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This struck me as amusing, for whatever reason; it’s the kind of click-bait headline that one feels vaguely ashamed for falling for it, but on the other hand – revenge of the maths nerds? If you can’t get a partner now, you’ll have your moment (and plenty of them) in later life? 🙂
Maths skill adds up to more sex – study
Scott, that essay your wrote is stimulating a lot of thought in me. Thanks for writing it. I agree with your basic argument there. Social and conscious power are very much like a variant of noblesse oblige where the nobility endure insults from the peasants, because they know the nobility’s own power, and the peasants’ lack of power, is quite stable. Thus, the idea that social and conscious power of the underprivileged needs to increase until it turns into structural and unconscious power, makes no sense.
Scott, I notice that essay you wrote that I linked to above, is 3 years old. Yet it’s at the heart of much of what has been discussed on this open thread here and now today. If you have any further thoughts on this important issue, would you do another post on it some time?
Wow, I just found this that Scott wrote. I am new to the site and haven’t read all Scott’s stuff yet. Some real gems there.
This essay by Scott relates to a lot of the gender and racial issues people have been discussing here today.
An analysis of the formalist account of power relations in democratic societies
http://squid314.livejournal.com/354385.html?page=2#comments
It’s nice to hear that I won’t get linked from SSC to Scott’s older writings from now on, as a response to my comments on here.
I’ve been thinking about getting a blog recently, but worried about the privacy stuff and about hostile commenters (and the small fact of staring at a blank doc and not knowing what to say first and foremost). (Will still stick to a private .docx for now.) Then I thought of browsing Scott’s old LJ for references as to how other people I now read were writing at my age. Encouraging, but still.
“It’s nice to hear that I won’t get linked from SSC to Scott’s older writings from now on, as a response to my comments on here.”
Huh? People link to Scott’s older writings in here a fair amount, and I like people to do that myself. Since I am new to the board, I often don’t know that Scott has written a post about the very subject we are discussing.
That’s what I meant.
Some of these issues about people insulting someone who is romantically interested in them, rather than just saying “Sorry, you’re not my type” are more rank issues than gender issues.
If a person is alpha, or thinks they are, in attractiveness, success, social class etc., then they might feel free to insult someone whom they see as beta. Almost everyone is beta– or not the best looking or most successful person at a large party- so that puts most women and most men in that category.
“Women, you have to treat ’em like shit”: a new ad turns Trump’s quotes against him
http://www.vox.com/201/3/14/11224468/donald-trump-women-ad
It’s abuse of rank, really. This board is predominantly men. And men hate this, so we are hearing a lot about this here. But women hate this too. And they are more often on the receiving end of it than men are, because most aggressive or insulting people are men, even though they may not be a large percentage of the total.
A lot of social activists of all kinds of stripes try to be aggressive and alpha like and in your face, because they think that will get them to their goals. It doesn’t necessarily though. Sometimes they end up just driving people away, and keeping themselves out of most conversations about the issues of interest to them. Or else they end up shutting up these conversations, so no progress can be made, as things are at a standstill–, and you can’t even speak about the issue, much less move forward on it.
Please for the love of all that is holy find some other nomenclature than alpha and beta.
What do you prefer? High rank and low rank? Don’t ignore my point here because you prefer different nomenclature.
In the way the term was originally used, as a strong aggressive ape who could survive and help his tribe to, maybe 0% of people are really alpha. Trump probably couldn’t survive in the wilderness for a day or 2.
It is preferable to use BRUTE and BETA CUCKOLD ORBITER.
Chad and BETA CUCKOLD ORBITER*
“Chad” is quite possibly the most universal case of nominative determinism (in the broad sense).
It’s because the Alpha / Beta / Omega heirarchy has been heavily promoted by the manosphere as part of the “red pill” set of beliefs.
“Alpha fux, beta bux” is a typical formulation. That women generally look for sexually aggressive antisocial personalities for fun in their youth, only deigning to have sex with stable prosocial shlubs after their peak attractiveness has long since past and they’ve accumulated an unacceptably high number of sexual partners.
I think the original idea, which you mirror, has a lot of value. But it’s been turned into something a bit crasser and less useful over the last few years.
Both men and women can be naive and stupid when they’re young and can date Mr. or Miss Wrong because of that.
Regardless of gender, a lot of women do tend to long for that one most rich successful guy in their social group. And a lot of men for that one most attractive woman. And then everyone else may not have so many dates.
But it happens to, and is done by, both genders.
I should have made more clear that I was describing the view, rather than endorsing it per se.
That said, I fail to see what your response has to do with the standard Red Pill view. I could see the argument that both sides settle in middle age and aren’t thrilled with the partners they could reasonably get. But your point about rich men is neither here nor there: the alpha personality is just as often a DJ or violent criminal as a rich guy.
Well, my point is that many or most women prefer rich guys, even if they are not particularly aggressive. Perhaps I should replace alpha with rich, in the case of men. Of course, there are also some women who won’t go out with a rich asshole or a rich guy they consider not aggressive enough.
Most women don’t do that, though. They sleep with a few guys, and then pick from that list to marry. Even women who become single mothers mostly follow that pattern. It’s a Pareto problem, taking what a small percentage of women do and extrapolating that it’s the norm in the face of sex partner and sex life data to different effect entirely.
A lot of research into a typical hunter/gatherer society shows that foraging / fishing / trapping is easier than hunting for game. Men who need to support children would actually temporarily restrain from hunting and instead forage.
I’m not sure this is right – at least when it comes to dating. Dynamics are different. Men are required to be aggressive and make the first move – the risk of rejection is almost entirely borne by them.
A woman who is sensitive about being rejected can go through life never putting herself on the line like that and still have plenty of opportunities to date. Men simply cannot. Your choice is “face your terrible fear of rejection or be alone forever.” Period.
We’ve already noted that on dating websites, the overwhelming majority of first messages are sent by men. All a woman has to do is make a profile and wait for hundreds of offers to come streaming in. Men have to beg hundreds of women for attention in order to get it from one or two.
The dynamics of going to bars or whatever is basically the same. I’ve been described as about average-looking in terms of attractiveness by several friends both male and female. Want to know how many times, in my life (age 30) I’ve been approached by a woman and had the opportunity to make an accept/reject decision? That’s right – zero. I’m not sure my experience is that atypical.
To be sure, it *can* happen that a girl will make the first move, and a guy will reject her in a rude and hurtful manner. But to act like that’s just as common strikes me as very dishonest.
I’d also bet that men are far more willing to accept partners “below” their own rank than women are generally. Not quite *as* comfortable with this – but it strikes me that I see a LOT more “high rank guy with low rank girl” couples than I do “high rank girl with low rank guy” couples.
I’d also say that men who reject women based on rank are generally looked down upon, even by other men (most average guys on a college campus don’t think too highly of the “alpha” types); whereas we’ve already discussed how the term “creep” was invented specifically so women can communicate to other women that they too should avoid this guy for having the temerity to consider himself worthy of affection.
Less than attractive women are put down even when they did not try to hit on a guy. And women are put down and/or not given credit for their intelligence frequently in the workplace. Women are often treated as if we are just bodies that may be desirable sexually if we are attractive, but in many settings, we are not likely to be considered valuable or given due credit in other ways. And a woman who isn’t attractive is often invisible to men. At least most women see men, even men who are not their type.
Yeah, there’s Sheryl Sandberg for women, and there’s Obama for blacks. But they are not typical. They are just a bit past being tokens.
Ranks are different for men and women. There is some effect of socioeconomic class. But, at the risk of oversimplification, in American society, a man is his wallet and a woman is what her body looks like, in comparison to women on TV and in the movies. Those are the rank system. People of either gender who don’t fit into at least an average rank within their own gender rank system, often have difficult lives during adolescence and young adulthood.
Women are valued, but not respected.
Men are respected, but not valued.
Stolen from previous discussion here.
I am well above average in attractiveness and my life was much more difficult during that timeframe than for average or below attractiveness women. This was pre-internet though.
Do you know why that was the case? There are general cultural tendencies, but we all have our own family and peer and community situations, that may not be the average. They can be unusual, or traumatic, or favor some kinds of individuals above others in ways that are not true of the general culture.
It was the general cultural experience for myself and other women above average in attractiveness. Which is why I question the notion that it’s generally so terrible for less attractive women. They tend to get better promotions for example, in my and those other womens’ experiences.
There are a lot of factors at work here.
If some less attractive women spent most of their time on learning what they needed to know to advance in their careers, and just gave up on being concerned with dating, they would end up with more promotions.
But then whether they were better off then would depend on how much they wanted or enjoyed promotions vs. dating.
A lot of things about dating are random too. It’s really a matter of luck. to some extent, given that you are attractive enough, whether someone you are attracted to, is also attracted to you. Maybe you have no common interests, maybe they are already committed etc. Maybe they are looking for a specific type that is not who you are.
Apparently auto mechanics classes and golf courses are places with good gender ratios for women to meet men. And churches and cooking classes and dancing classes for men to meet women.
Cities offer more people and more variety usually, unless you live in an introverted city like Seattle.
And then there’s the matter of how high your standards are, and exactly what you are looking for in a date.
And then people who have lots of dates aren’t necessarily happy. There’s the matter of whether and to what extent you get along with your dates– which depends on what kind of person you choose to date, and also what your own pattern of relating is.
At the very least, as a lonely guy I can console himself with the potential of one day becoming attractive, either through intelligence, lifting or money. A really unattractive woman has no reasons to have hope left.
Sometimes that is so. A couple of guys whom I really liked when I was young, decided to date women who were less attractive than I was, because of having common interests or values with them and not with me. That was unusual though.
Common interests and values are indeed important for a longer term relationship. And some guys don’t need to have their girlfriend look like the women on TV.
” A really unattractive woman has no reasons to have hope left.”
A not obviously relevant story.
A very long time ago I spent a summer in Canberra. One of the other residents of the building I was staying in was a man who had at some point been badly burned. His face looked so horrible that I found looking at it him unpleasant.
For some reason we got into conversation, he turned out to be an interesting person, and looking at his face was no longer unpleasant.
I think the pattern holds for dating. The woman you see as homely when you meet her as a stranger becomes pleasant to look at when you know and like her.
I have seen a similar effect on a much shorter time scale. The same woman who appears rather uninteresting at the moment suddenly becomes attractive when she is looking at her boyfriend and projecting “I love you” in her facial expression.
And I’m not the boyfriend, just someone observing strangers and reacting to them.
Speaking as someone who studies attractiveness for a hobby (that’s one self-flattering way of saying “gawking at people a lot”), you all factor in waaay too high money, muscles, and intelligence for guys, and waaay too low money and intelligence for women.
FYI: Money and good looks are correlated for both genders. Plastic surgery is a thing, it’s about the most expensive and the most effective way to modify looks (most causes of ugliness are morphological, meaning, not acne or fashion, but bone structure and fat distribution etc.). Most of people who have bad haircuts or clothes owe these things to bad judgment rather than money, but if you use whatever intelligence you have for picking up on cues on what people like in someone’s appearance and what they don’t, which btw is something most if not all humans are very incentivised to do, you can fix your bad judgment as well, by surrounding yourself with enough peers who express disapproval of your fashion choices.
Physical beauty matters for guys as well, and facial traits also factor into physical beauty. Whoever thinks women have no reason to fuck/form relationships with men unless they’re given material stuff in exchange, or that they do it because they submit to his dominance or something, has very hosed up views about women and should probably stick to prostitutes. As Moldbug says (if that’s a voice you people would respect), if it could be formalised it should be. Yeah, okay, there’s very probably a class of people consisting of guys who aspire to be sugar daddies to get laid, and women who aspire to be golddiggers to earn their living, but that doesn’t constitute the majority and you shouldn’t enter the field with this premise in mind. Muscles count about as much as lack of fat does, too, and generally being extremely physically imposing is more likely to matter in a possible physical altercation with another guy than it is likely to matter in impressing a woman. There’s something in our country which we call a “thick-nape”. You know, when the guy’s neck forms a straight line going from his occipital area to his cervical vertabrae. It’s basically how the high-fat/high-muscle combination looks like. That’s synonymous with “boor”, and newsflash, women don’t like that very much.
Money matters very much in how attractive a woman looks, for those of us who haven’t noticed. Nice clothes, hair care, makeup, the aforementioned plastic surgery which has the potential of turning an uggo into a passably attractive person (and vice versa) — they all cost something. When a hypothetical golddigger gets money off her sugar daddy, she mostly invests it in looks-related stuff. Not books or stocks or anything of the kind. Because maintaining these sorts of looks costs money. A really unattractive woman, as the parent comment mentions, has loads and loads of avenues for improving her dating prospects through appearance, which I’ve mentioned above. Basically every upper-class woman, no matter her genes, has found some way to presentablility. Ugliness is a fixable problem with enough money for both genders.
And, of course, when people on the left end of the normal distribution of good looks try to find a date, if they have some sense and no willingness to go through all this shallow process of aesthetic self-improvement, they settle for someone on their beauty level and discover the wonders of a good personality and other non-physical characteristics.
Then there’s the fact that sex =/= love and fuckability does not necessarily translate into romantic fulfillment (just ask me) and you all manage to discuss the whole matter of male/female coupling without even mentioning love much, which is, how do I put it, missing the essential ingredient of all this. Call me a naive fool, but it still matters.
This whole open thread is full of incel stuff, which is why I hesitated getting involved until now, despite (or particularly because of) being one. Either follow Scott’s directions of no race/gender discussion in the open thread, or try getting your sources from somewhere other than r/TheRedPill.
/drunken rant
P.S. This isn’t directed towards the parent comment as much as towards the tens or hundreds of comments on the topic to this date. The amount of misconceptions people have towards this is downright annoying.
@Dahlen,
I think you should consider the possibility that other posters aren’t idiots, and so not interpret their posts into things only an idiot would say.
That is, it sounds like a lot of the misconceptions you’re pointing out are things people aren’t really saying here. Like the nape thing: everyone who talks about lifting as a way to improve your looks is implicitly talking about getting cut, not just pure strength training. And if you look above where people are talking about wealth as a factor in attractiveness they weren’t talking about maintaining mistresses, so much as visibly living well.
As for money and women’s attractiveness, aside from the plastic surgery, the additional money spent on high-end versus discount cosmetics or hair care is not actually contributing very much in my experience at least. I’ve been with women who burn through hundreds of dollars worth of makeup a month and others who are extremely frugal, but the major difference isn’t in the quality of the product so much as the skill with which it’s applied. Someone with an eye for fashion or makeup can easily look good without paying the markup for brand names.
That said, replacing ‘money’ with ‘class’ would make the statement ring a bit more true. Which is probably closer to how you meant it, now that I think of it.
“This is icky [X] talk!” is not, has never been, and will never be a substitute for an actual argument.
@Zorgon: Yeah, that’s ’cause arguments are for people who actively want to get involved in “icky [X] talk”. What I said is more of a declaration that I don’t want to participate in it (but I did anyway, because I’m stupid.) There’s a whole world of human communication outside arguments and counterarguments, and if we’re doing the “replace every substance of the discussion with [X]” thing, this is the reason why “[X] is not an argument” is a pet peeve of mine. Maybe I just wanted to communicate something other than an argument towards some point.
@Dahlen: That’s only true for your trivial concerns. The topics I am interested in are of such universal importance that it would be irrational and cowardly for anyone else not to devote themselves completely to debating it whenever I bring them up.
Regarding Ashkenazi Jews.
“When Britain still had the 11-plus examination, children of professional and managerial parents recorded average IQ scores of 113, compared with an average of around 96 for the children of unskilled manual workers.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/a-social-divide-based-on-merit-there-is-a-demonstrable-link-between-class-and-intelligence-argues-1444881.html
Is it just that they are an easily identifiable subsection of the European middle class?
This would require an explanation, though, as to why they would be a subsection of the middle classes – that is, disproportionately represented in the middle classes – instead of distributed in the same fashion as the general population. Which comes down to either “they are more suited to it intellectually” (which involves saying they have a higher IQ), “they are more suited to it culturally” (which involves denying the IQ tests), or “it’s a CONSPIRACY”.
I was thinking that there might be other groups within Europe with the same average iq which aren’t recognized as races (that the middle class itself might be a race).
(Like if you took one particular family of dachshunds and then grouped all the other dachshunds in with the other kinds of dog and were puzzling over why this particular family were more sausage like than the average of all other dogs.
Because they are dachshunds.)
If the sort of trends predicted (as predictive fiction-slash-social-science) in “The Rise of the Meritocracy” and (as retrospective social science) in “Coming Apart” continue you could see classes becoming more and more distinct genetically.
EDIT: A Scott review of “The Rise of the Meritocracy” would be really interesting. In some ways, it was remarkably prescient. In others, however, it completely blew it (for instance, it completely fails to predict the rise of feminism – in Young’s essentially IQ-as-caste-based society, high-IQ women in 2033 go to university, meet high-IQ men, get their educations, and then become housewives, so they can apply their intelligence to raising hopefully-high-IQ children). In some it’s just sort of off (he predicts a system where everyone gets the same basic income, and more prestigious jobs get more perks, and what he predicts as taking place through a complicated system of IQ tests and educational streaming seems to have taken place relatively organically).
The returns to marginal improvements in raising children would have to be enormous to have that strategy make any sense.
Depends on if the alternative depressed fertility. In theory, no reason it has to, in practice, it might well.
It’s the biggest thing he missed, too: that highly educated women would not at any point want to use those educations.
that highly educated women would not at any point want to use those educations.
…not sure I’m following. Is the implication that stay-at-home-moms don’t/can’t use their university educations?
Use as in professionally. Someone with a PhD – male or female – who is a stay at home parent isn’t really using their PhD as they would if they were a professor, or worked for a think tank, or whatever. There’s no degree requirement to be a parent, stay at home or otherwise.
My job is entirely unconnected to what I studied in university. Do I use the skills I learned? Yeah, I guess – some of the skills I learned are generic white-collar skills, and there are all sorts of non-employment ways I use what I learned. But I wouldn’t say I use my degrees in the same way I would if I had a job someone couldn’t do without them.
I’m not trying to devalue being a stay-at-home parent – I probably could have phrased things better – but Young posits a future where the only degree that really matters for educated women is the Mrs., when in fact that changed quite quickly after his book was published.
Think about it in the steady state. You’d be forgoing the direct contribution of half your population to art, science, business, politics, etc. forever.
Even working outside the home depressed fertility you’d still probably be able to come up with a division of labor and economies of scale that maintained population levels without sacrificing that much productivity.
@Dndrsn: Valid points, to be sure.
There’s been talk (passive voice used because I don’t recall the source) that part of a doctor shortage is limited slots in medical schools going to females in greater numbers, but many of these women opting to spend time home raising children after relatively few years in the profession.
I’m fine with all the choices on the parts of the women in principle, but combined with a posited medical school bottleneck it presents a problem.
There’s no reason mothers at home can’t contribute to any sort of art, and we suffer from no deficit of politics. Women could contribute to business part time and full time for about a third of their lives even if they all stayed home a couple decades while raising a brood.
Moving intelligent women out of the breeding population and into the productive population (inasmuch as working full time reduces fertility, and inasmuch as it is under anyone’s societal wide control) seems equivalent to eating the seed corn.
Think about it in the steady state. You’d be forgoing the direct contribution of half your population to art, science, business, politics, etc. forever.
You’re assuming that direct contributions in these areas can only be made by full-time professionals, which is false.
And even then, the tradeoff is that the other half of the population will be making a greater contribution by virtue of A: having been raised by intelligent, educated parents and B: being supported on the home front by an intelligent, educated spouse. There’s a difference between a stay-at-home mother who can cook, clean, and nurse, and a stay-at-home mother who can teach calculus and arrange social events for a gaggle of professors.
A factor of two difference in the working spouse’s productivity? The more we learn about how little parenting matters beyond a modest threshold, the more I’m inclined to say not. But a significant positive difference, so even in Young’s day you weren’t losing half your society’s intellectual productivity.
Why are you guys conflating conceiving, birthing and raising children? And why should any of this prevent women from working?
Through most of history women have continued working their ass off while in their breeding years. I think it’s only post-50s industrial boom, after the diminution in need for domestic labor, that we see an idea that women don’t work.
Edit: I think I am making a similar point to John Schilling
Someone with a PhD – male or female – who is a stay at home parent isn’t really using their PhD as they would if they were a professor, or worked for a think tank, or whatever. There’s no degree requirement to be a parent, stay at home or otherwise.
Is “using their degree as they would if they were a non-stay-at-home-parent” the only way a degree can be used?
I’m serious here – we have this paradigm which is based on how men (who don’t bear babies and don’t nurse) traditionally pursued careers. Is this the only way it can be done?
Is it possible to create a “woman’s path” or “parent’s path” where – after a brief period (2-3 years?) of intense engagement in the profession, a person on the family track stepped off the fast lane, worked fewer hours/more regular hours (for less pay! They are making a trade!) for a period of fifteen to twenty -five years, and then perhaps shifted back into the profession more fully.
I agree that a person raising kids (even a non-SAHM) isn’t going to use their degree in the same way as a nonparent.
Does it follow from that, that they aren’t going to use it at all in that profession?
(Edit: ninja’d by *everyone*.)
@Randy M, HeelBearCub, John Schilling, keranih:
There seems to be some kind of confusion? I’m not endorsing keeping women out of the professions or whatever. I’m remarking that Young’s imagined future, circa 1958, completely fails to predict the entry of affluent women into the professions that began within a couple decades of his writing the book.
EDIT: Basically, his prediction of 2033 had it much the same with regards to gender roles and the workplace/home as in 1958 (working class women work in some jobs, middle and upper class women are generally supported by their parents and then by their husbands). I am not endorsing this! I am merely pointing out that he predicted some things pretty well, but missed other things.
SAHMs do work, it’s just that domestic labor is not recognized as work at all.
There seems to be some kind of confusion? I’m not endorsing keeping women out of the professions or whatever. I’m remarking that Young’s imagined future, circa 1958, completely fails to predict the entry of affluent women into the professions that began within a couple decades of his writing the book.
We understand this, yes. I, at least, assert that you are substantially overestimate the impact of this by assuming that the affluent women who had not yet “entered into the professions” were making no contribution to the quantity and quality of the professional work that was being done ca. 1958.
@John Schilling:
Somehow I completely misread your last post. That is how Young portrays things – in his 2033 the high-IQ mothers staying home raising the kids, on the basis that they’d do a better job than lower-IQ nursemaids.
His 2033 does, however, have the resistance to the whole system of constant IQ testing and early streaming being led by young high-IQ women who don’t want to be housewives, leading the lower-IQ masses (who themselves do not have effective leaders among them, due to any higher-IQ kids being peeled off to better schools and higher-powered careers).
It is odd that he didn’t predict middle and upper class women wanting careers earlier than 75 years in the future from when he was writing.
Why would anyone assume that people are “suited to” the class they are in, rather than than to others? If that were true, there wouldn’t be any social mobility, would there?
Social mobility can, to some extent, be seen as people suited for a higher class than the one they are born into overcoming discrimination (class discrimination, race discrimination, etc) to get to the class they belong in, and as people suited to a “lower” class than the one they are born into fucking up bad enough that the social advantages they enjoy can’t protect them from falling to a lower class.
In a society that has massive racism and classism, you will see less social mobility. In a society that eradicates racism and classism, you will see a lot of social mobility … until everyone has been sorted, and then you just see individual cases of more intelligent children born to less intelligent parents and vice versa (which happens for various reasons).
I highly recommend “The Rise of the Meritocracy” by Young. It is dated, but interesting.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/26/compound-interest-is-the-least-powerful-force-in-the-universe/
Are you posting that because it backs up what I’m saying or stands against it?
Perhaps “a lot” is overselling it.
Yeah, my point is that Clark’s work (and land-lottery studies, etc.) tends to show that social mobility is pretty much constant and not all that high regardless of institutions–which is compatible with a model where most people are, contra Jill above, pretty well suited to their social class.
Does anyone have a good answer for what the ideal amount of social mobility actually is?
I mean, realistically, we shouldn’t expect (and probably not even desire) it to be 100%. But we generally behave as if “more = better”…
0%
Classless society or bust.
“social mobility is pretty much constant and not all that high regardless of institutions–which is compatible with a model where most people are, contra Jill above, pretty well suited to their social class.”
Or else most people are stuck in their social class, due to barriers that ought not to be there, glass ceilings and such.
Mobility shifts from time to time, when discrimination becomes less. This doesn’t have to do with the suitability of the population that is no longer discriminated against. Were people “suited for” slavery in the U.S. until it ended, and then suddenly after the Civil War, they weren’t?
Women in the past few decades have suddenly become able to enter many of the professions in far far larger numbers than they did previously– law, medicine, engineering, sciences etc. Were they unsuited to those professions just a few decades ago and now all of a sudden they are magically suited to them? Or was there significant discrimination against them in those professions decades ago?
The point of Clark’s empirical findings, which Scott reviewed in the post I linked to upthread, is that it more or less doesn’t. Empirical findings are, of course, subject to dispute.
Most descendants of slaves occupy a position in American society pretty comparable to that of their enslaved ancestors, especially if you include the incarcerated population in your analysis.
This is essentially irrelevant to intergenerational mobility. Consider the case in which every woman who becomes a well-paid doctor is the daughter of a well-paid male doctor, and all daughters of well-paid male doctors become well-paid doctors themselves. (SES, of course, is not the same thing as having a high-paying job.).
Other than the beatings, forced labor, near-starvation conditions, and that inconvenient bit where you get your children sold away from you.
Gee, I can’t imagine why liberals might think HBD is just a mask for racism.
TIL: it is racist to notice that the descendants of slaves are disproportionately very poor, incarcerated, harassed by police (and CPS, since you mention children), neglected (see e.g. Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside), generally deprived of autonomy, ….
No, but deliberately equivocating between poor and downtrodden and enslaved with an eye to implying that the former isn’t much of an improvement over the latter is pretty racist, yes.
How are the descendants of slaves doing relative to the descendants of those who stuck around in sub-Saharan Africa?
Given the presence of AIDs, that is hardly fair. However LE is 75 (black Americans) versus 66 (Ghana; no civil wars, low aids rate)
Conditions were not ‘near starvation’; owners wanted living slaves who could put in work, not corpses.
“How are the descendants of slaves doing relative to the descendants of those who stuck around in sub-Saharan Africa?”
I don’t know the answer to that question, but I am not sure it would be relevant. Because most countries in Africa were colonized. And some areas have experienced long wars and genocide. So they are not some kind of ideal control group, that is likely to be trauma free.
It may not be an ideal control group but it may be the closest we’ll get.
Unless you want to try “How are the descendants of hunter-gatherer tribes who were colonized/enslaved doing relative to the hunter-gatherer tribes that remained undisturbed and/or uncontacted?”
Just about every people in every region of the Earth experienced “long wars”, possibly also genocide (after all, genocide was the go-to solution to dealing with defeated enemies in ancient times).
Africa was colonized, yes, but then we would see that regions colonized the least would be outperforming regions colonized more… except the opposite seems true. North Africa has been colonized in antiquity and remains colonized to this day, and somehow does better than pretty much everywhere north of South Africa. South Africa itself, the whitest country on the continent, is pretty much the only other state that is up to any amount of scratch. Meanwhile, Ethiopia, the country colonized least (~5 years, by the Italians, just before WWII), is just about perfectly average in comparison with other sub-Saharan countries.
I don’t personally see any obvious evidence that ‘colonization’ had anything to do with African underperformance, much less ‘long wars’ and ‘genocide’ which are universal.
This is probably overstating the case. There are a few documented conflicts resolved in ways that might rise to the level of genocide, depending on where you draw the line, and a bunch more legendary ones. But at least in the parts of history I know a lot about, it was a lot less common than killing and replacing only the elite of the society you’ve just conquered, or simply subjugating and co-opting them (the usual Roman approach; Carthage was exceptional).
As to Africa, Botswana’s doing pretty well, with a per-capita GDP (PPP) comparable to Greece and much higher growth rates. Gabon and Equatorial Guinea have relatively high GDP per capita too, but those are petrostates.
Sic semper tyrannis
http://www.wsj.com/articles/gawker-declaring-bankruptcy-will-be-put-up-for-auction-1465578030
It’s probably bad of me to celebrate but I’m doing so anyway.
It’s bad to celebrate the suffering of the employees. Celebrating the fall of a tyrant and a bully however, that’s ok.
Let’s buy it and make them produce good content.
… said the new owner of every single shitty media group as they were buying it.
There’s already a move to persuade Notch to buy Kotaku.
worked for The New RepublicCouldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people.
Ziff Davis, owner of PC Magazine and IGN, is placing a bid. If they win the auction, the tech-oriented sites will probably get merged into the bland corporate media they were meant as a rebellion against. The rest will flounder for a bit and eventually get sold off – the memo talks about keeping those sites to expand ZD to new audiences, but what the hell does ZD know about the readership of Jezebel or Deadspin? Tellingly, Gawker.com and the currently dormant Valleywag aren’t mentioned at all.
