to be if they want to transform what law enforcement looks like in the United States is IN the field of law enforcement could and would work the samee way, and probably notably faster.

          • AG says:

            But we have seen police departments themselves get more diverse. The effect was that non-white officers commit police brutality at about the same rate as white officers, and the thing that actually produced change was directly changing union leadership by force, not waiting for someone to climb the ladder organically.

    • littskad says:

      My oldest son just finished his first year of college. He’s wanted to be a police officer for a few years now since one at his high school befriended him a few years ago. He would probably make a very good one, I think. He’s very friendly and kind, works really hard and is very organized, keeps himself very fit, and really cares about helping people. But when he was working on his class schedule for the fall, he told me that he’s decided to change from his criminal justice major to a technical major (he’s thinking maybe an actuarial major), and asked me for advice on math courses to take. When I asked him why he was going to change his major, he told me it was because he thought it was going to be too politicized and that there would be a good chance that the fact that he is a (mostly) white male would be held against him for his whole career. He likes that an actuarial career has a very legible career path and seems to reward smarts and hard work. He’s also looking into the national guard.

      I suspect that he’s not the only person making this sort of decision right now.

      • Trofim_Lysenko says:

        Young people have been making that decision more and more since the late 90s/early 2000s, and the number of them making that decision has steadily grown. That’s a non-trivial contributor to WHY most police departments are having chronic manpower shortages.

    • roflc0ptic says:

      This is a radical proposal in the sense that radicals sometimes propose this, and even have a name for it – it’s called “salting”. I personally knew leftists who talked about salting the police, I don’t think very seriously. It’s related to the communist “vanguard” strategy, whereby they covertly salt various organizations and then align them with communist goals.

      In my own experience with the left in Florida, circa 2012, there was a communist organization called FRSO with secret membership that… tried to get leadership positions in as many leftist organizations as they could, and align their goals with that of FRSO. They ended up having lots of infighting that was pretty machiavellian, and there were several accusations of sexual misconduct, at least one of which was spurious and one of which was quite serious. They now have a snazzy website: https://frso.org/

      The FRSO name is from an older organization, but I don’t know if there was some kind of lineage, or if they were just resurrecting it because it was cool. I was left aligned but wasn’t a communist, so I didn’t get invited to join their club.

      • AG says:

        Law enforcement has been salted, all right — by white supremacists.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          So it can work?

        • Trofim_Lysenko says:

          So your argument that this doesn’t work to me above was insincere? You seem to be pivoting on a dime here.

          • AG says:

            If the place has already been salted by the enemy, what makes you thing that they’ll let their enemy climb the leadership ladder?

        • I don’t see any evidence in the linked story that white supremacists had successfully infiltrated and taken control of police departments, only that there were some in police departments and the FBI was concerned.

          • AG says:

            The fact that they are allowed to be an active presence indicates a law enforcement culture that doesn’t view them as a detriment. Our president pardoned a sheriff convicted for openly racially profiling.
            The FBI published their concerns, and the power/influence of the right-wing group was enough to get any further investigations dismantled, and even got an apology from the DHS secretary. They have successfully prevented any counterterrorism efforts from focusing on white supremacy.

            That is real power.

      • I believe Frank Meyer, who had been a communist, claimed that when he was at Oxford (or possibly LSE) the communist party there controlled every student organization, including the conservative club.

  141. GearRatio says:

    Feedback from my friend who is a Phoenix-area cop who is often tasked with protest/riot duty:

    About three weeks ago, a curfew of 8:00 PM was instituted in Phoenix. Cop friend likes this, because it keeps him from trying to keep people from burning stuff down deep into the night, which would be necessary whether or not they were for-sure trying to burn stuff down. But after a few days of the curfew, he noticed that what he called “legitimate” protesters were starting to leave super-snappily at 8:00 PM, to the point of visibly organizing to have everybody leave faster just before 8:00 PM.

    What they were doing, he says, is hanging the rioter cohort out to dry. The rioter section had/has a separate organizational structure running it and was less capable/willing to leave at the curfew time; the legitimate protesters leaving quickly left them scrambling to change from rock-chucking behaviors quickly enough, and let the police scoop up the violent group in greater numbers for a brief period every night and then made keeping riots at bay mostly trivial for the rest of the night, since nobody was supposed to be out at all.

    Whether or not you think this is positive depends on whether you think he can differentiate between violent rioters and non-violent protesters or not, and that you approve of curfews and such, but it was interesting to me that the “good” protesters seemed in some way to be intentionally assisting police in trying to purge the rioter contingent. My buddy likes protests/protesting in a general sense and has been pretty consistent on this since I’ve known him, so I trust him a bit more because of that, but YMMV.

    • Wrong Species says:

      What they were doing, he says, is hanging the rioter cohort out to dry.

      Good. That’s what we want. Those who actually support peaceful protestors over the rioters should be aiming for this result. Of course, violent criminals should be in jail for longer than “a brief period every night” but it is what it is.

      • GearRatio says:

        Disambiguation: I mean there was a brief period every night where the protesters were gone, but the rioters were still there doing riot-ey things you could see and get them for.

  142. Belisaurus Rex says:

    I don’t exactly have a word for these (rhetoric maybe?), but when I see one in an article (scientific or social sciences) I immediately get suspicious (although I suppose you could obfuscate even when the facts are on your side, merely out of habit). Below, some times I give examples, other times reasoning. Anyone want to add to my list?

    Evidence based/ fact based (implies the other side is so bad they don’t even have any evidence to support their fever dreams)
    Opinionated (I have opinions, but you’re opinionated)
    Lashed out (protest by people on the other side, implies illegitimacy of their complaint)
    Speak to (instead of speak about; no idea why this one is so grating)
    X informs your understanding of y (x is why you’re too clouded to think)
    Nitpicking – because when you generate an argument out of nothing, all the complaints will sound like nitpicking
    Unpack (What the sophisticated individual prefaces his nitpicking with)
    Nuance – generic criticism word, when used in the positive takes effort to point out something specific (Book had a nuanced depiction of X), but in the negative does not require specificity (Book lacked nuance)
    Clearly/obviously (if you have to say it…)
    Equal to X years of education (support for UBI correlates with an increase of 4 years of education)
    Scientists think (which scientists? Why not just state it as a fact?)
    Growing body of evidence (by definition not a majority or you would just say a majority, this could mean any size)
    Growing trend (Same as above)
    It is said (by who?)
    Up to sixty percent (by definition less than 60%)

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      My pet peeve is “divisive.” (“I think you should give me your stuff and do what I say.” “I disagree.” “You’re being divisive.”)

      • Nick says:

        Conrad, we need to have an open and honest dialogue about you giving me your stuff and doing what I say.

      • Paul Zrimsek says:

        If your guy makes us furious, that proves how divisive your guy is.
        If our guy makes you furious, well, h8rz gotta h8.

    • I believe the generic term for these is “weasel words.”

      • Belisaurus Rex says:

        “Lashed out” isn’t weaselly though, it’s just smuggling in assumptions. I tend to think of weasels as hedging: probably, maybe, it depends. Not wanting to put themselves down as saying something definite.

    • Wrong Species says:

      “Refuted”

    • Nick says:

      I had a whole list of “banned” words at work:

      authentic, encounter, feel(s) safe, re-victimize, accompany, dialogue, weaponize(d), paradigm shift, rigorist, concrete situations, changing realities, conscience (unless you define it), develop (if used transitively), moral ideal, exponential(ly), discern(ment), fascist, parasitism

      Naturally, having listed them, folks made an effort to drop them in conversation with me. I can’t tell you how many times I heard during a meeting, “This change to [software] would be a real paradigm shift.”

      • DinoNerd says:

        – Exponential works for me, when referring to something we can count, that really is growing in an exponential fashion. That would require the speaker to be numerate to the point of recalling some highschool algebra/pre-calculus, rather than being an arts type using “exponential” as a generic intensifier. (I’m guessing you see the latter much more often than the former.)

    • 10240 says:

      Growing body of evidence (by definition not a majority or you would just say a majority, this could mean any size)

      I don’t think this one should be contrasted with the majority of the evidence. A typical situation is that originally there is little knowledge about something: no evidence either way. A study or two come out in favor or a particular proposition; at this point as much as 100% of the evidence may be in favor of the proposition, but the evidence is not strong. “Growing body of evidence” indicates that more and more evidence has come out in favor, though it’s still not conclusive.

    • DinoNerd says:

      – “could mean”, “could be” etc. – This finding (2 anecdotes) could mean that (something we’d all like, that’s vanishingly unlikely) is true.
      – xxx % of members-of-relevant-high-status-profession agree that …. (Reads like advertising copy).
      – someone’s truth (as compared to the truth)
      – “… is a religion” – when applied to opinions or behaviours that plainly aren’t

    • theredsheep says:

      I have always appreciated “science says”; it’s so much more concise than “an amateur or poorly-paid journalist came across two journal articles and decided to overgeneralize from their results to meet a clickbait quota.”

      • Wrong Species says:

        It’s one thing when people say “scientists say”. It’s almost always oversimplified but it can be justified. But “Science says” demonstrates that our fundamental psychology is really no different than the pre-moderns. I really question what those people think is happening.

        • Except that “scientists say” means “some scientists say” and sounds as though it means “science says.”

          • sharper13 says:

            Just went looking for the article again and couldn’t find a link, but I saw a headline the other day regarding the pandemic along the lines of Science in conflict with economics!

            I really wanted to ask when economics stopped being part of science, but what they probably really meant was something along the lines of health scientists in conflict with economists over restrictions.

          • Wrong Species says:

            @sharper

            There’s the pantheon of different sciences like Economics, Physics, Biology, etc. However there’s the big cahuna himself, Science. He’s the arbiter of all science related issues. So there’s conflict between the lesser Economics and the Great Science.

      • John Schilling says:

        an amateur or poorly-paid journalist came across two journal articles

        Two journal articles? I think you’re talking about the highly-paid elite professional journalists there – and even they only occasionally look for a second article to support their thesis.

    • Paul Zrimsek says:

      In my experience, “nuance” is not generic: it usually means the speaker has been caught in a self-contradiction or falsehood, and you should stand by for some bafflegab explaining it away.

      • Belisaurus Rex says:

        Oh, you mean it in a DEFENSIVE sense.

        “You just missed the nuance in my work.”

    • Spookykou says:

      All of these seem very common on SSC, do you find them equally suspicious in this context, or does your ‘opinion of the media’ inform your understanding of rhetoric? I have seen a growing trend of opinionated, anti-media posting, that speaks to a general need to lash out against the perception of antagonism. Ultimately this position does not seem to be very nuanced, maybe you could unpack some of your terms?

      🙂

      • Belisaurus Rex says:

        Assuming you even wanted your question answered, SSC uses different language to substantially the same effect. Even useful jargon can be misused.

        Inferential gap –> “I don’t want to explain it”
        Rational X –> e.g. “rational ignorance” (like justifying by putting rational in front makes it better?)
        Bayesian –> “Evidence based”
        More light than heat –> “lashed out”
        Singularity –> True Communism has never been tried before… with computers
        Etc –> I can’t think of any more

        • “rational ignorance” (like justifying by putting rational in front makes it better?)

          Neither better nor worse — predictable, since it is a consequence of rational behavior, not a mistake.

          The term comes from public choice theory.

          More light than heat –> “lashed out”

          Don’t you mean “more heat than light”?

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          orthogonal -> “unrelated”

  143. Nancy Lebovitz says:

    Black People in the US Were Enslaved Well into the 1960s

    This is about sharecropping– sharecroppers aren’t paid in money, instead they have a manipulated debt which means they can never get away from paying in crops and other labor. So far as I know, they don’t get sold, and I’ve never heard of them being traded from one farm to another. It might be like being a serf, but I don’t know enough about serfs.

    How could sharecropping (in the US or elsewhere) be eliminated?

    If you prefer, suppose that big scary aliens show up and say sharecropping must be eliminated in five years or all the non-sharecroppers will be hauled away to spend the rest of their lives working in alien factories.

    From my facebook discussion:

    Diantha Day Sprouse: my grandfather and great grandfather on my mother’s side were sharecroppers. My grandfather share cropped until the late 1940’s. When my grandmother’s parents died they left her a small sum of money which she invested in a farm for her husband. If not for that tiny bit of inheritance he would have remained a sharecropper until he died in 1987.

    Nancy Lebovitz: Do you know what happened with the sharecroppers who didn’t get an inhereitance?

    Diantha Day Sprouse: there are still a few sharecroppers around. Most of the ones that I knew of have died off . their children getting jobs in factories and such and moving off the farms. A lot of the farms big enough for share cropping have either been broken up or gone to industrial commercial farming with hired labor. There are still a few men who stayed on the farms or sharecrop someone else’s farm land but not many. Many of the farms I knew as a child are lying fallow.

    Diantha Day Sprouse: the small inheritance was $120.00 in 1948.

    • Evan Þ says:

      Ideally – listen to General Sherman, break up all the plantations in 1865 as punishment for the planters’ treason and nonpayment of federal taxes (or at least most of them), and parcel them out to the freedmen as an act of justice. That’s unlikely, but not beyond the bounds of possibility if a Radical succeeds to the Presidency instead of Johnson.

      After Johnson issues pardons all around, it becomes much more difficult.

      • broblawsky says:

        Yeah, this sounds about right. White supremacy is built around economic advantage; redistribution of land would’ve done a lot to help break it down.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        I’d rather the plantations not be (immediately) broken up, merely placed under new management with the former slaves receiving all of the income as salary. In 1866 or 1867 each plantation-corporation can reevaluate.

        • Evan Þ says:

          Who would that new management be? And how would the freedmen’s salary be calculated when crop prices can vary dramatically from year to year? I think you’ve just reinvented sharecropping with a couple epicycles.

          On top of that, most of the freedmen hated gang labor and really wanted to work their own land.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Who would that new management be?

            Ideally an ex-farmer who doesn’t need an income or formerly enslaved foreman who trains the field hands in how to manage a business.

            most of the freedmen hated gang labor and really wanted to work their own land.

            They’d be the shareholders in the company and could ultimately vote to break it up, buy out other shareholders, or sell it entirely.

        • zzzzort says:

          Land use reform (breaking up landlord’s holding and giving the land to the people working it) worked out great in Taiwan and Japan. Not doing it during reconstruction probably significantly held back the economy of the south.

        • keaswaran says:

          In 1865, was there a good enough market for corporate governance that these owners of shares of a plantation could legitimately expect to receive this income? Remember, these are people that have never owned a financial instrument in their life, so they would really have very little way to evaluate whether their agents were managing the capital in an efficient way, rather than somehow pocketing the money and sending it to New York.

          However, these people did have a lot of experience with managing the land itself, and growing crops on it.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            The entire corporation would have consisted of the freed slaves and maybe a couple of others to help them get set up and going.

            Basically the only way to abscond with money would be to sell the crops and run away with it after having sold it. Or that whoever they sold the crops to ripping them off in price.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        Apparently Sherman didn’t finish the job.

        My guess is that it’s harder to find the smaller farms which are doing this.

      • Lambert says:

        What’s the risk of falling into the Soviet Union/Zimbabwe failure mode, where badly executed expropriation of land, however unethically owned, leads to a massive drop in productivity?

        That said, crashing the agricultural system once might be worth it in the long run to avoid 100 years of jim crow. Zimbabwe’s GDP per capita has started growing again after a decade.

        • Hasn’t Zimbabwe also started talking about giving land back to the white farmers who got expropriated?

        • Thomas Jorgensen says:

          Approximately zero. Land reform goes wrong when you hand land over to people who were not farming it before hand.

          The southern blacks were the people doing the actual work, so have the actual skills so no problem there. The issue is, it gets really difficult to predict where the south goes after that – the planter class utterly dominated the place, in terrifyingly destructive ways in otl, without that bunch of malignant magnates, whence the south?

          • Spookykou says:

            This seems right in terms of knowing how to farm in the place where you are already farming, but I thought the soviet system mostly involved moving farmers around and bad incentives, did they actually just throw a bunch of randos from the cities onto the land and tell them to farm?

          • Lambert says:

            > did they actually just throw a bunch of randos from the cities onto the land and tell them to farm?

            That was generally a maoist thing, right? Like, the Khmer Rouge was big on it. Probably just what happens when your revolution is lead by peasants, rather than proletarians.

          • matkoniecz says:

            Soviet system was primarily problem of bad incentives, poor plans combined with deliberate mass murder.