In other words, it looks like the worst tabloid excesses are going away while most of the writers and their obnoxious left-wing commentary will stay around a bit longer. And the latter seems to be what offends most of the Gawker-haters.
The latest in technological unemployment.
Not exactly as advertised, but interesting nonetheless.
Was thinking about HBD and why everyone seems to sort of believe it to some degree at a gut level, yet it’s hard to find people to admit they believe it. Or else people hold really incoherent positions like that it applies to things like height and athletic ability, but not intelligence. Of course, I think the average person probably hasn’t even put too much thought into exactly how much of personal outcomes are genetic and how much environmental–they just know there’s some combination at work. Still, it’s still pretty taboo.
It strikes me that the real problem is that nobody has confidence that other people can handle the implications of HBD responsibly. And perhaps with good reason. I certainly feel like I am able to judge people on their individual qualities and not assume, for example, that every black person is good at basketball or every woman is bad at math, but I also don’t trust others to be able not to act on a bunch of stereotypes (though maybe everyone feels that way? And if so, is it because we’re all better at not stereotyping than we think, or maybe, all overestimate our own ability not to stereotype? Third option, the kind of person who reads SSC is good at not stereotyping, but rightly distrusts Joe Sixpack’s ability not to do so?).
Anyway, the point is, it feels like information which most people believe, but which most people don’t believe others can handle.
Is this a particular phenomenon LW et al have discussed somewhere? I feel like I’ve seen something about this on SSC, though I don’t recall where. One might call it {Jack Nicholson voice} “you can’t handle the truth!”{/Jack Nicholson voice}
Is there a good way to deal with such cases? What are other cases? The idea that global warming is a serious problem but doesn’t spell immediate doom also seems like one (that is, environmentalists perpetually exaggerate imminent threats because they fear a realistic assessment won’t be taken seriously)?
Is there really such a thing as something which is true but which it’s harmful for people to believe? (some might argue atheism here as well)
“Third option, the kind of person who reads SSC is good at not stereotyping, but rightly distrusts Joe Sixpack’s ability not to do so”
Sounds like you just failed the “can an SSC reader avoid stereotyping Joe Sixpack” test!
“Is there really such a thing as something which is true but which it’s harmful for people to believe? (some might argue atheism here as well)”
One famous philosopher (might have been Voltaire, but I can’t remember for sure) was hosting a dinner party where all the guests were talking about how God most likely didn’t exist. When the servants came in to deliver the food, he hushed them all right away. After the servants left, they asked him, “Why should we be secretive about this? Don’t the servants deserve to know the truth as well?” and he replied “If my servants didn’t believe in God, they’d steal from me.”
That was Voltaire.
Is there really such a thing as something which is true but which it’s harmful for people to believe?
Is this not what we make taboos and brightlines/Schilling points(?) for? Because we recognize the grey area/possible negatives, and want to minimize the outcomes by forcing most people to not do this “because I said so” rather than “long drawn out discussion of pros and cons”?
And I feel like some topics related to this has been discussed earlier upthread and I don’t want to get into that here. I suspect a number of this topics have a high emotional:rational reaction ratio.
I think that rational consideration of pros and cons will work only so far as people make rational judgements, and when people insist that we make non-rational judgements that taboos work better.
In the case of HBC, I think we-in-the-USA have worked our way out of a largely irrational acceptance and enforcement of racial-specific laws, and have shifted towards a more rational, judge each person by their own merits sort of assessment. Which is good.
But then I think we’ve gone too far in trying to push out irrational (say) “anti-black” racism, and now are promoting a nearly equally irrational stance of “you can’t say [that]! That’s racist!” about judgments which can be assessed (and discarded, if they prove false) on an empirical basis.
Having said that – I don’t think that we as a species are wired to do emotion-free (or: previous-experience-tainted) assessments, and there’s a trade off between making gross-level judgement and saving time to get to other things. We will, a lot of the time, just say “this person is sketchy and creeps me out” and be done, rather than subjecting each stranger to a rigorous examination.
(In my head this is a clear response building off onyomi. YMMV.)
Didn’t Scott have a post about true things it is unhelpful to publicize? I can’t remember the examples he used — maybe something about drug side effects?
Edit: here it is https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/14/the-virtue-of-silence/
I think that is what I was thinking of. Thank you.
OK, not really addressing the main point, but something kind of jumps out at me:
Beyond HBD ideas of variation between large groups (such as ethnic groups), even regarding variation between individuals or smaller groups (such as families), there is a difference in how we (“we” being society at large) treat, say, height, versus how we treat intelligence. I am not making any claims as to the correctness or incorrectness of HBD as regards ethnicity and intelligence – I do not think I am equipped with the right tools to have my own informed opinion; I would merely be parroting some expert or other on one side of the fence or other.
I think three things are going on here: The first is that height is blatantly obvious. It’s obvious who’s tall and who isn’t, it’s obvious that it runs in families, etc. It is also much easier to measure: complicated tests or observing someone’s abilities in an intellectual environment for intelligence, vs. a tape measure for height. Questions like “who is taller?” only arise when two people are quite similar in height, and are easily resolved.
The second is that height is less inherently valuable. Being intelligent opens more doors for a person than being tall (while, say, taller men earn more money and are rated as more attractive, the jobs where you must be tall or absolutely cannot be shortare few and far between) and being stupid closes more doors than being short. I think most people would prefer to be in the 15th percentile for height (for reference, for an adult man in the US that’s a little over 5’6″) than 15th percentile for intelligence (in the US, that’s IQ 85).
The third is that we as a society place more value on height than on intelligence (given that intelligence is more inherently valuable, we may be right to do so, but we may be valuing intelligence relative to height more than reality merits), and we often associate intelligence with moral worth. Recognizing that some are smarter than others has all sorts of implications that recognizing the same for height doesn’t – for instance, it might be taken as a reason to support a strictly streamed education system, as exists in Germany (as I understand it, some provinces are stricter than others).
As a result, it is both harder to ignore height and easier to accept variations in height between individuals and between groups of different sizes (not just ethnic groups, also male/female). Few* would say “all children have the potential to be 6′, that some are taller than others and men are taller than women is due to poverty, bad child-raising, and discrimination”. Of course, someone might not reach their genetic potential for height due to premature birth, malnutrition, sickness, etc – the heights of people in many different parts of the world have increased greatly (the US average was something like 5’6″ or 5’7″ for a man in the 1930s, I think) – but it is generally acknowledged that even with perfect conditions different people will reach different heights.
However, because it is harder to measure intelligence, and because of all the implications of recognizing differences in intelligence (again, not even just between groups – between individuals, also), you have a lot more people who would say something similar regarding the ability of all children to reach 115 IQ (the same percentile of intelligence, roughly, as 6′ is for height among American men). To say that Alice has an inherently higher potential intelligence than Bobby is far more toxic than to recognize that Bobby has a higher potential height than Alice – even more of a difference to say her family is on average smarter than his than to say his family is on average taller than hers – and even more toxic to say her ethnic group is on average smarter than his than to say his ethnic group is on average taller than hers.
Further, you have a lot of people who would deny the concept of IQ and related ideas altogether. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever claimed that height is a mistaken concept, and that everyone is equally tall, just in different ways.
I think that’s why some people’s positions are so incoherent. Saying “Bobby is taller than Alice” means a lot less for society than saying “Alice is smarter than Bobby” and so on.
To actually address the main point: sort of, in that believing certain things would definitely do harm to the way things currently operate in society. An educational system such as exists in North America where kids are mostly put through the same system, where everyone can apply to university, etc would be seriously harmed by certain beliefs regarding what intelligence is, how it works, how it is developed, how it varies, etc.
Obviously, there are beliefs of a different sort that are harmful: if your neighbour’s cockatoo convinces you of the correctness of the belief that you should burn everything, that’s probably harmful.
*I vaguely recall reading about a fairly radical feminist author who claimed that the only reason women were smaller and weaker than men was that parents gave girls less food than boys, which is why “few” rather than “nobody”.
[edit: beat to it more or less by dndrsn]
We don’t have problems at least tacitly acknowledging some innate racial differences, or else I missed the big outcry against the racism in the NBA rosters. The difference between that and the suggestions that will lead to imputations of motivations of hatred are that height and athleticism no longer really matter, whereas in a modern capitalist society, one’s usefulness–which is easily confused for worth or value–is directly tied to intelligence. Intelligence as well as characteristics like conscientiousness or time preference which appear to be well correlated with intelligence but also are considered moral virtues.
I suspect the taboo is due to the fear that a prejudiced response to meeting someone is rational if these hypothesis are believed to be true. To what extent this is right I don’t know, but certainly it makes more sense as man is moved from Imagio Dei to purely economic units.
“or else I missed the big outcry against the racism in the NBA rosters”
I’d bet you at least half of the people who acknowledge this would attribute it to something like: “It’s not really a difference in physical ability, it’s just that black people are more interested in and motivated to become athletes than white people, probably because of how society is racist and tells them that they can’t be scientists.”
It’s because most modern people believe that higher intelligence is associated with higher moral worth. Because most folks also believe and want to believe that everyone is of equal moral worth, advocating the belief in different mean intelligence among races (or even between people) is seen as dehumanizing or devaluing those portrayed as less intelligent. And they’re not wrong, it is pretty common for HBDers to go from “these guys are less smart” to “these guys are less morally worthy”. And the last time there was widespread societal acceptance of population differences in intelligence, there were atrocities driven by that perceived lack of moral worth.
Personally, what I would like to see is a widespread acceptance of the fact that stupidity or intelligence are not moral signifiers, and that we have equal moral rights thanks to being made in the image of God. I think that refusing to accept that some individuals are relatively stupid impedes our ability to help them, and likely the same could be said of populations, but there are very very good reasons for liberals to be suspicious of people going around saying “These guys are stupid, it’s science!”
On a purely selfish basis and speaking as someone at the relative top of the intelligence heap now, I think it’s a very good idea to beat it into society’s head that higher intelligence does not mean higher moral worth and that we have a collective duty to work in the best interests of everyone, stupid or smart, before we end up at the bottom of the intelligence heap in the future, whether by genetic engineering or AI or what have you.
“Personally, what I would like to see is a widespread acceptance of the fact that stupidity or intelligence are not moral signifiers, and that we have equal moral rights thanks to being made in the image of God.”
Reminds me of when Trump said “I love the poorly educated” and everyone took this as some outrageous and condemn-able statement about how he’s simply appealing to the lowest common denominator, etc.
Ignoring the implication of “the poorly educated don’t deserve to be loved and their opinions shouldn’t count the same as ours”
As long as we have the category of mentally incompetent, that isn’t happening. Also breaks down for
-genetically engineered people
-cost/benefit analysis. Turns out people really don’t like having their lives be equal to everyone elses; the elderly complained when the EPA had lives value set on ‘expected years”
The mentally incompetent have moral rights. (Or more accurately, the rest of us have moral duties towards the mentally incompetent.) So do genetically engineered people and the elderly. I agree that what I would like to see isn’t likely to happen soon.
The problem is what moral rights contain because the mentally incompetent certainly don’t have political or other rights.
Let’s start with the right not to be murdered and go from there.
Children don’t have political rights. Doesn’t mean they have no rights at all however.
Have fun with the abortion question. You just turn this into a fight over defining person. And then you have to deal with animals. Really isn’t a universally agreeable solution.
The same could be said to apply to slaves. I mean it works if your goal is ‘no extermination’, but most people’s moral bar is slightly higher.
These reasons sound about as good to me as reasons to be suspicious of people going around saying “Men are physically stronger than women, it’s science!”
In other words, not at all.
With respect to moral worth, you need to specify your morality first. Descriptively speaking, moralities in the modern world are pretty diverse. Some attach moral value to being smart, some don’t.
For a society high-IQ people are more useful. Whether it should lead to them having some elevated moral status is an exercise left for the reader 🙂 There will be no test.
As I said, the last time there was widespread societal acceptance of population differences in intelligence, we saw widespread atrocities committed on the basis of that belief, in conjunction with the modern liberal belief that intelligence confers moral worth. Most modern liberals are rightly and correctly appalled by those atrocities and so react very strongly to anyone trying to promote belief in population-wide differences in intelligence. I think right now we’ve got:
1) Liberals who remember the colonialist, Darwinist, and Nazi atrocities and viciously attack anyone who looks like they’re trying to bring back anything that could start them again.
2) HBDers who have discarded the equal worth of all as an axiom.
3) HBDers who have discarded the moral value of intelligence and so think that lies about intelligence make it harder to help people.
I’m firmly in camp 3, and I think there are others there as well. But there’s also a ton of people in camp 2, trying their hardest to get camp 1 to join them. And if that ever happens, we’ll make the fucking Nazis look like pikers.
“As I said, the last time there was widespread societal acceptance of population differences in intelligence, we saw widespread atrocities committed on the basis of that belief, in conjunction with the modern liberal belief that intelligence confers moral worth.”
This is the problem. People are understandably scared of going back there again.
Even if HBD beliefs were true, they would be unnecessary, and perhaps harmful. To characterize some entire race in some way that is unflattering is like calling them all creeps. And even if HBD were true, that wouldn’t be accurate because these would be average characteristics of that race, not ones that every member of the race holds. They are not all identical clones of each other.
If you have less intelligent individuals of any race, you try to help them to learn and function however they can. There is no need to separate them by race.
I see no utility in characterizing an entire race as creeps in some way. It just doesn’t lead to anywhere constructive.
And these people whose families or geographic areas have suffered the brutalities of Naziism, slavery, colonialism etc.– can anyone really expect them to feel empathy for the First World problems of some lucky privileged middle class young person? Someone who has no idea how easy his life is.
A lucky young middle class First World person who feels frustrated because he can’t admit openly that he thinks a whole race of people are inferior, because his girlfriend or his employer might disapprove of that?
Do you really want to start advocating that it’s better for us to not know the truth, if it conflicts with our common sense in this particular case?
Even if HBD beliefs were true, they would be unnecessary, and perhaps harmful. To characterize some entire race in some way that is unflattering is like calling them all creeps. And even if HBD were true, that wouldn’t be accurate because these would be average characteristics of that race, not ones that every member of the race holds.
Jill, I don’t think you are thinking this through.
Right now, you assume that it is the fault of racially-oriented bigotry when the average test grades of AA/black students does not match that of Asian or Caucasian students. If this was so, it would be worthwhile to put effort into reducing the racially-oriented biogtry. And if we were successful at reducing this bigotry, then the AA average test score would rise.
However, if – on average AA students were less intelligent than Caucasian or Asian students, then even if we successfully reduced bigotry the AA average test score would not reflect this. We might waste years and years, spinning our wheels and making people angry and frustrated at society for still being bigoted, when the issue lay somewhere else entirely.
If you have less intelligent individuals of any race, you try to help them to learn and function however they can. There is no need to separate them by race.
YES! EXACTLY! THIS IS WHAT WE SHOULD DO. Students who pass the class go on to the next grade, and get tracked for intellectually challenging professions. Students who do less well get extra help and are tracked into less challenging professions where they can still succeed and be productive members of society – working just as hard as they can, and respected for that work.
And all we need to do is come up with accurate measures of intelligence and performance that everyone agrees on, and angels to oversee the implementation so that no one gives extra “help” to members of their own family/tribe or race, out of a feeling of sympathy for that member – or who hinders someone of a different race because “white boy problems don’t really matter.”
Which is kinda the underpants gnome plan part of the whole deal.
I think the effects of colonialsim, slavery, Naziism etc. extend through more than the generation that experienced it too.
And some of these effects could be cultural reasons for characteristics that people think come from genetics– whereas in reality these characteristics some from e.g. being from a family where people were harmed physically and psychologically in numerous ways.
E.g you get people who survived slavery and were set free but they are stark raving mad from having experienced and also witnessed massive amounts of physical and psychological abuse. So when they parent their kids, they are stark raving mad. And the next generation had parents who were stark raving mad, and maybe they had a teacher or coach at school who happened to be sane, so that generation does a little better but is still severely affected.
And maybe eventually the effects dissipate, but it could take a very long time.
Half a truth can be worse than nothing at all. It’s good for a man to know if his wife is cheating on him, but you’re not doing him a favor if you tell him that when he’s drunk and put a gun in his hand on his way home.
“However, if – on average AA students were less intelligent than Caucasian or Asian students, then even if we successfully reduced bigotry the AA average test score would not reflect this. We might waste years and years, spinning our wheels and making people angry and frustrated at society for still being bigoted, when the issue lay somewhere else entirely.”
I don’t see a ton of serious efforts to reduce bigotry, so I don’t think we have to worry about spinning our wheels in that direction. Our wheels are fairly still.
“And all we need to do is come up with accurate measures of intelligence and performance that everyone agrees on”
A lack of measures of performance isn’t the problem. The problem is assuming that Johnny or Jamal can do fine in school even if one parent is psychotic and the other is a drug addict and there’s nothing to eat at his house.
We need mental health treatment services, substance abuse services, community services etc. for those who can’t afford them, regardless of their race.
Our biggest problem with kids who are not learning is that we assume a good teacher can make up for an awful home environment.
And another huge problem is that we don’t look at the school as a whole system, where kids with behavior problems are all put into the classrooms of the new teachers who don’t have the status to keep that from happening. And then when the students test poorly, the teacher is fired and another new one is hired.
And somehow we need to get privileged white boys who went to fancy private schools, or to excellent public schools in good neighborhoods, to understand these issues. Because they are the ones who end up in charge of a school system they don’t understand.
And because right now, some of them think the worst problem in the world is that their girlfriend and their employer don’t want to hear about their beliefs that AA kids are stupid, compared to whites. And so they feel like they don’t have free speech.
I don’t see a ton of serious efforts to reduce bigotry, so I don’t think we have to worry about spinning our wheels in that direction. Our wheels are fairly still.
Seriously? You’re going to sit here in a country with an AA president, AA generals, AA surgeons and national business CEOS, award winning inventors and writers, celebrities and artists, AA supreme court justices both conservative and not, and say I don’t really see a ton of serious effort to reduce bigotry? Are you really going to try to say that?
Besides which – you’re not considering the possibility that attempts to blame bigotry – which is a Bad Thing – for the effects of lower intelligence –
– such as “disparate impact” court findings and fines, and job quotas, and ‘affirmative action’ promotions –
– are working *counter* to the stated goal of reducing bigotry further? Because it’s one thing to hold someone responsible for what they have done. It’s another thing to fire the coach because the women’s track team runs slower than the men’s.
@Jill:
Oh that is just not true.
There has been, and continues to be a concerted effort to reduce bigotry, and it has been radically successful within merely one lifetime.
When Obama was born, Jim Crow laws were still in effect in the South. Now he is finishing his second term as president. If you don’t see that there has been a successful concerted effort to reduce bigotry over the last 55 years, I think you are making sure to look for the bigotry that continues to exist, and ignoring the bigotry you don’t notice the absence of.
The problem is assuming that Johnny or Jamal can do fine in school even if one parent is psychotic and the other is a drug addict and there’s nothing to eat at his house.
*grits teeth* This is not an assumption held by anyone that I have ever spoken to. In fact, most people seem to hold that there are a multitude of factors which affect childhood growth and adult intelligence.
It also seems to be agreed on that these factors impact the ability of the adult to perform at genetic levels. So again, we have people of unequal outcomes, not related to racial bigotry.
We need mental health treatment services, substance abuse services, community services etc. for those who can’t afford them, regardless of their race.
Yes, and we need to figure out how to prevent those conditions, rather than just try to treat them after the fact.
Our biggest problem with kids who are not learning is that we assume a good teacher can make up for an awful home environment.
Be careful with your pronouns. Among other sets of “us”, the biggest problem is that people refuse to acknowledge that a poor home environment maims childern’s learning potential, and thus refuse to follow onto the logical and unappealing step of refusing to let people who have awful home environments to have children.
Your characterization of the school system is overly simplistic, as Scott has discussed.
And somehow we need to get privileged white boys who went to fancy private schools, or to excellent public schools in good neighborhoods, to understand these issues. Because they are the ones who end up in charge of a school system they don’t understand.
Are there no AA principles of schools in your area? No AA senior teachers? No AA school board administrators? It is past time to stop blaming this all on “rich white people” Jill. They are no longer slaves on the plantation, and they can make their own choices.
And because right now, some of them think the worst problem in the world is that their girlfriend and their employer don’t want to hear about their beliefs that AA kids are stupid, compared to whites. And so they feel like they don’t have free speech.
“They are no longer slaves on the plantation, and they can make their own choices.”
I do understand that almost no one believes in PTSD, or notices that its effects can be passed down from one generation to another. But it is that way.
And I guess some people believe in totally free choice, that is not affected at all by your previous environment.
Have you ever seen 12 Years a Slave? Do you think that the effects of such experiences as were portrayed in that movie, just disappeared after one generation?
That’s a think in the U.S.– total ignoring of history– as if we all just sprung into life yesterday and were not affected by anything that happened previously.
I guess many people who watched 12 Years a Slave thought of it as like another Game of Thrones– a story of brutality but just made up for your own amusement–nothing that actually would ever happen to a human.
Living in a poor neighborhood changes everything about your life
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11852640/cartoon-poor-neighborhoods
And if there is a black school principal, that doesn’t wipe out the problems of a kid in a home where one parent is psychotic and the other an addict, and there’s no food in the house, and there are no or insufficient community services.
Just like there being an African American president doesn’t make unarmed black people killed by police any less dead.
@Jill — Out of curiosity, what do you think the inter-generational transmission rate for PTSD is? This is probably Googleable, but I’d like your take on it. Ballpark figures are fine.
I think Jill is talking about epigenetic changes; we can track those from famines, but I’m not sure there is any type that is related to oppression.
I’m sorry, I am going to call bullshit on that. I have no idea what “Darwinist atrocities” are. Colonialism was based on raw power differentials: broadly speaking, the Europeans conquered Africans because they could, not because there was some theory about IQ differences. And the Nazis wanted lebensraum, land, and incidentally, had no problems going to war with non-IQ-inferior Western Europe.
On the other hand, Soviet Russia and Communist China committed more than their share of atrocities without any HBD/racism involved at all.
@ Jill
I’ve lived in a poor neighborhood. Poor as in 90+% black, burned out houses, gunshots every other night. I lived there because that was all I could afford.
It didn’t change everything about my life.
As to PTSD effects passed down generations — give me a break. Go to Europe — they all had PTSD only 70 years ago. And another one 30 years before that.
This heritable PTSD sounds pretty scary. We’re going to have to keep Syrians out of our country for a lot longer than we thought.
“there has been a successful concerted effort to reduce bigotry over the last 55 years”
True. But we are going backwards now, with the likes of Trump.
“I’ve lived in a poor neighborhood. Poor as in 90+% black, burned out houses, gunshots every other night. I lived there because that was all I could afford.
“It didn’t change everything about my life.”
But you didn’t grow up in one, now did you? That has the largest effect.
“As to PTSD effects passed down generations — give me a break. Go to Europe — they all had PTSD only 70 years ago. And another one 30 years before that.”
Yes, and it affected them– not as much as people whose whole race were in slavery but it did affect them. There are different degrees of effect. And a small amount of the effect may be constructive. Europeans are more hesitant to enter into pointless wars than the U.S. is.
It’s been so long since the U.S. has had a full scale war on our territory that we are reckless sometimes about getting into wars.
“This heritable PTSD sounds pretty scary. We’re going to have to keep Syrians out of our country for a lot longer than we thought.”
I know you were being sarcastic. However, the crisis in Syria has been fairly recent– which is why millions of refugees have not been pouring out of Syria for generations. It does not compare with generations of slavery experienced by your entire race.
” the Europeans conquered Africans because they could, not because there was some theory about IQ differences. And the Nazis wanted lebensraum, land, and incidentally, had no problems going to war with non-IQ-inferior Western Europe.”
Not so. The Europeans thought the races they conquered were savages who were below them. The Naziis did think that Jews and any non-Aryans were inferior races. And they did think it was the place of the German race and nation to rule over other races and nations.
What do you have to say about the Balkans, which endured Ottoman slavery operations for hundreds of years? Why don’t the people there live in ghettos?
Terrible events in history cause multi-generational PTSD which is really bad, except if we can think of a group with terrible events and good outcomes then the PTSD was constructive. That PTSD theory seems like it will be strengthened by any evidence.
The Balkans are kind of a shithole — economically, politically, and culturally.
An European shithole. First world compared to any other shithole.
You don’t need the multi-generational PTSD theory to explain why the countries there aren’t G7 currently. If multi-generational PTSD were a thing, why were there functioning governments in the 18th and 19th century in the Balkans?
“Not so. The Europeans thought the races they conquered were savages who were below them.”
They thought this but it wasn’t particularly relevant to their motivations in going there and colonizing the lands. The natives were considered “in the way” and all the Europeans really wanted was for them to get out of the way.
But there was no intentional effort to eradicate them from the globe. Maybe the more committed catholics wanted to convert them – but that was about the extent of it.
Nornagest, I don’t have even a ballpark guess here, but I think it is significant. There are a fair amount of studies being done on inter-generational PTSD.
I know, I hit Google Scholar after I posted that. It doesn’t look like settled science, and a lot of studies find nothing or have obvious methodological problems, but the highest figure I was able to find was 45%, in one of the studies covered here (a survey article covering several studies on the children of combat veterans with the disorder). Given that we’re seven generations out from the Emancipation Proclamation, that would give us a prevalence for intergenerationally transmitted PTSD dating from the slavery era of roughly (0.45 ^ 7) = ~0.004 if 100% of freed slaves showed PTSD symptoms.
The disorder’s prevalence in the general population is about 0.08, so we’d be talking a relative risk of about 5% over unity given these already very generous assumptions. It strikes me as implausible that that would have much effect on the broader culture.
More recent trauma could, of course. This study shows a prevalence of PTSD that’s roughly 2% higher in black than in white Americans (9% vs. 7%), though most other anxiety disorders are lower. That’s not peanuts, but it still looks like a rather weak effect. (You should never draw strong conclusions from one study, though.)
“Given that we’re seven generations out from the Emancipation Proclamation, that would give us a prevalence for intergenerationally transmitted PTSD dating from the slavery era of roughly (0.45 ^ 7) = ~0.004 if 100% of freed slaves showed PTSD symptoms.”
“The disorder’s prevalence in the general population is about 0.08, so we’d be talking a relative risk of about 5% over unity given these already very generous assumptions. It strikes me as implausible that that would have much effect on the broader culture.”
Regarding PTSD, many of the cases are instances where a person underwent one single terrifying experience. A life time of slavery might magnify the effects of trauma to a very large degree, in that slaves experienced one trauma after another for their entire lives. They didn’t so much have Post-traumatic Stress Disorder as they had Post-tramatic Life Disorder.
One effect that may have taken place in black culture that would relate directly to tests that are supposed to measure intelligence– but perhaps do not– is the effect of being heavily punished for performance and achievement. What happened when a slave performed well and got a lot of work done? He was given more and more back breaking work and no pay.
There was a term– I’ve forgotten what it was– it’s sort of like rate buster, except that, of course, it didn’t apply to income because slaves weren’t paid any income. There was a term for the slave that worked harder because they were particularly strong or energetic.
It was considered an evil thing to do, and the other slaves would really get on the guy’s case. The reason it was considered evil, is because if one slave got more done than the others, then the slave master would come along. He would beat the other slaves to within an inch of their lives, trying to get them to do the same amount of work in the same time– which was impossible for people with more average energy or strength.
Then after the Emancipation Proclamation, this sort of experience did not entirely stop. There was still Jim Crow, and still a lot of lynchings and other violence against black people. Some violence that was done to black people was done because they were so “uppity” that they tried to learn to read and write, or later on because they tried to apply for good paying jobs that white men wanted.
So, even after slavery, there continued to be harsh physical punishments, or even death, for black people who tried to achieve and do well. It’s quite possible that the ridicule of studious black children by other black children is an effect of such experiences that has been passed down through the generations.
Many of us can think of habits or customs or whatever that have been handed down from one generation to another in our families. Some are good habits. Some can end up being destructive.
They can be habits that worked well for the needs or the survival of past generations, but they don’t work any more. Hopefully, we realize that when it happens. But often we don’t.
Some of this, people in black culture have to find the way out of themselves. But discrimination and bigotry tend to make these kinds of things worse. E.g. in this situation, continued bigotry seems to reinforce the idea that the time still hasn’t come for most black people to take the risk of trying to achieve, because they will still be squashed, even now, except for a very few token blacks who are allowed to rise up through the white ceiling.
I mention this because it is relevant to performance as measured by intelligence test. But it is very very far from being the most severe effect of slavery on black culture.
What is the evidence that the reason for the various atrocities you mention was the belief in different distributions of heritable characteristics by race or gender?
The largest atrocities, measured by body count, were committed by communist governments which I don’t believe proclaimed such beliefs, although they may have held them.
Going back a bit, slavery was common in classical antiquity and quite often owners and slaves were of the same race. In the Islamic world, many slaves were black but not all.
What, by the way, were the “Darwinist atrocities?”
” To characterize some entire race in some way that is unflattering is like calling them all creeps”
You are attacking a straw man. Where do you observe that people who believe in HBD make a claim about all individuals of a race? The usual claim is precisely about the distribution of heritable characteristics.
Let me try to show you why I find your comments here disturbing. Imagine that you posted that you were disturbed at the hostile reception your progressive views got.
Someone responds: “Why are you surprised? If you announce that you are in favor of shooting everyone who expresses conservative or libertarian views, first torturing the more prominent ones into confessing their sins, and dealing with less articulate rural red tribe members by seizing all of their food so that they starve to death, wouldn’t you expect people to be disturbed?”
That would be about as accurate a portrayal of your views as your repeated implication that HBD supporters believe that all members of a race are inferior, should not be allowed to vote or get certain jobs or have the same rights as others is of their views.
Can you find an example of a believer in HBD who thinks Thomas Sowell is of low intelligence? By your account they should all believe it.
I just wanted to point out here that the Nazis didn’t really believe that Jewish people were stupid, or even stupider than Aryans. The Nazi caricature of “The Jew” was perfidious and conniving, not an idiot.
@light purple Anon:
This is true. Nazi propaganda tended to portray Jews as physically inferior. Anti-Semitic propaganda even before the Nazis – not sure if just in Germany or more generally – made a big deal about how Jews supposedly all had bad eyesight and flat feet (rendering them unfit for military service, and thus unable to serve and truly be a part of the nation). I recall reading something about how a post-WWI German Jewish group put a lot of effort into trying to refute these ideas and show the % of Jews that fought in WWI for Germany was the same or higher as the general population.
They did, however, present the Jews as intelligent in a parasitic manner: to the Nazis, the Jews were more “clever” or “crafty” than “intelligent”. They didn’t see them as willing or able to create – just to leech off of those who could. They also tended to portray the more assimilated Western European Jews in a different fashion from the less assimilated, ghetto/shtetl-dwelling Eastern European Jews – Nazi propaganda made a big deal about how the Eastern European Jews supposedly lived in filth, etc.
In contrast, anti-black racism traditionally portrays them as being mentally inferior, but physically equal or superior. The message of the propaganda in the former case is “these insidious parasites are taking over our societies from within and corrupting us”, in the latter case it’s “these intellectual inferiors are strong and numerous and will swamp us with sheer numbers”. There is, of course, plenty of propaganda in which the former target is portrayed as using the latter target as a tool.
Let’s take this statement, “The reason there aren’t any Asians in the NBA is that Asians are short”. Do I need to point out all the myriad ways this is statement is just factually wrong? Myriad ways should spring instantly to mind. I contend that, roughly speaking, this is the base level of argument that comes out of the people who self label as believers in HBD.
Uncontroversial statement: “Those who can trace their heritage to Ashkenazi Jews have a higher prevalence of certain genetic traits including specific genetic diseases. They have a higher than normal incidence of individuals with above average IQ. The population of origin for Ashkenazi Jews is believed to have been about 330 individuals in 1200-1400 AD.”
Controversial statement: “Jews are smart.”
Uncontroversial statement: “People who can trace their heritage back to Sub-Saharan Africa or the Arabian peninsula may be at risk for sickle cell disease.”
Controversial statement: “Blacks have sickle cell. Also they have low IQ.”
It’s not that there is an objection generally to the idea that genetic traits are passed down, it’s that when you try and draw the circle around too large a cohort and make statements that are then too broad about a population, you are making a fairly basic mistake.
I have found that even expressing the uncontroversial versions you present can make people uneasy. A lot of people get antsy when inherent group differences like that are discussed.
I don’t even care about the race thing, but do you really expect people to be so bizarrely hyperliteral? By these standards, statements like “oranges are larger than lemons” are wrong or at least “controversial”.
And what’s the deal with the gratuitous factoids? Your uncontroversial Ashkenazi facts read like the smart kid in a bad cartoon.
The gratuitous factoid isn’t gratuitous.
The fact that we can show Ashkenazi Jews trace back to such a small sub-population so recently goes a long way to explaining their relatively high homogeneity.
Edit: As to the “hyper-literal” accusation, I will just say that is a funny millstone to try and hang on me here, of all places.
Yeah, I get that, but why bother? The extra SD of IQ that Ashkenazi get on average is well established on its own, and you don’t need founder effects for a population to have interesting traits, they’re just one possible mechanism. You don’t need the first sentence either; every population on Earth has a higher prevalence of some hereditary traits, usually including genetic disorders.
Define population.
Pretty much any group you might be interested in is going to have that quality, unless you specifically design it not to: members of social classes, Mayflower descendents, inhabitants of specific cities are just three examples. You’re more likely to find interesting stuff the more ancestry is shared between them, of course.
@Nornagest:
What do you mean by well-established? Because I had not heard of that before fairly recently, and it was either here or somewhere a degree or two of separation from here.
The standard explanation I had heard for the disproportionate number of Ashkenazim in positions that require and reward higher than average intelligence – academia, science, business, law, medicine, a lot of entertainment jobs – was that it was a cultural thing: Judaism is and has been for quite some time a religion with a heavier focus on learning that is the norm in religions (your average rabbi is probably more of an expert on Judaism than your average minister is on Christianity, and is guaranteed to have facility in Hebrew, whereas I would bet most ministers don’t have even the rudiments of Greek or Hebrew). Note that the cultural explanation doesn’t differentiate Ashkenazim from Sephardim or Mizrahim.
The standard explanation isn’t “+1SD IQ means 15% have 130+ IQ and 2% have 145+ IQ instead of 2% and a fraction of 1% as is the case in the general population, so of course you’ll meet more of them in the faculty lounge”.
And even the standard explanation can be touchy. It is generally considered rude to point out the disproportionate Jewish presence in those fields – for good reason, because there is decent overlap between “points that out” and “believes in world conspiracy, may start adding parentheses to names”.
Thinking about it, though, the “+1SD IQ” explanation is arguably less anti-Semitic than the “culture” explanation, because the “conspiracy” explanation is kind of a variant of the latter. “They’re just smarter than the rest of us” is hardly a negative belief to hold about a group of people.
I mean that if you Google Scholar “Ashkenazi IQ”, 3440 results turn up. (Some of them aren’t relevant, because “Ashkenazi” is also a last name, but hit 1, for example, is.) Maybe Joe Sixpack or whoever posts on /pol/ has never heard of it. I’m not talking to them.
I don’t know the shape of the IQ curve, by the way. Since the test is not normed on Ashkenazi, a mean of IQ 115 doesn’t necessarily imply that +1 SD is IQ 130 within that population. (I do know a lot of really smart Ashkenazi, but n=1 and all that.)
“You’re more likely to find interesting stuff the more ancestry is shared between them, of course.”
Remind me again why the starting population size for the Ashkenazi is irrelevant?
This is my whole point, that when you try and say something about, say, “Asians” you aren’t being specific enough in your cohort.
OK, well established factually, not well-established socially. I get it. I thought you might be saying that it’s an “everyone knows” sort of deal.
EDIT: And yeah I suppose I missed the norming issue, etc.
My whole point is that you don’t need a huge amount of shared ancestry to get measurable differences.
Sure we can measure really big groups of people and find some differences between them.
So, is the reason that there no Asians in the NBA that Asians are short?
I can think of a lot of possible reasons there aren’t many Asians in the NBA (don’t know if the number is zero at the moment, though Yao Ming at least means it wasn’t always), but if someone came up to me and said that, I would neither think “zomg wrong” nor “zomg racist”.
The biggest contributing factor is probably just that it’s a relatively small minority nationwide, so the base rates are low — but do you really think anyone who says that is talking about base rates?
The fact that East Asians (Chinese, Koreans,etc) are, on average, shorter than Whites/Blacks is probably the most important reason there are so few Asians in the NBA. Even if basketball culture was as prevalent in East Asia as it is among US Blacks there would be few Asians in the NBA. In fact basketball is fairly popular in China. Wikipedia says the Chinese Basketball Association claims China has about 300 million active basketball players. So China probably has at least 100-200 million basketball players.
Very popular in the Philippines, too. When I was over there, my hosts thought it was endlessly funny to see my well-over-six-foot self getting smoked by people a foot shorter and half my weight.
(Tall American, must play ball, right?)
@Nornagest:
I would think “zomg, not even wrong”. It’s too simplistic an explanation. There are something like 3 billion Asians and they aren’t homogeneous enough to for that explanation to be right or wrong. There are plenty of very tall Asians.
Yao Ming was born and raised in China, so base population rates in the US aren’t necessarily relevant. NBA players that come from outside the U.S. have never been unheard of and increasingly common. There have been successful NBA players as short as 5’2″, so a its not even like you can at least eliminate from consideration all of the Asians who are short.
And all this is for a relatively simple, bounded question: “explain the relatively small number of Asians in the NBA”!
So, simple HBD conclusions about even more complex questions about various outcomes strike me as facile at best.
It’s an incomplete explanation, but normal language tolerates incompleteness. This is what I was trying to get at way back with the hyperliteralism thing.
By the standards you’re proposing, colloquial statements about population differences need the precision — and the detailed support — of academic papers, or be branded as “not even wrong”. I suggest that these standards are dumb. I might even suspect that the bottom line’s already been written here, but that can’t be true, right?
@Nornagest:
onyomi originally said “Or else people hold really incoherent positions like that it applies to things like height and athletic ability, but not intelligence. ”
What I was trying to point out is that it’s not even coherent to take the simplistic view as dispositively explanatory for “height and athletic ability” translating to “NBA success”, which is a very, very simple example. Based on the number of tall and athletic Asians in the world, we should have seen more than two total in the NBA, one of whom ain’t even very tall. We don’t see Chinese baseball players, even though we do see Japanese and Korean ones, and if you want to sell me an HBD explanation there, I’m going to be even more dubious.
So, when we hear the same simplistic formulations for even more complex questions, it’s not incorrect to react with significant skepticism.
I think you might be looking for deterministic answers while no one’s trying to sell you anything more than a stochastic one.
@Nornagest:
Are you trying to say that the average HBD proponent is not selling the formulation, “Observed black poverty is not due to racism or structural inequality. It is because their genetics make them low IQ”?
I haven’t got a clue, I don’t hang out with those guys. Don’t think anyone in this thread is trying to sell you that, though. Definitely not in the strongly causal, if-then formulation you seem to want.
@Nornagest:
I’m trying to answer onyomi’s original question:
“it’s hard to find people to admit they believe [HBD].”
What did you think I was trying to do?
Scott, could you get your software to allow an extra layer or 2 of nesting here in the comments section? I am often not sure if I am posting in the thread I am trying to post in, because threads here are so very long.
“Are you trying to say that the average HBD proponent is not selling the formulation, “Observed black poverty is not due to racism or structural inequality. It is because their genetics make them low IQ”?”
This question was asked of someone else here. But I want to comment on it, to point something out.
Whoever it was, scores of comments ago maybe, who started this thread on HBD, said that he couldn’t speak of it, for fear of losing his job and his girlfriend. So it would make sense that the formulation of the question above, might very well be what he was talking about.
And if it was not, what then would be the statement he would make about his HBD beliefs, that would be so very incendiary that he could lose his job and his girlfriend over it? The formulation above gets my vote.
Jill, he doesn’t need to say “black poverty is caused by their low IQ”. All he needs to say is “people from central Africa have lower than average IQ for genetic reasons”. People will fill the gaps by themselves and then blame the messenger, even if he’s just a good old Tarski maniac.
@Jill
It might be that, or, to my mind the more charitable interpretation, the worry is that the knee-jerk reaction to the initial statement will be a rush to judgment, rejection, and ostracism, before the more nuanced position can be explained (presuming there is one).
Likely? Perhaps not. I don’t know their social situation. But a risk nonetheless, and one with evidently unacceptable consequences.
@Nornagest:
What do you think of kerinah’s comment?
That seems like a pretty straight line argument to me.
Well, keranih thinks that test scores are not equal to poverty.
You know, for what it’s worth.
Thing is, outside of maybe very formal abstract discussions, humans tend to assume bad faith. So “I believe there are measurable biological differences in human populations” gets translated to “I think black people are stupid and ugly but have enough social awareness not to say that out loud.” Similarly, “global warming is a problem but it doesn’t spell immediate doom” reads as a very reluctant concession from someone who still basically thinks global warming is a load of hippy tree-hugger BS.
“I believe there are measurable biological differences in human populations”
Either that is so broad as to be trite, or you have some definitions in mind when you say “human populations”. Because the statement is so broad to begin with, the natural assumption is that you are defining each “population” really broadly (whites, blacks, Asians, etc.)
And those broad categories are too broad to be meaningful.
The natural assumption is that since most people don’t care about population genetics, nobody else does either. So if someone brings it up, it’s taken for granted that it’s an indirect way of getting at what they really care about, ie, the axe they have to grind with the blacks or the jews or whoever.
Or, as I have several times suggested, a way of pointing out that an argument routinely offered as proof of discrimination is wrong. If people keep saying “A therefor B” without noticing that the conclusion depends on the further assumption C, it seems natural to point out that they have offered no evidence for C and it is probably false.
If every time one does that, the response is “you are only saying that because you are a racist/antisemite/misogynist,” at some point one suspects that the people making the argument know it is wrong and want to keep other people from realizing it.
My current conjecture in Jill’s case, although I could easily be wrong.
Rilly? Most people don’t care about flower arranging either, but if someone does bring it up the natural assumption would be, here’s one of those people who do.
Actual racists ruin it for everyone, and no one wants to be associated with racism, as that seems to be the worst possible thing to be in modern society (maybe a rapist is worse; murderers certainly don’t seem to be viewed worse, except for that whole being in jail thing).
Well, in a way, one might argue that the existence of real racists is a kind of proof that at least some people can’t, in fact, handle the truth, assuming some degree of HBD is true.
That said, racism predates any scientific understanding of genes, etc. The problem, it seems, is that scientific HBD, eugenics, etc. in early years played too much into preexisting biases and were therefore terribly abused.
In other words, maybe truths which can be used as justifications for common biases may be potentially dangerous truths?
Truths which can be used as justifications for common biases may be potentially dangerous truths. A lie, on the other hand, is far more dangerous. It can cause contradictions which result in madness rather like the madness of Clarke’s “HAL 9000”.
That is, suppose HBD is true but we insist on !HBD. Now, we see some undesirable difference in outcomes that is (in fact) caused by HBD. Since we assume HBD is false, we must look for other reasons for this difference in outcome. We control for as much as we can, but the difference in outcome persists. We decide the factor must be discrimination. We try to eliminate it through blinding and other methods. The difference persists. Eventually we throw up our hands and say we can’t eliminate the discrimination, so we’ll just compensate for the difference in outcome (e.g. by biasing test scores or whatever). But the difference in outcome just moves to the next step. We go through the process again and keep biasing things to make the outcomes equal.. but the process never ends. Sound familiar?
Racial discrimination isn’t a good thing any way. So no problem with eliminating it, even for the wrong reasons.
But the thing that needs to be done to improve school performance is more mental health, substance abuse, and other community services. This focus on the teacher alone– and the test score alone, as compared to what it was a year ago, is ridiculous.
All kids/families should get the help they need in order for the kid to live in a situation where they are fed, cared for, and able to learn– as well as have good teachers. And there is no need whatsoever to focus on racial groups, as opposed to what individuals, families, and communities need in order for kids to learn.
Jill, that’s not elimination of discrimination. It’s the opposite.
I tend to agree.
Certainly there are negative consequences of refusing to accept HBD. I think the problem is many people seem to feel explicitly or subconsciously that the consequences of accepting HBD might be worse.
Let’s say
0HBD=weird blue tribe refusal to accept any form of HBD
5HBD=reality
10HBD=Nazi white supremacy (or Japanese supremacy or…)
I think the problem is that people who have a personal or political urge to be in the 6-10 range may use acceptance of 5HBD as support for 6-10HBD.
But I think most people, maybe myself included, located on the 0-5HBD position, are more scared of the consequences of 6-10HBD than 0-4HBD. Therefore, if making a stand at 0, 1, or 2HBD prevents more people from straying into 6-10HBD, then it might be worth the annoying but less scary consequences of 0-4HBD.
In other words “if we admit 2+2=4, next they’ll insist it’s 5, so we better just take a firm stand at 3.”
But if 3 is better than 5, it might make sense?
We will just fudge the numbers until they tell the story we want to see. I honestly think that’s not the worst possible outcome.
I’m not sure what you mean by fudging the numbers. You can claim that NBA players aren’t overwhelmingly black and executives aren’t mostly white, but race isn’t subtle; you won’t be fooling anyone.
@ onyomi
Certainly there are negative consequences of refusing to accept HBD. I think the problem is many people seem to feel explicitly or subconsciously that the consequences of accepting HBD might be worse.
This could be so – and were we not talking about this wrt normalizing homosexuality, a couple threads back? There are upsides and downsides.
For my part, I think that if the social code was laissez-faire wrt how other people succeeded or failed – that is, if we had the attitude that if one group did worse or better than another, it was of no-never-mind and there was no social responsibility to change the environment so that all sorts of people came out equally – if that was the case, then it doesn’t matter if HBC is a correct theory or not, and it doesn’t matter if people accept it or not. And in that case, well, we each run into few enough people that we should be judging each person individually.
However, that’s not the world we live in and I don’t think that I particularly fancy that world.
Seeing as we do live in a world where we would prefer that the environment is such that – as Jill says – all people have about the same access to resources, etc, and seeing as we don’t live in that world yet, and seeing as people are trying to use common (ie, taxpayer) resources to make those environmental changes, then I think it matters quite a hell of a lot if HBC is correct.
Because if we can not get an accurate picture of the various things influencing different groups, and we can’t measure and characterize those groups appropriately, then we will have no clue if our attempted “improvements” are working at all.
On those grounds, I think that it is social engineering/rationalist malpractice to refuse to consider and test the various sub-bits of HBC, to see which actually hold up and which do not.
“if the social code was laissez-faire…”
This is a big reason I’m a libertarian: putting any particular issue into the realm of politics turns it into an object of conflict and makes it hard to be objective or dispassionate about when it need not necessarily be that way.
If one weren’t taxed to pay for public schools, for example, then I wouldn’t worry so much about questions like whether or not other people’s kids are learning evolution in their school. I would only worry about what they teach in my kid’s school. But make me pay for it and suddenly there’s an argument if you’re not teaching something I want or teaching something I don’t approve of.
Similarly, it seems like the answer to HBD would be less emotionally charged and prone to error if we didn’t have this idea that everyone in society is responsible for making sure everyone else has the opportunity to succeed. Once you decide that, then suddenly the question of to what degree success is determined by genes, culture, upbringing, etc. suddenly becomes very contentious.
How come everyone just accepts that they are able to judge a person not by race or gender, and look at them individually. I mean, we know how difficult rationality is, how many subconscious biases we have affecting our perception, but for some reason they are not supposed to apply to judging people by their race?
We constanly judge people by externalities, and we do so at a quick glance. “Is this guy handsome? Oh, then he must be also nice and smart” (halo effect). This person is a girl? Oh, then she must be wonderful (Women are wonderful effect). Doing this is literally our nature, taking pieces of information and evaluating people, our System 1 does not care that in the specific case of a very visible externality society has decided that it’s reprehensible.
The Implicit Association Test (though it’s validity is somewhat controversial) regularly reveals that even left wing people sometimes have a strong negative bias against blacks. FWIW, after the Cologne attacks in Germany I have been appaled by the immediate suspicion towards muslims- on my part. If I am in a bar, and I see a muslim walking up to a girl, I can’t shake the association of “muslim” – “sexual molestation”, even when I try.
That’s why I absolutely endorse our cultural taboo on discussing these differences, especially when it comes to intelligence, and prefer it being blamed on discrimnation and such. It’s a wonderful mantra, whose repeating keeps society in peace.
@SolipsisticUtilitarian – “The Implicit Association Test (though it’s validity is somewhat controversial) regularly reveals that even left wing people sometimes have a strong negative bias against blacks.”
It also appears to show that they have a much stronger negative reaction to opposite political parties/ideologies. How worried are you about discrimination, conscious or not, against people who support a different party than you?
“…That’s why I absolutely endorse our cultural taboo on discussing these differences, especially when it comes to intelligence, and prefer it being blamed on discrimnation and such. It’s a wonderful mantra, whose repeating keeps society in peace.”
With respect, I do not think you could possibly be more wrong about this. Accusations of racial discrimination require a target, and that target is now well on the way to collective awareness that they’ve been framed. Using white people as a scapegoat for poorly understood, odious demographic phenomena will inevitably result in mainstream white identity politics. From there, a peaceful society seems unlikely.
” How worried are you about discrimination, conscious or not, against people who support a different party than you?”
A lot. I droped out of psychology partly because of the field’s discrimination against conservatives (DAE conservatives have a low iq, right!?) and I am extremely concerned about it being a growing problem in Western Europe.
Austrian elites have been trying to deal with their emerging right-wing populist party with ridicule and manipulation for twenty years: The result was a recent presidential election where the green candidate supported by all(!) the mainstream parties managed to etch out a victory over the very right wing candidate by a margin of .2 percent amid a very abusive campaign. This development is not at all surprising, smug self affirmation just leads to resentment.
Having said that, you have to see that you can hide your political affiliation when you apply for jobs or are in public making friends.
I disagree with the presumption of racial discrimination necessarily requiring a target group, if one is consistent it’s actually an obvious contradiction in itself. It remains to be seen if the American model, where being progressive means attacking white people, is inevitable. In Germany, I see no sign of white people being under attack, there are no places on university campuses where caucasians are not allowed and, more importantly, there are no collective attirbution of guilt towards white Germans. When progressives cite discrimination for bad educational outcomes of migrants, they don’t blame a specific group.
I think part of the difference is that the claim that Jews are basically white and have always been in a position of privilege is likely to meet a rather different reception in Germany than in the US or UK.
Peace like the Cologne attacks?
I guess this is a very strong point against my argument, that an awareness of middle eastern cultural norms not being compatible with Western sexual mores might have prevented the Cologne sex attacks simply by Germany not letting the refugees in.
Still, the question of new immigration is an entirely different one from how to deal with minorities already here. I do not see how discussing racial inferiority will lead to anything but increased resentment by the migrants already here.
Part of it may be due to the thought that people ‘can’t handle’ certain beliefs about average racial differences, but I think more of it is just due to what communicating those beliefs signals about the rest of your politics. Making a big deal out of genetic racial differences is part of a cluster which has, on the extreme edges, the sort of reprehensible attitudes towards minorities or racial purity that were common historically, and in the less extreme cases, various political commitments most liberals disagree with (that people should be really concerned about immigrants from other countries coming in and destroying the country in some way, or that there are few if any significant negative effects of racism on minorities and we shouldn’t make a big deal about it). There’s nothing inconsistent about expressing the relevant beliefs about race and intelligence and standard liberal beliefs elsewhere, but that’s how they tend to shake out as a matter of social fact, even, I’d guess, here at SSC.
This certainly seems like a big part of it, at least in this case.
Related: Evidence for (very) recent natural selection in humans. I would really like to know if there has been selection on IQ in the past 2k years. If so, I might decide to have a higher IQ child since it is less likely their genes will wash out of the gene pool.
What are people’s go to meals they cook? I feel like I’m bouncing between taco meat based dishes, pastas of various types, and some Asian dishes.
An hour or two ago I put a pot of sausage stew on the slow cooker, which should be ready for dinner and last through the weekend. This, for a broad range of stew-like dishes, is a fairly common thing for me to do on weekends where I don’t have anything planned to take me away from home.
Is that a case of exactly what is sound like? Cut up sausage, potatoes, carrots, onions, and spices simmering? I’d like to do more of those, but I make too much at once for two people to eat and my fiancé gets mad. Do you make it in smaller quantities or does it not bother you to eat the same thing many times in a row?
Left-overs are a great way to avoid a few meals work of cooking and cleaning. Seems a bit of a lack of empathy for your fiance to object to this unless they simply don’t like the meal to begin with, though there’s no reason you can’t put a few other dishes in-between the soup days. Soup will keep for a week just fine ime.
Some people just really hate food repetition. My husband doesn’t even want to see the same meal twice in 2 weeks, with a few narrow exceptions.
You make enough of a dish for two or three meals. Eat one meal worth, freeze the rest. Wait however long is necessary, put the frozen food in the microwave, and you have dinner without the need to cook.
It depends on your cooking the sort of thing that is still good after being frozen and reheated, but there are a fair number of things that qualify.
I intended that to sound more self-deprecating, as my version of “too much” is usually enough for a dozen meals. She is fine with meal repetition but not in the same way that I can eat the same meal for half the meals in a week, but she gets tired of it or its variations after 3-4 times in a week. I am also much more willing to push the boundaries of how long food can be stored for (I think in part because her nose and stomach are more sensitive than mine).
I do freeze meals, after reading an excellent blog on just how to do that with various staples. The limitation for that is our single freezer that also stores bread products, frozen meat, frozen fruits, and frozen veggies.
Cut up sausage, potatoes, carrots, onions, and spices simmering?
Yes, but if you’re using a slow-cooker or crockpot you need to brown the meat first, as the “simmer” part won’t get hot enough for the Maillard reaction. And you’ll need more liquids for a slow-cooker than you would on a stovetop. The convenience of having the meal cooking while I am at work is nice, but get a cookbook or some recipes specific for slow-cooking until you get the hang of it.
Does it not bother you to eat the same thing many times in a row?
I’ll make enough for a weekend; if I get truly bored I can go out for dinner and have a lunch or two’s worth of leftovers for next week.
I personally can’t eat the same meal more that twice in a short time. So, I’ll have dinner one night and leftovers for lunch the next day, but if there are more leftovers than that, it will almost certainly end up in the trash.
I’m almost the opposite, I can keep eating the same thing or with minor variations (taco meat into enchiladas or 7-layer dip) for a while without getting tired of it.
What would you say makes you dislike eating the same meals in a row, if you can pin it down?
My day-to-day cooking is boring, literally the same thing every day, and screams “caloric deficit”, but stuff that’s actually nice that I find myself returning to:
-Steak. Steak is the easiest thing to cook. Get quality meat (if you need to save money, a cheaper cut of good meat is the best choice – there are cuts that are a bit tougher than the best cuts but still work for steaks), pat it dry with paper towels, season it with some kosher salt and some pepper or stuff, let it sit at room temperature for a couple hours, pan fry or grill it for a few minutes a side. Done.
-Mashed cauliflower. Less work than mashed potato, and you can feel virtuous because it’s low carb. Boil a bunch of cauliflower, drain it, throw in some salt and pepper and a fat of some sort, mash it up with an immersion blender. You can blend in some fried onions and garlic. I’ve done it with butter and butter and cheese as the fat, but palm oil and coconut oil work too – virgin coconut oil gives it a nice flavour while palm oil and refined coconut oil are more neutral.
-Not something I’ve done a lot, but for people who require a vegan option, there’s a nice red lentil soup with lemon recipe in the Silver Palate cookbook originally. There’s a bunch of Google recipes for it.
Our go to is pretty much this, although salmon, while more expensive, isn’t any more difficult to cook.
Also shepherds pie, which is basically the same thing with ground beef.
Eggs with stuff in them (chorizo, spinach, onion). Grill a bunch of chicken thighs on the weekend and eat them with whatever vegetables I feel like through the week.
Most of mine come out of my hobby of cooking from very old cookbooks. That includes rishta, a noodle dish from a 13th c. Middle Eastern cookbook (about fifty years before Marco Polo supposedly brought pasta back from China), Icelandic Chicken, which I got out of medieval Icelandic medical miscellany but is probably a southern European recipe from a lost cookbook which survives as several northern European daughter manuscripts, of which that is one. My wife usually does the lentil dish from a 13th c. Andalusian cookbook.
I also make fruit salads, have a couple of medieval Islamic frying pan pastries, bake bread, sometimes make cinnamon buns.
Stews and soups freeze extremely well. Get some single serving containers, make a huge batch and freeze most of it. Then you don’t have to eat it over and over again for a week. You can just pull them out a month later when you’re too tired to cook. Good stews/soups:
* Lamb stew (sear the lamb, add carrot and leek, some rosemary and salt, simmer)
* Chicken stew (Tear apart a rotisserie chicken ($5 from costco!), add celery and carrot, sage and oregano, simmer)
* Miso soup (Simmer dashi stock (available in powdered form from Asian markets) with kombu (dried seaweed) and miso. Add chopped firm tofu and leek/green onion/carrot/daikon and simmer. Can also add that thin-sliced pork they have at the Asian markets for a more filling stew).
* Ham and white bean stew (I do this every Easter with leftover ham. Simmer the hambone for a few hours to make a stock, then add dried white beans (presoaked), chopped leftover ham, salt, pepper, and spices.)
* Taco soup (presoak a bag of pinto beans in a slow cooker, drain and rinse. Cook with a bag of frozen corn, canned tomatoes, and 1 lb seared ground beef. Spice with BBQ sauce, salt, and garlic. Great with tortilla chips.)