            In Ukraine it was outright crime against humanity/genocide, with giant pile of skulls (3 to 7 millions dead). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

            I just discovered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333 article

            man-made famine where 1.5 million (possibly as many as 2.0–2.3 million) people died in Soviet Kazakhstan, of whom 1.3 million were ethnic Kazakhs; 38% of all Kazakhs died, the highest percentage of any ethnic group killed in the Soviet famines of the early 1930s.

            In other regions without mass scale famines successful farmers were deported/murdered/vilified and on collectivized farms there was no benefit from productive work for anyone.

            Polish farmers fiercely resisted collectivization. In some cases, they cut down forests which were marked for nationalization. According to sources, peasants feared collectivization more than a hypothetical future World War Three, hoping that such a war would help them to keep their land.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Polish_People%27s_Republic

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      How could sharecropping (in the US or elsewhere) be eliminated?

      Go door to door informing people of their right to declare bankruptcy and offering to help them file for free. Then throw in a social network elsewhere that will help them set up a new life.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        “Going door to door” might be a little harder than it sounds if you’re going through rural areas. Satellite photo should make it easier, though.

      • yodelyak says:

        Exactly this. Bankruptcy law is anti-slavery law. And being visited by an attorney who may be interested to hire one as their attorney–that’s a right that applies to undocumented immigrants, arrestees in police custody, and yesyesyes, to sharecroppers, even if the land they are on is owned by somebody who doesn’t want lawyers there and posts “no trespassing signs” and demands every lawyer who approaches to leave. If fact, if people live there you can probably get a court order requiring the landowner to provide for *safe* entry/egress of lawyers, so he can’t leave a barbed wire fence with no gate, or a dangerous dog, in your way.

        It’s also why non-severable student debt is insane, when you think about it.

        Also, when you see a rich person deliberately abusing the bankruptcy system via driving multiple businesses bankrupt (but only after they’ve paid him handsomely), well, somewhere someone else has to carry the bag for that.

        • 10240 says:

          Bankruptcy law is anti-slavery law.

          How? Not having personal bankruptcy doesn’t mean that the creditor can enslave the debtor. It only means that the debtor has to pay a certain fraction of his income (in Hungary 1/3 AFAIK) until the debt is paid off, potentially until the rest of his life.

          • m.alex.matt says:

            Not having personal bankruptcy doesn’t mean that the creditor can enslave the debtor.

            That, in fact, used to be exactly how a lot of people fell into slavery. Debt slavery and PoW slavery were the two main sources of slaves throughout history.

            It only means that the debtor has to pay a certain fraction of his income (in Hungary 1/3 AFAIK) until the debt is paid off, potentially until the rest of his life.

            This is also pretty much slavery. Skill artisans that were enslaved have been given surprising amounts of freedom to go to a city and ply their trade, as long as they pay the correct portion of their proceeds to their master, for the entirety of human history.

            yodelyak is right: Bankruptcy law is anti-slavery law.

          • matkoniecz says:

            This is also pretty much slavery.

            ? this is insanely broad definition of slavery.

            Skill artisans that were enslaved have been given surprising amounts of freedom to go to a city and ply their trade, as long as they pay the correct portion of their proceeds to their master, for the entirety of human history.

            And what happened when they failed to earn enough or refused to work?

            Wage garnishment is not slavery – at least with sane limits (minimum sufficient to live is protected from garnishment, later only part can be garnished).

          • 10240 says:

            That, in fact, used to be exactly how a lot of people fell into slavery. Debt slavery and PoW slavery were the two main sources of slaves throughout history.

            @m.alex.matt That’s correct: many (most?) societies had debt slavery in the past. My point is that it’s entirely possible (and not uncommon) to abolish debt slavery without instituting personal bankruptcy.

          • Ninety-Three says:

            It only means that the debtor has to pay a certain fraction of his income (in Hungary 1/3 AFAIK) until the debt is paid off, potentially until the rest of his life.

            This is also pretty much slavery.

            @m.alex.matt I’m curious how you feel about taxation, because there are governments that take more than a third of people’s income, without the possibility of getting out from under it.

          • ana53294 says:

            without the possibility of getting out from under it.

            If you can’t get out under the government (like in the USSR, or Cuba, or whatever), and they take a third of your income, and force you to work if you don’t produce that income (as would happen if the debt slave of the past just stopped working and became a beggar), then it would be slavery, yes.

            So Gulags were a form of slavery. And other concentration camps, too.

            Not allowing your own people to get out of your country is still a grave violation of human rights.

          • matkoniecz says:

            If you

            Yeah, in such cases I agree that it is form of slavery or at least de facto the same thing.

        • bullseye says:

          I read a book (whose title and author I can’t remember, unfortunately) written by a man who studied sharecropping in southern Georgia in the 1870s. I don’t know how much of it generalizes to other times of places, but he lays out how debt leads to more-or-less slavery:

          The farmer doesn’t get paid until the crop is sold, and until then he needs to borrow money to put food on the table. The only person willing to lend is the landowner. If prices are high and the landowner is honest about what price he gets, the farmer can pay off the debt and get a little extra money. Otherwise, the farmer remains in debt, and must borrow again the next year. The debt can build up until there is no hope of paying it off. If the farmer tries to leave, the landowner can have him arrested for failure to pay the debt. I don’t recall any mention of bankruptcy in the book; in any event, the farmer has no hope of getting the law on his side thanks to judges’ racial bias. (All sharecroppers in that time and place were black.) It’s better than actual slavery mainly in that the farmer could choose how he did the work without a white man looking over his shoulder, and that the farmer’s children did not inherit the debt.

          • John Schilling says:

            If the farmer tries to leave, the landowner can have him arrested for failure to pay the debt.

            “There shall be no imprisonment for debt.”
            Georgia Constitution, Article I Section 18 (1868)

            So unless I’m missing something, sharecropping as you have described it was flat-out illegal in the way that slavery was flat-out illegal. Black-letter constitutional law. Workable only if the landowners are flat-out lying to the sharecroppers and being backed by the local police and courts.

            Which I certainly believe could have happened, but it does constrain the plausible solution space.

          • SamChevre says:

            @John Schilling

            One of the tricky distinctions here is between imprisonment for debt and imprisonment for fraud: if I pay you $100,000 to work for me for a year, and you go work for someone else and don’t return the money, is that sufficient proof of fraud? It was until Bailey vs Alabama (and it seems that was one of those cases where the principle doesn’t apply anywhere else).

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          The US has the most, or nearly the most, liberal bankruptcy laws in the world. Compared to other countries, you can get out of legitimate debts with remarkable ease.

          It never occurred to me that this might be some remnant of anti-slavery. I’m not sure it is, but it’s something to consider.

          (The fact we let 17-year-olds sign up for non-dischargable debt is that much more insane when you look at the rest of US bankruptcy law.)

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            My impression is that liberal US bankruptcy goes back too far to have originated as an anti-slavery measure, and that the true explanation is more like “This is what you get when a bunch of people farming mortgaged land decide to have a revolution.”

    • SamChevre says:

      Sharecropping wasn’t just a black thing – there were a LOT of white sharecroppers. My first boss grew up sharecropping in the 1950’s-he was white. What the VICE article describes isn’t much like typical sharecropping.

      The more typical arrangement was an agreement between a landowner and a farmer to farm a piece of land; the landowner provided land, generally seed and fertilizer, and heavy equipment. The sharecropper provided labor and got half the crop. Done fairly and in an economy where farming was economically feasible, this was a reasonable arrangement. Where it became a problem was in its interaction with the store credit system, as well as the inevitable opportunities for exploitation offered by a system with a lot of poor, semi-literate people.

      In general, this provided a lot less opportunity for exploitation and cruelty than any system where farmers have to work under direct supervision.

      So the question is – what kind of arrangement are you trying to get rid of.

      • Sharecropping has been a common system in lots of societies. One argument for it, as opposed to a standard rent system, is that it spreads the risk of a bad harvest.

        • Lambert says:

          I think the argument is that it’s better for the farmer to own the land they work, and that under sharecropping, rent or manorialism, too much capital is accumulated by too few landowners.

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        The family of my BIL are some white sharecroppers, and they are working their whole lives for nothing, and don’t seem to listen when people tell them it’s a bad plan. I don’t get it.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        From the article:

        ************

        Mae’s father, Cain Wall, lost his land by signing a contract he couldn’t read that had sealed his entire family’s fate. As a young girl, Mae didn’t know that her family’s situation was different from anyone else’s. The family didn’t have TV, so Mae just assumed everyone lived the same way her brothers and sisters did. They were not permitted to leave the land and were subject to regular beatings from the land owners. When Mae got a bit older, she would be told to come up to work in the main house with her mother. Here she would be raped by whatever men were present. Most times she and her mother were raped simultaneously alongside each other.

        Her father, Cain, couldn’t take the suffering anymore and tried to flee the property by himself in the middle of the night. His plan was to register for the army and get stationed far away. But he was picked up by some folks claiming they would help him. Instead, they took him right back to the farm, where he was brutally beaten in front of his family.

        When Mae was about 14, she decided she would no longer go up to the house. Her family pleaded with her as the punishment would come down on all of them. Mae refused and sassed the farm owner’s wife when she told her to work. Worrying that Mae would be killed by the owners, Cain beat his own daughter bloody in hopes of saving her. That evening still covered in blood, Mae ran away through the woods. She was hiding in the bushes by the road when a family rode by with their mule cart. The lady on the cart saw the bush moving. She got off to find Mae crying, bloodied and terrified. That white family took her in and rescued the rest of the Wall’s later that night.

        ************

        I would like to get rid of a system which keeps people that helpless and isolated.

        I’m not sure about the specifics. I’m not usually fond of compulsory education, but it might help.

        • SamChevre says:

          Right. The reason I asked was that the kind of direct control over everyday life that the landowners have in that account is exactly what sharecropping was designed to AVOID–so getting rid of that sort of exploitation and getting rid of sharecropping seemed like distinct goals.

    • John Schilling says:

      One thing I couldn’t find in that article was anything about the legal basis of sharecropping. As in, what’s stopping the “slaves” from just walking away and starting a new life in Detroit or whatever? As anonymousskimmer points out, if there’s a debt it’s almost certainly dischargeable by bankruptcy. And even Cain from the article seems to have understood that he could just walk into a military recruiting office and be done with it.

      So it seems that the system worked on the basis of, A: Lying to people and saying that they had to keep being quasi-slaves Or Else, B: Having local thugs beat up anyone who didn’t go along with it and presumably having the Good Old Boy sheriff look the other way, and C: the victims being risk-averse in the face of uncertainty and not willing to walk away from the life they knew for the uncertainty of starting over with nothing in Detroit. And I’m guessing a measure of D: the landowners and their GOB network controlling the specialized resources and market access necessary for small farmers to succeed.

      So, land redistribution may not work. The white guy with the big house, even if he only holds legal title to a tiny bit of land, can lie and tell people that he has a mumbo-jumbo lien on the ex-slave’s land and they have to give him a share of their crops or else. His thugs can still beat them up if they don’t go along with it. The victims will still be scared of running away with just the clothes on their back. And presumably the local Good Old Boy merchants will all agree that nobody sells shovels or plows or seed to or buys cash crops from ex-slaves without going through their ex-masters.

      This is a job that calls for something like the Underground Railroad, working under more favorable protections now that the Union Army is the ultimate guarantor of order. Explain to everybody that no, they don’t have to put up with this. Offer them whatever support they need to make the leap to Detroit.

      And maybe set up local support for the ones who still want to keep farming the land they always have, with e.g. carpetbagger merchants to trade with. But that’s going to be tricky if the GOB sheriffs keep turning a blind eye towards the thugs supporting the old order. You could give the sharecroppers guns, but that’s the sort of thing that lead to the last Civil War and we’d prefer not to have an immediate rematch.

      • As in, what’s stopping the “slaves” from just walking away and starting a new life in Detroit or whatever?

        Nothing.

        The black population of the North is largely descended from people who left agricultural poverty in the south, whether as employees, renters, or share croppers, to come north.

        • Nancy Lebovitz says:

          You underestimate how gung ho racists can be, especially when they have the political advantage.

          https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/long-lasting-legacy-great-migration-180960118/

          “Resistance in the South to the loss of its cheap black labor meant that recruiters often had to act in secret or face fines and imprisonment. In Macon, Georgia, for example, a recruiter’s license required a $25,000 fee plus the unlikely recommendations of 25 local businessmen, ten ministers and ten manufacturers. But word soon spread among black Southerners that the North had opened up, and people began devising ways to get out on their own.

          Southern authorities then tried to keep African-Americans from leaving by arresting them at the railroad platforms on grounds of “vagrancy” or tearing up their tickets in scenes that presaged tragically thwarted escapes from behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. And still they left.”

          • I knew about state restrictions on labor recruiters, although I think the early cases were mainly recruiting blacks in parts of the South where they were treated badly for jobs in other parts of the South. That ended up as a Supreme Court case, and the court came down on the wrong side, permitting the regulation, arguably contrary to their support for free markets in previous cases.

      • SamChevre says:

        This is also partly a response to Scott below.

        The big thing that kept sharecroppers impoverished (beyond the general poverty of subsistence farming) was the way credit was handled: breaking up the rural store credit and crop-lien system was an important goal for the Farmer’s Alliance for a reason. Functionally, most sharecroppers owed half their crop to the landowners, AND owed most of the rest to the store. If you were caught buying from any other store, the store near you wouldn’t extend any more credit.

        Sharecropping died when tractors and cotton-pickers became common in the late 1940’s; that meant far less labor was needed per acre, and so sharecropping, like small farming all over the US, largely died out. Industrial growth provided the opportunity to earn cash (garment manufacturing especially), improving transportation meant that travel to more than one store became feasible, and the whole system just kind of died. Alabama’s Song of the South captures the dynamic pretty well.

        Papa got a job with the TVA,
        We bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet

        One great book about sharecropping and the post-war south is Lanterns on the Levee; it’s very one-sided, but the one-sidedness is hard to miss.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        John Schilling, I agree with your points, and I’ll add one more– one person can leave, but that puts the rest of their family at risk of being severely punished. It’s harder to get a whole family out at the same time.

        • John Schilling says:

          Very good point. And I note that many of the techniques apparently used to make the sharecroppers stay put on the land they’ve always lived on doing the work they’ve always done, closely match the techniques now used by human traffickers(*) to make sure their victims don’t go back to their ancestral homeland and trade.

          * The real ones, not the “we need to make sex work look disreputable again” ones.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      This says “well into the 1960s”, which suggests it ended – does anyone know how (if?) it was ended IRL?

      • Erusian says:

        There are still some sharecroppers but not many. It began to decline with the mechanization of agriculture and was almost wiped out when agricultural policy wiped out the smaller landlords and farming communities in the 1970s. Perdue’s strategy, initiated in 1968, is typical.

        Honestly, attacking sharecropping is ridiculous. If you want to help farmers, you should deal with their current issues like exploitative corporate contracts and corporate power abuses rather than something that’s a tiny edge case. That’s what farmers are asking for. They don’t want an end to sharecropping, they want an end to a system where large corporations force them to race to the bottom and punish them for complaining while the government runs programs that transfer income from rural to urban areas which keeps them from accumulating enough wealth to be independent and often driving them into debt.

        • OutsideContextProblem says:

          > the government runs programs that transfer income from rural to urban area

          It seems to be a universal rule that state subsidies transfer wealth from productive urban areas to rural landowners – often under the guise of ‘protecting our way of life’ or ‘small farmers of nation x are the only real xians’ or something. This is especially true when you include the various tariffs and ntbs, again almost universally adopted, which transfer wealth from domestic consumers to domestic producers.

          • cassander says:

            Farm programs are ubiquitous, but they’re a tiny share of national budgets. meanwhile, richer urban dwellers pay higher taxes and get their own subsidies in the form of transit and other infrastructure. I’m not saying the subsidies all go to the cities, just that its not that clear cut and a solid answer would need a lot of study.

          • Erusian says:

            It seems to be a universal rule that state subsidies transfer wealth from productive urban areas to rural landowners – often under the guise of ‘protecting our way of life’ or ‘small farmers of nation x are the only real xians’ or something. This is especially true when you include the various tariffs and ntbs, again almost universally adopted, which transfer wealth from domestic consumers to domestic producers.