I also figured out last year that you can freeze pre-cut homemade baking powder biscuits and cook them one at a time, so I keep a freezer stash of them. (2c flour, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 tsp cream of tartar, 1/4 tsp salt, mix, cut in 1/2 c fat (butter or shortening), stir in 1 c milk into a dough. Roll out, cut into squares, and freeze in ziploc bags. I bake them in the toaster oven at 350F for ~15 minutes.) Stew + biscuits is a great meal and very quick in the evenings if its coming straight from the freezer.
I also buy huge cuts of meat from costco and break them down into ~1lb servings to freeze. Generally the big chuck roasts for beef, pork tenderloin, legs of lamb, and chicken thighs (seriously, thighs are way better (moister) than breasts, and they’re cheaper to boot). Then the night before, move what I need for dinner into the fridge to defrost and it’s ready to cook the next day. Combo with the frozen steam-in-bag vegetables you can find at every grocery and you can do a lot of simple meals quickly. A rice cooker helps too, if you like rice. Things that work well this way:
* Curries (sear pork/chicken in oil for a few minutes, add the cooked vegetables, pour over ~1 cup water, steam, then add the curry paste. Serve over rice)
* Asian stir frys (sear pork/chicken/beef, add veggies (I like broccoli and snow peas), add a bit of oil and your favorite sauce (lemon & teriyaki are favorites here))
* Oyakodan (this is a new favorite – sear chicken and onion in oil, pour over a bit of dashi stock, crack egg into it, cook until egg is as cooked as you like it. Serve with bok choy over rice.)
* Simple stews
* Steaks & veggies. Sear your lamb/beef/pork steaks for a minute or two on each side in a cast iron pan, move the pan to a 350F oven for 10 minutes, serve with steamed veggies.
Other meals we like that are more involved:
* Pulled pork. (Take a ~lb of pork (beef/lamb can work well too), sear in an electric skillet on all sides, cover with ~2 c water and some BBQ sauce, salt and garlic. Heat the water to boiling, then bring down to a very slow simmer. Simmer for 4-6 hours (I do this on days when I work from home). Pull to pieces and serve with veggies over hamburger buns.)
* Hamburgers! (1 lb ground beef, bread crumbs, 1 egg, and spices (salt, pepper, garlic, BBQ sauce). Mix, pat out, fry.)
* Pasta (I’m sure you can cook pasta, but you can make it more interesting. I make my own white sauces, they’re really easy. Mix up a roux (heat 2 tbsp butter to just browning in a saucepan, whisk in 2 tbsp flour, cook until light brown, mix in 2 c lukewarm milk, whisk until thickened. Add whatever spices/flavorants you like. With chicken I add broccoli and a light garlic white sauce. For fish, try dill. For homemade mac & cheese, add some gouda or sharp cheddar.)
* Fish tacos (marinate tilapia filets with cilantro, coriander, and lime juice for ~30 minutes. Sear in an electric skillet on both sides. Crumble into tacos with sliced mango and red cabbage)
* Shepherd’s Pie (Make a beef hash (sear 1 lb ground beef, add ~1 cup water, salt, pepper, and a bag of frozen peas.) Add a bit of cornstarch and cook it down until it’s a little thick. Pour it off into a pyrex baking dish. Make some mashed potatoes (chop into 1-2″ cubes, boil until soft, pour off water, mash with butter, salt, pepper, and milk). Dab the potatoes onto the beef hash evenly, then scrape a fork over it all to make raised bits. Bake for ~20 minutes at ~350K until it’s brown. Freezes well in single-serving portions)
* Fish pie (Poach some tilapia filets in milk with some salt and dill. Take ~2 c milk and bring up to just under boiling in a skillet, add the fish and simmer until flaky. Flake the fish up into small pieces. Add in a golden roux (equal parts butter and flour cooked until light brown) and stir until thickened. Pour into the bottom of a pyrex baking dish. Top with mashed potatoes and bake just like the shepherd’s pie.)
* Roast salmon (Take a fresh salmon filet (again, I get mine from costco) and put it in a costco baking dish. Dab with pats of butter and add some salt and dill. Bake for ~25 minutes at ~350 or until the fish flakes. Serve with veggies and rice. I also like it with a baked pecan teriyaki sauce.)
General tips to make cooking easier:
* Keep a list of meals your family likes somewhere handy on the fridge. We’ve got ~30 or so. That’s big enough that you don’t feel like you’re always eating the same thing, and we add new ones as we discover them (usually from youtube or trying them at restaurants) and take off ones we don’t feel like anymore.
* Keep your pantry stocked with what you need to make a couple of the above meals at all times. Go shopping not when you’re out of food, but when you’re low.
* Do some meal planning on the same schedule you go grocery shopping (weekly for us). Just make a list of 7 things you’ll plan on having for dinner that week. It doesn’t have to be rigid, you just want to make sure you have the pantry stocked with enough food for the week and that you’re not home going “Whadda you want for dinner?” “I dunno, whadda you want?” Instead it can be “Do you want chicken stir-fry or burgers tonight?”
For pork the cut you should use is shoulder, sometimes also called butt. It’s quite inexpensive. If you want to be able to leave it unattended you can cook it in a slow cooker, my usual process is dry rub over night, stick in the slow cooker before I go to work, and then roast the outer skin in a very hot oven with a salt and sugar mixture to develop that bark when I get home. I serve it with a vinegar / hot pepper sauce (eastern NC style) or a thinned out ssamjang sauce inspired by a David Change recipe I saw once.
Unfortunately it doesn’t freeze too well, so I don’t think it’d be a good choice for people cooking for just themselves. But if you want to feed a bunch of people cheaply and without too much effort it is a great choice.
Thank you for this! I actually do some of these or their variations already, but I will be checking out the others. Sounds like we should do an SSC certified cookbook! (I’m only partially joking)
My wife and I eat some minor variation on each of these pretty much once a week. New recipes drift in and old recipes drift out:
* Rice and black beans. My wife and I have different ways of cooking the beans. She uses some packaged seasoning, I simmer them with sliced tomatoes and a bunch of cumin. Takes about 15-20 minutes either way.
* Pasta with sauce and some sauteed vegetable and onion. Orange bell peppers, green beans, zucchini, whatever we have on hand. Sometimes we follow a recipe I found on marthastewart.com where you cover the vegetables in Italian dressing and garlic first. We have pasta more than once a week most weeks. Pasta is one thing our two-year-old will reliably eat.
* Mujadara – a lentil and rice dish I learned from my aunt. Incredibly easy if you don’t get fancy. All you need to do is sautee some onions, lentils, and rice, then add the right amount of water, let it boil and then simmer for like 40 minutes.
* Broccoloni, a dish invented by my mother to get us to eat vegetables. It’s mac and cheese but with broccoli. You boil pasta and broccoli together until they’re both done, then you add some cheese and milk and that’s it.
* Roasted vegetables with rice. Chop up a bunch of vegetables, potatoes, broccoli, onions, peas, etc. and put them in a baking dish. Coat them with some vegetable oil and seasoning (Italian dressing works well!), cover the pan with tin foil and put it in the oven for around 40 minutes, maybe stirring once.
We eat other things too when we have more energy or when guests come. My wife will make interesting breads occasionally and she makes really good chili for Sundays sometimes. My special ability is making cheese sauce from scratch. We have meat once every one or two weeks, usually chicken breasts or ground beef.
I am proud of our ability to cook tasty and not terribly unhealthy meals every day without too much money or time. All of the dishes above take 15 or 20 minutes of attention at most.
How do you do cheese sauce? I made mac and cheese the other weekend. Just a simple roux (melt butter, let cool, whisk in flour), heat up again, add shredded cheese, salt, pepper, some drippings from the steak I was cooking, milk.
I’d be interested if there’s a different/better way.
No, pretty much like that. I was taught to do it with a white sauce. Melt the butter, add milk and flour and whisk until it starts to thicken, then add shredded cheese. Steak drippings in your mac and cheese sauce sounds amazing.
According to my mother (who is a far better cook than I, and can bake, which is harder than cooking) letting the butter cool before you whisk the flour in keeps it from getting lumpy.
She also told me to use less butter and more flour than I would have otherwise.
Excellent. The cheese tends to cover a multitude of errors, but I’ve been branching out to other uses for my white sauce and that advice might prove helpful.
I feel that this is profoundly true.
I’ve also done cheese sauces using sour cream as a good base and adding in parmesan to give it a saltier/more umami flavor. But then I’ve also experimented with a parmesan-miso white sauce (really good), so your tastes may vary.
Hard-boiled eggs.
Bread + onion + meat + cheese + tomato sauce + spices + yellow cheese. Cooked in the oven.
Jasmine rice + fried onion + fish + canned peas and carrots.
Vegetable soup made with any vegetables lying around the house.
My wife and I are both avid cooks, so we tend to have a pretty diverse menu. however, my go-to meals when I don’t feel like thinking about making something fancy are:
Italian sausage cooked with peppers and onions. Just about the easiest thing you can make, and very delicious.
Gyudon. It’s almost as easy to make as the sausage, and is extremely satisfying. I mainly eat this in the winter.
Carbonara. If you can fry bacon and boil pasta, you can make this dish. It’s another super satisfying meal, though it’s probably not the most healthy thing in the world.
Re: carbonara
My egg, cheese, butter mixture never seems to transmogrify into a creamy sauce like it is supposed to. Instead I end up with butter pasta with bits of cheese and bacon in it. Tastes pretty good, but still a disappointment.
Do you add some of the pasta water into the dish after you’ve mixed it all together? That helps melt the cheese and give it a creamy texture. This is a good recipe for carbonara, and while I don’t follow it to a “T” any more, it is how I originally learned to make it.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/spaghetti-alla-carbonara-recipe.html
Yes, I’ve done that.
How important is the “freshly grated parmigiano reggiano”? I buy real parmigiano reggiano instead of the parmesan, but I don’t have a cheese grater (not that they are particularly expensive now that I look at it).
I never buy pre-grated cheese, so I can’t really answer that. I would definitely assume that if you are using Kraft green can parmesan that there’s a good chance it wouldn’t work right, but it doesn’t seem like that’s what you’re doing.
A good way to do Italian sausages with onions (I imagine peppers would be good too) involves chopping up the onions, seasoning them, microwaving them a bit. Then, spread them over the bottom of a big pan of some sort. Put the sausages on top. Cover with foil. Put that on the grill for a while, until the sausages are mostly cooked and their fat is rendered, take the top off, let the onions continue to cook, and finish the sausages on the grill so there’s some browning.
The way I usually do it is to fry the sausages in a pan to brown them, then I add in the onions and peppers (sometimes I’ll add garlic and canned tomatoes) with a little oil and cook the whole thing while covered until the onions and peppers are tender. All the flavors mix together nicely and it works great as a sandwich.
Ooh, I’d be interested in that Gyudon recipe. I’ve tried it but I can’t seem to get it right. Also, what sort of beef do you use?
I’ve been doing mostly sauteed vegetable with tofu, meat and/or cheese lately. Or baked chicken, with the picked-over carcass then turned into broth for various soups. That reminds me, I should make some lentil-beet soup soon – saute onion, then add beets, lentils, and broth, then puree. It’s good with plenty of dill, and maybe some garlic.
I used to do more elaborate meat, like slow-cooked pork shoulder for pulled pork, but ever since I got pregnant my appetite for meat has really decreased.
Do you use canned lentils and beans or do you find it easy to remember to pre-soak/boil them the day before?
Lentils don’t require preboiling or soaking–they cook just fine in an hour or so. Dried beans are more of a problem.
Canned beans – yes, frequently. I do sometimes use dry beans if I’m thinking ahead enough to pre-soak them, or if I have all day to throw them in the slow cooker (you don’t really need to pre-soak most varieties if they’re going to be cooked all day anyway).
Canned lentils I have never touched in my life. Like David Friedman says, the dry ones really don’t take that long to cook – I’d estimate closer to 30 minutes than an hour, myself.
This may sound ridiculous, but a significant reason I hope Hillary Clinton loses is because I don’t want to endure eight years of this after having endured eight years of the race equivalent.
A lot of the differences between mainstream presidential candidates actually come down to style and setting the tone. And I totally expect to be harangued about this sort of thing for eight years if Hillary wins. Is there any way we can just… not?
I mean, I’ll make you a deal Democrats: Hillary wins but you never get to complain it’s because of gender when people oppose her policies? Please?
Only half joking.
I more baffled by lah-di-dah over Trump than the rapturous enthusiasm. In what way is he a “mainstream candidate”?
Well I get the sense he’s actually very moderate in terms of his actual positions, though stylistically he certainly is a big departure. Maybe that’s actually why I hope he’ll win? Just to see something different at all the insufferable press conferences.
Voting for Johnson, though. I wish Ron Paul would stop being a curmudgeon and endorse him. Could make a real difference at this crucial point when seemingly a lot of people in both parties are less than happy with their candidate. The libertarians seem downright reasonable by comparison.
I don’t think he has a full set of actual positions. And unlike most politicians I don’t think he’ll defer on an issue he doesn’t know or care much about to his party’s consensus. Instead he’ll just do that thing where he blurts out whatever comes into his head and then be stubborn and double down if challenged. Those inspirations might be moderate but they might not be. Depends in no small part what he had for breakfast.
The people in both parties who don’t like their candidates are at opposite ideological extremes though.
Social conservatives hate Trump because they think he’s a closet liberal.
Berniebros hate Hillary because they think she’s a closet neocon.
Gary Johnson will get neither of those groups with his “fiscally conservative socially liberal” nonsense.
“Nonsense”?
“fiscally conservative socially liberal”
I guess we’ll see Billary apply it again.
Libertarianism is not a hodgepodge of compromises from the terrible “major” parties.
It has a proud and dignified philosophical tradition of its own. Libertarians should be promoting and defending that, not desperately trying to point out things they have in common with two organizations that almost every average person hates.
Well, but I think “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” is a decent, reasonable-sounding, non-scary version of weak libertarianism in a nutshell.
Clearly Johnson and Weld are trying to run on a platform of being the “reasonable,” “sensible” alternative this go round.
Normally I’d say that if you’re going to basically be an ideological protest candidate then don’t water down the message, since the message is the point.
On the other hand, this might be a good chance to expand the mainstream appeal of libertarianism, given how many people are currently dissatisfied with the big party nominees. In fact, one could argue that Trump already IS the right wing protest candidate, potentially leaving a real vacuum for the “reasonable,” fiscally responsible, not-super-religious conservative.
I’m not sure I agree that the never-Trump Republicans and the Bernie Bros would never vote for a libertarian, either. Obviously most of them will vote for Trump/HRC or else stay home, but Johnson has both the experience and even-handedness Trump seems to lack, as well as Bernie’s anti-war, socially liberal positions.
In other words, at a time when both major party candidates seem kind of scary, offering an un-scary version of libertarianism might be a good strategy, especially if we can get a lot of celebrities like Penn Jillette and Bill Maher talking about it (not sure it is, but I can see the thinking).
I don’t know how you can actually tell what his positions are.
Do you think that you WON’T hear a bunch of complaining if she loses about how it’s proof positive of how we live in a sexist patriarchy?
Yeah, but it will die down pretty fast, ironically, relative to the case in which she wins.
Consider how much more we had to ironically hear about how racist we all are during the first black president’s tenure than ever before.
True. His victory granted a large constituency the apparent mandate to declare anyone that wasn’t with the program to be Unamerican Traitors.
Wonder where they could possibly have gotten that idea?
Zing!
Why, I couldn’t possibly imagine, Zorgon. Where do you think they got that idea?
We’re dealing with a counter-factual here. I’m not at all convinced that had McCain won, we wouldn’t have spent the next eight years constantly hearing about how every piece of bad economic news was a direct result of America being too racist to elect the obviously superior other guy.
Eh, people forget about the loser pretty quick.
Maybe in your circles they do.
My blue-tribe friends still can’t go more than a week without reminding us all that the Supreme Court rigged the 2000 election for GWB… they’re still bitter over the defeat of moderate white guy Al Gore… I can’t even imagine what they’d be up to if Obama had lost…
2000 was an unusually close election decided under highly irregular circumstances, on par with 1824 and 1876. No other election in recent memory inspired such lasting bitterness. Certainly if you look at state and local elections, there’s nobody blaming racist New Yorkers for electing Bloomberg over Thompson in 2009, etc.
Bullshit. I scarcely remember seeing much any of that past 2011.
(DAE remember the Boondocks episode about the first Obama campaign? That was such a fun show.)
I’m gonna go ahead and speculate, that it will not be as bad as the race equivalent.
Two reasons: You will hear criticism of Clinton attributed to sexism, but not in center mainstream media(NOT Salon or Vox). The sort of feminism that labels every criticism of a woman sexist is extremely uncool and low status. Clinton, unlike Obama, had very low and unethusiastic support from young voters. Even more, Albright, an old-school feminist, had to apologize after saying that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t support Clinton.
Second reason: They had a point about the criticism of Obama. If 20% of the population actually believed that Obama was secretly a muslim, it’s not totally unreasonable to suspect racist motives. While this obviously does not suggest that most of the opposition to Obama was because of racism, the mental association between ‘Not liking Obama’ and ‘Being racist’ was strengthened by this. I do not see this happening with Clinton, as there is no part of the Republicans who hates women.
There may not be many who actually hate women, but surely you’re aware that “the Republicans hate women because they oppose (insert name of policy promoted as helping women)” is a very common accusation?
Anyone else read Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better?
I found myself agreeing with one of the Amazon reviewers who said “A bunch of information is thrown together and justified by some source to support the premise the author wants to promote.”
That holds true for all arguments that aren’t based on brazen lies.
No, it is s possible to tell both sides of a story.
Yes, some people do not cherry pick their examples and stats, but make an effort to be objective.
Like who? Scott and Jonathan Haidt don’t count.
What are inexpensive alternatives to psychotherapy/psychiatry/etc.?
I know someone who is depressed and has chronic anxiety. She has health insurance but even with that, each session with a therapist looked like it was going to cost her about $300 out of pocket. Technically she probably could afford a session or two, but going for any length of time would probably eliminate her ability to save money or pay off debt early–both of which are very important goals and not something it would be wise for her to push aside.
(Before you recommend that she just smoke a joint once in a while, she is not willing to break laws.)
Support groups, like AA, Al Anon, Codependents Anonymous or any other kind of support group that local hospitals, clinics, churches, or community centers offer. Some community clinics have free or low cost therapy. Some therapists use a sliding scale.
She may want to join a social group or 2, or a church, just so she won’t be too isolated.
There are also relaxation methods on the Internet, although they are not a substitute for psychotherapy. Still, many people find them helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DALbwI7m1vM
If you like the sound, keep it. If not, turn off the audio part.
This is just one of the EMDR youtubes. Just type in EMDR or eye movement therapy into youtube.com to get others, if this one doesn’t suit you.
Here’s an article about EMDR.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/emdr-trauma/399650/
There’s also self tapping of acupressure points—Emotional Freedom Technique—a different technique for the same purpose, here.
http://bradyates.net/videos.html
If you like the sound/affirmations, keep them. If not, turn off the audio part.
I’ve recommended support groups to her before. Her answer was basically “You’re going to tell someone with anxiety to go sit in a room with other anxious people?” That was the end of that.
I emailed her the Atlantic article and the Youtube link and encouraged her to try it out (“It’s worth ten minutes to try, right?”) so we’ll see how it goes. Thanks.
Don’t click it! It’s a Cylon trick!
Talking to a friend. Exercising. Meditating. Medicating (but you said no psychiatry; come on tho’, it’s not very expensive). Hanging out in quiet, pleasant areas and getting very gradual exposure to uncomfortable social contact. Minimising job/family stress and seeking out situations in which she could feel comfortable, safe, and in control. Taking her out for fun, getting random gifts or pleasant surprises from family or friends, maybe; something to make her feel loved.
Not very professional advice, just racking my brains here. Do you think any of this could work/is applicable?
@ Miller Lite
(Before you recommend that she just smoke a joint once in a while, she is not willing to break laws.)
Try a weekend in Colorado, Washington State, etc?
From what I gather, those states have made drug tourism illegal.
It is legal by Colorado state law to go to Colorado and smoke a joint. The amount tourists are permitted to buy is smaller than the amount residents are permitted to buy, but it’s not zero.
Unfortunately it’s still technically Federally illegal though unenforced. So forget it if you object to breaking any law, or if you have a security clearance or want to get one in the near future.
Or if (as is more relevant to many people) your job tests you on a regular basis.
Also I read an article several months ago about how it’s easy to buy marijuana in Colorado as a tourist, but nearly impossible to find a place you can actually legally smoke it. Perhaps this has changed since, but at the time it was illegal to smoke it in public outside places, illegal to smoke it in bars/restaurants/hotels. Pretty much the only legal place to smoke it was in a private individual’s backyard, a place that many tourists will not have access to. (A side effect of this was that it was nudging people towards edibles, which are significantly more potent and can make you pretty sick if you’re a newbie who doesn’t really know what they’re doing)
@Matt M, an acquaintance recently returned from a business trip to Denver in which he indulged, and according to him the solution was a hotel with private balconies. Apparently one has acquired a reputation for being friendly to the smoking tourist. No idea whether this was strictly legal or simply politely ignored, but it does seem to be the consensus solution.
exercise and mindfullness exercises are good things to try first
Long shot, but whatever: Anyone following the football Euros here? Of all the teams, I am looking forward to England the most, seeing as their young players would facilitate exciting attacking football quite well. Watching the technical perfection of Spain and to a lesser degree Germany can get quite boring.
Related: Is there any reason, to not consider the odds for Mario Gomez from Germany being the top goalscorer bascially being free money?
Ronaldo 7/1
Müller 8/1
Griezmann 8/1
Giroud 14/1
…
Gomez 25/1 (!!)
Gomez is the only real striker in a team considered to be at least among the top three candidates to win the title. Since the World Cup, Germany has been relieing on set pieces quite a lot, and Gomez is great in the air.
He has had a very good season in Turkey, and while his performances can be lackluster at times, he is an incredibly consistent scorer. His only disadvantage is that he does not take penalites, Müller does that for Germany, but that can’t justify these odds.
Source for the odds:
http://www.oddschecker.com/football/euro-2016/top-goalscorer
I don’t follow football that closely, but I’m taking a trip to Europe this summer and an planning on seeing a match live, just for the experience of it. It’s the Quarterfinal match taking place in Lille. I believe most people are projecting that it will likely be England vs Portugal. Should be fun, I hope!
If it indeed ends up being Portugal- England you are in for quite a treat. The last, now notorious, match up of those teams was in the the quarters at the WC in 2006, which made almost literally all of England hate on Ronaldo and the Portuguese team, because they
were looking to blame somebodyaccused him of manipulatiing the ref into sending off Rooney, then England’s best player.Yes – I do follow football somewhat casually, remember that particular match well, and have been a fan of Ronaldo ever since 🙂
I’ll be watching. I expect France will be fun to watch, but I generally wait to see how the teams play before following any in particular. (Aside from England).
Reasons against Gomez odds: in general, I wouldn’t expect the bookies to be wildly off. In particular: it’s not (overwhelmingly) probable that he starts (vs Goetze, Draxler, Muller, depending on formation), and his good season was in an inferior league.
Also: Germany have tougher opponents.
I feel like I don’t have “free speech.” It is pretty clear that I would face sever social and economic repercussions for expressing my views on race and gender publicly. For example I believe in HBD. Among other things my girlfriend’s family would probably become extremely hostile and I could actually lose my job. Being able to express my political views publicly is pretty important to me.
So I find it hard to care about threats to free speech for other people. Why should I cry that some other people might have to walk a mile in my shoes. The obviously example is Trump. On some level I don’t want him to stifle criticism. But on the other hand I can’t really manage to emotionally care.
Maybe on some level I understand the Black Lives Matter style protesters. They feel like society has screwed them over hard. So they find it hard to care about society screwing over others.
HBD?
http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/HBD
“Human bio diversity”, in this concept. Attempting to describe without endorsing or condemning: significant genetic differences exist between identifiable racial clusters, and these genetic differences lead to meaningful phenotypical differences in abilities, temperaments, and measurable qualities and outcomes.
How is that politics? Isnt politics about what a society ought to do?
Well, yes. A lot of the idea’s proponents and opponents strongly believe that endorsing it would lead to certain courses of action (to put it dispassionately and neutrally).
Except (to Evan) a number of people have pointed out to those proponents that we already live in a world where those ideas are practically speaking applied to the population at large.
To wit, one of their main policy implication views is that people with really great test scores would have a leg up in the job market and especially higher level administrative goverment work (policy setting and the like) and yet when it’s pointed out that this is already the case to HBD proponents, well, that tends to be met with silencia.
Yes, Anon Comment, if you think certain races are inferior, people of those races would be pretty pissed off at you, and the friends and relatives of people of those races would be pretty pissed at you. You are, of course, free to say it, but there are consequences.
Most people do not believe in HBD. But most people believe in something that, if they said it, especially to certain people, it would piss those people off. That’s the typical human experience. In many neighborhoods, a guy can’t say “Your mother is a ____” even if she, in truth, is one. But few people consider that a hardship. You just don’t say it, at least not to him.
Talking about politics at all often has negative consequences in American society today.
If this is what constitutes a big problem in your life, you are very very lucky.
Free speech does not mean that you are free to say any thought that comes into your head, and that other people are required to not be pissed off, or not to have their feelings hurt, and then are required not to react to you in a negative way.
I am sure there are other people you could talk to about this, who also believe in HBD. But you also might consider how likely it is that you may be wrong.
You might consider how it would be for you if whatever race or weight or ethnic group or whatever you are– whatever your characteristics– if people said that you and all others in some category you are in, are inferior– and said or implied that people in your category ought not be allowed to vote or go to a university or own property or have certain types of jobs or have various other rights etc.
I think you’re right on a personal level – that we shouldn’t go out of our way to personally antagonise people by talking directly to them about things that they find offensive – but I’m not sure that is a rule that you can rightly apply to public discourse in general. There really seems to be no end to the things that people might find offensive – and I think people have to have the freedom to make general points (i.e. “single parenthood has worse outcomes than couples” should not be censored, whereas “you are awful because you are a single parent” perhaps should be).
Anyway, on the point of race, I read recently that the Igbo tribe of Nigeria has a higher average IQ than indigenous British whites. As a white British person I didn’t find this news to be particularly upsetting, just as I’m not upset by the idea that European Jews have a higher average IQ than other Europeans.
I guess that’s because I don’t fear that I will be dehumanised because of these facts(?).
“I guess that’s because I don’t fear that I will be dehumanised because of these facts(?).”
Yes, if you were getting discriminated against in the job market, if there were videos all over the Internet showing police killing unarmed people of your race, if people of your race were in prison in droves for nonviolent drug offenses– offenses which people of other races were committing but almost never getting arrested for– then it might have a different effect.
I’m being slightly pedantic here, but there is a well-understood (among those who know the issue well anyway) explanation for the disparity in non-violent drug offenses you mentioned.
Often, gang members are caught committing serious crimes. The police, already overstretched, know it takes a lot of time and work (not that it’s impossible, just that it takes a lot of time and work) to collect the evidence needed to prosecute them for those crimes, and their incentive is to bust up drug gangs anyway. So, they get the gang member to plead guilty to a non-violent drug charge that carries a lighter sentence (the gang makes money by selling drugs, so the gang member usually has a drug charge along with whatever else) in exchange for some information about his higher-ups. It’s a win for the cops who don’t have to do as much work and get information out of it, and it’s a win for the gang member who gets a lighter sentence. (See “The Wire” for a nice realistic illustration of this pattern.)
Whereas the random white person who gets busted for drug possession/use usually isn’t in a gang, and he can usually get off by promising not to use/buy drugs anymore and take a drug education class.
This has been going on for decades upon decades, contributing heavily to the racial disparities seen in prison.
Does the lack of videos all over the Internet about it make it better that cops are killing unarmed people of my race?
Re videos: Of course not, but when you see the videos, then you know cops are killing these unarmed people. And many people did not know that before. When the videos do exist, it is information about what is going on.
If cops are killing unarmed members of Nybbler’s race, and nobody else knows or cares about that, and Nybbler knows that nobody else knows or cares about that, does that make it better?
When the videos do exist, it is information about what is going on
There are so many other sources of information about what is going on, that the videos are of little value there. Where the videos are valuable, is as information about what people care about.
Ruprect, the single parent issue certainly may have some different interpretations. If single parenthood has worse outcomes than couples, then that does not necessarily mean that it would always be better if parents would marry, or if they would stay married if they already are.
It’s possible that the explanation is that some people find a compatible, responsible, caring partner and they wisely marry the person, or stay married if they are already. And any kids there benefit.
And other people may find a partner, have a kid, and then realize that the partner is irresponsible, or abusive, or criminal, or consistently spends more than the household income each month etc.
In that case, the more responsible partner wisely chooses not to marry– or not to stay married to– the irresponsible or abusive partner. But that does not mean that the kid would be better off if these parents were married.
Similarly, with race. Many American black intellectuals have discussed their growing up years in their books or speeches– and said that they were put down and ridiculed a lot by their peers, for being studious and interested in school.
So if American black kids, on average, score lower on scholastic tests, it could have more to do with this practice of ridiculing studiousness, or with other environmental situations that are more common with blacks than with whites, rather than being due to genetics. Most kids stop doing things that bring ridicule from peers.
Definitely. But I think it’s a discussion we should have.
I like to think of this as the holocaust denial problem. Throughout my life, I’ve always equated holocaust deniers with mad racists. A few months ago I watched a video on youtube by a holocaust denier and I realised I had absolutely no idea whether what they were saying was true or not, and that I’d never actually heard any of their arguments before.
I have no idea if holocaust deniers have a legitimate point, and I’m pretty sure most people have even less idea than me, but I’m pretty sure that if people started denying the holocaust they’d face some pretty severe social consequences (and perhaps in the UK, criminal charges).
I’m guilty of that kind of mob mentality. I also suspect that whatever we might gain in avoiding thinking about the fantasies of mad-men, we lose more in submitting to an illogical group-think.
In my day, we occasionally had actual holocaust survivors come into school and talk about their experiences. I realize that this is probably no longer an option, but in that context, it would have seemed silly (putting it very generously) to also address mythicists.
Ruprect,
On a similar note, I just finished reading “Blacklisted By History” – essentially a conservative revisionist work on the career of Joe McCarthy which largely presents him as someone who was mostly correct, concerned about the security of the nation, and destroyed so liberals (and “moderate” conservatives) could score some political points and cover up for a lot of their friends (many of whom totally were communists).
I tried to discuss the book with some of my liberal friends and they were having nothing of it. They wouldn’t even listen to the arguments. It was an immediate shoutdown – “Everyone knows McCarthy is evil, therefore any book that portrays him as non-evil is an obvious lie.”
For the record, the book is 600 pages and is very thoroughly footnoted, and relies upon many sources that have been de-classified and made public AFTER the majority of the standard histories of “McCarthyism” were already written. This information did not seem relevant to them.
If single parenthood has worse outcomes than couples, then that does not necessarily mean that it would always be better if parents would marry, or if they would stay married if they already are.
No, it means that on average the child of a single parent is worse off than if that child’s mother had gotten married when she realized she was pregnant.
Population stats don’t say anything about individuals – they talk about general trends.
In terms of race and gender, we have simple tests to see if someone is academically inclined and will succeed in school – they are called grades. These are much better indicators than skin color of the ability of a particular student to succeed, and so we should look at grades, and not skin color – as so unfortunately generally happens – to see if a student is succeeding or not. And we should look at averages of grades – not skin color – to see if a school system is succeeding at educating its students.
We don’t, right now, have good ways to test individual women to see if they can raise children at a level equal with the average quality of a two-parent household. Failing to have that test, it makes sense to use the more general metric and urge her to get married to the child’s father (and failing that, to the best option she has to hand) in order to best provide for the child.
No, Jill is correct. You are selecting from separate populations. Without carefully and comprehensively correcting for that, you can’t draw the conclusion you do.
Not so. You assume that Jill’s caveats apply to a majority of unmarried women – that their only options are criminals who beat their wives.
Again, it is not true that every child of an unwed mother will do better with the mother marrying her lover (or anyone else.)
It is, however, so that more children will benefit from this than will be harmed.
No, that’s just one example of a possible confounder. Not the only one. Until and unless you correct for drawing from separate populations you can’t connect the different outcomes to the treatment. This is stats 101.
Demonstrate to me that when studies control for everything else and still show a difference in outcomes between children of single parents and children of two parent households, that they are “drawing from different populations”.
They are not.
If you have such a study at hand, that’s a horse of a different color. That’s not what jill mentioned, nor have I laid eyes on such a thing myself.
There are no perfect studies. The IRB is not going to approve killing fathers. Draft randomization is pretty good, but the casualty rate is too low to make good studies. Other studies of widows are pretty good. The children of widows do better than the children of other single mothers but worse than the children of intact families. Part nature, part nurture.
“I also suspect that whatever we might gain in avoiding thinking about the fantasies of mad-men, we lose more in submitting to an illogical group-think.”
I can’t see how that could possibly be true. If you had to, in any meaningful way, evaluate the claims of every mad-man out there, you would not have time left to spend on anything else.
“I can’t see how that could possibly be true. If you had to, in any meaningful way, evaluate the claims of every mad-man out there, you would not have time left to spend on anything else.”
Yeah… that’s true. I guess we should aim to treat ‘offensive’ fringe beliefs as we treat ‘harmless’ ones. I don’t feel inclined to check out the latest research on astrology, but I’m not too bothered by people discussing it and don’t demonize those who do so. Theoretically, you might reach a point where an idea is so damaging to society that it has to be suppressed, but I think in practice, where severe social sanctions for ideas have been tried, it hasn’t really been effective, instead simply encouraging bad ideas to proliferate.
@Ruprect
I think you might underestimate how many bad ideas have been stopped from spreading by social sanctions. It’s a difficult thing to notice because the whole point is that the bad ideas aren’t visible.
Anecdote:
I was a grad student in physics at Chicago in the theoretical group. There was one black in that group. He was an Ibo.
Of the black people I met in university (fairly high-level undergrads plus fairly high-level grad students of all stripes), something like half were Nigerian or of Nigerian ancestry, and that group is majority or entirely Igbo.
I just completed a graduate degree at a Top-20 level business school. This was also my experience – we had very few black students – maybe 15 at most (out of a class of like 150), at least five were of Nigerian ancestry and three were Nigerian nationals.
Anonymous Comment said he believes in HBD, not that he thinks certain races are inferior. Andrew Hunter gave a pretty good short definition of it, which you can refer to if you’re confused.
I think what Anonymous Comment might have been getting at is the fact that a lot of people (especially on the Blue Team, in my experience) are able to speak candidly about their political beliefs without any consequences, because those beliefs are aligned with and protected by the officially endorsed dogmas and those “in the drinking water” so to speak. People who have beliefs at odds with those ideas are in a precarious position because there is no official ban on their ideas but they know they could be arbitrarily punished for expressing them anyway.
(Libertarianism is an exception; libertarians seem to mostly enjoy the freedom to express their views without punishment, so long as they avoid talking about freedom of association.)
I’m going to take a wild guess that Anonymous Comment is white, so he probably has indeed heard lots of people expressing the belief that white people are inferior–or evil, or at least collectively responsible for the problems of the world–and has witnessed the fact that other racial groups are given institutional and cultural privileges that are denied to white people (for example, the right to form their own student unions at universities, hiring or admittance preferences at jobs and schools, more leniency with regard to how they can talk and behave in public, and having their race downplayed in the news if they commit crimes).
Anonymous Comment never said that people of other races ought not to be allowed to vote or go to university or own property or have certain types of jobs/other rights. In my experience there are a few rogue voices in the HBD commentariat who suggest these things, but for the most part they really aren’t part of HBD, which instead is a paradigm adopted mostly by people earnestly trying to think and talk about race in a realistic, informed way.
I wasn’t saying Anon Commenter said those things that he didn’t say. I was just giving examples, to try to be specific about what might offend people, since he didn’t specify exactly what he might say that he thinks might lose him his job or his girlfriend if he said it.
Anon Commenter never said those things you said above either, as I am sure you are aware also.
Anon Commenter, are those the kinds of opinions you were referring to, that you feel you can’t say in public? The examples I gave? Or the examples Miller gave? Or something different?
Yes, I prefaced my comment with “I think what Anonymous Commenter might have been getting at” rather than just put words in his mouth.
And I myself said “IF you think certain races are inferior.” Not SINCE or BECAUSE or anything of that kind.
There are a lot of good people here. But also a lot of people who love to criticize others constantly. If you didn’t say anything incorrect, they just make something up, claim you said that, and criticize you for it.
Fair enough. But I’d say your “if” is a pretty big leap given the starting point of Anonymous Comment’s comment, though I’m familiar with HBD and some of the major voices/core ideas in that area. To someone who isn’t as familiar, your if is probably not a big leap.
Par for the course for humanity, no? “You have the right to remain silent: anything you say will be misinterpreted, and then used against you.”
More seriously, though, language is a fuzzier concept than it looks, with everyone having their own minefield of slightly-to-drastically-different definitions (aka “idiolects”), in the same way everyone has their own minefield of cultural assumptions (that American Civil Religion comes to mind, for one).
Certainly, most people hold some beliefs that at least some other people would find offensive. There is a difference though – some people’s offense is deemed to matter, and some isn’t. This seems to be getting worse as “I am offended!” increasingly becomes the strongest assertion of power someone can make (if they’re in the favored group).
For example, at your average American university, if a white person were to say “I am offended by your assertion that white people invented racism”, they get laughed at. “Too damn bad, that’s your privilege talking!” Whereas if a black person says “I find your factual discussion of relative violent crime rates among racial groups offensive!” he will be supported and the crime discusser will be told to shut up and be more sensitive.
Jill the fact that you don’t seem to get this vis a vis HBD kind of illustrates the point – HBD, when done well at least, posits testable hypotheses, and deals in verifiable data (for a flip side controversy, consider AGW). Uncomfortable or not, it is either a fact or it isn’t, but you write the whole field off as an offensive opinion not even worthy of being discussed.
But anyway this whole discussion is just reinventing the concept of an Overton window, isn’t it? If you’re outside it your ability to easily engage in free speech is certainly curtailed.
What about if you aren’t talking about a university, but your girlfriend’s family? They aren’t entitled to be offended by what offends them? They have some sort of moral duty to be polite to an edgelord?
Nobody has a “duty” to be polite to anyone or any idea, except insofar as we are attempting to promote a culture of truly free speech. That doesn’t mean you can’t have standards of etiquette, and it’s certainly reasonable to consider “dinner with potential in-laws” as a more restrained environment.
I do think it’s fair to expect reciprocal politeness / freedom though. If you’re in “free speech zone” that should apply to all ideas, even if some people consider them offensive or “edgelord-y” (especially if they are offensive but plausible, as HBD is). Likewise with a “no politics zone”. Don’t spout off on your political beliefs regardless of my feelings, unless you’re willing to give me a fair hearing too.
Source? My impression is that most people totally do, on a gut level, believe in HBD. They’re not scientific about it, but they do know that race is genetic, and most if not all traits are genetic.
I’m not so sure that is true. For example, I think there are a lot of people out there that think that the difference between a smart person and a dumb person is the quality of school they went to, or how much their parents taught them growing up.
Most people’s beliefs are not self-consistent. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” is a common expression indicating traits are largely hereditary, but it coexists with attitudes that consider parenting styles almost determinitive.
It is definitely true that most people aren’t always intellectually consistent. Even then though, I still think most people lean more towards nurture rather than nature. Perhaps it’s different in other countries, and the US is an outlier because our culture is more anti-monarchy than most.
Most people who argue about politics online do not believe in HBD.
Most people who exist in the world almost certainly do.
Even there I don’t know if I agree with that. If people truly believed that most traits were genetic, then why is there so much focus on raising your kids “right” or “wrong”? If people really believed that a person’s outcome was mainly genetic, then why would they worry about things like spoiling kids or things of that nature?
Doesn’t like a third of India still (unofficially) operate under a caste system?
I think the notion of your family determining your eventual worth is probably quite common in the developing world.
The fact that Chinese “tiger moms” devote so much energy to their children doesn’t mean they think “most” factors are nurture rather than nature… it may indicate that they think nature is so dominant that a ridiculous amount of effort must be put towards proper nurturing in order to give their middle-class child even the slightest bit of chance at competing with the elites.
“If people really believed that a person’s outcome was mainly genetic”
Where does the “mainly” come from?
I expect most people believe that heredity is one important factor in what people are like. If you combine that with “and the distribution of heritable traits is different in different populations” you are making a claim that some will regard as offensive.
I think nurture notions are largely a leftover of the days before mass education. In those days, education really did make a large difference, because there is a large difference between being literate and illiterate. Nowadays just about everyone in the first and second worlds is sent to school; we have reached the point of diminishing returns from education a long time ago. And since that variable has been largely made the same for almost everyone, other variables – such as genetics – are now relevant towards outcomes.
@David Friedman
In the original post the commentator said “They’re not scientific about it, but they do know that race is genetic, and most if not all traits are genetic”, and I was saying that I don’t think that the average person thinks that genetics make up more than 51% of a person’s traits.
Does the 50% figure really matter here?
I’d guess that nearly everyone agrees that genetics make up somewhere between say, 30% and 70% of a person’s traits. Whichever way you swing on that, it’s still significant (yet still not the ONLY significant thing)
Well, that was the original point that I was objecting to, and pretty much the whole point of this conversation. I don’t disagree that people think some part of who a person is is genetic. I just disagree that at any level average people think genetics are the majority factor.
Motte =/=bailey. In asmuch as HBD is a political movent it is not some purely descriptive, value neutral thing.
Remember that Anonymous Coward described HBD as a political view. Several people then tried defend HBD as some value neutral thing,.,.well, value neutral or political, you can only pick one.
And we already have a term for the descriptive science of genes…its called genetics.
Most people have never heard of the HBD political-scientific movement.
Which HBD?
I meant the “genetics determine outcomes to a large extent” idea.
Jill said that most people did not believe in HBD. If she meant the political-scientific movement based on internet blogs, then her statement has no substance – almost nobody, in human population terms, has even heard of it. So I took it to mean the underlying argument, rather than the movement itself. Jill’s replies so far indicate that I have interpreted her correctly.
You can speak prose without knowing that you are speaking prose, and you can disagree with right wing race..sorry genetics…based politics without knowing that anyone ever called it HBD.
Genetics determines outcomes isn’t a political argument. Genetics determines outcomes more than environment is a bit closer, but the gap still needs to he closed.
If you give a purely scientific statement of HBD then you can portray your opponents as ignorant, which serves some purposes…but then how can it be a political opinion? Don’t be surprised if people fill the gap out of their darkest imaginings.
“if people said that you and all others in some category you are in, are inferior– and said or implied that people in your category ought not be allowed to vote or go to a university or own property or have certain types of jobs or have various other rights etc.”
Do you have any reason to believe that the poster you are responding to believes, or wants to say, any of that?
The usual HBD claim is that the distribution of characteristics is different in different populations. That does not imply or even suggest that “all others in some category are inferior.” Nor does it imply the rest of your list. The claim that the distribution of height is different in men than in women, with men on average taller, is true and uncontroversial. It does not imply that I am taller than you are, and I’m probably not.
It sounds as though you are rejecting a wildly distorted parody of the views the poster feels not free to express.
Suppose he stated what I conjecture are his real views, something along the lines of “the distribution of IQ’s is wider for men than for women, with a larger fraction of men at both the high and low end,” or “The distribution of IQ is higher for East Asians than for Europeans, higher for Europeans than for sub-saharan Africans.”
Do you regard those views as obviously false? Obviously wicked to hold? Implying that some people should not be allowed to “vote or go to a university or own property or have certain types of jobs or have various other rights etc.”?
How would you describe someone whose image of those who disagree with her is wildly distorted in a negative direction?
If HBD has no practical consequences, why proselitise it? There is information the fact that someone chooses to say something, as well as in wh is said.
Remember that Anonymous Coward described HBD as a political view. Several people then tried defend HBD as some value neutral thing,.,.well, value neutral or political, you can only pick one.
Belief in HBD as a political issue among the decision-making class, if HBD as a scientific argument is true, is likely to lead to better choices regarding, for example, education. Less wasted money.
If HBD is true, it should be accepted. To reject a true statement is likely stunt the growth of affected fields. There will be research you cannot do (or cannot report) in the fields of genetics because it would support HBD. This could spread upwards to (valid) techniques of research which would be rejected because they lead to studies which support HBD.
The statement of HBD is value-neutral; the question over whether it should be allowed to be accepted is political.
I think the most neutral application of HBD is that if we are trying to root out things like sexism, racism, etc. then we should know what the actual base rate of things are. If Pacific Islanders are SD higher in IQ or improved social skills but are not proportionally represented in high IQ or high social skills professions, then that is evidence of some sort of problem or confounder. If Spaniards are not represented proportionally in soccer team rosters but their height and lung capacities are on average much lower, then that should be applied as a confounder for how much of their lack of representation is due to other factors rather than directly related ones.
HBD is a basic premise I agree with, but statistical trends of different populations are only useful in population level analysis. Any info you might glean from population trends are blown out of the water by the information you get just by seeing how they carry themselves, their personal hygiene, etc. A first visual impression’s information is an order of magnitude less information than you’d get by seeing how they act, how they interact with other people, and how they talk. This is still orders of magnitude less information than seeing their direct performance over time on the given task or criteria. The only time when race should matter among individuals is when you don’t have enough information and your actual first step should be to get more.
If HBD has no practical consequences, why proselitize it?
HBD has significant practical consequences, which do not include disallowing people to vote, go to a university, etc.
Nothing thar is purely descriptive has any poltical consequence unless you add some values into it.. that’s how you get across an is ought ga.p.
Plugging unknown value X into HBD, doesn’t lead to any particular poltics, furthermore. Someone who bases some particular politics on HBD has some particular but unstated values in mind. Thats a problem.
The sanitised version of HBD, that genetically defined populations differ genetically, is not sufficient to tell you anything about education.
You at least need the further claim that genetics sets a ceiling n achievement.
We have already had examples of people saying that the obvious response to failures is to a/ spend more money AND b/ stop wasting money. Preteding that it is somehow all just science is incredibly unhelpful.
If (accepted moral premise)+(truth of sanitized HBD)–>(one political policy), while (exact same moral premise)+(falsity of sanitized HBD)–>(completely different and incompatible political policy), then sanitized HBD has political consequences.
You can say HBD is value-neutral and scientific and non-political, but that ain’t gonna defend you when you start making claims that displease a political majority. No amount of “but I’m not a politician” will save you from the politics.
If you refuse to plug in any value into HBD, people will assume you’re plugging it in implicitly and penalize you anyway. They have no way of knowing if you’re honestly being clueless or if you’re stirring the pot feigning innocence since we’re pretty good at ambiguity.
Maybe you were even filling the gaps for me and assuming what political group I’m making implications about with my neutral-value statements, as you were reading my comment!
Sanitised HBD can have political consequences without determining a unique political stance.
I am not saying HBD is anything in particular, just noting mismatches between how it is presented, and what people do with it.
Suspcions that HBD is a trojan horse fr some far right philosphy can be allayed by putting forward an explicitly political, explicitly non right wing version,…for some values of ‘can’.
You might consider how it would be for you if whatever race or weight or ethnic group or whatever you are– whatever your characteristics– if people said that you and all others in some category you are in, are inferior– and said or implied that people in your category ought not be allowed to vote or go to a university or own property or have certain types of jobs or have various other rights etc.
We could do that. Or maybe we could focus our attention to things that are actually on the table, and not get distracted by side projects.
For instance, maybe we might want to provide a good education – one that pushed each student to the limits of what they themselves could learn. We know that this will vary from student to student so we don’t expect every student to equally excell. And if we have a system where one subgroup of students repeatedly doesn’t do as well as another, it’s worth our time to see if the system is failing to educate this group as well as the others. And if the shortcoming is in the system, then we need to adjust the system, so that all student groups are treated the same.
But if this one group of students is actually different from other, better performing groups of students, then it would be a mistake to treat all the students the same, because they’re not. In order to meet our goal of getting the best outcome for all students, we’d have to treat the groups that were different, differently. Maybe they need hearing aids. Maybe they need more classes in English language. Maybe they need individual prescriptions for eyeglasses. Maybe this group has had FAS and we need to understand what the likely top performance is.
HBC is a means to grapple with various causes of different outcomes in order for us as a society to reach the outcome we want. Refusing to consider HBC’s implications traps us into the false notion that all people are just alike in strengths and weaknesses.
The only people I can think of who would rationally want everyone to be thought of as the same would be the sort of people who have come to the conclusion that they have more strengths under the current system than other people, and don’t want the other alternative strengths of other people to be acknowledged or valued – nor for additional assistance to be available to those people who need it in order to succeed (*) in the current system.
To which I can only say, what mean-hearted selfish racists.
(*) Note that I say “succeed” – not “be equal”. We’ve already established that one person differs from the next, and when society tries to impose attribute equality – instead of, say, equality under the law – it never ends well.
Why look at average racial differences when you could be looking at individual characteristics? It seems that when people do this, they often want to stereotype every individual with the average characteristics of their race.
Education can be done by looking at individual kids’ needs.
This kind of stereotyping is most crazy in the case of gender. Do you realize that around 50% of the people in the world are male, and around 50% are female. There is great variation within each group, of course. To treat an individual in school a certain way because of their gender, rather than their individual characteristics, is absurd.
“Why look at average racial differences when you could be looking at individual characteristics?”
And goes on to talk about the case of gender.
One obvious answer is that people routinely make factual claims that hinge on the unstated assumption that there are no relevant differences in the average characteristics by gender (or race).
When you read a claim about the male/female wage difference or how much less blacks make on average than whites, it is taken for granted that it demonstrates the existence and scale of discrimination. That claim depends on an assumption about average racial (or gender) characteristics–an assumption which there is no evidence for and lots of evidence against.
And if anyone points that out he gets the sort of response Jill recently demonstrated–the assumption that anyone who points it out want to ban blacks or women from certain jobs, not let them vote, … .
The obvious explanation for that behavior is that people making the discrimination claim know that the evidence they offer does not support the conclusion they reach without the assumption that average characteristics are the same, and so want to shut up anyone who points out that the assumption is false.
Perhaps Jill can offer an alternative explanation more flattering to her and those who share her views?
You’ve heard about racial and gender discrimination before, I am sure. And decided that all evidence for it that you’ve ever heard was invalid. I expect that nothing I can say will change your mind.
Why do you think such huge percentages of women have gone into professions such as law, medicine, science and engineering in the last few decades, as compared to the previous few? Are you thinking these professions were totally open to them all those previous years, and there was never any discrimination at all, but they just suddenly decided to go into them recently? Because female genetics changed? Or what?
I think that Jill is right about gender discrimination. There are a lot of women since, say, the 1970s or so (as I understand it, the 1970s saw the first generation of young women who really got a chance to enter the professions in a big way) who entered professional/managerial careers in large numbers (less affluent women always worked – they had to) who previously would have only had secretarial jobs open to them.
To put it another way, women who had the capability to be doctors, lawyers, etc, were previously confined to jobs they were overqualified for, and “jobs” not “careers” – the assumption was usually that they would quit their job when they got married and had kids.
After her children were grown, my grandmother had the opportunity to go back to work, and my grandfather forbade it, because he would have considered it a comment on his ability to provide for his family.
So, there was discrimination and social pressure preventing women working. Then again, when my grandfather was made redundant he fell into a deep depression and believed that he was worthless – he only snapped out of it when my grandmother threatened to leave him – then he cheered up and enjoyed early retirement.
So… maybe the best way of looking at it is that there was a social system where gender roles were fairly strictly defined, but actually men were equally “locked-in” to their roles as women, and there was always a degree of give and take in terms of how men and women interacted with each other on a family level.
Also, even now, there are certainly professions, which, as a man, I would hesitate before getting into (nursing, primary school teaching), even though there might no direct discrimination, in exactly the same way as women might feel discouraged from entering certain professions.
@Jill:
David obviously did not imply that there is and never was discrimination against women or blacks.
His point was:
P1:There are racial differences in some form of accomplishment .
P2:We know there are no differences between races.
C1: Therefore blacks are being discriminated against.
He is criticising the whole reasoning , based on questioning P2. Just because there are differences in outcome, we cannot say that they are based on discrimination.
“You’ve heard about racial and gender discrimination before, I am sure. And decided that all evidence for it that you’ve ever heard was invalid.”
Your ability to predict my views is about as bad as your ability to understand other people–you are living in a world created by your own imagination.
When my sister went to Bolt (Berkeley Law School) in the late sixties, women were about ten percent of the class. One year, of the two top students in each of three classes, five of the six were women. That’s pretty strong evidence that, for one reason or another, it was much harder for a woman than a man to end up in a top school, hence that the ones who did were, on average, abler than the men. Currently, law schools are about 50/50, and there doesn’t seem to be a big difference in how well male and female students do.
That’s good evidence that the reason for the earlier situation was not a difference in the distribution of innate ability, although one can’t tell if it was discrimination in the admissions process or social pressures such that only women who really wanted to be lawyers and were good at it end up in top law school.
My point is not that there was no discrimination. Your insistence that I must believe that is evidence that you are unable to understand views different from yours. To repeat:
One observes a difference in outcomes by race or gender. That difference might be due to discrimination (broadly defined–I’m including the social pressure case), it might be due to innate differences.
Jill and those who agree with her confidently announce that the difference is due to discrimination.
In order for that conclusion to follow from the evidence, they have to believe that there are no relevant innate differences. They have no evidence to support that belief.
When someone points that out, hence that they don’t know how much of the difference in outcome is due to what, they attack him as a racist and insist, as Jill has just done, that he must believe that none of the difference is due to discrimination.
Is it true:
1. That people with your views routinely attribute observed differences in outcomes to discrimination?
2. That in order to do so, one needs to be confident that there are not innate differences that could explain them.
3. That there is no good basis for such confidence, hence
4. No good basis for the conclusion. The difference might be due to discrimination, it might be due to innate differences, they don’t know which it is but pretend they do.
Which of these four claims do you disagree with?
David, what evidence do you have that the racial differences in performance are innate? If the gender differences were not innate– those differences in the percentages of women vs. men in professions– percentages that shifted hugely in recent decades– then what reason do you have to believe that the racial differences are innate?
There could I suppose be innate differences. But there could be cows jumping over the moon too, in their space suits, coming from other planets. What reason do you have for positing innate differences between blacks and whites?
“What reason do you have for positing innate differences between blacks and whites?”
What reason to you have for positing that there are no such differences ? Your argument depends on that assumption, since you are the one who claims that differences in outcome are due to discrimination. I don’t know what innate differences there are, so don’t know how much of the difference in outcomes is due to discrimination. Similarly for gender.
My grounds for positing that some differences exist are pretty obvious. We believe, or at least I believe, in Darwinian evolution, which implies that humans are “as if designed” for reproductive success. The characteristics that are optimal for reproductive success depend on the environment. Sub-saharan Africa is a strikingly different environment from Europe or East Asia, so we would expect a different distribution of optimal characteristics for each. That fits what we see for easily observable characteristics such as skin color, build, facial features. Why would you assume that all of those differ, but less easily observable characteristics don’t?
Yet your argument depends on that assumption. Do you have any reason to make it other than that assuming it leads to conclusions you like?
Your position is even less defensible in the case of gender differences. We are as if designed for reproductive success. The essential difference between male and female is their role in reproduction. It would be an extraordinary coincidence if the characteristics, physical, psychological, or whatever, that were optimal for the male role in reproduction were identical to those optimal for the female role.
And, of course, observable physical characteristics are noticeably different, not only in ways directly linked to reproduction. As we would expect.
I am repeatedly struck by the fact that people on the left make fun of people on the right because some of the latter say they don’t believe in evolution–and then refuse to accept the most obvious implications of evolution when those implications don’t fit their ideology.
I don’t think it follows from Darwinian evolution that average genetic differences between races are necessarily the reasons for average differences in social or economic status between/among races.
Certainly it’s possible. But not likely, in my view.
My concern is that such views are very very often used for the purpose of justifying discrimination against certain categories of people. I happen to be more concerned with the effects of beliefs on our society than with the actual beliefs themselves.
Everybody has their right to their own opinions. But it makes a BIG difference whether certain views are typically used to harm certain categories of people.
The belief that average genetic differences between races are necessarily the reasons for average differences in social or economic status between/among races– or that they should be– this belief has a troubled history. It’s been connected to ethnic cleansing and all kinds of other brutalities.
Look at this article. It happened only 10 years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jan/18/educationsgendergap.genderissues
“The president of Harvard University has provoked a furor by arguing that men outperform women in maths and sciences because of biological difference.”
“I don’t think it follows from Darwinian evolution that average genetic differences between races are necessarily the reasons for average differences in social or economic status between/among races. ”
I am not sure it has gotten through to you yet that nobody in this conversation says that such differences are necessarily the reason. Why do you keep talking as though that’s the position you are arguing against?
As I have said over and over again, I don’t know how much of the difference in outcomes is due to what cause. You pretend that you do.
“Certainly it’s possible. But not likely, in my view.”
And your reason for thinking it is not likely is? So far you have only given a reason to want to say it is not likely–whether true or not.
You might want to look at what the president of Harvard actually said. You will discover that in that case as in this, you are misrepresenting “X is a possible explanation for Y” as “X is the explanation for Y.” Or, more probably, believing other people who misrepresent it in that fashion because that fits your prejudices. You are thus supporting the idea that if someone makes a true statement you disapprove of, he should be punished for doing so. As in that case.
I offered four statements and asked which you disagreed with. You did not answer.
If your real view is “for all I know racial and gender differences are responsible for the difference in outcomes, but we should pretend to know they are not and attack anyone who disagrees as a racist” you might at least have the honesty to say so. At this point, that’s the only sense I can make of your position.
I don’t think our communication is working here, David. And I am at a loss to guess how/if it might be able to work. I think we have different goals and values about what a conversation is.
” I think we have different goals and values about what a conversation is.”