            This is simply wrong. The way the current system works is that the government slants the market so that food is extremely cheap (thus transferring wealth from rural to urban households) and then recompenses the farmers with some basic agricultural support. Another way to think of it: are poor families in cities or farming towns richer? If we’re doing a net transfer of income, why are American farming communities poorer relative to urban communities than those in virtually any other country? Including globalized powers like Great Britain?

            Edit: Wow, that was fast. Apologies to the Scotts (and North Irish, Welsh, Cornish, etc.)

          • The way the current system works is that the government slants the market so that food is extremely cheap

            I don’t think so — could you explain what you mean? The biofuels program pushes up food prices as a way of buying farm votes, as Al Gore admitted in explaining why he supported it. I’m not sure of the details of other relevant policies at present, but government programs ever since FDR have been aimed at pushing up food prices, not down.

          • Erusian says:

            I don’t think so — could you explain what you mean? The biofuels program pushes up food prices as a way of buying farm votes, as Al Gore admitted in explaining why he supported it. I’m not sure of the details of other relevant policies at present, but government programs ever since FDR have been aimed at pushing up food prices, not down.

            You are overestimating the impact of biofuels as a part of total US agricultural policy (it’s small). Seriously, if Al Gore was buying so many votes why did he lose? And you are mistaken as to the nature of agricultural subsidies, which are designed to stimulate overproduction while decreasing price by artificially reducing price while decoupling price from compensation.

            The primary concern of agricultural policy is not to keep the agricultural industry productive but to keep food prices low. This is because of a very simple incentive: everyone eats food but only a shrinking minority of the population produces food. So cheap food is an easy way to increase the disposable income of poor voters who outnumber food producing voters. If you read through FDR’s speeches he repeatedly brags about increased standards of living and the nutritional plentitude at cheap prices enjoyed by Americans. There was propaganda produced about how FDR’s controls meant that food was cheaper than it had been during World War 1. There is a fairly clear pattern that the US government steps up subsidies when prices increase, not when net farm income goes negative. Indeed, net farm income has been negative for decades. And anecdotally, you can look at the food price protests in the Nixon administration or the Democrat’s abandonment of rural farm collectives to see policy.

            The average American spends less than their compatriots in virtually every country on food if you remove dining out. This pattern is true even compared to other wealthy and developed countries. Because the US has prioritized cheap food, including crony arrangements with a series of corporations I could rant about for hours.

          • matkoniecz says:

            @Erusian – you have not answered how supposedly “government slants the market so that food is extremely cheap”.

            Government taking credit for low food prices proves nothing, government will take credit for anything at all (I guess that you can found someone taking credit for failing prices of electronics and for a good weather).

            AFAIK low food prices are primarily result of technological progress and some practices of questionable sustainability (soil loss, fossil fuels).

            BTW, any citation for negligible impact of biofuel subsidies on food prices? AFAIK there was noticeable one, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_vs._fuel#Food_price_inflation

          • Erusian says:

            @Erusian – you have not answered how supposedly “government slants the market so that food is extremely cheap”.

            Do you know how current farm subsidies work? How do they work?

            AFAIK low food prices are primarily result of technological progress and some practices of questionable sustainability (soil loss, fossil fuels).

            As I pointed out, Americans’ food prices are low even compared to western Europe with its subsidized farms. I presume you’d agree that western Europe has access to comparable technology?

            BTW, any citation for negligible impact of biofuel subsidies on food prices? AFAIK there was noticeable one, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_vs._fuel#Food_price_inflation

            Well, your own citation has shown a rapid decrease in food prices post-2008. It’s mainly talking about a period from 2001-2007. And I freely acknowledge food prices rose for those six years but I’d point out, as your own citation does, it is now lower than it was even in the ’90s. USDA stats show food was the cheapest it’s ever been from about 2009 to Trump’s trade war (about 2019).

          • matkoniecz says:

            @Erusian – you have not answered how supposedly “government slants the market so that food is extremely cheap”.

            Do you know how current farm subsidies work? How do they work?

            Highly depends on a location. In EU farmers in at least some cases got paid for not producing food.

            As I pointed out, Americans’ food prices are low even compared to western Europe with its subsidized farms.

            I suspect that taxation and cost of labor may be important here, but I would probably believe any trustworthy-looking source.

            BTW, any citation for negligible impact of biofuel subsidies on food prices? AFAIK there was noticeable one, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_vs._fuel#Food_price_inflation

            Well, your own citation has shown a rapid decrease in food prices post-2008. It’s mainly talking about a period from 2001-2007. And I freely acknowledge food prices rose for those six years but I’d point out, as your own citation does, it is now lower than it was even in the ’90s. USDA stats show food was the cheapest it’s ever been from about 2009 to Trump’s trade war (about 2019).

            I am not claiming that food prices are always increasing, I am claiming that biofuel policy results in noticeably increased food prices compared to world without subsidizing/forcing/encouraging biofuels.

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            Cheap is not the goal of most agricultural subsidies. The reason just about everyone does this is to ensure a reliable and domestic food production, for, essentially, military reasons. Nobody wants foreign chaos or a naval interdiction to turn into a domestic food shortage, so it is very much preferred if trade in food is caloric neutral – that is, Itally sells tomatoes to points south, buys papaya, ect, ect, and the exceptions – the places that are consistently in caloric deficit mostly import from places which might as well be domestic -that is, no member of the european union worries about supply from other union members being disrupted. (Brexit violates this, which is kind of breathtakingly daft. )

          • As I pointed out, Americans’ food prices are low even compared to western Europe with its subsidized farms.

            European agriculture is protected by trade barriers, resulting in high prices.

            The U.S. farm policies I am familiar with, aside from biofuels, were either paying people to hold land out of production or buying crops in order to hold prices up. Both of those make food more expensive. The Supreme Court case that legalized the New Deal farm policy was about a law limiting the amount a farmer could produce in order to push agricultural prices up.

            I am still waiting for you to describe what policies have the opposite effect.

          • Mabuse7 says:

            @DavidFriedman – I’m not aware of the specifics myself but I have heard that Nixon changed agricultural policy so that the subsidies lowered food prices rather than raising them.

        • Nancy Lebovitz says:

          My point in attacking sharecropping is about helping people who are horribly trapped to escape, it isn’t about helping farmers in general.

          Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if some sharecroppers have been switched to manufacturing– I’ve only heard of immigrants (legal and illegal) being trapped into manufacturing, but it seems like something which could be done to sharecropping.

          I don’t know what efficient altruism for human rights would look like. Efficient altruism is about things which can be measured easily, but that’s hard with politics.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        I think “well into the 60s” means it hadn’t ended by then. There’s an implication it might have, but possibility it didn’t end is left open.

    • Kind of tangential, I’m reading “War & Peace” for the first time and it’s updating my understanding of serfdom. E.g. they were bought and sold all the time, sometimes as part of land transactions and sometimes separately. Among the Czarist-Russia equivalent of plantation owners serfs were viewed and valued exactly as lifestock. In the chapter I just finished one character trades three families of his serfs for a hunting dog that he wanted, and nobody at the time thinks that at all unusual.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        BE AWARE THAT Russian serfdom was different from Western European. Western manorialism tied most farmers to “their” land through payments to an employee of the King’s national security company.
        It’s not clear to me that the definition “human chattel” for “serf” even existed elsewhere in Eastern Europe. This Wikipedia article on Polish-Lithuanian serfs next door doesn’t make it sound like they were detachable from land as domestic etc. slaves.

        • matkoniecz says:

          This Wikipedia article on Polish-Lithuanian serfs next door doesn’t make it sound like they were detachable from land as domestic etc. slaves.

          Local variation was forbidding to leave land (“przywiązanie chłopów do ziemi”), it was not only economical – but migration was outlawed.

          By the mid-16th century no peasant could leave the land without explicit permission of the lord.

          So you would be able to buy village (and therefore serfs), but there was no selling people like livestock to buy a hunting dog.

        • Erusian says:

          While Russian serfdom lasted longer and certainly changed, the idea that serfs were secure in their land is a myth. Medieval lords could and did force serfs to leave their homes. They could not be sold on the open market, but then neither could Russian serfs (since owning a serf was a right annexed to a specific class).

          Also, you’re incorrect in asserting it’s primarily an eastern phenomenon: serfdom in England was unusually harsh. And in every system there was at least a class of serfs (the villeins in England) who could be sold apart from land.

          • matkoniecz says:

            And in every system there was at least a class of serfs (the villeins in England) who could be sold apart from land.

            Not a historian, not an expert, serfdom was evil etc – but AFAIK in Poland such outright slavery never was happening. Are you sure that every serfdom had such outright slavery?

          • Erusian says:

            I’d like to start this by saying I have a particular fondness for Poland. Several of my friends and teachers were Poles and I’ve long been an admirer of Polish culture, particularly Polish nationalist culture and its poetry and literature.

            But Poland these days has got a strain of revisionism that’s distorting things. There was a class of Polish serfs and slaves that was treated that way from tribal times until the late 15th/early 16th century when serfs were basically made uniform in rights and privileges. But that system also made serf’s labor salable and was not such an immediate change. The Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth did make strides towards improving the rights of serfs eventually. But until the 18th century or so it actually did the opposite, increasing noble rights over serfs. And ultimately the PLC’s most radical steps took place as the nation was collapsing. It was Napoleon who finally swept away the vestiges of serfdom in western Poland and the system continued with Russian blessing, with Russian laws and terms, in their sections.

            I’m not sure every serfdom had some form of outright slavery. Perhaps there’s an exception somewhere. But not in Poland-Lithuania.

          • matkoniecz says:

            until the 18th century or so it actually did the opposite, increasing noble rights over serfs.

            I 100% agree and that it was horrible system, barely above slavery.

            But from what I know – without outright selling people as trade goods and at least in theory legal rights of serfs were greater than theoretical rights of slaves in most of systems.

            But Poland these days has got a strain of revisionism that’s distorting things.

            Just as disclaimer: serfdom was a horrific system, I am not enthusiast of nobility, as far as I can trace my family was not any kind of nobility but farmers. What I quite like.

          • Erusian says:

            Sure, I’m not accusing you of anything. But I have made comments about the PLC and gotten told it was a perfect society and golden beacon of liberty etc etc. Rising nationalism and all that.

            But from what I know – without outright selling people as trade goods and at least in theory legal rights of serfs were greater than theoretical rights of slaves in most of systems.

            Depends on the system, I suppose. In the earliest days Poland was basically tribal and had slavery by name with chattel and all that. Over time a patchwork of rights and arrangements cropped up, including some serfs with fairly extensive rights and some with fairly few. Indeed, some serfs in the 14th century just had to pay a small nominal tax to their lords while others could be sold like chattel. The system was semi-standardized as part of legal reforms in the 14th/15th century, the general trend being the ending of cash payments and the increasing extraction of labor and direct lordly control. These serfs had rights that distinguished them from slaves but there were still a few marginal cases where they could be sold like chattel. And it was, as you say, still a horrible system, leading to an (in)famous case where a particular serf was forced to provide eight days of labor a week and so was whipped weekly for failing to provide this impossible amount to his lord.

            In the 18th century increasing commercialization, declining power of the nobility, and an enlightenment emphasis on democracy encouraged Poland-Lithuania to think of its serfs as incongruent to their ideals of liberty and increased their relative power. Things shifted back towards cash payments and there were concrete steps to improve their lives as well as a movement to emancipate the serfs. This was finally only done in 1793, though, as the nation was collapsing. The law never fully took effect because Poland-Lithuania ceased to exist in 1795. It was more fully wiped out in the west by Napoleon (though somewhat reintroduced by Prussian Junkers along Prussian lines) and converted to something closer to the Russian from in the East.

            Austria, which had only a small part of Poland, made a concerted effort to actually end serfdom because they had outlawed it decades ago. They still had a system of noble corvee that applied, though that ended in the early 19th century. Indeed, local Polish peasants in Austria were able to make a great deal of political hay playing the local magnates and the Austrians against each other.

          • matkoniecz says:

            gotten told it was a perfect society and golden beacon of liberty etc etc.

            Perfect society? Wat?

            Something along lines “”quite good for its times” or “X was quite nice and unusually good” can be justified.

            Bur to describe it as a perfect society?

            leading to an (in)famous case where a particular serf was forced to provide eight days of labor a week and so was whipped weekly for failing to provide this impossible amount to his lord.

            AFAIK this is legend and misinterpretation of more complex situation – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Poland

            in extreme cases requiring a peasant to labor eight man-days a week per 1 łan of land farmed by a peasants family for their own needs (the land belonged to the landlord), which in practice meant that the male head of the family worked full-time for the lord, leaving his wife and children working on the peasant’s family land, and even then they had to help him occasionally, unless a peasant hadn’t hired additional workers (poorer peasants)

            In the earliest days Poland was basically tribal and had slavery by name with chattel and all that.

            I admit that I forgot about that early history – and depending on where you begin history of Poland start may be 100% tribal.

            but there were still a few marginal cases where they could be sold like chattel.

            Can you recommend any sources to learn about that (preferably something online)? I was pretty sure that by 14th/15th century it would not be happening.

          • Erusian says:

            Perfect society? Wat?

            Something along lines “”quite good for its times” or “X was quite nice and unusually good” can be justified.

            Bur to describe it as a perfect society?

            I have ties to Poland and its intellectuals, so I probably get exposed to more raw Polish nationalists than most people. Some of them say very silly things. And a lot of them attack me online in certain forums. I’m not trying to claim it’s a widespread opinion but I have heard it.

            AFAIK this is legend and misinterpretation of more complex situation – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Poland

            It is possible that particular story is made up. It’s reported to us by contemporary primary sources but it does seem particularly egregious. It might have been a polemic about conditions rather than meant to be taken as literally true by the writer. Regardless, we have very strong evidence that there was a shift to noble power and control over labor. For example, the so called religious freedom was actually freedom of nobles to choose their religion even for their peasants (as it was in Germany, except on the princely level).

            As I admitted in my answer, even if that story is true (and there were a few who could be sold like chattel) these were exceptional cases after the reforms of the 15th century. The vast majority of peasants could not be sold like chattel, as you describe.

            Can you recommend any sources to learn about that (preferably something online)? I was pretty sure that by 14th/15th century it would not be happening.

            As I am failing to communicate, you are correct for the majority of peasants. I’m afraid I don’t have any online sources but Wikipedia cites a series of online sources in this article. My understanding is that the 14th century did see a major change to serfdom which mostly did separate them from slavery but didn’t eliminate chattel classes entirely. Certainly, my understanding is being a Polish serf was far superior to being a Russian one (especially by the 18th century when Polish serfs were becoming Russian serfs).

      • ana53294 says:

        Yes, early nineteenth century serfdom in Russia was terrible. But it did improve a bit with time.

        Ironically, Nicholas I banned the sale of negroes in Russia and ordered they all be freed, while keeping russians serfs in slavery (he did it because of an international treaty he signed in London). But he did do a few things to improve the Russian serfs’ lot. Since 1833, sales of individual people were banned. This makes it a bit less destructive to the institution of the family.

        Still, Russian serfdom was horrible, with the same problems of not giving people the land (although without the horrible Civil War, thankfully). Russians got freed only five years before US blacks did. But it does seem like the was merely delayed and not avoided.

        • “Russians got freed only five years before US blacks did” — before _southern_ US blacks did. Northern states started abolishing slavery in 1777 and had all made it illegal by the 1810s. (Though outside of New England some of those abolition laws were phased in, so there were declining numbers of slaves in some non-NE northern states as late as the 1840s.) As one historian put it in critiquing the NYT’s “1619” articles, “We launched into a bloody civil war in 1861 because half, actually a bit more, of the country had _rejected_ slavery.”

    • Erusian says:

      Firstly, sharecropping is incomparably better than slavery. The idea that sharecropping was equivalent to slavery is a frankly insulting meme I wish would die. I’m not going to say sharecropping as practiced in the US was great but it was much, much better than slavery. If you want I can go on at some length about how it was better. Also, keep in mind the majority of sharecroppers were white.

      Sharecropping’s issues were less due to the inherent economic arrangement of sharecropping and mostly other factors of landlords taking advantage of unequal power relationships. There were attempts at sharecroppers unions or strikes and their demands weren’t to end sharecropping but to negotiate terms with landlords.

      Anyway, historically you’d need to prevent the land confiscations that followed Redemption. If you could stop Redemption generally that’d do a lot to forestall Jim Crow. But that would involve politically excluding the majority of the population.