That’s possible. You keep attacking a position nobody is arguing for and ignoring the position actually being argued for–straw manning at the extreme. I can’t tell if you are unable to understand the views of people who disagree with you or if your real position is one you are unwilling to defend in public.
I did not believe in HBD until I read @David Friedman’s summary above. When stated as above, I have to say I find HBD’s conclusions quite disconcertingly convincing.
Can I ask a question in good faith, as someone with little to no knowledge of evolutionary biology whatsoever. I would presume that a minimum number of generations must pass before tangible differences would arise both within (gender differences) and without (racial differences) a population. I seem to recall that in yeast experiments, the required number of generations was in the many tens of thousands. Have there been anything like enough generations for something like human diversity to take form, since our racial populations diverged?
@erenold
The most striking example is perhaps the russian fox experiment (eminently googleable). The short version is that given sufficient selection pressure, ten generations is enough to give major differences. There has been plenty of time for humans.
David, I think Jill is being honest here. They literally said that even if HBD is true, it’s better to pretend that it’s not. Maybe they are just following through on that statement.
Besides discrimination and HBD, there is another explanation for different outcomes: Cultural conditioning. Obviously the female gender role is different from the male one, so they behave differently and make different choices. However, I don’t see how this is something that is unequivocally bad because there are trade-offs. Women earn less than men, but are more satisified with their life.
I seem to recall an experiment on rats that showed significant effects after four generations.
As others have mentioned, divergence rate varies with selection pressure. Sufficiently deadly environments would cause rapid changes in any surviving populations – consider the prevalence of Black Plague immunity among western Europeans. To this day, there are regions where bearers of the mutation that immunizes them are like 80% of the population, where in unaffected regions of Europe, it’s approximately 0%. (Overall, about 10% of modern day Euros bear the immunity gene. It also immunizes vs AIDS.)
That’s a strange definition of honesty.
Women earn less because they work different jobs. The calculation used to show the wage gap is about as dishonest as statistics can get.
“After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else.” — Megan McArdle
@ Jill –
You said:
Why do you think such huge percentages of women have gone into professions such as law, medicine, science and engineering in the last few decades, as compared to the previous few?
To me, the far more interesting question is why are there huge differences in the percentage of women who have gone into medicine and health-related professions vs the percentage who have gone into (equally male dominated) professions such as physics, construction, and truck driving? We can agree that there were social pressures that across the board limited the number of women in the work force. When those pressures lifted, why did women only enter some professions, and not all of them?
Edit – forgot to add this link to a 1970s to 2010 comparison of occupation segregation.
I seem to recall that in yeast experiments, the required number of generations was in the many tens of thousands. Have there been anything like enough generations for something like human diversity to take form, since our racial populations diverged?
Yeast reproduce asexually, which tends to greatly reduce the rate of evolutionary adaptation. They do have an alternate mode of sexual reproduction that emerges under environmental stress, but even then they aren’t very good at it and don’t do it too often. Possibly on account of the inherent creepiness of being fungi.
So, a thousand or so yeast-generations, but only a fraction of those are the evolutionarily-useful sexual type. As others have noted, mammals under stress can show significant evolutionary adaptation in ten generations or so.
“After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else.”
You’ve also lost the power to learn from them, because why should anyone try to teach you anything new when you are doing such a good impression of not listening?
All you can do is live in your bubble, and maybe wear yourself out preaching at the “ignorant masses” outside. The bubble is more comfortable.
“You keep attacking a position nobody is arguing for and ignoring the position actually being argued for–straw manning at the extreme. I can’t tell if you are unable to understand the views of people who disagree with you or if your real position is one you are unwilling to defend in public.”
Interesting. I would say the same about you. I also find you to be rather insulting and demanding. And I’m hearing you accuse me more than once, of accusing other people of being racist, which I have not done.
There are lots of people on this board who aren’t insulting, demanding or accusatory– or at least not very often. So I prefer to converse with them instead.
If you want to entice someone into a discussion with you, you have a strange way of doing it. However, I don’t imagine you are aware that you are doing these things at all. So there’s nothing that can really be communicated here, as usual.
The best of luck to you and those who get something out of discussing matters with you. I don’t think I am ever going to be one of them.
Once you start going on about Truth you’ve already convinced most people you’re a hopeless zealot.
“And I’m hearing you accuse me more than once, of accusing other people of being racist, which I have not done.”
The beginning of this was your explanation of why someone who believed in HBD and said so might get a hostile reception. That explanation took it for granted that “believe in HBD” meant thinking that some races were inferior, should not be allowed to vote, should not be allowed to hold some jobs. I think most people, including you, would describe that view as racist. You don’t have to use the word.
You then repeatedly attacked the view that every member of a race was inferior, a view nobody here was proposing. Probably also within your definition of racist.
But if you are unwilling to respond to my arguments, for whatever reason, not arguing with me may be prudent.
@David Friedman:
For a very knowledgable academic, you can be surprisingly uncharitable in debate/discussion.
Sometimes I think it’s because you can’t imagine where the other person is coming from. But much of the time I feel like it’s motivated by a desire to “crush your enemy” … or something.
Here is the question, then. Is the following a central example of a position held by those who ascribe to “HBD”?
“1 in 5 American blacks are borderline retarded and the average Sub-Saharan black is borderline retarded.”
@HeelBearCub:
It’s possible that your explanation is correct, but from my side if feels like frustration at someone who refuses to respond to the argument. Over and over again. Possibly linked to my being an academic and so not expecting people to behave like that.
So far as your question, I don’t know what makes something qualify as a central position. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people who believe in HBD would say that.
But even if every believer in HBD believed that it would not justify Jill’s version since it does not imply anything about all blacks.
I’m waiting for someone to point at a believer in HBD who thinks Thomas Sowell is of below average IQ.
@David Friedman:
Jill seems to me like she is not familiar with many of the “standard” conservative arguments. I think she some times glosses over points because of this. (Sorry to talk about you in the third person, Jill. This is just my impression, I could be wrong.)
“since it does not imply anything about all blacks.”
I assume you are saying it doesn’t imply anything about any individual black person.
All, I can say is that, assuming -2SD IQ among Sub-Saharans is a central HBD position, it is certainly saying something about the vast majority of people. Saying 95% of Sub-Saharans aren’t as intelligent as someone in the lowest 6% of American whites is a pretty large claim. I mean, that would put a huge chunk of Africans in group homes if they lived here.
And I have seen the 2 SD claim not infrequently. I believe it is bog-standard in self-described HBD circles. Do you have some evidence to the contrary?
2 standard deviations isn’t the HBD position. 2 standard deviations is what the current IQ tests results are.
That doesn’t mean the genetic IQ is 2 standard deviations below; I don’t think the HBDers (or mainstream genetics evidence) has come up with a definite value as much as a range.
“Jill seems to me like she is not familiar with many of the “standard” conservative arguments.”
Or libertarian arguments. Or, so far as I can judge, any serious arguments against her standard model progressive orthodoxy. A few days ago I described her to someone else who reads the blog as pleasant but naive.
That explains the first time that she responded to someone by explaining that it wasn’t surprising if people reacted negatively to his telling them that members of some racial groups shouldn’t be allowed to vote or have the same rights as other people. That, presumably, is what people on the left believe that people on the right believe.
But she kept on ignoring straightforward arguments, never responding to them, imputing to other people arguments they hadn’t made. At some point naivete becomes an inadequate explanation.
@David Friedman:
In reading back, Jill’s position seems to (roughly) be that a) every child should be treated individually and as close to optimally as possible, b1) this is not happening, b2) and poverty disproportionately affects black children c) therefore, the deviations in outcomes pointed to by HBD advocates aren’t good evidence of innate differences, d) therefore, saying there are innate differences is to call blacks inferior, e) which sounds an awful lot like arguments that were made in the recent past.
But, people want to concentrate on (d) and (e) rather than the whole chain.
@Samuel Skinner:
If the 2 SDs isn’t the genetic difference, and we don’t know how much of the difference is genetic, then why would one claim to know that there is a genetic difference at all? The whole argument (we know blacks have innately lower IQ) falls apart, doesn’t it?
It’s not happening because it’s impractical, unless you want to advocate homeschooling. (Which is a decent proposition in its own right.)
If we take “whites” as the standard, AFAIK, every racial grouping is going to have a different rate of affectedness vs whites.
How does that follow? White children aren’t being catered to specially here – they attend the same mass education facilities as black children, Asian children and Hispanic children.
Inasmuch one considers differences in intelligence grounds for the “inferior” label.
Guilt by association, eh?
“therefore, the deviations in outcomes pointed to by HBD advocates aren’t good evidence of innate differences,”
This has the argument backwards. The claim isn’t “deviations in outcome are good evidence of innate differences.” It’s “there is evidence for innate differences and there are reasons to expect them, hence differences in outcome are not good evidence of the existence or magnitude of discrimination.”
I thought I had made that point several times over already. The bog standard argument assumes that differences in outcome must be due to discrimination. Once you recognize that innate differences may exist, that assumption becomes indefensible. You then have to either provide evidence that, in this case, innate differences are too small to explain much of the difference in outcome, which nobody seems prepared to do, or concede that you do not know how much, if any, of the cause of different outcomes is discrimination. Which Jill and those who agree with her seem unwilling to do.
Or insist that differences in outcome must be due to discrimination and anyone who denies it is a bad person.
Jill mentioned the controversy over a talk by Larry Summers in which he discussed why there were relatively few women professors in fields such as math. He suggested that one possible reason, in addition to discrimination and women being less willing to make the commitment in time that success in such fields required, was that the variance in relevant abilities was greater for men than for women, hence more men at the very high (and, although I don’t know if he said, low) end of the distribution.
And for offering that possibility he was ferociously attacked. The position isn’t “You can’t be sure innate differences are responsible,” which is true, it’s “You can’t consider the possibility that innate differences might be responsible.” And, if you do, should be punished.
Even when, as in that case, there is evidence for the relevant difference.
@David Friedman:
No, I don’t think I have the argument backwards. We see large differences in outcomes between blacks and whites and HBD advocates assert this is essentially due to innate differences.
This is very different than asserting that some portion, perhaps very tiny, perhaps large, we don’t know, and we can’t draw an conclusions is due to innate differences in some sub-population which we can’t precisely define.
Do I need to go find some examples of the people who are asserting the measured 2SD deviation in IQ in the Sub-Saharan population is due to innate differences? Would that change your position?
The Larry Summers brouhaha is perhaps not so illustrative because he was (more or less) speaking off the cuff and therefore has no prepared speech text to fall back on to show what he meant one way or the other. But my understanding is that he gave the impression to some that he was asserting that gender differences in Academic field selection might be the result of innate differences, full stop. In addition, he said multiple times that he was “trying to provoke”, which suggests that he was trying to be offensive (in some way). Acting surprised when people were then offended seems , well, asinine.
Can you see the difference between these positions, and why one who speaks the latter may be displeased at being accused of the worst behavior of those who speak the former?
How likely is someone who says “I think there are statistically significant gender and race differences in preference and innate ability” to be labeled an HBD advocate, despite not saying all that other stuff you object to and not self-identifying as such? How might this contribute to a usage different than the one you’re proposing?
@Inferential Distance:
You should parse what I wrote as “might be completely the result of innate differences”.
Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
@HBC:
“We see large differences in outcomes between blacks and whites and HBD advocates assert this is essentially due to innate differences.”
What you wrote and I responded to was:
“therefore, the deviations in outcomes pointed to by HBD advocates aren’t good evidence of innate differences,”
Which implies that the HBD advocates claimed the deviations in outcome were good evidence of innate differences. That was what I described as getting the argument backwards.
Can you point at someone who deduces the innate differences from the differences in outcomes?
A different claim would be “Here is the evidence for innate differences. They are large enough to fully explain the differences in outcomes.” I don’t know if anyone says that, but it wouldn’t astonish me. It doesn’t prove there is no discrimination, but, if true, it proves that the outcome differences are at most weak evidence for discrimination.
The case where such an argument might be doable, at least approximately, is gender. You could calculate what percentage of math professors at top schools were female, somehow estimate how far out on the tail of the distribution math professors at top schools are, use the data on the IQ distribution to estimate the m/f ratio that far out on the tail, and compare. There are a lot of problems with that argument, but it would at least tell you whether it was plausible that that explained much of the difference.
In the general case, I don’t see how you could do anything much more than demonstrate the existence of substantial innate differences.
Perhaps you can point me at web pages that provide evidence of exactly what argument people who identify as believers in HBD make? I’m judging by what arguments I have seen online.
I don’t think I have seen anyone say “we observe that black students have SAT scores two standard deviations below white students, that shows us how large the innate difference in ability between the races is,” which I think would correspond to the argument you are attributing to them.
(about Larry Summers)
“But my understanding is that he gave the impression to some that he was asserting that gender differences in Academic field selection might be the result of innate differences, full stop. ”
According to the summaries I saw, he offered three possible explanations. That was one of them. Presumably if that’s a possible explanation, it could be the entire explanation.
Why do you find that offensive, assuming you do? Do you disagree with the factual claim that for some measurable traits (I think the example is IQ) the female distribution is tighter than the male distribution? If that is true, wouldn’t it provide an explanation for fewer women than men who were very good mathematicians? If so, is there some reason people should pretend it doesn’t?
This may shock you, but there are black people who don’t live in Africa.
La Griffe du Lion did just that.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm
I believe that HBD is true, and that statement is wrong. “Mostly” is as far as it goes.
If you want to read someone who believes in HBD (indeed, advocates it) and isn’t a Death Eater, look up JayMan’s blog.
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-iq-f-a-q-f-r-b/
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/
@David Friedman:
“Why do you find that offensive, assuming you do?”
I was talking about how people at the conference reacted and potentially why. You can’t just ignore the part where I pointed to Sumners being intentionally offensive (he indicated that his intent was to provoke people). No one should be surprised if he succeeded at offending people.
This is one of the things that drives me up the wall when having a conversation with you. You take one sentence and ignore everything else and then pound it like you are on debate team.
@HeelBearCub
He offered three explanations, phrasing it as solely advocating for the one you like the least is disingenuous. Yes, some people behave irrationally (i.e. ignoring the other explanations), a rational person should expect that some people will behave irrationally. That does not excuse the irrational behavior, however. Bad things are still bad even if they’re predictable.
One of the three explanations (the limited pool of women to draw on) is so empirically strong as to be beyond arguing. One of the three (women focus on raising children which harms their ability to compete) is ostensibly sexist (innate gender difference in preference), but is again borne out by the evidence, to the point that feminist lobby groups advocate for maternity leave and support for children’s day-care to help women have careers. Even the third explanation has evidence supporting it, though not to the degree the other two do.
Additionally, you are repeatedly focusing on “HBD” as it is practiced by the most objectionable group of people who adopt the term (“1 in 5 American blacks are borderline retarded and the average Sub-Saharan black is borderline retarded.”). However, none of the people in this thread have advocated for that particular brand of “HBD”, and the existence of people who ascribe to “HBD” and do not agree with the aforementioned highly objectionable people is sufficient evidence for the category “HBD but not absurdly racist” to exist. Furthermore, you have not answered the question about people accusing others of being proponents of “HBD” for holding positions far less objectionable than the ones you keep pointing at.
Finally, I posit that there is an important difference between believing in “HBD” and holding one’s belief in “HBD” to be a central identity, and that focusing on the latter category of people is deliberately weak-manning the concept of “HBD”. That’s like criticizing science because science fans keep getting science wrong.
@Inferential Distance:
“He offered three explanations, phrasing it as solely advocating for the one you like the least is disingenuous.”
You seem to be ignoring some of the words I am using, which leads to you incorrectly parsing my statement. First you ignored “full stop”, now you are ignoring “might”. Clearly if I have the word “might” it admits that there are other possibilities (although I didn’t explicitly say they were discussed). I also said I didn’t think the Summers flap was particularly illustrative. I think it depends too much on reported impressions, and Summers can’t point at an actual text of his remarks.
IOW, the Summers flap is not a very good example of a central position on HBD. I’m not even sure he describes himself as an HBD proponent.
As to your point about me arguing against HBD positions not being advocated by anyone here: a) The question is not whether anyone here is doing it, but whether it is the central position of those who label themselves HBD proponents, and b) the OP that onyomi wrote was asking why there was a reaction against the term or a reluctance to use it, which necessarily depends on the central perception of the phrase, not even the central use.
Finally, I want to point out that in this sub-thread I came in mostly because I thought Friedman was doing a bad job of parsing Jill’s argument. A fair amount of the conversation confuses my summation of what I presume to be Jill’s position as if it was my own. My position would be more nuanced than Jill’s.
@HeelBearCub
No, I didn’t ignore your words, I picked the verb “to phrase” and the adjective “disingenuous” very carefully. Firstly, “full stop” wasn’t part of the sourced article, and the fact that he proposed 3 mechanisms suggests that he thinks the outcome is a result of all 3 mechanisms. Secondly, what you chose to omit in your summary matters, and that your word choice technically allows for the truth does not justify the spurious focus.
In fact, a direct quote of Summers from the article: “The real issue is the overall size of the pool, and it’s less clear how much the size of the pool was held down by discrimination.”.
You were framing for heat instead of light.
Bullshit, this whole comment chain started because Jill implied that Anonymous Comment believed some races “are inferior– and said or implied that people in your category ought not be allowed to vote or go to a university or own property or have certain types of jobs or have various other rights etc.”.
Then the people you are defending are begging the question, because it has not been determined that “1 in 5 American blacks are borderline retarded and the average Sub-Saharan black is borderline retarded” is a central HBD position. I have seen the assertion, but not the evidence to back it up, beyond pointing to the non-zero number of people who hold said position (contrasted with the non-zero number of people who don’t hold the position).
You have again not answered the question regarding the label “HBD” being weaponized against far less objectionable positions. I assert that it does get weaponized that way, and people who don’t have prior exposure to the term, because they do not hang out with horrible racists on the internet, will understandably adopt a definition that denotes something far less objectionable than “horrible racism”.
In case you missed it, Jill didn’t know what HBD meant, so Jill couldn’t have been confused by a non-central usage of “HBD”, even assuming your definition of central “HBD” is correct. The definition given was not the highly objectionable version. Your constant references to the highly objectionable version are irrelevant.
Jill implied Anonymous Comment thought certain races “ought not be allowed to vote or go to a university or own property or have certain types of jobs or have various other rights etc.” because they said they believed that “significant genetic differences exist between identifiable racial clusters, and these genetic differences lead to meaningful phenotypical differences in abilities, temperaments, and measurable qualities and outcomes.”.
If Jill did not mean to cause such offense, she may wish to choose her words more carefully in the future. For example, if she wishes to communicate that other people are making assumptions, she should say “they assume you also hold [MEAN BELIEF]”, not “if you hold [MEAN BELEIF]”. A conditional statement is only explanatory if the antecedent is true or the consequent is false, and we know the consequent is true (that people are upset at Anonymous Comment for his beliefs); therefor, by Grice’s Maxim of Relevance, Jill was asserting the antecedent.
“therefor, by Grice’s Maxim of Relevance, Jill was asserting the antecedent.”
OK, I actually laughed here.
I don’t think Jill is very good at argument. I don’t think she parses statements very carefully. I don’t think she has absorbed the source material of what she is arguing about. I don’t think she uses language carefully. I’m not sure if my opinion on that matters to you or not.
But, none of that should necessarily prevent us from steel-manning or strong-manning what she is saying.
As to your problems with my statement about Summers, let me go back and repeat the sentence in full: “But my understanding is that he gave the impression to some that he was asserting that gender differences in Academic field selection might be the result of innate differences, full stop.”
So, I put lots and lots of caveats in that statement. I wasn’t even referring to the article that Jill linked. Just to my understanding of the the origin of the brouhaha. Further I said (twice now) that I didn’t think it was a good example of anything!
As to the quotes directly from Summers, those are given to the Globe after the whole thing has become an issue, so they don’t tell us what he actually said in the conference.
As to whether the phrase “HBD” is “weaponized”, I don’t know. My suspicion is that the people who say “HBD” (probably on both the pro and the con side) the loudest have turned it into a polarizing and simplistic term.
Transcript of Summers
Steel-manning is not done to excuse the behavior of less thoughtful commenters. An insult is still an insult, even if the argument can be made without it. Insulting language is still objectionable even if the commenter doesn’t consciously realize it’s insulting; to forgive ignorance first requires acknowledgement that there was an offense to forgive.
You’re correct that you did not literally say that Lawrence Summers said that gender differences in Academic field selection are be the result of innate differences. On the other hand, can you understand how phrasing “Dr Summers offered three explanations for the shortage of women in senior posts in science and engineering” as “he gave the impression to some that he was asserting that gender differences in Academic field selection might be completely the result of innate differences” might give the impression to some that you were asserting fault with Summers and not with the people who ignored the other two explanations?
Edited to add:
Vindication!
@ anonymous
Thanks for posting that link. Here is what
Ctl-C found when I searched for ‘provo’.
I asked Richard, when he invited me to come here and speak, whether he wanted an institutional talk about Harvard’s policies toward diversity or whether he wanted some questions asked and some attempts at provocation, because I was willing to do the second and didn’t feel like doing the first. And so we have agreed that I am speaking unofficially
….
And I think one sees relatively little evidence of that. So my best guess, to provoke you, of what’s behind all of this is
….
I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said.
“You can’t just ignore the part where I pointed to Sumners being intentionally offensive (he indicated that his intent was to provoke people). No one should be surprised if he succeeded at offending people.”
Being provocative doesn’t translate as being offensive.
We know about what he said. Whether or not he thought it would offend people, the question is still why people would be offended at it.
“This is one of the things that drives me up the wall when having a conversation with you. You take one sentence and ignore everything else and then pound it like you are on debate team.”
If I give a detailed response to everything in your comment and you give a detailed response to everything in my response and … the length of our comments will grow exponentially. Also very fast.
I respond to what I have something I want to respond to. So far as “hammering,” when I make an argument I think important and get no response, I keep trying. Either the other person didn’t follow my argument, in which case I should explain it again, or he is deliberately evading because he has no response, in which case he should be (verbally) hammered.
@houseboatonstyxb
Some selected excerpts of said “provocation”:
—
—
—
—
“I’m not even sure he describes himself as an HBD proponent.”
I’m pretty sure Summers doesn’t. But Jill offered his case as evidence of the terrible consequences of HBD beliefs. That’s where he came into the argument.
“As to your point about me arguing against HBD positions not being advocated by anyone here: a) The question is not whether anyone here is doing it, but whether it is the central position of those who label themselves HBD proponents, and b) the OP that onyomi wrote was asking why there was a reaction against the term or a reluctance to use it, which necessarily depends on the central perception of the phrase, not even the central use.”
If I remember the sequence correctly, someone posted that he couldn’t describe his (HBD) beliefs without getting attacked, and was bothered by that.
Jill’s reply assumed that the beliefs he expressed included people of some races not being allowed to vote or to take some jobs, and pointed out that it wasn’t surprising if he was attacked for expressing those views.
That struck me as a wildly distorted picture of HBD beliefs, so I said so. I offered Jill a similarly distorted picture someone might have of progressive beliefs to try to convey how wildly and unfairly distorted I thought her picture was, but she didn’t respond.
If my memory of the sequence is correct, the question is either what views the original commenter had expressed, which we don’t know, or what views one might reasonably think he had expressed. I don’t believe the view Jill described in explaining why people would react negatively to it was anything close to a plausible guess at the latter. It was as if Jill described herself as a progressive and someone responded on the assumption that that meant a Stalinist.
At a later stage in the argument, Jill was interpreting the view she was arguing against–I’m not clear if it was supposed to be mine or some generic HBD believer’s–as being that all individuals of a race were inferior. I never did get a response from anyone pointing me at an HBD supporter who thought Thomas Sowell had a below average IQ, which is what that would imply.
” Clearly if I have the word “might” it admits that there are other possibilities (although I didn’t explicitly say they were discussed).”
I think I, if not ID, read that correctly. The obvious question is why saying “here are three possible explanations, for all we know any one of them might explain the entire difference” would offend anyone.
So far as your view that Summers was trying to offend people, what he said is perhaps relevant:
“Summers opened his remarks by saying that he had been asked to be provocative, and he noted that women in science are not the only group “whose underrepresentation contributes to a shortage of role models for others who are considering being in that group.” For example, he said that statistics would reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture.”
@ InferentialDistance
Maybe I should have added my personal opinion to my quotes from Summers.
Ctl-F found four instances of ‘provo’. Three of them were things like ‘provoke discussion’ or ‘provoke gathering of evidence’. The fourth did not have that kind of predicate noun. It could be read either in the same way as the other three, or as an outlier indicating ‘annoy’ or ‘anger’ instead. The latter seems very unlikely (though there may have been a shade of it, suggesting ‘ get you interested’, ‘motivate you’, ‘challenge you’ to give him the arguments/evidence he is requesting.
To all, re Larry Summers:
First, thanks for the transcript. Second, I don’t think there is vindication in there for you, Inferential Distance.
His three reasons for female underrepresentation, he summarized as (at the beginning): the job is “high powered”, “aptitude”, and finally “socialization” and “discrimination in search”. And then he says, “And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.”
So he starts off by saying, he isn’t speaking as the Harvard president because he wants to be provocative, and then he says his opinion is that discrimination is the least of the issues (and implicitly says that discrimination once hired isn’t an issue at all).
No one should be surprised that some people at the conference took that as “women don’t want to work hard, they aren’t smart enough, and, sure, they get some unfair discrimination”.
I will just say that if you are trying to get people to listen to what you are saying this is a remarkably bad start. And some people at that point stopped listening to him.
And this is not just a problem with the summary, because in the part of the speech where he addresses socialization and discrimination, he is essentially dismissing it as a possible explanation. Where he discusses the high-power part of the job, the entire thing is predicated on the idea that women innately can’t work as hard without being childless. The entire speech, taken as a whole, really does give the impression that he thinks that women, on average, have a lower ability to excel in the fields in which they are underrepresented, and if their is anything to be done about it, we will need to make the job somehow easier. But he very much wishes that this is not so and that he should be proved wrong, of course.
And this could be true! I happen to think that both overt and unconscious discrimination plays a bigger part than he thinks, but that’s neither here nor there. However, to say his speech wasn’t fairly characterized is just plain wrong.
@HeelBearCub
For a self-identified charitable reader, you can be surprisingly uncharitable in debate/discussion.
Sometimes I think it’s because you can’t imagine where the other person is coming from. But much of the time I feel like it’s motivated by a desire to “crush your enemy” … or something.
Here is the question, then. Is the following a central example of a statement that might give the impression to some that one is asserting that gender differences in Academic field be completely the result of innate differences?
“The most controversial in a way, question, and the most difficult question to judge, is what is the role of discrimination? To what extent is there overt discrimination? Surely there is some. Much more tellingly, to what extent are there pervasive patterns of passive discrimination and stereotyping in which people like to choose people like themselves, and the people in the previous group are disproportionately white male, and so they choose people who are like themselves, who are disproportionately white male. No one who’s been in a university department or who has been involved in personnel processes can deny that this kind of taste does go on, and it is something that happens, and it is something that absolutely, vigorously needs to be combated.”
——
I mean, you’ve literally walked back from “gave the impression that gender differences in Academic field might be completely the result of innate differences” to “gave the impression that discrimination might account for less than 50% of gender differences in Academic field”, but without acknowledging the distinction.
I will just say that if you are trying to get people to listen to what you are saying this is a remarkably bad start. And some people at this point will stop listening to you.
@HeelBearCub
Are you asserting that refusing to listen to what a person says is fair and charitable interpretation?
Edited to add:
Again, bad behavior does not magically become good merely because it is predictable. That’s victim blaming, and you should know better.
No, he literally says that discrimination is absolutely, 100%, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a thing that exists and needs to be addressed. What he does is dismiss it as the majority contributor to outcome. As in, he asserts that discrimination accounts for less than 50% of difference in outcome. To phrase that as “dismissing it as a possible explanation” is incredibly uncharitable.
because that’s what the evidence says! Leaving out that part is super, mega, insanely unfair. Deliberately leaving out the evidence is mischaracterizing the speech, because it makes “he’s a horrible sexist” as likely as “he followed the evidence” (more likely, given most people’s priors). “The evidence shows this outcome is to be expected even in the absence of bias” is extremely non-central sexism, and framing it as central sexism is the height of bullshitting.
@ HBC
I very much disagree with you, on many points. Here are a few of the shortest.
You are using the word ‘hard’ for what he called ‘high powered jobs’. That’s mischaracterization. He is not talking about difficulty of the work, but about the long hours required (including home time on call). Remember the striking junior doctors?
“Where he discusses the high-power part of the job, the entire thing is predicated on the idea that women innately can’t work as hard [ie as long hours] without being childless.”
For this there is good evidence: a survey of women at the higher levels that showed that very strong pattern (Summers may have cited it).
“and if their is anything to be done about it, we will need to make the job somehow easier.”
‘Easier’ is parallel with ‘hard/harder’, but distorts Summers’s meaning of ‘high-powered’ jobs even worse. ‘Hard’ is sort of a generic referring to any sort of difficulty or problem, so ‘long hours’ may fit under it. But ‘easier’ does not stretch that far that, er, easily
“And some people at that point stopped listening to him.”
There, I agree with you. As a 1970s feminist, I disagree with them. As professional women, they should have listened and got the right version (to rebut as requested).
@Inferential Distance:
I am trying, perhaps unsuccessfully, to say two separate and distinct things:
1) Larry Summers should not have been surprised by people taking offense and being unreceptive to the message of his speech. He started out in a way that was highly likely to prime some chunk of his audience to reject his message. That was my suspicion based on what people said after the fact and now that I have the transcript I view this suspicion as confirmed. This is essentially a stylistic critique, and therefore doesn’t make it actually a very good measure of any substantive arguments about “HBD” .
2) Now that I have a full transcript of the speech, it appears that it is not even correct to assert that Summers views discrimination as an important or substantive factor in determining gender ratios in STEM academic representation.
The part of the speech you quoted the beginning of is fairly explicit on this. The part you quote condemns discrimination when it occurs. I don’t think it is fair to say that Summers agrees with or condones discrimination. If that is what you understood me to be saying, I apologize for not being clear enough.
But let’s quote the conclusion of that section:
“So my best guess, to provoke you, of what’s behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them.”
Clearly Summers is saying that discrimination and socialization pressures exist, but that they don’t matter much compared to the other issues. Note that he says that factors 1 and 2 are “by far” responsible for gender imbalance. He repeats the phrase “to provoke you”, which indicates that he is being deliberate in causing anger, annoyance or some other strong emotion, by the dictionary definition. He is dismissing discrimination as an important factor and he knows that will make people mad. But he isn’t being provocative by saying something he doesn’t believe but thinks needs to be addressed. He specifically rejects that by repeating several times that he believes what he is saying.
I’m not trying to “crush” Larry Summers. I admitted that what he is saying is possibly true! (although I don’t find it likely and I think is contraindicated by other evidence). I’m trying to accurately parse what he said.
Am I trying “crush” you? Probably a little bit. I am human after all.
@houseboatonstyxb:
You reject the word, hard, and I’m fine with that. I don’t think “high-powered” is any less an emotionally loaded term, though. I just think it’s just loaded in a way that Summers wanted and thought was in his favor.
But changing the word “hard” to some other word, doesn’t, I think, actually change anything about what I wrote. Summers clearly views innate differences between males and females as responsible, “by far”, for the gender imbalance in representation in the field.
Again, I admitted this might be true! But it’s not correct to say it is not the view Summers is espousing.
No, I get what you’re saying. There are indeed people who will take offence at phrases like “the evidence seems to indicate a conclusion you find abhorrent”. I just don’t think “X believes abhorrent conclusion” to be a charitable phrasing of the prior statement.
For example, from the first paragraph, before he has said anything about innate differences between men and women:
“To take a set of diverse examples, the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture. These are all phenomena in which one observes underrepresentation, and I think it’s important to try to think systematically and clinically about the reasons for underrepresentation.”
Which seems quite clearly to me to be priming for “follow the evidence” and “not all difference in outcome are the result of vile discrimination”. And rather than disagree with the evidence (e.g. assert Jews are kept out of farming by the anti-semitic agriculture corporations’ discriminatory behavior), people choose to cherry pick the most objectionable statements.
“Lesser” does not mean “irrelevent”, “by far” does not mean that the other is insignificant. If different willingness to work obscenely long hours accounts for 40% of the outcome, and different ability at the extreme end of the ability curve accounts for 35% of outcome, that leaves 25% of the outcome to be determined by discrimination and sexists socialization. This breakdown satisfies the first two factors being “by far” more significant (three times as much effect, 75 = 3 * 25), shows the last as the lesser (40 > 35 > 25), would mean that sexism is not dominant (25 < 50), and show the first two factors as dominant (75 > 66 > 50, greater than even a two-thirds majority). And sexism accounting for 25% of difference in outcome would still be significant, would still be important, would still be in dire need of being addressed.
Treating “X is much more important than Y” as equivalent to “Y is not important” is wrong. It is doubly wrong when the person explicitly says “Y is also important”.
Following up on this, Summers mentions:
“Second, what about objective versus subjective factors in hiring? I’ve been exposed, by those who want to see the university hiring practices changed to favor women more and to assure more diversity, to two very different views. One group has urged that we make the processes consistently more clear-cut and objective, based on papers, numbers of papers published, numbers of articles cited, objectivity, measurement of performance, no judgments of potential, no reference to other things, because if it’s made more objective, the subjectivity that is associated with discrimination and which invariably works to the disadvantage of minority groups will not be present. I’ve also been exposed to exactly the opposite view, that those criteria and those objective criteria systematically bias the comparisons away from many attributes that those who contribute to the diversity have: a greater sense of collegiality, a greater sense of institutional responsibility. Somebody ought to be able to figure out the answer to the question of, if you did it more objectively versus less objectively, what would happen. Then you can debate whether you should or whether you shouldn’t, if objective or subjective is better. But that question ought to be a question that has an answer, that people can find.”
As in, “here are two mutually exclusive methods to decrease the difference in outcome between the genders; one requires that women and men have no innate difference in ability, and compensates for subjective bias against women; one requires that there be no subjective bias against women, but compensates for any innate difference in ability. Which method actually decreases in difference in outcome?” As in “the possibility that there are innate differences in ability between men and women is an important question that needs to be answered even if we want balance outcome despite there being innate differences”. As in “we need to draw an accurate map if we actually want to navigate the territory”. As in “it is incredibly unlikely that you will decrease difference in outcome if you’re wrong about what causes the difference in outcome”.
Finally, regarding the “provoking offense” assertion you keep making:
“I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said.”
No, summers was not trying to provoke offense, he was trying to provoke epistemological rigor. He explicitly said so! At the start of his speech (“I think it’s important to try to think systematically and clinically about the reasons for underrepresentation.”)! At the end of his speech (see above)! In the middle of his speech (“First, most of what we’ve learned from empirical psychology in the last fifteen years has been that people naturally attribute things to socialization that are in fact not attributable to socialization. We’ve been astounded by the results of separated twins studies. The confident assertions that autism was a reflection of parental characteristics that were absolutely supported and that people knew from years of observational evidence have now been proven to be wrong. And so, the human mind has a tendency to grab to the socialization hypothesis when you can see it, and it often turns out not to be true.”)! Characterizing that as desiring to cause offense, rather than to dispel mistaken assumptions, is uncharitable!
Just like how Summers admitted that what he was saying was possibly wrong? How did that work out for him? How do you expect that gambit will work out for you?
Just so long as we’re clear that none of us are without sin.
@Inferential Distance:
This doesn’t follow. The percentages you used mean that I could say that obscenely long hours and discrimination outstrip aptitude “by far”. You are positing that he meant last in rank among rough co-equals. It’s a little silly to assign specific numerical percentages to this, anyway, as he didn’t do so himself. “By far” means what it means and it is fair to assume he used it for an intended effect, which was to minimize the contribution of discrimination to the disparity in outcomes.
Tilt at that as you will, but I think you are barking up the wrong tree.
It’s fair to say he was trying to induce epistemological rigor. But he was doing it by being provocative. He knew he was being provocative. He says it right at the very beginning.
Let me ask you this. Why do you think he made a point of saying he wasn’t speaking as Harvard’s President at the beginning? And why did he say that if he did speak as Harvard’s President he could not be provocative? Can Harvard’s President not attempt to induce epistemological rigor?
” And then he says, “And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.””
What are you quoting from? I don’t think that’s in the excerpts that ID posted.
I was able to find articles about the speech but not a full transcript.
The closest I could find in what ID posted was that the claim that the hard jobs problem plus the different distribution of ability problem accounted for a fair amount of the outcome, which doesn’t tell us whether either of those is more important than discrimination.
“Larry Summers should not have been surprised by people taking offense and being unreceptive to the message of his speech.”
I agree. He probably wasn’t, although he probably underestimated the size of the effect.
But that doesn’t say anything bad about Summers, it says something about people who react hostilely to being offered arguments they don’t like.
If you get up at a Trump rally and announce that Trump University was a scam, you shouldn’t be surprised to get a hostile response. Doing so is evidence that you are imprudent.
And honest.
@HeelBearCub
No. 40 is only 14% larger than 35 (40/35 ~= 1.142857); 75 is 200% bigger than 25;
No. 40 is 80% larger than 25, that is not “rough co-equals”.
The combined effect of the first two explanation “by far” outstrips the effect of the third.
Pot, meet kettle. The point, in case you missed it, is that the actual numbers matter. Like, seriously, you just said an 8 is “by far” bigger than 7, but then turned around and said that 8 is “roughly co-equal” to 5. And I’m the one trying to tilt that as I will?
If I really wanted to tilt, I’d have used 34/33/32, which is technically correct because 32 is less than 34, even if it’s a non-central example of lesser (and 67 is more than twice as big as 32). You’re the one assuming something like 55/40/5. Or, at the very least, you’re defending people who made such assumptions without consideration for other possible breakdowns.
He was doing it by challenging sacred values, and there’s no way to improve epistemological rigor without causing offense to a person who has made a wrong conclusion into a sacred value. Summers was not roasted for saying that women are idiots, he was roasted for saying that the evidence indicates that discrimination may not be the largest source of difference in outcome between the genders. Because there are a significant number of people who will mentally edit the latter into the former.
Because he wanted to make it clear that his talk there was about epistomological rigor, not Harvard’s actual hiring policies. As in “I’m not going to stop our efforts to increase the percentage of women in our academic positions, but it seems there is evidence that some of the proposed policies depend on faulty assumptions”. Because if he didn’t, the headline Jill linked wouldn’t have been “Why women are poor at science, by Harvard president” but “Harvard president refuses to hire women because they’re bad at science”.
@David Friedman
Both HeelBearCub and I are quoting from this, which a helpful purple anon linked earlier in the comment chain.
@David Friedman:
Purple anonymous posted a link above to a transcript on Harvard’s website: Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce
The link above is called “Transcript of Summers”.
“Can Harvard’s President not attempt to induce epistemological rigor?”
Not in any way that will be seen as politically incorrect by a substantial number of influential people. Not and remain president.
As demonstrated.
@HBC:
Thanks for the link–I somehow missed it. The only link to the transcript that I found online didn’t work.
@Inferential Distance:
Yes, and 60% (35% + 25%) is 50% bigger than 40%, i.e. the effect of “long hours and discrimination” is bigger than aptitude, “by far”.
If you actually read what I am writing and parse it either correctly or honestly you would stop trying to catch me in some sort of … I don’t know what.
When you say that “A and B more important than C, by far”, it is highly suspect and disingenuous to suppose that I could group A and C (bigger than B) or B and C (bigger than A). If he meant something like that he wouldn’t have used the language he did.
Jeebus.
@HeelBearCub
My mistake. However, 50% bigger is still factor 4 less than 200% bigger, (factor 3 is factor 2 times larger than factor 1.5). That is to say, my “by far” is by far bigger than your “by far”.
It is disingenuous to say that “A and B more important than C, by far, but C is still important” means “C is not important”. And he wouldn’t have used the language he did, of explicitly and repeatedly calling C important, if that was not what he intended.
Pretty frustrating to have your position misrepresented and then the misrepresentation used to criticize you, neh?
Like, I get your complaint. I’m not being charitable and forgiving to the people who criticize Summers. But they’re not being charitable nor forgiving to Summers. And in your attempts to be charitable and forgiving to the former, you become uncharitable and unforgiving to the latter. And given that the latter is the one who bothered show up with some empirical evidence, I am displeased about how these isolated demands for charity result in decreased epistemological rigor. And I am relentless in my attempt to get you to admit that you’re being uncharitable to Summers.
No, I think the entirety of his problem is that he posed it in a way that assumed he already knew the answer, and that it was that women were less capable of doing the job.
There are plenty of ways to ask that the question be investigated, and that science demands we do so, without assuming you know the answer. You can fight the premise that we already know what the effect size of aptitude is, that we already know it is negligible, etc.
@Inferential Distance:
“explicitly and repeatedly calling C important”
Now, I think you are conflating two different meanings of important.
Can you point me at where Summers explicitly said that discrimination was “important” in the effect size it has on gender ratios in STEM academia? I think what he said is that stopping discrimination is important because discrimination is bad/repugnant/etc.
@HeelBearCub
Ah yes, he assumed he knew the answer, as can be clearly seen in the following passages:
“I think it’s an area in which there’s conviction but where it doesn’t seem to me there’s an enormous amount of evidence.”
“Let me just conclude by saying that I’ve given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may be all wrong.”
“Yeah, look anything could be social, ultimately in all of that. I think that if you look at the literature on behavioral genetics and you look at the impact, the changed view as to what difference parenting makes, the evidence is really quite striking and amazing. I mean, just read Judith Rich Harris’s book. It is just very striking that people’s-and her book is probably wrong and its probably more than she says it is, and I know there are thirteen critiques and you can argue about it and I am not certainly a leading expert on that-but there is a lot there. And I think what it surely establishes is that human intuition tends to substantially overestimate the role-just like teachers overestimate their impact on their students relative to fellow students on other students-I think we all have a tendency with our intuitions to do it. So, you may be right, but my guess is that there are some very deep forces here that are going to be with us for a long time.”
“It’s not clear at all. I think I said it wasn’t clear. I was giving you my best guess but I hope we could argue on the basis of as much evidence as we can marshal”
“I don’t presume to have proved any view that I expressed here, but if you think there is proof for an alternative theory, I’d want you to be hesitant about that.”
“All I’m saying is one needs to ask the question”
Can you point to where he says the opposite, in an absolute sense? Because the quote I have is:
“The most controversial in a way, question, and the most difficult question to judge, is what is the role of discrimination? To what extent is there overt discrimination? Surely there is some. Much more tellingly, to what extent are there pervasive patterns of passive discrimination and stereotyping in which people like to choose people like themselves, and the people in the previous group are disproportionately white male, and so they choose people who are like themselves, who are disproportionately white male. No one who’s been in a university department or who has been involved in personnel processes can deny that this kind of taste does go on, and it is something that happens, and it is something that absolutely, vigorously needs to be combated. On the other hand, I think before regarding it as pervasive, and as the dominant explanation of the patterns we observe, there are two points that should make one hesitate.”
The phrase “vigorously needs to be combated” does not distinguish between “because it is repugnant” and “because it is of significant size”. Note, also, he uses the phrase “No one who’s been in a university department […] can deny”, suggesting that discrimination is so obvious that mere inspection (in the mathematical sense) is sufficient to prove it, which seems to me to suggest an effect size not just visibly large, but so large that it is unthinkable that anyone who’s had a chance to see the situation could deny it was happening.
@Inferential Distance:
I have already given you the quotes, you just don’t want to accept my interpretation of their meaning, which I believe is their plain English meaning:
“One is what I would call the-I’ll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are-the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.”
“So my best guess, to provoke you, of what’s behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.”
And then there are the statements he makes within the section that ostensibly is talking about the problem of discrimination and how consequential it is. It’s worth noting that in the other two sections, the thrust of his comments are in support of the idea that inability to perform “high-power” jobs and lower aptitude are in fact consequential. He doesn’t attack those theses, he supports them.
But in the section where he is talking about socialization and discrimination he makes a number of statements like:
“[T]here’s a real question as to how plausible it is to believe that there is anything like half as many people who are qualified to be scientists at top ten schools and who are now not at top ten schools, and that’s the argument that one has to make in thinking about this as a national problem rather than an individual institutional problem.”
“if there was really a pervasive pattern of discrimination that was leaving an extraordinary number of high-quality potential candidates behind, one suspects that in the highly competitive academic marketplace, there would be more examples of institutions that succeeded substantially by working to fill the gap. And I think one sees relatively little evidence of that.”
So he consistently downplays the possibility that the are very many candidates capable of doing the work that aren’t already doing it.
Look, pulling individual quotes is, of course, suspect. But the entire thrust of his comments, when read in totality, is aimed at minimizing the hypothesis that discrimination is a substantial driver of the gender difference in employment.
Read the whole thing. In it’s entirety. It’s very hard to take away that he thinks discrimination contributes to the gender gap in a substantial way. He wishes it were so, but he doesn’t think it is so (to the extent we can believe him when he tells us that this is his actual opinion).
And you don’t want to accept my interpretation of their meaning! Which I believe to be their plain English meaning! How incredibly convenient that when I refuse to accept your interpretation, I am being uncharitable, but when you refuse to accept my interpretation, you are being completely fair.
Note, again, I said “absolute”, which is not “relative”. 1000, 999, 998 is ranking of importance in “exactly the order he described”; 998 is “in fact lesser” to both 999, and 1000. You have not unambiguously demonstrated your interpretation.
Yes. Downplays. Pay attention to that word. Downplays from what, however? The prior that innate differences account for a sizeable but less than majority amount of difference in outcome? Or the prior that innate differences are inconsequential and humans are blank slates entirely determined by the pressures of society?
Summers said: “I think before regarding it as pervasive, and as the dominant explanation of the patterns we observe, there are two points that should make one hesitate.”
Look. Really look. He said “before regarding it as pervasive, and as the dominant explanation”. He says “should make one hesitate”. What does it say about his audience, that he chose to frame it like that? Perhaps that they think discrimination is the dominant explanation? Perhaps that they do not hesitate when they make that declaration?
When your audience starts from an extreme assumption, such as “difference in outcome is almost entirely determined by discrimination”, the assertion “difference in outcome is partially determined by discrimination and partially determined by innate ability” looks like minimizing discrimination and maximizing innate ability, because pushing discrimination down to 50 from near 100 is heavily downplaying, and pushing innate ability up from near 0 to 50 is heavily emphasizing. The more extremely wrong a position is, the more extremely hard you have to push back at it to get to the truth.
You keep imploring me to read between the lines. But you refuse to pay attention to the audience. The audience members are not blank slates, they bring their own biases and assumptions in with them. Summers challenged some of those assumptions, to the audience’s outrage.
Pay closer to attention to the Q&A:
Is this the behavior of a man who thinks knows the answer? Or is it the behavior of a man who thinks he knows the question, and believes his audience does not want to ask it?
@Inferential Distance:
If you have 1000 things, and their absolute value is in some way evenly distributed such that they are very similar, then you won’t be talking about the rank order of the top 3 as “exactly that order”. “Exactly that order” implies clear and unequivocal differences between the sizes of the effects. If you think they have similar effect sizes you won’t describe it like this.
When you retreat to pedantry like this to try and make your point, and it is similar to the pedantry to which you retreated in trying to make an earlier point ( A+ B >> C), yes, I don’t think you are parsing the clear English meaning correctly.
An accusation of pedantry? From the person who cannot stop talking about Summers’ singular usage of “by far” from his speech? But continually ignores phrases such as “I don’t presume to have proved any view that I expressed here” and “that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem”? Again, pot meet kettle. I have devolved into pedantry because you refuse to acknowledge Summers’ explicit claims as adequately illuminating of his position. The pedantry is to force you to acknowledge that an inoffensive interpretation is allowed by the text, and thus get you to consider whether such an interpretation is a better fit than the one that directly contradicts several of his explicit statements.
Yes, I do not think a relative importance of 1000/999/998 is what Summers intended, which is why I first gave out 40/35/25, which I think is in the neighborhood of what he intended. And also clearly supported by statements such as “fair amount”. Do you think he would refer to the combined effect of innate aptitude and willingness to work as explaining “by far” more of the difference in outcome than discrimination in one place, but only a “fair amount” of the outcome in another, if he secretly believed it to in fact explain “almost all”? Or that, perhaps, he believes it to be somewhere in between those positions, and in some cases he ends up overstating the amount, and in some cases understating it? Do you think my paying attention to both these statements is somehow a less thorough, less comprehensive interpretation than the one you have offered?
@ HBC
I very much disagree with you, on many points. Here are a few of the shortest.
You are using the word ‘hard’ for what he called ‘high powered jobs’. That’s mischaracterization. He is not talking about difficulty of the work, but about the long hours required (including home time on call). Remember the striking junior doctors?
“Where he discusses the high-power part of the job, the entire thing is predicated on the idea that women innately can’t work as hard [ie as long hours] without being childless.”
For this there is good evidence: a survey of women at the higher levels that showed that very strong pattern (Summers may have cited it).
“and if their is anything to be done about it, we will need to make the job somehow easier.”
‘Easier’ is parallel with ‘hard/harder’, but distorts Summers’s meaning of ‘high-powered’ jobs even worse. ‘Hard’ is sort of a generic referring to any sort of difficulty or problem, so ‘long hours’ may fit under it. But ‘easier’ does not stretch that far that, er, easily
“And some people at that point stopped listening to him.”
There, I agree with you. My image of the women who didn’t listen but did go to others not present (including iirc the campus paper) and spread a version similar to HBC’s … fits the stereotype of women who really shouldn’t have important jobs. And I feel like going after those
with a codfishwith my smoldering bra.(I hope I’ve put enough disclaimer words in here, but note I won’tI follow anyone down a rabbit hole lined with mirrors reflecting distorted straw men back and forth.)
@houseboatonstyxb:
I already said that I was perfectly fine with your objection to the word hard. Not sure why you are bringing it back in.
@Inferential Distance:
I have been fairly clear that I thought Summers was stating his opinion, what he thought was true. I never said he claimed to have proven it.
Summers put lots of caveats in his speech. “I might be wrong about X, I could be wrong about Y, I’d like to be wrong about Z”. I did not say he wasn’t epistemologically humble, nor have I even said he was necessarily incorrect. I have multiple times admitted he might be correct.
It’s clear that Summers thinks that discrimination exists and that he thinks it is bad and that he does not condone it.
But it’s also clear that he does not hold much hope that eliminating discrimination will do much to close the gender gap in STEM academics. Sure, he thinks that it will do some good, but not very much. The gender gap will still remain and will still be large.
Do you think, after having read that speech, that Summers thinks a significant portion of the gender gap can be eliminated by addressing discrimination? Or, is his best guess that there are not anything like enough qualified women to be STEM professors at top 10 schools (as the job is currently constituted)?
Would you say “Summers says the lower frequency of female geniuses might be significantly due to innate difference, and he could be right?” is a fair summary of the speech? That substituting “women are poor at science” for “women produce absurdly brilliant scientific minds at a lower rate” is uncharitable? That leaving out the “he might be right” part is uncharitable? That phrasing “discrimination is the third most significant cause of difference in outcome” as “discrimination is no longer a career barrier for female academics” is uncharitable?
That, when you read between the lines of an article like this, it seems like people aren’t giving Summers’ evidence a fair shake? That they are, perhaps, jumping to conclusions? That while their behavior is understandable, it cannot be described as “charitable” nor as “fair”?
Define “significant”. I am absolutely certain that Summers believes that there is a non-trivial (as in, sufficiently greater than zero so as to be worth the effort of fighting) portion of the gender difference that is still caused by discrimination despite all the ongoing attempts to reduce discrimination (e.g. discrimination in the 1970s accounts for 80% of difference in outcome; implement policies to reduce discrimination, discrimination falls by half over 10 years; discrimination in 1980s accounts for 66% of difference in outcome; implement more policies to reduce discrimination, discrimination falls by half over 10 years; discrimination in the 1990s accounts for 50% of difference in outcome; 33% in 2000s; 20% in 2010s; 12% in 2020s; etc…). Whether that number counts as “significant” appears to be highly subjective, though I would say any number sufficiently high so as to be worth spending the effort of fighting would be “significant”.
Similarly define “enough qualified women to be STEM professors at top 10 schools”. Enough for their to be at least one? Enough for there to be at least one at each school? Enough for there to be at least one for each qualified man? What is “qualified”? Is it IQ above a certain cutoff, in which case we could use IQ tests to determine the availability? Is it IQ higher than all the competition, in which small differences in average ability would be magnified by the focus on the outliers?
Summers certainly seems to think that the possibility that there are “enough qualified women” is sufficiently high so as to justify “the many things we’re doing at Harvard to promote the crucial objective of diversity”…
From the speech:
“What should we all do? I think the case is overwhelming for employers trying to be the [unintelligible] employer who responds to everybody else’s discrimination by competing effectively to locate people who others are discriminating against, or to provide different compensation packages that will attract the people who would otherwise have enormous difficulty with child care. I think a lot of discussion of issues around child care, issues around extending tenure clocks, issues around providing family benefits, are enormously important. I think there’s a strong case for monitoring and making sure that searches are done very carefully and that there are enough people looking and watching that that pattern of choosing people like yourself is not allowed to take insidious effect.”
@Inferential Distance:
“[A] 1994 graduate of Harvard Business School … reports that of her first year section, there were twenty-two women, of whom three are working full time at this point.”
“If you do that calculation-and I have no reason to think that it couldn’t be refined in a hundred ways-you get five to one, at the high end.”
“And there’s a real question as to how plausible it is to believe that there is anything like half as many people who are qualified to be scientists at top ten schools and who are now not at top ten schools, ”
That last quote is Larry Summer saying he doubts it is plausible that there enough qualified [female] scientists to close the gender gap at top-10 schools. Yes, he would like to be proven wrong, but he currently doubts it is true, and he doesn’t think there are anything like the numbers required to close the gap.
And, let’s be clear here, that means half as many as are currently there, because that quote is in the context of how trying to increase diversity will necessarily be a competition between the top 10 schools. This means he thinks there aren’t anything close to half as many of the very small percentage of women that were there at the time, which if I am inferring correctly, was about 12.5%
That means he puts the ceiling for additional STEM faculty at top-10 schools at well under a 6% increase.
The first two quotes are illustrative of why he thinks that is so. Women drop out because they do not want to do the “high powered job”. Men plausibly outnumber women 5 to 1 at the high end of the IQ scale. He would like to be proven wrong, he hasn’t proven this, but this is his best guess at why the gender gap exists (and will continue to persist).
Yes, Summers does not believe there are enough genius-level women who want to be professors for the top 10 schools to achieve gender parity without compromising on qualifications. Are you calling an up to 50% increase in the number of women working as professors for top 10 schools insignificant?
Would you say “Summers says the lower frequency of female geniuses might be significantly due to innate difference, and he could be right?” is a fair summary of the speech? That substituting “women are poor at science” for “women produce absurdly brilliant scientific minds at a lower rate” is uncharitable? That leaving out the “he might be right” part is uncharitable? That phrasing “discrimination is the third most significant cause of difference in outcome” as “discrimination is no longer a career barrier for female academics” is uncharitable?
Would you say “HeelBearCub thinks women might be innately poor at science” is a charitable and fair summary of your position in this discussion?
Like, look at the passages you quoted:
“If you do that calculation-and I have no reason to think that it couldn’t be refined in a hundred ways-you get five to one, at the high end.”
Five to one is 16.6%.
“And there’s a real question as to how plausible it is to believe that there is anything like half as many people who are qualified to be scientists at top ten schools and who are now not at top ten schools, ”
16.6% / 12.5% = 1.328; A 32.8% increase. And note, he does not say “there are only enough smart women for a 32.8% increase in female professors”, he says “it’s a real question” (we don’t have enough evidence) “as to how plausible” (we are wildly overconfident) “that there is anything like half as many people” (that we can even get to 50%, let alone the 300% the consensus assumes). This is literally asking the question: “No really, how many qualified women are there?”
Like, from an earlier post of yours:
Such as suggesting that there’s a possibility discrimination might not be the dominant explanation (“My best guess is that discrimination is the third largest factor”, “I may be wrong”, “Yes, everything could be the result of socialization”)? Such as challenging the assumption (“real question as to how plausible”) that there are enough qualified women to increase the hiring of women by a factor of 4? Such as:
“Let me take a second, first to just remark on a few questions that it seems to me are ripe for research, and for all I know, some of them have been researched. First, it would be very useful to know, with hard data, what the quality of marginal hires are when major diversity efforts are mounted. When major diversity efforts are mounted, and consciousness is raised, and special efforts are made, and you look five years later at the quality of the people who have been hired during that period, how many are there who have turned out to be much better than the institutional norm who wouldn’t have been found without a greater search. And how many of them are plausible compromises that aren’t unreasonable, and how many of them are what the right-wing critics of all of this suppose represent clear abandonments of quality standards. I don’t know the answer, but I think if people want to move the world on this question, they have to be willing to ask the question in ways that could face any possible answer that came out.”
Where he literally says we don’t know the answer, but that we need to do the research honestly and face the result, even if we don’t like it?
Summers literally did the thing you suggested would be inoffensive, and you call him offensive for it!
@Inferential Distance:
You keep claiming things for Summers that he doesn’t actually say.
He thinks that even a 50% increase is highly implausible, that there aren’t anything like the numbers to make that 50% increase. Now, you are claiming him saying a 50% increase is possible (and then claiming significance for it).
Let’s be charitable and say he thinks female STEM representation can increase by 3% of the total faculty from 12% to 15%, which would be a 25% increase in female representation, but still wouldn’t really change the overall mix. Hell, let’s be super, super charitable and say it can increase from 12% to 18% and use that 50% increase number that he specifically says he highly doubts is plausible to believe.
That means, being quite charitable and ignoring that he specifically said he thought it wasn’t plausible to get a 50% increase, he thinks the maximum female STEM representation of females at top 10 schools is 18% or 19% (assuming that the requirements of the job don’t change).