      In modern day, you could simply pass a law banning sharecropping if you wanted to get rid of it. Just ban landlords from extracting rent as a percentage of crop: require them to demand fixed rents. But it’s a rare arrangement these days. Agriculture has moved on to hired seasonal labor, even in the South.

      • Evan Þ says:

        But it’s a rare arrangement these days. Agriculture has moved on to hired seasonal labor, even in the South.

        There’re a number of farms still rented out in the midwest; my mother actually inherited one several years ago. Last I heard, it was mostly planted in corn and soybeans. IIRC our tenants pay most of their rent as flat cash (after selling the crop on the open market themselves), but I might be wrong. At least, I could easily imagine the contract being written so that they pay rent as a fraction of the crop’s selling price, which would technically make them into sharecroppers.

        • ltowel says:

          I believe my family is the beneficiary of a trust in SD structured in a similar way – annually we get a nice letter from the farmers who work the land an they send my parents delicious marmalade. My understanding is that they work it along with the adjacent land they own and get the vast majority of the profits, which in a good year with the crop insurance are like tens of thousand dollars and the trust gets royalties which are hundreds or thousands of dollars a year. Of course if my brother or I ever feel a need to move to Clark, SD, I have a line on a place. I don’t know what will happen after this older couple dies or decides not to keep working this land, and I don’t think it’s important to the family aside from being where our grandparents grew up.

          • Erusian says:

            This sounds like your parents own a little plot of land that a local farmer is renting for some nominal price. I’d guess it was undeveloped and they negotiated the right to work it in exchange for a small rent. This isn’t that abnormal. Indeed, you can still get free land out west, though not free funding to develop it into a productive farm.

          • ltowel says:

            @eurasian oh, absolutely that’s it that. being said, based on the letters I’ve seen it looks like the farmers are renting it for a share of prophets, but it might just be an annual renegotiation of rent where the rates are informed based on crop insurance rates/payouts. I’m hoping that my family is not getting the winning side of this negotiation. Although, these farmers are old enough that this will probably hit the oncoming farming demographic failure.

        • Erusian says:

          I can almost guarantee sharecropping isn’t the arrangement they have. Farmers do sometimes pay landlords but usually in cash. The current model is basically corporate, with farmer corporations buying or renting land and then buying the labor and inputs before selling the produce to big ag corporations. This can be problematic because the government is heavily slanted towards those corporations to suppress the price of food. For example, the contract is often structured where the farmer is the caretaker of the assets of the big corporation. So, for example, the corporation delivers a bunch of chicks and the farmer then has to pay to raise them and sells them back to the corporation. Naturally, this is ripe for abuse.

          • I’ve worked in Midwestern agriculture for several years now and learned a lot firsthand about the current economics of the Corn Belt. I work mostly with farm-sector trade organizations but also with some farmers directly.

            I’m not sure what you mean by “farmer corporations” — if you mean that a farming family has formed an LLC, that is what I deal with all over the place now. In virtually all cases some members of that family are doing the actual farming, or did before getting too old for it. (There are lots of farm widows out there now.) The percentage of Midwestern farm ground that is owned by parties who do no farming themselves (i.e. big-city investors, REITs, etc) has turned out to be much smaller than I thought a few years ago when all I knew about it was from MSM articles.

            Meanwhile though it turns out that in some Corn Belt states a _lot_ of active rowcrop land is being rented. Many of those farm families that formed all those LLCs are farming some ground that they own _and_ some that they rent. (E.g. from all those farmer widows, seriously there are enough of those to be a sizeable landowning constituency now.) That’s what is normal now: according to the USDA about 40 percent of all U.S. farmland today is leased but only 10 percent of all active farmers are _only_ tenants (don’t own any of the ground that they farm).

            And yes, all that leasing is on a cash basis. I’ve not yet come across any examples of sharecropping or anything resembling it.

    • Dack says:

      People still rent farmland. Some of them still rent it for a percentage of the grain rather than a flat rate. So in a sense “sharecropping” still exists.

      The difference, as far as I can tell, (I know little about historical sharecropping) is that the rates are not extortionary and your grain is converted into money on demand.

    • Radu Floricica says:

      If you want to fix the situation I think you should think a bit more about the cause of the problem. I don’t think sharecropping is it, fundamentally.

      People are (and should be) able to get into bad deals. From sharecropping on bad terms to borrowing to buy a waay too expensive car. Society doesn’t, as a rule, protect against bad business sense. And it should be noted that sharecropping would offer both a higher degree of independence and higher potential earnings than being employed – at a greater risk. Just like any small business. So it stands to reason that there will be winners and losers.

      But then – why _are_ things so ugly, at least on occasion? Because I do believe you that they’re ugly. I just don’t think sharecropping as a concept is the proper culprit.

      Usually it’s a mix of bad laws (30%), breaking laws (30%), and a systemic mix that ensures people don’t get access to knowledge or representation – call it “cultural context” (40%).

      How can people get so deep in debts in a system that’s nominally about sharing a crop? It’s likely because in that case, that’s not really the system at play. Just like company stores, that can make you work not just below minimum wages, but you may potentially end up deeper in debt the more you work – and that’s a much simpler example, where people (should) just get an hourly wage.

      I don’t know enough about the situation to say what are the specific problems and solutions. But it’s likely a good start would be higher-abstraction things like bankruptcy and zero physical violence.

      • Lambert says:

        I think the cultural context of a landed gentry that’s doing everything they can to cling onto the vestiges of their antebellum power is probably the big factor.

  144. Betty Cook says:

    On the subject of worries about attention…

    I am married to David Friedman, have been for a long time, and he has been on the internet since Usenet days, posting under his own name. Regulars here will have a good sense of how controversial he is likely to get. I have spent something on the order of 30 years with a slight worry that one of these days, someone mad at David will come throw a brick through our front window or the like.

    Hasn’t happened yet.

    Granted, Twitter didn’t exist when the internet was Usenet, and it is orders of magnitude easier to join a Twitter mob than to get to someone’s house across the country and throw a brick through his window. But if the latter was going to happen to someone for internet comments, David seems to me to be a likely candidate, and, for whatever comfort this may be, it hasn’t.

    • Nick says:

      FWIW, to narrow the range a little further, it seems to me like it’s only been since the gamer controversy that it has become an actual (if still remote) danger to Be Controversial on the Internet (TM). The Usenet days, at least the way everyone tells me, were full of eccentric weirdos who really liked to talk; these days we’re surrounded by (or have become) conformist NPCs who really like to shut others up.

      • samboy says:

        Well, if people got really out of line, the Usenet mob would gang up and work on making the person in question unable to post again. There was, in the mid-1990s, some Holocaust denier nut case over at Netcom who would post in a bunch of newsgroups (think sub-Reddits, but mostly without moderation) his Holocaust denying screeds until, after getting a bunch of complaints, Netcom set things up so he could only post in a handful of newsgroups.

        Cancel culture wasn’t really a thing until the mid-2010s, but people would go to a lot of effort to harass and deplatform people who used Usenet to post spam.

      • Gerry Quinn says:

        People would hurl insults and abuse at each other on usenet, but for the most part it was all in fun, and nobody worried about cancel mobs. Though even then there were some sensitive souls who didn’t like the rough and tumble.

        It was with the advent of social media for everyone that stuff started to get weaponised.

    • Reborn says:

      I don’t think the fear is of bricks through windows but getting fired, and I think it’s a more legitimate fear than many here seem to suspect.

      People downthread were speculating that the number of people canceled is probably in the dozens or maybe just over a hundred. I looked for some good figures, but I couldn’t find them, and frankly, I don’t think there’d be any way to collect them because most cancellations will never make any news.

      My wife has worked for about a year at a company with a couple thousand employees. She knows of five people who have been fired in the past year because of complaints from social media.

      Unless her company is a huge outlier, that would suggest that the total number of cancellations could easily be in the low thousands rather than the low hundreds. And there’d be no way to know of any of them because not a one of them made the news. (I looked.)

      • samboy says:

        0.25% of employees getting fired (i.e. 5 out of a “couple thousand” which I made 2,000) because of cancel culture would result in (in the US at least) 389,430 people getting fired. [1] That seems a few orders of magnitude higher than the number of people who have lost their jobs that I hear about in the news.

        I have never seen anyone or heard of anyone who was fired, reprimanded, or otherwise held accountable for something they did on social media in my many years working the tech industry.

        [1] Before COVID-19, the US had 155,772,000 employed people

        • jewelersshop says:

          Two who made AFAIK only local news:
          One, a couple years ago, was Marriott’s social media graveyard shift guy. His job was “monitor social media and if anyone says something good about Marriott, like/retweet/whatever from the corporate account.” Someone tweeted a thank you to Marriott for recognizing Taiwan, so he did his job – and China insisted he be fired; Marriott promptly caved. So you can get fired in the US if you violate China’s speech norms. (Whether wumao will notice this comment I do not know; no idea if they monitor this blog all the time, or just check front-page virus posts).

          The other was last week. Someone posted something on social media (What was it? Local news helpfully did not include that information.) that someone else deemed racist. Based on the name, the latter someone decided the poster was the son of a certain restaurant owner and started a protest outside the restaurant.* Customers had to be escorted to their cars by police for several days, and police were also called to the owner’s home as the protest group showed up threateningly there for two nights in a row. So the restaurant closed permanently. Keep in mind, this was not for something that had happened at the restaurant, nor for something the owner did or said. He lost his business due to being related to someone who said something deemed objectionable.

          Two anecdata isn’t much, but both are impressively bad for a free society (successful international pressure to fire a low-level functionary; cancelled because you’re related to someone).

          *The protestors also did not like one menu item’s name, a biscuits-and-gravy-dish named the Robert E. Lee; when the place opened in 1976, that was a “hello Northerners, here is a Southern dish” name. They told local news that they wanted the dish renamed and to have a menu item named after a black person (because that would never be deemed racist).

          • original-internet-explorer says:

            I can’t put myself in the brain of somebody who wants to cancel Uncle Ben.

            For decades millions of people have interpreted the symbol and name as a proud old black man and now he’s on the wrong side of history.

            It’s not interesting there are fringe views held by some faction. It is interesting that the society is pampering the social justice fringe. If you visit an alt-right website you will see complaints about bigoted advertising – these are not typically minor details but horrifying attitudes against men or whites being passed off as fun or virtuous. If reversing the races in the advertising makes it racist to contemporary society then the society is hypocritical.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @original-internet-explorer
            There are a ton of food products with old white women on them as well. Given that the historical reason women tended to cook more often than men was due to patriarchy, shouldn’t those be changed as well?

            I mean this seriously as a liberal.

            I think it best that these things be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and only ones that should be removed be removed (based not on stereotyping, but based on whether the original reason was stereotyping and the intent of that stereotyping).

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            A lot of cancelling is just entertainment.

            Like going to the Coliseum to watch people devoured by lions.

          • original-internet-explorer says:

            @anonymousskimmer

            A symbolic win is important like the Berlin Wall but the cancelers are having micro scale wins at an expense like using a blowtorch to remove zits. All the indefensible behaviour we have seen on video – it’s social stress – this is not how these people conduct themselves on better days.

            I would like to be part of Cancel Culture – and here is what I would do – I’d cancel almost all news media except Steve Paikin and the North Korean team who produces news reports on Coronavirus. I don’t want to do this but we have run out of options.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGQNc1Nrvlo
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI_MG3ZnDak

      • Alejandro says:

        Does “because of complaints from social media” include non-ideological stuff like a customer complaining that an employee was rude, incompetent, etc? I wouldn’t say that e.g. a waiter fired because of several Yelp reviews complaining about their service has been “cancelled”.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          Someone (that I used to respect) tried to cancel Domino’s Pizza because they liked a tweet in 2012.

          The 2012 tweet was an anodyne “I like your pizza” sent by someone who is today a Trump person.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Hmm. This is a tough spot. I’m in favoring canceling anyone who likes Dominoes pizza. It’s awful cardboard.

    • original-internet-explorer says:

      If the comment was aimed at me – I accept the feedback. As defense – the proposal wasn’t to wind SSC community up – it comes naturally. Some of my relatives are unusually responsive to threats – it’s not pathological – it is characteristic – but I appreciate discounting the wins is also a species of mistake.

      In the preweb days we argued long and hard but there were no photographs to divide us. It is bittersweet to see how it has turned out to date. Originally we wanted commerce and there were a sense it validated the existence of the network – but now – I could have been ignorant of it at the time but it seemed freer and culture war free.

  145. proyas says:

    Has there ever been a case where two, identical twins were born, with the only difference being their 23rd chromosome pair (i.e. – one had XX and the other XY)? I’d be interested in learning about such cases to better understand sexual dimorphism.

  146. Error says:

    Is there a word for the meta-opinion “I’ll treat your opinions on topic X as relevant if you actually know something concrete about X”?

    I remember encountering the idea in an SSC comment that went roughly “you have the right to an opinion on nuclear power iff you know how much of your energy comes from nuclear”. I could swear the author of said comment had a word for it, but google has failed me in finding it.

    • Belisaurus Rex says:

      It signals that you might be a good conversational partner on the topic instead of just mood affiliating. It’s a little rude, but I wouldn’t want to waste an hour talking about nuclear in a “college freshman bull session”.

      For example, if someone talking about renewables doesn’t even know about storage/peak load, there’s nothing productive to say.

    • roflc0ptic says:

      Apparently just from his administrative post. Kevin Bird’s twitter says something like “the campaign was never about getting rid of Hsu’s tenured position.” More ominously for MSU, he also writes

      “Thank you @michiganstateu for making the right choice. There’s a lot of work ahead to address and heal the deep structural problems at our university but I’m optimistic we can get there together.

      Hsu’s repeated interaction with alt-right people wigs me out, but as far as I could tell, Bird really was flagrantly taking Hsu’s statements out of context to make him look like he supported ideas he explicitly disavowed. He really wasn’t being honest. Even if the dishonesty isn’t widely known, I hope this level of drama makes Bird unemployable. Certainly administrations wouldn’t want him around. Much like Hsu at this point, Bird is an institutional risk.

      • samboy says:

        Kevin Bird celebrated the burning of buildings during the George Floyd riots and a lot of his Twitter feed has stuff like Biden being far too moderate, abolishing the police, etc.

        We discuss him at length; just look for “itsbirdemic” on this page.

        • roflc0ptic says:

          Thanks, I think I read through that. Not trying to re-litigate: just making a further point based on new info from after the firing. Maybe would’ve been better on that thread.

          That said – those are political positions which aren’t strictly institutional risks. Universities are generally unthreatened by employees just having far left views. As someone who knows the mind of a lot of academics and radicals, he’s not alone in that thinking, though many are circumspect enough not to say it so publicly.

          Publicly mounting campaigns (based on evident lies) against members of a university administration, and then saying essentially “I’m not done yet!” is a different category of thing.

      • albatross11 says:

        That’s great sauce-for-the-gander stuff, but I’d rather Bird get hired for jobs based on his competence and knowledge, regardless of his distasteful and socially destructive extracurricular activities. The person who failed here isn’t Bird, it’s the president of MSU.

        • roflc0ptic says:

          It’s a fair point. If we take out my own vindictive motivations here… I’m really unclear on what I think here, or if I agree.

          In some principled universe, I think I would prefer that MSU’s president judge Hsu baed on his competence and knowledge, but in real life, taking that stand would be matyring himself and probably matrying MSU. The incentives are heavily aligned against him ever taking a principled stand that hurts the university, and the context of Hsu’s case here in 2020 makes it worse.

          Organizations(/cultures/hobby groups) can’t really exist without people acting in the organizations interest. E.g. the Shakers don’t exist anymore because of their principled, self destructive policy of not reproducing. The political moment changed, Bird took his shot, and Hsu became a liability. The institution acted.

          If a biologist wrote on the top of their resume, “My goal is to cause as much harm to this institution and my colleagues as possible while also putting out top notch biology papers”, I kind of feel like this should be disqualifying, but I’m not sure what principle to tie it to. If he had a penchant for murdering his colleagues over petty disagreements, I think everyone could agree that would be an overriding consideration: don’t hire the guy. Hsu and Bird’s case are much less clear cut. But for institutions like MSU to thrive, they have to protect themselves pretty strategically, over principles.

          I’m personally happy to sacrifice MSU’s wellbeing for the greater good of limiting the power of twitter mobs and principles of meritocracy, but principles that say “everyone should self harm for my principles” feel wrong, and I think asking that Hsu and Bird only be judged on their professional competence seems like that sort of principle.

          .. Which I think can all be summarized with a confused shrug.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            I can agree with this inasmuch as I expect MSU to look after the interests of MSU, much as I expect the Minneapolis police department to look after the interests of the Minneapolis police department. What I find myself unable to do in either case is approve, especially considering that they are both taxpayer-supported: if I were in the Michigan legislature, I’d incline to the view that if MSU is only going to look out for MSU, it should do so on its own dime.

          • Ninety-Three says:

            If a biologist wrote on the top of their resume, “My goal is to cause as much harm to this institution and my colleagues as possible while also putting out top notch biology papers”, I kind of feel like this should be disqualifying, but I’m not sure what principle to tie it to.

            Hiring is meant to select the candidate who will best advance the goals of the organization (e.g. write a bunch of biology papers). Normally the main variables candidates on which candidates differ are how many papers they write, and how good those papers will be, so we judge candidates based on their competence and knowledge. But Mr. Tear Down My Peers will significantly reduce the organization’s overall output of papers by diminishing the productivity of his coworkers. Choosing not to hire him is part of the normal and consistent principle that underpins most hiring, it’s just on an axis that rarely comes up because most people try to emphasize that they’re a team player.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Would someone on the Right who Tweeted in support of some non-BLM rioters actively burning buildings face arrest for federal conspiracy charges?

          • roflc0ptic says:

            It’s not illegal, so at first blush this sounds like fairly conspiratorial thinking. Are there examples of this happening?

          • Ninety-Three says:

            If by “support” you mean that they said “Seeing [this] is the proudest I’ve been of America in a long time”, no, not even close, that’s super protected.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @Ninety-Three: That’s a relief to hear.
            Just to clarify, if Google firing James Damore had resulted in mobs of Republicans coordinating through social media to go burn down Google-owned buildings, nobody who cheered it on with the post “Seeing Google buildings burn is the proudest I’ve been of America in a long time” would be prosecuted? It would be such an open-and-shut protected speech case that no poster would be subjected to the process as punishment?
            Obviously that’s not morally equivalent, since George Floyd was murdered rather than fired and banks had nothing to do with it, but it seems the equal Free Speech hypothetical.

          • Ninety-Three says:

            @Le Maistre Chat
            Yes, speech protections go really far here, imminent lawless action is a pretty strict test. Given a statement several degrees milder than those permitted by famous court cases, and little precedent of the government prosecuting people out of the blue for bad tweets, it’d be pretty wild to go after “proud of America” guy.

            Like, you know that the internet is fully of edgy boys who cheer on mass shooters right? The feds have never gone after them.

          • roflc0ptic says:

            For a very fleshed out example, check out “Endgame” by Derrick Jensen, where he’s advocating for the violent overthrow of civilization “by any means necessary” – blowing up dams, destroying powerlines.

          • Lambert says:

            Or Hess vs Indiana, for a more protest-related example.

            They’re serious about the ‘imminent’ part.

        • LesHapablap says:

          Keeping out toxic jerks is extremely important to every organization. One toxic jerk will ruin the morale and productivity of a team and cause good people to leave. There is probably no worse hiring decision than to bring someone like that on.

          One of your goals running a company should be to create an organization that reflects your values. Hiring people with similar values is important to that goal, and if you think your values are morally correct (you should) then creating a powerful organization that reflects and promotes those values is a morally good thing.

          • silver_swift says:

            if you think your values are morally correct (you should) then creating a powerful organization that reflects and promotes those values is a morally good thing.

            It’s worth pointing out that the bolded part is not quite true. You should only believe that no other set of values is more likely to be morally correct than yours.

            You should definitely not be 100% certain that your values are morally correct. That’s what the whole asymmetric weapons thing is about, fighting with weapons that make it more likely the good guys win, even if you happen to not be one of them.

          • LesHapablap says:

            That’s certainly a fair point. I just meant it in the sense that if you try to be a good person for whatever definition you have, it is likely that your values are morally good and you shouldn’t subscribe to a wishy-washy moral relativism. You should apply your values to your business and get everyone else to do so as well, and there is nothing to be ashamed of about that.

            I realize that this gives carte blanche to the worst sort of SJW-saturated organizations to keep out anyone who disagrees, but that’s still good in the same sense that it is good that the constitution gives carte blanche to let people say awful things.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @LesHapablap

            Any business that controls patents is a government-licensed monopoly. They need to be held to higher standards than a fungible business.

  147. outis says:

    This is the most interesting and concerning article I have read about the Floyd case:

    https://medium.com/@gavrilodavid/why-derek-chauvin-may-get-off-his-murder-charge-2e2ad8d0911

    Interesting because it explains aspects of police procedure in that department which I had not seen discussed elsewhere. It gives the first credible account I’ve seen of how the cops involved ended up acting as they did; without justifying them, of course.

    Concerning because we can all imagine the consequences if he does walk.

    • Anteros says:

      Agree about it being an interesting article. If I was on the jury and all we had was the video and that article, I’d be tempted to acquit.

      I also agree that there would be consequences if Chauvin does walk, to put it mildly.

      I can be very idealistic about things like ‘innocent until proven guilty’, and ‘everyone deserves a fair trial’, but if I felt certain that acquitting someone would cause chaos and a complete breakdown of law and order in a country of more than 300 million people, I might lose a certain portion of my idealism. I really wouldn’t want to be on that jury.

      • original-internet-explorer says:

        I’m sure you recall OJ Simpson.

      • Gerry Quinn says:

        If you’re in that spot, the chaos is coming soon anyway. A tougher issue might be a country that is stable and you need to cover up a crime by the government to keep it so.

    • DeWitt says:

      On the point talking about ‘the department’s policies said it was okay’..

      .. Is that really evidence in favor of anyone, right now?

      Chauvin was not under any orders to act as he did, and he made the call by himself. If the department’s policy had been a hypothetical ‘if a black man does anything you dislike, just shoot him’, we’d not exonerate him either. Why should a jury care about the department’s policies? Why is the proper move not both to convict Chauvin and punish the people so cavalier in their attitudes about human life?

      • smocc says:

        The parts of the argument here that shook me were that all of Chauvin’s training and information would have taught him that the hold he used was non-lethal (and even perhaps safest for everyone involved) and that there’s reasonable doubt as to the cause of death.

        If those two arguments hold up then you could still argue for a manslaughter conviction but murder becomes hard to prove.

        • Matt M says:

          If those two arguments hold up then you could still argue for a manslaughter conviction but murder becomes hard to prove.

          Yeah… it seems obvious that in this case (and the Atlanta case as well), the prosecutors are over-charging for political reasons (to placate the angry mob). The mob, of course, doesn’t understand that the higher the charge, the harder it is to convict. But in the event that one or both of these guys walks, the DA will throw their hands in the air and say “Well I did my best but the jury was racist, what can you do?” and walk away.

          We already saw this basically play out with George Zimmerman. They overcharged him and he walked. They probably could have got him on manslaughter, but charging him with manslaughter was not politically optimal.

          • Evan Þ says:

            Fortunately, the Chauvin jury will have the option to convict on the lesser included charge of manslaughter.

      • Matt M says:

        If the department’s policy had been a hypothetical ‘if a black man does anything you dislike, just shoot him’, we’d not exonerate him either.

        I’m not so sure. At least depending on your definition of “we.” I find it entirely plausible that 1-in-12 Americans would, in fact, exonerate a cop who was “just following orders.” And that’s really all Chauvin needs.

      • AliceToBob says:

        @ outis

        Thanks for sharing that.

        @ DeWitt

        Why should a jury care about the department’s policies?

        Perhaps for the same reasons this article updates my views on the death of George Floyd. Up until this point, it’s been very difficult to interpret the arrest video as anything but police brutality.

        The article plausibly argues that the actions taken by Chauvin followed from policies designed around the safety of police officers and those they deal with. It’s a tough tradeoff to strike, and the outcome here is one of the worst.

        But, yikes, this article offers an alternate perspective of Chauvin’s state of mind. That, along with the claim that respiratory distress began even before the arrest due to the “potentially lethal” levels of fentanyl and meth in Floyd’s system (he was claiming he couldn’t breathe while standing upright), mitigates some of the worst inferences from the arrest video.

        Hopefully, we’ll get to the bottom of these things in court. But if these two aspects are both supported, it shifts my view away from “this is murder” to “Chauvin may be acquitted”. It’s possible that some jury members may feel the same.

        Why is the proper move not both to convict Chauvin and punish the people so cavalier in their attitudes about human life?

        Feels like a rhetorical question…but because details like those in the article matter when deciding to convict a person of murder and potentially jail them for life? To do otherwise seems equally cavalier.

        • Anteros says:

          +1 and thoughtfully expressed.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          That, along with the claim that respiratory distress began even before the arrest due to the “potentially lethal” levels of fentanyl and meth in Floyd’s system (he was claiming he couldn’t breathe while standing upright), mitigates some of the worst inferences from the arrest video.

          Doesn’t this make it worse? Let’s not believe anything an arrested person says about a medical condition, when we do have reason to believe that he has imbibed drugs (at least alcohol) in sufficient amount to plausibly give him a medical condition?

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ anonymousskimmer

            I’m sorry, I’m having trouble understanding your claim (my fault, most likely). Can you elaborate further?

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Sure. I can be more clear. 🙂

            If the police did what they did to George Floyd but Floyd never mentioned he was in respiratory distress then their behavior would be more understandable than them doing the same when Floyd claimed to be in respiratory distress.

            The fact that Floyd’s claim of respiratory distress was plausibly true based on the facts that they, the cops, believed (i.e. he was intoxicated) is yet another aggravating factor. With that plausible claim the police should be entertaining the possibility that Floyd isn’t engaged in actively resisting arrest, but is responding as would a typical, non-resisting person in respiratory distress.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ anonymousskimmer

            Thanks, I think I understand what you’re saying.

            Doesn’t this make it worse? Let’s not believe anything an arrested person says about a medical condition, when we do have reason to believe that he has imbibed drugs (at least alcohol) in sufficient amount to plausibly give him a medical condition?

            The fact that Floyd’s claim of respiratory distress was plausibly true based on the facts that they, the cops, believed (i.e. he was intoxicated) is yet another aggravating factor. With that plausible claim the police should be entertaining the possibility that Floyd isn’t engaged in actively resisting arrest, but is responding as would a typical, non-resisting person in respiratory distress.

            I’m guessing the police officers may have entertained several possibilities: he’s drunk, he’s on drugs, he’s faking, he’s in medical distress, and others I’m can’t think of.

            On top of having to weigh those possibilities, Floyd was also exhibiting respiratory distress AND actively resisting (perhaps quite vigorously) AND checking some boxes for ExDS.

            I imagine there might not be a typical set of criteria that allows a cop to untangle this, at least not in real time. But I don’t know.

            If respiratory distress and ExDS are mutually disjoint conditions, and the police are trained to know this, then I think your point stands and, yeah, it’s worse.

            On the other hand, if they can occur together, then the cops may have been legitimately worried about ExDS and decided that was the overriding medical concern.

            On the other other hand, ExDS seems to encompass a broad range of behavior/symptoms, and so it seems like it could be used by malicious officers as an excuse for doing harm.

            But the main takeaway for me is: the situation doesn’t seem so clear cut anymore, and I could see jury members feeling the same way.

            Edited: to add “symptoms”

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @AliceToBob

            Yeah, I agree with you. I ultimately think this comes down to a duty-of-care standard, and that, in my opinion, police officers have a particularly high duty-of-care when making an arrest or incapacitating a person.

      • John Schilling says:

        Why should a jury care about the department’s policies? Why is the proper move not both to convict Chauvin and punish the people so cavalier in their attitudes about human life?

        If the captain of a warship, knowing that a particular vessel is a refugee transport, tells his crew that it is an enemy troop transport and orders it sunk, do we convict the gunner of war crimes?

        It is not reasonable to expect that Derek Chauvin hold independent expertise in the diagnosis or management of Excited Delirium Syndrome. His state of mind, his belief as to what would result from his actions or from his hypothetical inaction, are based on the policies and training of the MPD. And the crimes of which he has been accused, require him to have believed his actions would likely result in the death of a man who posed no immediate danger to innocent life.

      • A Definite Beta Guy says:

        If the department’s policy had been a hypothetical ‘if a black man does anything you dislike, just shoot him’, we’d not exonerate him either.

        Well, yeah, but that’s because it’s an entirely different situation entirely.
        Sort of like how if my boss says “it’s okay to reclass this expense into this capital order” it’s pretty strong evidence that I am not willfully committing fraud against the investors because it’s a company policy over a gray area between expenses and capital, and if my boss says “kill everyone in the plant I am an evil supervillain BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” then it means my boss is crazy.

        Telling police officers that it is okay to kill ethnic minorities if the officers don’t like them is basically comic book supervillainry, and knee restraints are a common practice throughout most of the country for specific situations.

        Also, if we suddenly decide that, say, LIFO accounting is basically tax fraud and we need to ban it, like Obama tried to do, then we should obey the Constitution’s whole “Ex Post Facto” thing and not throw me in jail for something legal at the time. I would also prefer a spirit of charity and not tar me with feathers if it is suddenly decided some legal and commonplace accounting practices currently in use are actually Really Bad, so that I can continue to go to my daughter’s soccer games and eat at restaurants without Cancel Brigade showing up every 5 minutes.

    • 10240 says:

      The article says that the neck restraint used is not especially dangerous, the situation was dangerous for the people involved regardless of what they do, and there was a significant risk of death regardless of what restraint is used; but it also says that what the officers did was wrong, and the rules they acted on (and thus the police department) are responsible for Floyd’s death. Conditional on the article getting the facts right, what should the policemen have done instead?

      • Deiseach says:

        The Floyd case is just an entire mess, but I am seriously asking a question here: what is the best way to restrain an unarmed person who is agitated or disturbed?

        I’m asking because today is the state funeral of an Irish police officer who was killed by such a person, who grabbed the guard’s weapon and shot him with it.

        The case is strange for a couple of reasons; first, Irish police are not routinely armed, so that an armed officer was sent out to deal with this guy is unusual. Secondly, that it seems he was sent out on his own. Thirdly, that it seems this guy has a record of causing trouble due to mental health problems. And fourthly, of course, how on earth did he grab the gun?

        But from this side, a case like this, you can see why American police might be trained/conditioned to be aggressive/proactive and not assume that just because the person seems to be unarmed that they are not dangerous. That kind of attitude can then lead to being trigger-happy or using dangerous restraint methods.

        • John Schilling says:

          The Floyd case is just an entire mess, but I am seriously asking a question here: what is the best way to restrain an unarmed person who is agitated or disturbed?

          I think step one is, if at all possible have at least two people for each subject that needs to be restrained. I share your bafflement at the Garda sending one, armed, officer for that job.

        • Nancy Lebovitz says:

          Floyd was handcuffed behind his back, so less drastic methods would be needed than for someone who isn’t restrained.

    • Viliam says:

      George Floyd was experiencing cardiopulmonary and psychological distress minutes before he was placed on the ground, let alone had a knee to his neck.

      Doesn’t seem like a reason to keep suffocating him. (“His health is already in bad shape. Might as well kill him and blame it on his health.”)

      Restraining the suspect on his or her abdomen (prone restraint) is a common tactic in ExDS situations, and the white paper used by the MPD instructs the officers to control the suspect until paramedics arrive.

      Someone please explain: does “restraining on their abdomen” include “kneeling on their neck” or not? (If not, how is this relevant?)

      Floyd’s autopsy revealed a potentially lethal concoction of drugs — not just a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl, but also methamphetamine. Together with his history of drug abuse and two serious heart conditions, Floyd’s condition was exceptionally and unusually fragile.

      Unusually fragile, you say?

      …but yes, I can see that a sufficiently motivated person could use this as an excuse to let the murdercop go.

      • AliceToBob says:

        @ Viliam

        …but yes, I can see that a sufficiently motivated person could use this as an excuse to let the murdercop go.

        I assume you mean motivated in the sense of gathering as many of the relevant facts as possible before coming to a conclusion.

        • Viliam says:

          Relevance is the issue. If we investigate someone’s rape, is it okay to mention that the victim was promiscuous in the past? If we investigate someone’s murder, is it okay to mention that the victim had health problems in the past? Some people believe that this only provides a convenient excuse to dismiss the crime as no big deal because the victim had it coming anyway.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ Viliam

            If we investigate someone’s murder, is it okay to mention that the victim had health problems in the past?

            I think it depends on the circumstances. Consider if the article is correct about a couple points. First, Floyd took a potentially lethal dose of drugs in the recent past, unbeknownst to the cops. Second, these drugs made lethal a typically non-lethal police restraint. Then, I can see how a charge of murder might be blunted.

            …but yes, I can see that a sufficiently motivated person could use this as an excuse to let the murdercop go.

            I shouldn’t have referred to “facts” in my response to this, since we don’t know the truth of these things. Even if true, a jury might not find them relevant. But at least their inclusion as inputs into the trial seems reasonable, particularly if we care about allowing for a robust defense of the accused.

            And I don’t think one needs to be “sufficiently motivated”–whatever you’re insinuating with that terminology–to reach that conclusion.

    • I haven’t read the article, but my conclusion from the original stories about the Floyd killing was that it was manslaughter, not murder. I don’t think the cop intended to kill him, he was merely criminally irresponsible in how he restrained him, at a point when it was no longer necessary.

      • outis says:

        Yes, this is why I said “it gives the first credible account I’ve seen of how the cops involved ended up acting as they did”. It never seemed plausible to me that four police officers woke up that day and said “let’s go kill ourselves a black man in broad daylight in front of cameras”.

        Clearly a lot of people thought it was, having much higher priors on the police being bloodthirsty racists than we do. Of course, in Bayesian terms, they could rightly point at the video and say “see, it did happen, update your priors!”. But if we raise our prior on the police wanting to kill black people out of racism to the level required to make this murder plausible, that is, to the point that four officers of various races feel comfortable committing a racist murder in broad daylight, in front of cameras, with a completely calm demeanor, as if what they were doing was normal and they expected no consequences; if police racism is so widespread and powerful and bloodthirsty as to make that plausible, then we should expect to see way more police killings of unarmed blacks than we actually do, and in a much higher proportion compared to police killings of whites.

        So when I saw the video I was outraged, but I always thought that there was something unexplained about the behavior of the officers. This article is the first source I’ve seen that fills in the blanks to allow a plausible version of their thought process.

        • Nancy Lebovitz says:

          I don’t think police typically end up killing because they intended to kill.

          I think it’s more like habitually thinking that if it looks as though they themselves are at risk, they won’t be inhibited about violence up to and including killing.

          • outis says:

            Sure, but you’re not out in the streets smashing windows and toppling monuments, presumably. I think the average protestor, and probably the average African-American, really does think that cops are out to brutalize and kill blacks specifically (the protesters literally say this, and more). They believe that cops kill black people nearly exclusively, and I don’t blame them for it, because that’s what TV shows them

            If the media were forced to report all such killings with equal emphasis, irrespective of the race of the victim, it would reduce racial tensions, and it would bring us much closer to dealing with the police brutality problem.

      • Clutzy says:

        Having read the article I think the prosecution has a hard road to hoe. I’m not sure they are going to be able to prove the officers actions are a but for or proximate cause of the death. I also am not sure they are going to be able to prove the force used was excessive or unreasonable.

        The more you learn about Floyd, the more you start to think he was going to die on that night unless some miracle happened.

  148. Jacobethan says:

    A lot of discussion on this OT about the increasing difficulty of finding meaningfully CW-neutral spaces — professionally, recreationally, spiritually — for those who want them. Much of this is clearly coming from a distinctively American perspective. In particular there seems to be a growing resignation to the thought that a large segment of US elite institutions may have become irretrievably committed to a project of Blue Tribe inculturation, with uncertain implications downstream. But I also sense a certain feeling of surprise and alarm from folks elsewhere at what seems like a rapid “Americanization” (in this specific sense) of the terms of discourse in their own countries as well.

    It is, of course, eminently contestable how much this is really happening, and if so whether it is in fact a bad thing. Nonetheless the feeling is clearly very real, at least in some quarters. You’re already starting to hear people talking about voting with their feet, picking up and moving to a different US region or out of the the country altogether if the current evangelical mood doesn’t show signs of dying down.

    In a more optimistic, or maybe just pragmatic, version of that spirit, I thought it’d be interesting to hear people’s impressions about which places/institutions/careers still have it relatively good. (Where “good” unabashedly means “having a coherent culture defined neither by Blue Tribe activist entryism nor by reactive self-positioning as Red Tribe ‘alternative.'” SSC is in this sense a good example of a good thing.)

    So… currently accepting nominations for “most non-CW”* in any of the following categories (and feel free to add your own):

    Country (Anglosphere):
    Country (other economically advanced):
    US geographic region:
    US major city:
    US religious denomination:
    Professional-class vocation:
    Non-professional-class vocation:
    College major:
    Military service branch:
    Popular entertainment medium:

    * You can interpret “non-CW” however you like. I’m thinking of it mainly in terms of a strong sense of separation between politics as such and other forms of social or cultural activity (i.e., this is a norm that most people intuitively understand and accept as legitimate); a generally low salience of politics in people’s overall self-presentation; and a default sense of “live and let live” when it comes to tribal affiliation, which I can best define as “180 degrees from cancel culture.”

    • outis says:

      This is like a New Yorker in April looking for a nice town without COVID to spend the pandemic in. Stay put.

      • Reasoner says:

        To the contrary, I think “neutralist” immigrants like Jacobethan are just the thing if you want to inoculate yourself against CW warriors. It’s like the difference between someone who has never been exposed to the virus, and someone who has been exposed and has developed immunity.

        • outis says:

          My response sounds harsh, but it’s really only due to the first two items in his list; and even more specifically the second, since the Anglosphere is already too far gone. But if any other country wants to avoid the CW, they have to curb American influence in general. There are the Americans that will actively make it happen, and the Americans that will passively let it happen, but both will make it worse than just not having Americans around.

          For the inoculation, it’s enough to listen to your expats in America (pretty much every country has enough).

    • Uribe says:

      I’m a blue triber who’s done 20 years in the oil industry in Houston. I’ve learned to keep my head down when it comes to politics at work, but Houston itself is relatively CW free. It’s bad form to get in heated political arguments in real life, at least in my circle. Some of this might be generational, though.

      • GearRatio says:

        My actual feeling is conservatives are being whiny bitches about not being able to express their politics at their private industry jobs when that has always been the norm in the USA. You don’t talk religion or politics at work. I try to let everyone at my work believe I’m a conservative like them, because that’s part of the uniform wear given the industry I am in.I get it, because our clients tend to be conservative also.

        As a conservative who doesn’t express politics at work because it’s too much trouble, I’d like to quibble with this just a little: It’s not, in my experience, “can’t talk politics at work, because we don’t talk politics at work”. At least in the past five or ten years, it’s been “I can’t talk politics at work, because they are the wrong politics; someone on the left can talk politics all the live-long, though”.

        While you might argue that this perception is inaccurate, it’s a fair bit different than what you put forth. Being singled out as a monster whose views deserve instant firing/muzzling when the opposing views are lauded/allowed is very different than everyone being held to a “no political discourse” standard.

      • Skeptical Wolf says:

        My actual feeling is conservatives are being whiny bitches about not being able to express their politics at their private industry jobs when that has always been the norm in the USA.

        I firmly believe this is a miss-characterization of the issue, so I will attempt to clarify. When I say I want a CW-neutral space, that means I want a space where:
        – I can do my job and read the literature of my field without encountering calls for violence against people like me (or, preferably, against anyone) more than once per month.
        – I can take a walk of a couple miles without being obstructed and screamed at by someone who is attacking a political position I don’t even hold, just one they assumed because of my skin color and gender presentation (unless there’s a protest going on).
        – Demographic descriptors that apply to me do not routinely appear as derogatory terms in award acceptance speeches and corporate pep-talks.
        – My career advancement is not dependent on active participation in political advocacy activities outside of work hours. Nor is donating money to a political campaign I oppose a prerequisite for being employed.
        – When I attend a conference or convention, the panels that spend their entire time complaining about and insulting people like me are sufficiently labelled that I can avoid them and not accidentally end up stuck in a struggle session when I expected to hear a talk on graph databases or east asian folklore.
        – Harassment campaigns against people like me are not actively cheered in casual social interaction.
        – When someone in a demographic group I belong to posts a creative work related to one of my hobbies, “We have too much work by people like this” appears in the first five responses no more than half the time.
        – The conditions listed above are also available to people of other demographics and would not be lost if I switched parties/tribes.

        I do not currently enjoy such a situation and do not know of a place I can move or a career change I can make that would allow me to do so. This is a change that, to me, seemed to begin sometime in 2013, increase rapidly until 2016, and maintain roughly that level since. It has not “always been the norm”.

        I do not believe that the desire for anything on that list makes me an “oppressive fuck”.

        • AliceToBob says:

          +1

          with the exception that I haven’t experienced scenarios like the second bullet:

          I can take a walk of a couple miles without being obstructed and screamed at by someone who is attacking a political position I don’t even hold, just one they assumed because of my skin color and gender presentation (unless there’s a protest going on).

          Out of curiosity, can you describe an instance? I only ask because it seems outside the norm, but I don’t live in a large urban area, so that might be the reason.

        • AG says:

          I will note, “The conditions listed above are also available to people of other demographics and would not be lost if I switched parties/tribes.” did not apply to many people in the switched situation before 2013, and is in fact why they started agitating for places where they could feel as you did before 2013.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          Yeah, I’ve got all of that in the more affordable areas of the SF Bay Area with a government lab job. My degree and career is in biology.

          We get diversity talk, but outside of management emails and anti-harassment training these are optional things to attend. And frankly they rarely “demonize” white men except through omission or via the proxy of unconscious bias.

          And as a white man I had a brief chat with the chief diversity officer about issues that I think affect people like me (not white men, but asocial people vis-a-vis the exclusion inherent in a social outreach policy, which I acknowledged was a truly difficult thing to address).

        • Skeptical Wolf says:

          Out of curiosity, can you describe an instance? I only ask because it seems outside the norm, but I don’t live in a large urban area, so that might be the reason.

          The large urban area seems to be a requirement for this to occur. The most egregious example was during the second Iraq war when I got “Why do you want to bomb babies?” from a person blocking the sidewalk. A more recent example was “This road closed to Trumpers” from a small group in the same downtown.

          This is one area that I have been able to avoid recently, mostly by not walking in the downtown areas of heavily-blue cities.

          I’m tempted to add that the weirdest was a very aggressive “Where’s your mask!?!”, but since the answer to that question was “On my face”, I think that was just me running into a crazy person rather than an example of the same phenomena.

          I will note, “The conditions listed above are also available to people of other demographics and would not be lost if I switched parties/tribes.” did not apply to many people in the switched situation before 2013, and is in fact why they started agitating for places where they could feel as you did before 2013.

          I am aware that not every area and culture has historically maintained the level of tolerance that I prefer. However, if someone had posted my list in 2012 and said “I don’t feel like I have these things in my current community, where could I go to get them”, I would have been able to tell them “Come here and join my community”. I miss being able to do that as much as or more than I miss not existing in a cloud of low-level threats of violence.

          I do not believe that converting a culture that welcomed everyone into one that actively discourages empathy towards an entire segment of the population is an improvement.

        • DinoNerd says:

          Demographic descriptors that apply to me do not routinely appear as derogatory terms in award acceptance speeches and corporate pep-talks.

          As long as such demographic terms are used, someone is going to be the often-unintended target. I once did an exercise of trying to communicate, for a 2 or 3 day conference, without ever e.g. referring to a person who made a stupid decision as a “retard” – or any other metaphor of this kind. I found it incredibly difficult. Then there are the common metaphors equating white or bright with good, and black or dark with bad.

          I see no reason that you should be exempted from being such a target, that doesn’t apply to the hypothetical black crippled transwoman next door, or an elderly ugly immigrant with a foreign accent, or frankly anyone else.

          In the 19th century, one common way to insult individual men was to compare them with women – this applied even in academic discourse. Its still common in face to face conflict. Why do you deserve a better experience than all the women overhearing such insults?

        • outis says:

          DinoNerd:
          In the 19th century, one common way to insult individual men was to compare them with women – this applied even in academic discourse. Its still common in face to face conflict. Why do you deserve a better experience than all the women overhearing such insults?

          Why does he deserve a worse one? If we have decided that it’s bad to use “woman” as an insult, why go out of our way to make “white man” one?

        • AliceToBob says:

          @ Skeptical Wolf

          Thanks for the info. It sounds bizarre and unpleasant.

          @ DinoNerd

          Your position comes across as more vindictive than logical.

        • Why do you deserve a better experience than all the women overhearing such insults?

          That question only makes sense if you believe that those women deserved the insults. If they don’t, if they deserved a better experience than that, why doesn’t he also deserve a better experience than that?

        • DinoNerd says:

          @outis

          Why does he deserve a worse one?

          He doesn’t.

      • John Schilling says:

        My actual feeling is conservatives are being whiny bitches about not being able to express their politics at their private industry jobs when that has always been the norm in the USA. You don’t talk religion or politics at work.

        A: Reported for the “whiny bitches” part. Way to open a dialogue, there.

        B: The norm has been that you don’t talk politics at work. The norm is now, across a large section of the economy, that you talk liberal politics at work. Any of a thousand variations of “Orange Man Bad” are common water-cooler conversation, as are the orthodox liberal positions on race and gender and immigration. Any dissent, any expression of conservative political belief on any of a dozen hot-button issues risks a talking-to by HR on “hostile work environment” grounds, and while actual firings may be rare for now the chilling effect is real. And, as of the past few weeks, I’d wager at least half the Americans in this commentariat have had senior executives of their firm explain that it is the firm’s policy to endorse the orthodox liberal position on race.

        Which I expect will be defended on the grounds that the orthodox liberal positions on those issues are not “political” because they are Too Important For Politics. Which ought to be ignored as Too Silly For Words.

        • AG says:

          I find that this situation tends to occur, ironically, in places that weren’t too ideologically diverse in the first place, which is how they developed the confidence that their politics weren’t politics.

          Workplaces (like mine) where there are actually a good number of people on opposite sides of the aisle tend to develop a culture of not talking politics, and said people on opposite sides of the aisle are still inviting each other to BBQs at their house and such.

        • b_jonas says:

          > The norm has been that you don’t talk politics at work.

          I find this believable. I have a specific memory from shortly before the 2004 referendum. All of us agreed that the norm is no politics within the university but were also too excited about recent news, so I debated politics with a certain professor in the Goldmann György tér tram stop, since that was clearly not part of the campus area and the professor clearly wasn’t in any official capacity anymore. I remember this episode because I now think the argument I gave was wrong, even though the professor couldn’t convince me about that back then, so this is a very rare case when I can identify that I changed my mind about a political belief.

        • Skeptical Wolf says:

          … which is how they developed the confidence that their politics weren’t politics.

          This seems like a fully-general argument against any sort of non-political or politically inclusive space or culture existing. Is that how you intended it?

          It also seems rather uncharitable. When someone describes a change in the political climate of their workplace, my first thought is not normally “They must have failed to realize how political the space was until the winds shifted.”.

          When someone on the left describes feeling uncomfortable in a space they were once comfortable in, is your response “They must not realize that their politics are actually politics”?

      • Deiseach says:

        My actual feeling is conservatives are being whiny bitches about not being able to express their politics at their private industry jobs when that has always been the norm in the USA. You don’t talk religion or politics at work.

        I’d be happy to take that bargain, Uribe, but now I myself in little green Ireland have seen (1) someone putting their preferred pronouns at the end of an email when sending an announcement from an associated state body (2) this month, for the first time I have ever seen it, the front page of the website for the state body that manages our funding, amongst other entities, there’s the rainbow Pride flag and a brief anodyne message about “(we) administer and manage Government and EU funding to address disadvantage and support social inclusion”.

        Now, the day that same body puts up a banner announcing the feast of Corpus Christi (just gone by), or that TERF is an offensive term please don’t use it, then I’ll accept it that we’re just whiny conservatives.

        The Americanisation thing is all too true, if I bother my backside reading or listening to the activists marching in the streets and plainting on social media over here, then I would be convinced that Donald Trump was Uachtarán na h-Éireann and not Michael D. American terms out of the American context are being bolted on to non-American situations in a Frankenstein’s Monster creation. I don’t care a tuppenny damn if the clients we deal with are gay, trans or foreign (we had such clients in my last job – except for the trans and who knows?- and we all managed an attitude of ‘that’s nice, now fill out this form’). I do care that I am expected to get out there and wave the rainbow flag and loudly cheer or else I am being insensitive, discriminatory and in need of remedial training via video courses, when I am not the kind of person who waves flags for anything (e.g. I always forget the ‘wear green to work for St Patrick’s week’ stuff).

        EDIT: I have also seen two examples of progressives being whiny bitches, one someone on Twitter complaining about being tired of being black and queer because the recent Supreme Court decision was being celebrated, it’s okay for white queer people because this is just more privilege for them and another person complaining – in the same week as this decision, remember – that they can be fired from their job just for being trans.

        Some people just want to cling hard to that aura of victimhood no matter what concessions or decisions they are awarded, yeah, Uribe?

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        It’s bad form to get in heated political arguments in real life,

        This used to be the norm.

        And it worked, too. It could be the norm, again.

        My dad said “you don’t discuss politics or religion at a party.” I didn’t quite get it, or why, when he first told me. But I understand now.

        • AG says:

          Thing is, I sympathize with why people tore that norm down. “You don’t discuss politics” can get stifling when people making low-key swipes about you and your stereotypes gets filed under non-political, and so you can’t complain about it. (For example, dress codes that discriminated against black hair styles, or as we discussed several OTs ago, “where are you really from?” small talk, or see the case of Bon Appetit where not talking about it resulted in skewed outcomes. “Man, girls are bad at math” a la XKCD is considered non-political, but objecting to that sentiment is.)

          The Bible doesn’t include the book of Esther for funsies.

          I think that humans are so fallible that tearing the norm down did more harm than good, but understand how it was a tradeoff that they decided to make, because the status quo from before had harms, too.

        • keaswaran says:

          I’ve found that norm really stifling since I moved to Texas. I try to ask my local progressive friends who I should be voting for in local elections, and what their opinions are of the ballot measures we have (nearly as many statewide ballot measures as I had every year in California). But no one wants to talk politics, and so I end up voting in a very uninformed way.

      • cassander says:

        For the record, I work for a media publication that has a decent mix of ideological perspectives, but is still a media company. I got mildly chewed out once when someone overheard me saying in a friendly conversation “Hillary Clinton belongs in jail”. What I actually said was “Hillary belongs in jail and Trump belongs in an asylum”, but the first half of what I said was all that was reported as being too political at work, the second half quietly ignored. The boss that administered the reprimand was a republican who I’m pretty sure agreed with the assertion, and I never found out who complained to him.

        This is not some great tale of woe. I suffered no meaningful consequences from it. But it’s the sort of blatant double standard that pervades corporate america and which really rankles the right wingers I know, because they all have similar stories. We’d be fine with everyone talking about politics, or no one. We’re not fine with some positions being ok and some being forbidden.

      • @Uribe:

        but this new oppression of conservatives in the workplace is nothing new under the sun.

        The complaint some people are making is that the rule has shifted from “You don’t talk religion or politics at work” to “you only talk left wing politics at work.”

        Do you agree with that description, or is your claim that, in the past, it was common to have the rule “you only talk conservative politics at work”?

      • Wrong Species says:

        Who are these conservatives trying to proselytize at work? That’s not a thing. It’s the other side that does that, constantly.

      • Jacobethan says:

        My actual feeling is conservatives are being whiny bitches

        As is our wont.

        ….about not being able to express their politics at their private industry jobs when that has always been the norm in the USA. You don’t talk religion or politics at work.

        At this point I’m largely just echoing what others have said in response to this. But let me be clear that I am in fact extremely in favor of this norm, and am complaining about its apparent rapid deterioration.

      • DinoNerd says:

        Oppression of some people in the workplace, because boss/coworkers/community standards don’t like their politics is nothing new under the sun. And those of us who are old enough to have been in the oppressed group at one time, do tend to find people newly finding themselves in that group kind of “whiny”, or worse, particularly if people with opinions like theirs were previously able to speak freely while we were not.

        Better workplaces simply reject contentious topics entirely – none of us were hired to talk politics at the water cooler, unless we’re working for a politician, after all. But even then it leaks, and some opinions are “non-controversial” and freely expressed, while those who disagree had better keep their mouths tightly shut.

        I personally think it’s unkind to rub one’s political opponents’ noses in their relative inability to speak without unpleasant consequences, but for some categories of opponents, I’d regard the view as so bad that (a) I wouldn’t expect anyone I liked to have that view and (b) I wouldn’t care about the feelings of those who had that view. (Fill in the most crazy egregious beliefs you like for that example – the one that came to mind for me was someone who honestly supported the modest proposal of some women bearing and rasing babies for richer people to eat.)

        That doesn’t mean I don’t do it myself, though generally accidentally. Nor that I don’t take some private delight in people sharing what used to be majority opinions expressing shock and distress at being outshouted, or worse, and their fellow travellers suddenly discovering “freedom of speech”, “oppression”, etc. now that it’s happening to them. And I even do it unfairly, when the person complaining is too young (or from the wrong country) to have personal experience suppressing speech by those who disagree with their positions.

        Human nature, I’m afraid. I’m no better than anyone else, and if I had $100 for every time I shut up and swallowed statements “oppressive” of me, I’d probably be richer than Bezos and Gates combined.

        • John Schilling says:

          Human nature, I’m afraid. I’m no better than anyone else

          That is, I believe, an understatement. Perhaps I misunderstood your previous paragraph, but you seem to be saying that you take pleasure when people like me suffer, even as you acknowledge that it is unfair that we suffer. And that when you are the cause of our suffering, it’s usually an accident.

          You may excuse yourself with the belief that, because “everyone else” does this, it’s OK for you to do it too. That’s easier than trying to be a better person. But, please try to be a better person.

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      I’ve got all of that in a government lab job in the SF Bay area. If I was a high-level manager I’d have to send out emails about how all are welcomed, and would likely feel some pressure to append my preferred pronouns. But I’m not a manager, or even a supervisor.

      Of course this works because I’m not that politically social IRL, or that social at all, so don’t interact enough to notice the “culture” (outside of union activities and a brief flirtation with MoveOn in 2015/6).

      Huh, some of this may have to do with how many people of foreign extraction work in my workplace. To the extent I’ve initiated political conversations it has been about attitudes in their countries of origin, or about basic rights in the US.

      Edit to add: Emails from my union leadership is very liberal, but that can be ignored if I was of a different opinion (heck, I ignore a lot of it now anyway).

    • 205guy says:

      I feel this comment is redefining non-CW to mean right-leaning. In your hypothetical non-CW location, are there lots of bike paths, homeless shelters, abortion clinics, overpriced cafés, and married gay couples holding hands?

      I also think it’s sort of an American thing to talk about moving to align with politics, Europeans don’t have that view. The left has talked about doing the same when Trump was elected, and now you’re saying the right is thinking the same way in response to BLM and cancel culture (which is the first I’ve heard of it—the right wanting to move away). Also, I feel it’s kind of grand to call the strong left-leaning tenets “evangelical” when the actual evangelical movement in America has been so oppressive towards people (women, lgbt, etc) and active in pushing its own cultural politics (creationism, etc).

      As for the Americanization of issue, I assume you are referring to the international rallies in support of BLM. In my view, I think those rallies are two-fold: showing support for Black people in America, and shining a light on the racism and police abuses in their own areas. For example, I’ve seen French news where French-Arabs feel they are discriminated against by white French people (I’ve heard the same-resumé-different-name effect is there too) and also targeted by police with unnecessary violence.

      • SamChevre says:

        I share the OP’s observation, and I’m definitely not defining non-CW as right-leaning. When I started working as a professional 20 years ago, it was absolutely a norm in my profession that professional organizations, and reputable companies, limited their public statements to their specific area of expertise. Actuarial organizations would comment publicly on pension funding, not on police misconduct or historic monuments. Insurance companies would advocate for favorable tax laws, but not for or against gay marriage.

        That norm seems to have disappeared.

        • keaswaran says:

          For what it’s worth, I think that norm was still in place as of February 2020. It’s only after every business had to tell everyone their covid plans that they all started commenting on other things as well.

      • Etoile says:

        I think in some sense non-CW does mean right-leaning in today’s world because left defines part of its platform as simple kindness or civility, and notes that silence is violence, and the right (which is expanding to include people on the left who disagree with the rest of the left) don’t agree.

        If I avoid all Pride, BLM solidarity, etc. activity — I don’t attend events, I don’t post it on social media, I don’t display paraphernalia in my cubicle, don’t post my “preferred pronouns” — is that to be construed in any way as me being racist or homophobic or transphobic? If so, then it is NOT CW-free. Because if I am socially pressured to engage, it is a CW-space, and it is the left which usually forces you to engage; maybe in some workplaces, like Houston oil or small family businesses – it’s the reverse, and people push religion on you, but that’s definitely not an issue for the biggest companies across the country, like big tech and big healthcare ones.

      • Deiseach says:

        In your hypothetical non-CW location, are there lots of bike paths, homeless shelters, abortion clinics, overpriced cafés, and married gay couples holding hands?

        We have a rake of bike paths over here and the couple running the overpriced café were lesbian (though it was not overpriced and was very popular). Homeless shelters yes, that’s a perennial problem to get enough funding and placements, and no abortion clinics yet but thanks to our newly passed legislation that yet may happen.

        Now, would you like to ask us righties if we’ve stopped beating our wives yet?

      • Jacobethan says:

        In your hypothetical non-CW location, are there lots of bike paths, homeless shelters, abortion clinics, overpriced cafés, and married gay couples holding hands?

        Maybe yes, maybe no. I’m talking about discourse norms, not substantive policy.

        If the debate over what level of shelters/clinics/cafes to have stays within its own discrete box that people who are agnostic or indifferent are free to ignore while still pursuing the things that actually interest them through the full range of associational life, then it’s non-CW.

        To the degree that school and church and museums and sports and hobbyist groups and the workplace and the media devolve into so many occasions for obligatory hectoring and virtue-signaling on one side or another of the great Shelter/Clinic/Cafe Question, then it’s CW.

        Also, I feel it’s kind of grand to call the strong left-leaning tenets “evangelical” when the actual evangelical movement in America has been so oppressive towards people (women, lgbt, etc) and active in pushing its own cultural politics (creationism, etc).

        Look, you’re free to fight me on the “Is Wokeness a Religion?” issue. But insofar as it is “like a religion” in some sense, it seems clear enough to me that the sort of religion it’s like is, in its emotional temperature, much more revivalist and evangelical than, say, High Church Anglican.

        Another way of putting this is that America is historically a pretty evangelical country, and American social movements tend to partake of a strongly evangelical character, regardless of whether they come from the “left” or the “right.”

      • DinoNerd says:

        @205guy

        I’m not sure whether this is a direct response to Jacobethan, or whether it’s one level down in the hierarchy – this UI makes it hard to tell.

        Assuming the former, I disagree. Uribe brought in a more specific tribal orientation, and most of the discussion took off from there. Jacobethan’s request seemed neutral to me.

    • original-internet-explorer says:

      I share your concern. There is a lot of value we get from America but this is real.

      In my country bad political decisions and cultural problems all stem back to the American Culture War.

      One of our politicians set up the migration system such that tens of thousands of Nigerians migrated here just because they wanted to. Now we have lots of anti racist screeds in newspapers and anti-racist slogans spraypainted in train stations. The entire project is obviously from the American Culture War and has nothing to do with our context. I know from personal experience the attitude of the Irish changed from openness to black residents to suspicion their presence is not warranted.

      And I’m going to say it. The guy who did this was Jewish, lives in New York culture and heavily influenced by the American Culture War and his Progressive SJ beliefs. He’s a walking alt-right stereotype. I understand what he was going for with his ideals – I understand he thought he was performing a moral action – and I understand also that his effort is in the end a form of progressive accelerationism.

      When somebody of my race or class or political faction does something bad – it’s important for me to come out and say Not In My Name. A while back there was an attack on a synagogue in America where Jews were killed. I wanted to come here and say that didn’t represent me – but felt it was easier not to – to not open to possible attack – and I think now that was a mistake on my part even if I received verbal abuse. So I understand when black communities are mute when their people are badly behaved and why a Jewish American might feel they don’t want to possibly further antisemitism by putting a spotlight on immoral behaviour by a Jew but I think in the end we are all the better if we are saying without equivocation that some people don’t represent us – because the signal to the other factions is unmistakable when we fail to act – it might be invisible but it is not overlooked. People notice hypocrisy – that is the hidden source of aggravation that gets worse in time. In a way it’s not hard to stop – I just had to let go of the feeling I was ceding something and I know when I’ve heard black Americans acknowledge the problems of their culture or Muslims acknowledge the cancers in theirs it is like balm on a wound.

      This might sound stupid sometimes – surely I as right winger don’t need to explain I’m not for genocide of blacks or what have you – but actually there is going to be somebody out there who has the feeling I’m tacitly in support of such a thing and because that could be an interpretation I have to say overtly what I’m about or my allies in other factions just won’t have much to work with and might one day have the same suspicions if my faction isn’t restraining the impulses of their worst type and is silent. The most recent example we should have said something was the New Zealand attack. The problem as I see it is there exists a ratchet. We might think enough time passes and this goes away but it doesn’t – it just pegs into a higher slot with each event – and the only force that moves the ratchet down is where different groups feel compelled to be charitable to each other. The problem with the Culture War is it becomes difficult to cede a point you should be making to allow the game to remain fair – even the worst partisans have a principal of fairplay but ceding anything is rare because when each faction feels like it’s being backed into a corner it becomes attached to its precious positions even if the result is terrible.

      • Deiseach says:

        One of our politicians set up the migration system such that tens of thousands of Nigerians migrated here just because they wanted to.

        …And I’m going to say it. The guy who did this was Jewish, lives in New York culture and heavily influenced by the American Culture War and his Progressive SJ beliefs. He’s a walking alt-right stereotype. I understand what he was going for with his ideals – I understand he thought he was performing a moral action – and I understand also that his effort is in the end a form of progressive accelerationism.

        I might be very confused here, is the politician you are alluding to someone with the initials A.S.? Because “New York culture” isn’t what I’d associate with him, and while he is certainly very socially progressive in certain matters, he’s perfectly conservative in other ways (e.g. I don’t think he was hounded out of office and I do think he was too cosy with the police management and behaved in a high-handed manner). In sum, he’s a grandee of his particular party culturally and with regards to class.

        • original-internet-explorer says:

          You might be correct here – I’m in the habit of confusing a few different characters from FG – usually A.S and Peter Sunderland and another one I can’t remember.

          The country is bedeviled – as I see it – by the absence of an Irish version of the Tory. I’m sticking my neck out there but I’m holding onto that – Edmund Burke has to be resuscitated. I’m sure if he was around we would have housing and land reforms, more original thought sparked in all areas.

      • Etoile says:

        Man, the vicious cycle of people being stereotypical, and then the majority responds to the stereotype, and then it reinforces the stereotype, and then tensions and bad things ensue — it’s so hard to break.

        I’m a Jewish woman, and I’ll say I hate seeing that sort of thing. It pains me to see this just like it pains me when business-people and entrepreneurs treat employees like shit; when men, particularly right-wing men, treat women even on their side like shit. It sets back any kind of personal advocacy I might engage it to make the world more liberal (classically), more sane, more economically free, etc.

        BUT I’ll also say: ok, but when someone decides that they don’t like the fact that I’m Jewish, are they going to care that I said “not in my name”? Or am I condemned by blood? There’s no winning, unless I abandon the Jewish identity entirely and keep it secret – then maybe nobody will care. And it is true that a certain subset of people will view actions I take completely naturally — but if they find out I’m Jewish, it will be me “doing those actions while Jewish” and the actions take on completely new significance. And I have *no way* of proving them otherwise.

        I don’t know how to solve this problem, other than people being judged on their individual merits, and that becoming the standard again.

        • original-internet-explorer says:

          The cure is better conversation and defecting on bad team players. I don’t think Hsu is bad but Stefan is in that category for me – he is too activated for his own good – and he needs to be in debate with another rightist like Sowell who agrees with him on something and has written books in his topic area – not a liberal or a leftist.

          On the minister’s case – he did it for the same reasons Deiseach said – it’s the memes in his culture and class because it’s the same kind of political mistake Angela Merkel made – the blindspot of social progressives. This said – I cannot provide cover because antisemitism went up because of his actions. He is the author of his actions and should have known he was trading virtue points in exchange for racial animus later. It would be an error to whitewash – it doesn’t work as a tactic because if political partisans have one virtue it is that they found x-ray vision at discerning just where the flaws of the other factions are. I’d have all the time in the world for him if he came out and said he made a mistake.

          It does feel like a bind – it would be immoral to make anybody to feel ashamed of their heritage or ancestry – I hate to see that. Eric Weinstein was talking about how horrifying it would be were Germans forced to debase themselves before him when referring to the cringe videos of whites being made to kneel and swear oaths against racism – but there is a big wave of this disturbing behaviour being promoted and most of the anti-semitic tropes are the same class as the ones against anybody of European ancestry – so you are not alone in this feeling that winning is not one of the possible options.

          The way to get rid of the gotchas is I believe for each faction or group to call out their own faction’s problem behaviours, blindspots, weaknesses in plain language in public. This risks being interpreted as being antisocial – but it’s possible to be diplomatic and speak plainly at the same time. In my country we sooner or later had to have a conversation and cultural change around men mistreating their wives. I believe the British newspapers had that as a trope about us – but that changed and our culture doesn’t stand for that anymore – we developed new problems – we can talk about those another time.

          Without an open conversation people are left with the darkest possible interpretation to grow in their minds – the right is fearing that the left is using transgender rights to one day forward sex with minors – were prominent LGBT people to affirm that is not part of their program and never will be – they aren’t ceding ground even if it feels like opening the gate to attack and most partisans would be more charitable in the next round. Another version of this is where some Jewish guys were coming out against circumcision and that gave them points with me because they weren’t going private with their concern and acting as a monolithic block.

          There is skeletons is everybody’s closet – as some people here have pointed out there is some merit to some Social Justice ideas and a conversation can be had – but what we see presented to us in the media is this holier than thou attitude offending everybody except themselves. Most transgenders I’ve met are not crazy – and these people never appear on television right? I seem to remember in the earlier days of television there was real conversations between people with different politics – and that counted for something. Here on SSC we can talk one to one – a liberal I presume to a rightist – and that’s how it should be more widely. I’m confident at the meet-ups most people are very different and still reasonable – that is the culture to promote – the liberalism of the cafe or coffeehouse with scones and some forgiveness for error instead of the trench warfare we see each day on social media. The world is becoming boring – it gets more noticeable each day – we’ve become too synchronized by the social media and it will end with a series of moral panics.

          • The way to get rid of the gotchas is I believe for each faction or group to call out their own faction’s problem behaviours, blindspots, weaknesses in plain language in public.

            The clearest example I know of that was George Orwell.

          • original-internet-explorer says:

            @DavidFriedman

            It’s like the Vatican’s devil’s advocate – you need Orwells for each stakeholder in a policy. Opposition partisans seem to be good at spotting policy errors connected to different values but the inside baseball spots other types of mistakes – policy possibilities that rest in a faction blindspot.

            One of my pet examples of something that seems missing in policy space is precached genetic searches for organ transplants like bone marrow. This would be positive for all people but most of all those rare biracial combinations – it would break your heart to look at the websites set up for this purpose. I have never heard a Leftist or a Liberal discuss solutions to this – when I bring it up it’s waved away and I became suspicious it’s because the proposal isn’t interpreted charitably. If you had the inside baseball right liberal reviewing healthcare policy and genomics – mandating organ matching in advance of illness seems to me like an easy win. I could be mistaken here but nobody has explained to me why I am and my suspicion is the inside baseball person could steelman the case in a way other factions find to be acceptable.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @original-internet-explorer

            I agree something like this is a good idea. Given security breaches the fundamental concern is something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8MmNs35590
            https://www.imdb.com/list/ls002260628/

          • original-internet-explorer says:

            @anonymousskimmer

            The grimdark version I watched was called The Promised Neverland – recommended!

            The response I get suggests – usually ignorance there exists a cause of harm by not being proactive – but sometimes I sense it’s the topic of race being radioactive and short circuiting the brain.

            It makes sense for all people to have precached entries instead of searching for possible matches at the point of organ failures – late by years not weeks. In the ideal when you are a newborn the matches are found and arrangements organized were any from that category in need of assistance.

            The West has a horrible Not Invented Here Syndrome – there are useful ideas in the Iranian, Russian, Japanese medical systems like sanctioned organ markets, phage therapy and preventative healthcare like Ningen Dock. I’m not an expert in these areas – but I don’t hear compelling arguments against adoption. I searched a lot on Ningen Dock and know nobody has heard of it so they can’t have argued it’s a bad idea.

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      I think we are still pretty good in Ireland, even if the media have been infected to some extent with the American psychosis. You can have opinions across a pretty wide spectrum without a lot of people deciding that’s the only important thing about you.

      • original-internet-explorer says:

        @Gerry

        You have to pay heed to the small reveals – the direction we’re going in is not positive.

        In the last 10 years I’ve seen more gates, cameras and security systems and the people I speak with sometimes imply it’s because of blacks and illegals – and there has been a lot of shocking murders we didn’t have before. These used to be rare I’m sure you recall. It doesn’t have to be about a specific race – it can be a sign of social stresses opening cracks. It’s a sort of ecology where one animal in its niche can change the behaviour of other animals in ways which are not obvious.

        We are also seeing the same caste pattern in the UK and USA where blacks or POC are becoming classified automatically as an underclass while most whites get a strange upgrade we didn’t have before and the different groups are moving into places where they can remain separated. This isn’t as formalized yet but it’s happening fast because we are learning from the Americans instead of thinking for ourselves

        None of this is said outright – it just happens and then we gaslight the left by saying it’s not happening and they interpret all of it as bigotry. Meanwhile the newspapers start to overlook ethnic and cultural criminality and the right swells with us natives. To date the liberals in government are mostly keeping their eye on the ball but the American CW is going to keep throwing us new additions to play with and the minute our Liberals become as corrupted as the American versions we are in the same trouble they are now.

    • cassander says:

      San Diego seems a remarkably sensible place, the biggest city in the country where republicans aren’t totally marginal, but not particularly red tribe.

      • Jacobethan says:

        San Diego is a really good call. At least that was my impression of it going back a while, don’t know how it’s changed since.

        I’d wondered a bit about Miami. “Remarkably sensible” is probably not the description we’re going for, but South Florida would also seem to have a specifically local form of conservatism — the whole anti-Castro thing — that doesn’t really map onto what we’d normally think of as Red Tribe either. But I haven’t really spent any time there and I’m not sure how strong that tendency is with the younger generations.

      • Reasoner says:

        San Diego is just to the north of Tijuana and is also substantially safer than it, right? I imagine that contrast could create appreciation for the fact that America still does some things well.

        They’ve also got a big military base right?

    • AliceToBob says:

      In terms of countries (other economically advanced), how would Japan rank? I honestly don’t know, but I personally haven’t seen any CW issues involving them.

      • AG says:

        Conflict is brewing in Japan, though. Conversations and activism about their culture’s ethnic discrimination, homophobia, right nationalism, and police brutality are increasing. This is what I mean above about how the “no talking about CW” norm is sometimes simply mandating the conservative view as the default.

      • John Schilling says:

        The Japanese culture war runs along different lines than the American one, for obvious reasons. Not much point in e.g. arguing about whether Black Lives Matter when there’s only a few thousand black people living in your country. So if you’re an American looking for someplace to move where “The Culture War” isn’t going to be a problem, maybe Japan is a place where you could simply ignore the whole thing.

        Small probability of that working out really bad if the “All foreigners really are hopeless barbarians, and the Americans were especially evil barbarians for picking on us in WWII” faction wins the Japanese Culture War, but I think that’s only slightly more likely than the white supremacists winning the US Culture War. For now, it’s a fairly marginal position.

    • Doesntliketocomment says:

      I’m going to be bombastic about this: The reason there seems to be no safe haven anymore form the culture war is because this is quite literally World War 3.

      WWI and WW2 were as earth shattering as they were was because at the start* Europe was the wheelhouse of the world. (*but not by the end) The main European powers called the tune and the world danced, and so when they decided to really go at it with a fervor that would have made Napoleon blush, the rest of the world from the most backwater Siberian hamlet to the heart of Africa, was compelled to join in.

      So Europe faded, and in the last 60 years the US has come to dominate the globe in a way that has likely not be equaled in the last 1000. US cultural detritus can be found at the heart of the Amazon, the bottom of the ocean, and on the airless surface of the moon. American artifacts have even pierced the heliosphere. But for all this might, who is really in charge of the US? By design, the United states was not built around a people but an ideology, and a half-formed one at that. So we come to a place where all of this power and influence has no clear direction, no ownership. Unclaimed power beckons to men, and its calls are seldom unheeded. Sides have formed to claim this mantle, their hodgepodge ideologies are designed more for opposition than consistency. Taken as a whole they make little sense, with individual causes picked the way children might draft each other for a soccer match.

      What we are seeing now is a fight in the cockpit of the world. Until this is put to rest, it will continue to expand until encompasses every human being, whether they understand it or not. So when looking for islands insulated from the storm, keep in mind that they might not last.

    • keaswaran says:

      > a large segment of US elite institutions may have become irretrievably committed to a project of Blue Tribe inculturation

      I think this is a mistake. This large segment of US elite institutions has *always* been irretrievably committed to a project of inculturation into a very specific culture. Our politics has also had a Republican-Democratic axis for over 150 years. Separately, there has also been a culture war in the United States for well over 150 years. It’s quite well-known that the partisan axis and the culture war axis have rotated in this higher-dimensional cultural space in various different ways over the decades, with one period of alignment in the mid to late 19th century, and another period of (reverse) alignment in the past 20 years or so. But it’s less appreciated that the US elite institutional axis has *also* rotated gradually in this space, and is currently very aligned with these aligned political and cultural axes. This can make it seem like it’s a new thing for universities to be a place where people are brainwashed into elite globalist white culture. But that’s always been what they are primarily about, with knowledge of math and science and social science and humanities being a tool that is incidentally provided along the way.

      • original-internet-explorer says:

        If this is true there should exist undiscovered scientific development – unexplored parts of the tech tree in easy reach.

      • cassander says:

        This large segment of US elite institutions has *always* been irretrievably committed to a project of inculturation into a very specific culture. Our politics has also had a Republican-Democratic axis for over 150 years.

        True, but prior to the 1930s, it didn’t matter all that much. the biggest prize you could win was a federal government that controlled a couple percent of GDP, and used most of that to hire soldiers and postmen. Today the prize for winning is orders of magnitude more power and influence.

  149. anonymousskimmer says:

    Are there many liberals who think Woodrow Wilson sucked (notwithstanding his support of women’s suffrage) and Calvin Coolidge didn’t suck [2][3-updated 2 in pdf form]?

    • keaswaran says:

      Most liberals think Woodrow Wilson is a deeply problematic figure. Even if we ignore the stuff about the KKK, resegregating the White House, and women’s suffrage, and just focus on the famous stuff theorizing about what a nation should be, and the treaty that replaced Westphalia as the more modern statement of what a nation is, it’s heavily mixed with both good and bad. It enshrines an idea of popular sovereignty, which is generally good, but it also ends the Westphalian idea that a state is a mere political entity, and replaces it with an ethnic identity – Versailles is all about self-determination of *peoples*, not of individuals. And of course, the actual League of Nations mandates drawn up by France and the UK didn’t really respect the ideas at all anyway. But his ideas reflected the Progressivism of his time, which is quite interesting, and still progressive in many ways, but also deeply flawed.

      By contrast, I don’t know of anyone, of any political persuasion, who has much of an opinion at all about Coolidge. The articles you link are interesting, but this is just one person mentioning a single event twice, and doesn’t really tell me much about Coolidge’s general attitudes or policies. Before this, basically all I know about Coolidge is that he was famously “Silent Cal” – there’s the story of some woman who met him at a party and said her friend had bet her that she couldn’t get him to say three words to her that evening, and he replied “you lose”. I guess I also know that he’s some paradigm of “rock-ribbed” New England Republicanism (I don’t know what “rock-ribbed” means exactly, but it’s somehow always used for old-school Vermont and New Hampshire Republicans).

      Harding had famously the most corrupt presidency between Jackson and Trump (with only Grant competing). And Hoover is a fascinating character, though neither the pro- nor contra-Hoover case is quite as interesting as the cases for Wilson. But to my mind, Coolidge is just a blank in between them, sort of like how I think of the presidencies from 1840-1855 and 1884-1899. (Hmm, somehow those gaps in my mind are actually shorter than I expected them to be, given how many presidents did nothing of interest in those periods.)

      • cassander says:

        By contrast, I don’t know of anyone, of any political persuasion, who has much of an opinion at all about Coolidge.

        Libertarians love him

        Harding had famously the most corrupt presidency between Jackson and Trump (with only Grant competing).

        really? you’re leaving out LBJ, who stole the election in texas and made a fortune on getting favors from the government? Or nixon, who was, you know, Nixon?

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          I believe Harding (or at least his administration) was just so bad that it blows the rest out of the water.

          Johnson’s stuff appeared to happen outside of the Presidency. While Nixon merely set out to burgle the Dems and cover it up (that thing with Vietnam happened before the election).

          • cassander says:

            Johnson’s crimes started before the presidency, but there’s no reason to assume they didn’t continue. We won’t know the details until Caro finishes his damn book. I’d be shocked if even a generous assessment of how much trump has profited from the presidency came close to johnson’s. LBJ’s net worth is usually recorded at 9 figures in the 1960s, despite growing up dirt poor, marrying middle class at best, and working for the government his whole life.

            And nixon got strung up for more than a single burglary.

      • anonymousskimmer says:

        Thanks for this informative post.

  150. Deiseach says:

    As if I have any right to be even mildly surprised about how the sausage is made, but apparently we won our seat on the U.N. Security Council at the expense of Canada because when coaxing the foreign envoys and national representatives to give us a job (a) they preferred U2 to Celine Dion and (b) we’ve spent the past twenty years throwing the jar into them 🙂

    Critics question the cost and effort required from years of lobbying, including the endless meetings, wining and dining for Ireland in foreign countries, to win the temporary seat.

    An Irish diplomat once joked there were “no crustaceans left on the sea bed” after the culinary hospitality showered on foreign envoys during the campaign to win a seat 20 years ago.

    It is hard to fathom that a singsong with overseas guests in a Co Cork seaside village could have helped Ireland’s election to a United Nations Security Council seat this week, but it did.

    The night out in a pub in Crosshaven came during a visit by political leaders from small island developing states around the world to a conference on oceans and the climate.

    The Department of Foreign Affairs wanted to build an emotional connection between the islands of the world by inviting them to the SeaFest maritime festival in Cork in June 2019.

    …After speeches from the stage in the shadow of the Le Corbusier UN building in Manhattan, Bono and Ireland’s ambassador at the UN Geraldine Byrne-Nason – described by the U2 singer as “Ireland’s secret weapon in New York” – were mobbed by country ambassadors. They were later treated to a U2 gig at Madison Square Garden a few blocks away. The Canadians, as part of their campaign, invited ambassadors to a Celine Dion concert in March.

    “All I can say is we got 128 votes and they got 108 so Bono should feel very proud of his popularity,” said Mr Coveney, joking, when asked about what this says about the two singers.

    …Mr Coveney believes last year’s get-together in a Co Cork seaside village helped win the seat in the final stretch of the campaign but it will be brought up again as a reminder of promises made.

    “When you ring people to make sure they’re still onside, and they remind you of a sing-song in Crosshaven, you know you are are winning,” he said.

    “But those people will be back to us on the security council, if they have an issue. They will be reminding us of Crosshaven too, saying: ‘You said you would help us; now we’re asking for help.’”

    Take note, Canada, and up your schmoozing game! 😀

    • Erusian says:

      As someone who’s lived in DC and been to embassy parties etc, a huge amount of the sausage getting made is kitschy stuff like this. People obsess over who’s going to what party, who wore it best, who threw the best party, etc. There’s a huge amount of wealthy socialites who make money off government connections floating around and ambassadors are often just sponsored versions of those wealthy socialites. (As are lobbyists.)

    • bullseye says:

      Does that mean we got our permanent seat because of Elvis?

  151. Edward Scizorhands says:

    Jeremiah said:
    “I hear the whisperings of many:
    ‘Terror on every side!
    Denounce! let us denounce him!’
    All those who were my friends
    are on the watch for any misstep of mine.
    ‘Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail,
    and take our vengeance on him.’

    • CatCube says:

      This was the reading I had to do for our online church service this week. That passage jumped out at me, too.

    • AG says:

      Didn’t God also say that he was going to harden hearts in this case, though? To punish them for their faithlessness.
      I got the impression that Isaiah was like their last chance to turn it around, while Jeremiah needlessly suffered as a Cassandra.