Do you have a problem with my estimation of that top percentage based on Summers speech, assuming that 12% was the base rate at top-10 schools at the time?
Because the claim I originally made was that Summers left people with the impression that STEM under-representation of females might be completely based on innate differences, which is what you objected to, saying the claim was was being uncharitable to Summers.
But how is that substantially different than this:
“Larry Summers believes that by eliminating discrimination against women in Academia we might raise their representation to as high as 20% of the STEM faculty at top 10 schools”
I’ve said repeatedly that, although Larry Summers could be right, I don’t think that he is. I don’t believe those positions. Larry Summers repeatedly says that he does believe the the innate factors he cited were the cause.
So, no, not charitable.
Pot, kettle, round three. And remember, you’re the one who constantly implores me to read between the lines, to take the general thrust of his arguments, to not limit myself to the mere literal interpretation of the text, but to see that which lives beyond it.
The general thrust of his argument is that he is worried that his audience is wildly overconfident in their assumption that gender difference in outcome is driven almost entirely by socialization and discrimination. He downplays socialization and discrimination heavily because the limited evidence indicates that it plays a much smaller part than the assumed all-of-it, he heavily emphasizes preference and aptitude because the limited evidence indicates that it plays a much larger part than the assumed none-of-it, he repeatedly says that he might be wrong and that it is important to investigate thoroughly because the evidence is limited and the issue is too important to do shoddy work on. He cites a recent paradigm shift in psychology, multiple times, where people went from assuming that almost everything about human behavior was determined by socialization and almost nothing by biology, to the very opposed position that the majority of human behavior is determined by biology with a minority determined by socialization, because new evidence came to light that overturned the old assumptions. And he thinks it’s important to look for that evidence, and to seriously consider the risk that their assumptions are wrong, and not just a little wrong but extremely wrong, like in psychology.
To reduce this to merely his concern that discrimination plays a significantly smaller part of difference in outcome than the consensus assumes is disingenuous. That some people would walk away from the above with the reduced view is true. That those people are uncharitable is also true.
No, he thinks that it is highly ambiguous (“serious question”) as to the how likely (“how plausible”) a 50% increase is. In that we don’t have the evidence. Saying “we don’t have the evidence for this position” and “the evidence we do have does not exclude this extremely different conclusion” is the same as “there is a serious chance the situation is in fact the opposite of what we think it is”.
MAY NOT BE anything like the numbers to make that 50% increase. You keep projecting significantly higher certainty onto Summers than he actually states his positions with. That is uncharitable.
I do not have a problem with your estimation. However, your last summary still lacks “and he might be right”. And I think choosing to frame it in an absolute sense “to as high as 20%”, instead of a relative sense “by as much as 50%” is a deliberate choice to provoke outrage. Compare:
“Larry Summers believes that there is a fair chance that eliminating discrimination against women in Academia might increase the number of female professors of STEM faculty at top 10 schools by 50%, and he might be right.”
to
“Larry Summers says that women probably aren’t competent enough to make up more than 20% of female professors of STEM faculty at top 10 schools”.
Compare:
“Larry Summers gave the impression to some that he was asserting that gender differences in Academic field selection might be completely the result of innate differences.”
to
“Some people assumed that Larry Summers was asserting that gender differences in Academic field selection might be completely the result of innate differences.”
Can you understand how saying that might leave some people with the impression that you think that it’s possible that by eliminating discrimination against women in Academia we might raise their representation to only as high as 20% of the STEM faculty at top 10 schools?
Then we are agreed that cherry-picking quotes to exaggerate a position is uncharitable?
@Inferential Distance:
There is a difference between epistemic humility, which I have consistently maintained that Summers showed, and being neutral on the question of what you believe to be true.
Summers doesn’t say “Here is a possibility we can’t dismiss” (which would be a neutral statement). He consistently says, “Here is what I think to be true.”, “This is my best guess.”, “Please prove me wrong because I would like to be wrong” (with an implied “but I don’t think I am”).
I think you are agreeing that Summers’ position can be accurately summarized as “Summers best guess is that even if we can eliminate all discrimination, which he believes will result in as much as a 50% improvement in female positions in Top-10 STEM programs, 80% of the faculty will still remain male due to innate differences between men and women”
So, I think what you are objecting to is pointing out in the summation that a 50% improvement in female representation doesn’t move the needle very much. This is what you are describing as “a deliberate choice to provoke outrage”, yes?
““And there’s a real question as to how plausible it is to believe that there is anything like half as many people who are qualified to be scientists at top ten schools and who are now not at top ten schools, ”
HBD: “That last quote is Larry Summer saying he doubts it is plausible that”
“There is a real question as to how” does not translate as “I doubt that.” The former means “I think it might not be” while the latter means “I think it is not.”
If the probability of the claim is 70% there is a real question whether it is true, but you don’t think it is false.
@David Friedman:
Yes, he adds lots of epistemic humility and caveats. But taken as a whole it’s clear that his best guess is that the numbers don’t exist. That why he keeps repeating that this is best guess and he would like to be proven wrong. It’s also why he adds more reasons why we shouldn’t expect the numbers to exist.
Otherwise, what is it that he would like to be proved wrong on? Clearly he is indicating that he is making a claim about truth (that he wishes were not true).
And certainly if a number of people came away from the speech thinking that he believed that the vast majority of the gender gap was due to innate differences, they did not do so unwarranted.
Pointing it out is absolutely correct, so long as you also point out and Summers was epistemologically humble and very careful with the evidence. Leaving out the latter part is like talking about race and crime by presenting a long list of black criminals without even mentioning the much longer list of non-black criminals; literally true, but deliberately misleading.
Like, I think it’s fair to say that the progressive left has a pretty strong association between someone who says “there are significant innate differences between men and women” and someone being a sexist bastard. And when a person goes to great length to say “I still think sexism is bad, I still think it exists, I still think we need to fight it, and I could be wrong about this, but the evidence seems to point to, on balance, there being significant innate differences between men and women”, removing every part that would possibly stop a person on the progressive left from immediately concluding the speaker is a sexist bastard looks mighty fucking suspicious.
Jill’s article described the speech as “Why women are poor at science”. And yeah, that’s technically correct. It’s just that it’s an absurdly non-central version of “Why women are poor at science”, to the point where I start to wonder if the author of that article has some agenda influencing the decision to phrase it in such a manner…
@Inferential Distance:
I already said a bunch of (unfriendly-ish) things I thought about Jill’s style of argument up thread. I won’t repeat them here.
But that doesn’t change the basic facts of what I originally said about the Summer hubbub, which is that some people at the conference came away with the impression that he thought the gender gap (in certain STEM faculties) was primarily/centrally/essentially caused by innate differences. I didn’t originally say anything about my position on the issue, only that people at the conference came away with that impression.
And I always maintained it was not a good example of a central position on HBD.
So I really don’t know why it’s taken you this long to admit that Summers really did take this position, or at the very least that people coming away the impression was warranted.
I never said that Summers didn’t say those things, I always said that it was unfair to phrase it as him only saying those things. My very first post in this chain was asking you if you understood why David Friedman might be displeased (upset, insulted, understandably hostile) to Jill’s deliberate juxtaposition of Larry Summers’ speech with ethnic cleansing in response to Friedman’s assertion that there are innate differences between races and genders.
You complained that David Friedmen was being uncharitable, to someone who had just insinuated that he supports genocide. Merely for being insufficiently gentle in rebutting the claim. That’s what angered me. Your glib dismissal (“But much of the time I feel like it’s motivated by a desire to “crush your enemy””) of completely valid ire.
Yes, it is motivated by desire to crush, to crush those who would accuse me of terrible evil for woefully inadequate cause. Why should I leave them more than a shattered pile of assertions, those who would do me such damage over such trivialities? Why should I let them have any weapon to hurt me, when they have shown such a willingness to do so? Am I to allow such slander to pass unchallenged? Am I to smile as they spit upon me, too?
And lest you think I’m overreacting, in stepping in to defend Jill you assumed the burden of her claims. And at no point have you admitted that implying that those who believe in the existence of innate differences between races and genders support ethnic cleansing is a hostile and insulting act. At no point have you agreed that people should not assume that those who believe in innate differences between races support racial genocide. Instead, you repeatedly tried to assert that such is completely fair and valid behavior by referencing a particular group of HBD blogs you think define the central component of HBD. The closest you ever came was admitting that Jill is naive and careless, but even then you did not acknowledge the insult itself.
At no point have you admitted that anger about being accused of supporting genocide is valid. You have repeatedly asserted that it is invalid, that we are being unfair to Jill, unfair to the critics of Summers. Yet you have gone to great lengths to defend the anger of those offended by Summers’ assertion of innate differences between genders, and you have held them to a much lower standard of behavior. Of them, you ask, is their anger allowed by what was said? But of us, you ask, is our anger required by what was said? The hypocrisy raises my ire, and I think it a righteous anger.
You would not let us read between Jill’s lines, to the meaner view we saw that lurks beneath. But you insisted we let you read behind Summers’ lines, to the meaner view you saw that lurks beneath. I leave you no weapon you refuse me, but forgive you all trespass you forgive me.
“And certainly if a number of people came away from the speech thinking that he believed that the vast majority of the gender gap was due to innate differences, they did not do so unwarranted.”
I would have said entirely unwarranted. He said that two causes, of which that was one, were the main cause of a fair amount of the difference. How do you get from that to one of the two being responsible for the vast majority of the gap?
“It’s just that it’s an absurdly non-central version of “Why women are poor at science””
It isn’t even that. It’s a version of “why fewer women than men are extraordinarily good at science.” He didn’t offer any claims about lower means.
@Inferential Distance:
If your main complaint was about how Jill was treating David, you should have been clearer about it and we would not have had a long, long (apparently pointless) conversation about Mr. Summers. I understood that your initial claim was that it was unfair to say HBD claims about racial differences and Mr. Summers claims about gender were similar.
I have been clear several times that I don’t think Jill argues well. I don’t think it is fair to claim Friedman supports genocide (did she he accuse him of that?) It is, frankly, ridiculous. But this is the first time you have brought this up.
@David Friedman:
He gives two separate causes, each of which he believes are innate. One is IQ/higher variance in males(which is what I think you are referring to).
The other is the inability of women to perform in a “high-powered” job (unless they are unmarried and childless.) They will not choose to dedicate themselves completely to the job. He also says he thinks the jobs perhaps should not be so high-powered, which is why I have been careful to try and talk about the faculty positions as the they currently are, or as currently constituted. One of his proposed solutions here is changing the job.
Later he reinforces this by talking about his observations at a kibbutz and how the girls would treat the toy trucks like a daddy truck and a baby truck. He is talking about this in reference to innate differences in what jobs women and men will choose to do.
@HeelBearCub
Well I’m glad that’s settled…
Oh no. Oh no. You were doing so well. But you just had to get that last barb in, didn’t you? I wouldn’t have even replied, if you had left it to the prior statements. But alas, my pride is wounded! So, my very first comment in this thread, recreated in full:
————
Can you see the difference between these positions, and why one who speaks the latter may be displeased at being accused of the worst behavior of those who speak the former?
How likely is someone who says “I think there are statistically significant gender and race differences in preference and innate ability” to be labeled an HBD advocate, despite not saying all that other stuff you object to and not self-identifying as such? How might this contribute to a usage different than the one you’re proposing?
————
Two quotes, both from your posts. One about HBD, one about Summers’ speech. David Friedman had come to the defense of HBD, as he understood it, and also to the defense of Summers, as he understood Summers’ position.
Note, by this point you had already asserted that a very vile view was central to HBD (“1 in 5 American blacks are borderline retarded and the average Sub-Saharan black is borderline retarded.”). This is the post where you chided David Friedman for being uncharitable to Jill.
And I asked if you could understand (sympathize, empathize, acknowledge) that someone who says things such as Summers did, that there is evidence for innate difference, and evidence for those innate differences possibly explains differences in outcome, these things that David had also defended prior to your comment, that such people may not enjoy being accused of supporting the worst behavior of self-identified HDB advocates. I asked if you understood why asserting that “1 in 5 American blacks are borderline retarded and the average Sub-Saharan black is borderline retarded.” is a central position to HBD may upset people, that people might have a different definition of HBD. A definition that many people, including both Jill, David Friedman, and I, were operating under.
You didn’t answer.
I had also asked if you had considered other definitions of HBD, such as those caused by how people apply the term to others. I had to offer it a second time, pointing out that no one in the comment thread appeared to be using the version you preferred. You said that didn’t matter. You still hadn’t answered about the possibility of a definition of HBD different from the one you pushed. I pointed out that Jill couldn’t be using the version you were arguing for, and for a third time asked if you had considered how people apply the label to others affects the meaning of HBD.
That entire exchange was to get you to admit that perhaps David Friedman has a definition of HBD that is substantially less offensive than the one you use, that he may think the label applies to him, that in fact the less objectionable label does apply to him, and that he may take offense when you suggest that the label he thinks applies to him means something much more objectionable than he thinks it does. And that it is perfectly reasonable for him to do so, because from his perspective, you have accused him of supporting “1 in 5 American blacks are borderline retarded and the average Sub-Saharan black is borderline retarded.” merely because he asserted “there are innate differences in ability between races”, and the former does not logically follow from the latter.
And I tried to leave you a line of retreat. I tried to let you acknowledge that David’s less-than-charitable response to Jill was because, from David’s view, Jill’s response was a severe accusation far out of line with what David had actually said. That Friedman was not doing what he was doing out of any maliciousness, any desire to crush, but out of the discomfort of being accused of holding an abhorrent position. That David’s response was completely on point, given Jill’s assertions.
And it’s true, I was not entirely clear. I was not blunt. I did not drag the issue back to the original point. I tried to chase you after every evasion and leave you no other choice but to follow that one path. In so doing I allowed you to get lost down long chains of inferences and forget what was originally at stake. It was a mistake. I should have been far more repetitive.
But I did ask. You just didn’t answer.
————
Yes. Everything I said about Anonymous Comment applies equally to David Friedman. Miller Lite made a similar interpretation. So did David Friedman. TheAncientGeek seems to find it likely that people would impute the darkest of their imaginings on those who merely state the existence of innate differences. I am not alone in this interpretation.
The exchanges between Jill and David corroborate this. Where Jill accuses Friedman of believing that discrimination does not exist, and that he is unfairly stubborn to boot. Where Jill is “more concerned with the effects of beliefs on our society” and how David’s belief has “been connected to ethnic cleansing and all kinds of other brutalities”.
You said:
And I said:
“Steel-manning is not done to excuse the behavior of less thoughtful commenters. An insult is still an insult, even if the argument can be made without it. Insulting language is still objectionable even if the commenter doesn’t consciously realize it’s insulting; to forgive ignorance first requires acknowledgement that there was an offense to forgive.”
To forgive ignorance first requires acknowledgement that there was an offense to forgive. And what did you have to say in response to that?
Nothing.
I did mention it. Twice. But you didn’t respond to it. Twice. And the second time was blunt: an insult is still an insult.
So I mention it a third time. And this time you respond. And it was almost enough. I was nearly satisfied. I almost allowed the bit questioning Jill’s insult slide, because it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Because you made effort towards reconciliation and I wanted to respect that.
But you made a claim. A claim that flatters you, that shames me, that makes it look like I was stubborn and unclear, that I didn’t give you a chance to defuse the situation before I escalated, that I didn’t give you adequate opportunity to properly defend yourself. The claim that I hadn’t mentioned my complaint.
Your claim was wrong.
@Inferential Distance:
You seemed to have misinterpreted what I initially said about Summers statement and I corrected it. I was not sure if that made a difference in what you were arguing, and I apologized if my wording was unclear.
At which point you jumped into trying to prove that my statements about what Summers was saying were incorrect, rather than re-assert that your objections was to trying to refer to Summer as an HBD advocate, or Friedman as an HBD advocate or whomever it is that your real objection is about.
I had already said that I did not think Summers was a good example of an HBD advocate. I pre-admitted it was not a good thing to refer to Summers as an HBD advocate and I have repeated this over and over in this conversation.
At one point I did attempt to steelman why Summers arguments and other arguments about innate differences can be linked in a general conversation about HBD advocates.
If this was your objection it was not clear to me.If you find it offensive that I tried to steelman a position, that is to your detriment.Edit: On reflection, it should have been clearer to me why you were objecting to the steelman. Although, the idea that you can’t/shouldn’t steelman an argument that you take offense to seems deeply wrong to me.
But, at no point did you reference David Friedman until last night, (nor, in fact did you reference genocide before last night). That was the claim I made, not any other. If that was not clear to you (that I was making a statement about Friedman being accused of genocide), well, that seems to be the heart of the problem.
Edit:
You also seem to have missed where I said the following:
“As to whether the phrase “HBD” is “weaponized”, I don’t know. My suspicion is that the people who say “HBD” (probably on both the pro and the con side) the loudest have turned it into a polarizing and simplistic term.”
So your accusations that I said nothing about the unfairness of being linked to “HBD” when you mean “not the things that the worst people believe” seems off as well.
@Inferential Distance:
Let me also say that, in re-reading the thread, I acknowledge that I did not pay very much attention to your arguments about people feeling insulted or falsely accused.
Perhaps that was an error on my part, in terms of understanding your central objection, if I now do understand your central objection.
On the other hand, I acknowledged frequently that I did not think Jill’s arguments were very good. You had a long post about how objectionable Jill’s pattern was, I laughed at something I thought was perhaps hyperbolic and acknowledged I did not find Jill’s posts to be well argued. I actually had already said this to Friedman up thread, before I said it to you. I’m not sure why that wasn’t satisfactory to you in terms of acknowledging Jill’s fault in this.
You seemed to be accusing me of doing something objectionable, and you seemed to be accusing me of trying to crush Larry Summers for a position which he did not hold. You also seemed to be trying “weaponize” your umbrage.
Taking all that together, I consciously did not respond to the emotional content arguments very much.
@HeelBearCub
Thank you. That means a lot to me.
It was not enough to acknowledge that Jill’s argument was poor, because Jill’s conduct was both mean and threatening. It hurts to be called evil. And to leave such an accusation unaddressed may give the impression to some that it is true; that we do not fight it because we cannot. Between the two, Jill’s argument needed to be rebutted, and we have a vested interest in making it thorough enough that it does not come back later.
What I found objectionable from you was how lenient you were to those on your side of the political spectrum, and how harsh to those outside it. That you could take the time call David Friedman uncharitable, but could not take a moment to address Jill and her usage of segregation and genocide to make her point. That no amount of epistemic humility could protect Summers from being offensively provocative; that his detractors’ outrage was beyond reproach. And yet, though I asked several times, you wouldn’t even engage on whether anyone might have find your assertions about HDB offensive.
I admitted I wasn’t being charitable to Summers’ detractors, and challenged you to admit the converse. You didn’t. I made the first move, I ceded ground, and you ignored me. How was I supposed to interpret that?
You accuse me of pedantry, for behavior you started in your prior comments. I even admitted I was being pedantic, though not more than you. And you didn’t acknowledge it, nor admit any pedantry of your own. How was I supposed to interpret that?
You were not trying to crush Lawrence Summers, you were trying to crush me. Summers’ speech was merely the tool. You admitted no fault in your interpretation, admitted no truth in mine. That all fault was with Summers for not capitulating that discrimination accounts for more than half of difference in outcome; that his audience brought no biases in with themselves that caused them to react with more outrage than was merited by Summers’ actual words.
That I am a pedant, that I assume things Summers didn’t say, that I am uncharitable. That you are holistic, that you are modest, that you are fair. Of your interpretation, you ask, “is this allowed by the text?”. Of my interpretation, you ask, “is this required by the text?”. You give me a foot, but take a mile for yourself. The hypocrisy raises my ire, and I think it a righteous anger.
@HeelBearCub
Like, I cannot stress this strongly enough, you accused me of claiming things for Summers that he doesn’t actually say. We have a word for that in English. It’s “interpretation”. Interpretation is literally the act of combining your assumptions with the words someone said to generate things they did not say. Reading between the lines is claiming things for Summers that he doesn’t actually say. Your priors and your diction are the assumptions you make when getting at the general thrust of someone’s message.
You keep accusing me of doing the very same things you do. But you do so in a manner that suggests I am illegitimate when I do it, but you are not. You interpret, I assume. But these things are the same. You are not better than I. You do not get to make assumptions and deny me the same right. I leave you no weapon you refuse me. My wrath is righteous, my cause just: fight me fairly, or not at all.
This whole argument comes down thus: what is a valid prior for interpreting Summers’ speech? Your argument is: nature much smaller than nurture. My argument is: nurture smaller than nature. My whole point is that some of the audience has a poorly evidenced, extremely overconfident prior in favor of nurture, and that is what caused outrage, and that it isn’t fair because it isn’t well-informed, isn’t careful, isn’t unbiased. That to speak ill of another, you need more than hurt feelings, they need to be wrong. The moral response to pain caused by truth is to plead for sympathy, not to accuse others of maliciousness.
And I can still forgive the latter behavior, so long as it is understood that it is a trespass to be forgiven. That to forgive is not the same as to excuse. That to be forgiven is not the same as forgotten; that one is expected to learn to do better in the future. That in being lenient about this trespass, I do not invite further trespass in the future.
Like, what kind of person attends a Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce? Would you say it is extremely likely that some members of Summers audience, if asked to put a number on the nature/nurture split, would give 0/100? 1/99? 5/95? 10/90? Would it be unfair to say, that for some of these people, even saying “the evidence indicates IQ is at least 50% nature” would cause outrage? Is it fair to Summers that he gets shot for daring to be the messenger? Even if you disagree, do you at least understand why David Friedman and I find it unfair?
@Inferential Distance:
I understand why Friedman and you get irritated or angry if you are accused of desiring genocide or being malicious. Certainly Jill made unfair claims, including saying Friedman must have decided all claims for discrimination were invalid.
The original claim by Friedman that I responded to was that it was unfair to characterize HBD advocates as saying blacks are “inferior”. Which is why I made my original point about what I thought the central example of an HBD advocate claimed about the IQ of blacks. And when I said he can be “uncharitable” I mean in the debate sense, not in a “David is a mean person” sense. And I think almost everyone here likes to win an argument, which is how I was using “crush your enemies”.
I do have to say that I look suspiciously in general at claims of extreme umbrage in debate. It maps to an argument that goes “I am offended, therefore you are wrong”.
One of the things you are very offended about is that I said you claimed things for Summer he did not say. When I said that I should have quoted what I was referring to, especially as you seem to have posted a second time while I was composing that reply.
I think the price of milk could rise 50% next year.
I doubt it is reasonable to think the rise in the price of milk next year could be anything like 50%.
Those are two different claims. Do you agree with that?
@HeelBearCub
Thank you.
THAT’S WHAT SUMMERS’ DETRACTORS WERE DOING HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THIS ASJKBDK;BJFG;KBJS;KBJRI
This is what I mean. This right here. My umbrage is suspicious. Theirs is beyond reproach. Stop that. You get no weapon you take away from me. You don’t get to justify their behavior because Summers’ argument hurt, and turn around and tell me that my pain buys nothing.
Yes.
I think discrimination accounts for a small but significant contributor to gender differences in outcome.
I think discrimination might account for none of the gender differences in outcome.
These are two different claims. Do you agree?
Here, let me explain why I’m so angry about this.
“my under standing is” means “I believe this, but with low confidence so please be gentle if it turns out to be wrong”
“that he gave the impression to some” means “that he deliberately phrased his views so with the goal of leading some of his audience to this exact conclusion”, which you have tried to substantiate by asserting that Summers self declared attempts at “provocation” meant “offense”, despite the literal text of speech saying “provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said”.
“that gender differences in Academic field selection might be the result of innate differences, full stop” means “that discrimination might account for none of the gender differences in outcome in Academic field selection”.
I have dragged you, kicking and screaming all the way, to finally admitting that “third among three” means “between zero and one third”, that “not dominant” means “less than half (or less than a third, for a super-majority)”, that “not pervasive means” includes “medium or small”, that “not large” means “medium, small, or nothing”, that “discrimination exists” means “not zero discrimination exists” means literally the exact opposite of “that discrimination might account for none”.
This is basic fucking predicate logic. “Might be none” means that zero exists among the range of values, that zero exists in the solution space. The exact fucking opposite of that is that for all values, each and every single one of them, that value is most definitely not fucking zero.
Summers’ explicitly rejected the possibility that discrimination might account for none of the difference in outcome. He literally could not phrase that any stronger. He said it multiple times. Text trumps subtext. Anyone who walked away from his speech thinking otherwise is either too incompetent or too malicious (assuming Summers had malicious intent counts). Which do you prefer?
You weren’t even attached to this interpretation when this whole thing started! You could have bowed out by saying your sources were misinformed, and lost zero face! Instead, you chose to come after me for implying that the raw text of Summers’ speech supported my claim that he was misrepresented. You have been relentless in pursuing this. You have no moral high ground, you are no better than me, you are no more charitable, and you are incorrect to boot.
And lest you think it a smart move, “small enough that it might as well have been zero” is still.
Not.
Fucking.
Zero.
Admit your mistake, the mistake of trusting someone who turned out not to be worthy of that trust, that I was right and Summers’ was misrepresented, say not one thing else, make no attempt to salvage your pride at my cost, and I will thank you for it and say nothing else and close this tab and make no more comments here.
You: “I was mislead, Summers’ was misrepresented.”
Me: “Thank you.”
And it ends.
But so long as you continue to fight, so will I. I will not bow down. I was right. You will not take that from me.
@Inferntial Distance:
You claim umbrage that I said you claimed things that Summers did not say. I prove that Summers did not say the thing you said he did. I find your claim to justifiable umbrage to be lacking.
Let me ask you this, is it fair to say that Jill should not be surprised if someone gets angry if she implies or states that she believes that person is a racist who thinks black people are inferior?
I have other thoughts on your last post, but I’d like to stick to those two points for a second. If you would humor me.
@HeelBearCub
I answered your question. You did not answer mine. I am growing increasingly suspicious that your refusal to do so is because you are in fact malicious and deliberately refusing to acknowledge me when I am correct. It is a pattern. You call me pedant, and I assent. I assert that you too are a pedant, and you are silent. This is not the behavior of someone who is cooperating with me. This is not someone who is seeking truth. This is someone looking to score points, who refuses to acknowledge their opponent’s correctness, because to be humble is to be weak.
I admit it when I make a mistake. I call myself prideful, I call myself wrathful, I call myself greedy, because these things are true and I do not pretend otherwise. I am not posturing, I wear my failings openly. I am trying to be cooperative, trying to illuminate the truth. Trying to explain why I will not stop, will not give up, will not let this go no matter how small it seems. Because it matters to me, small as it is. Because I am small. But I am right, and I will not have that taken from me. I will not be made smaller than I am.
I take pride in my correctness. There are times I pit my knowledge against others in the crucible of debate, where I risk being visibly wrong, where I make claims or predictions that may be false, and may be called to account for being wrong. That I may have to admit that I was overconfident. I pick small gambles, small risks, because I am cautious. I predict that one’s enemies will not present one fairly, because I observe this to be true far more often then it is false. You picked the opposite, that Summers’ enemies would be fair to him. You hedged your bet, that it was merely your understanding, from what others had told you, that you were not confident, that it should not cost you much face to be proven wrong. The evidence came, and showed me correct. It did so in text, not subtext, but you refuse to acknowledge it. You say, when he says plainly that discrimination is the third in import of that which causes of outcome, what he actually meant, what he meant to communicate, that the secret meaning behind his words, that his true beliefs, were that it was not an explanation at all. You call Summers’ a liar every time you make that interpretation. You deny the text. You are ignominious in defeat.
And the part that should bother you most is that it is plain to see to all who do not share your biases. That the entire discussion is logged here. That every time you refuse to answer a question, anyone reading can see that you did not answer my question. That you insult me, and I accept the insult because it is true, but I ask that you accept the insulting truth, that you acknowledge that you are not doing better than me, not behaving better. And you say nothing. Because to deny it would be to lie, and to acknowledge it is to lose face. But everyone can see you retreat from that choice. And you keep doing it. Again and again and again. It does not make you look right. It makes you look petty.
I am greedy of my victories. They are little things, small risks, plainly such for all to see. But with enough of them you can build something grander. With enough of them and you can say: lo, you can trust what I say, for my reach does not exceed my grasp. For it has been so in the past. And it is so now. And it will be so in the future. Because I do not lie, and admit my mistakes, and any can see my conduct and judge for themselves whether I am wrong. My victories are mine and they are precious to me.
And I am wrathful against any would steal them from me. To any who would lie about me and call it the truth. That any would pretend their predictions were different from the ones they made, that I am mistaken in the claims they made. To any that would think I would forget, that I would not remember what was said, that I would not point it out to others. Others do not have to trust my words, do not have to trust my judgement, my anger is no impediment for it touches nothing but the reason that I care. They can look for themselves and judge my claims on their merits alone. And they will see that my wrath is righteous, my cause is just. That I was right, and you tried to steal that from me.
No. You have not proven what you think you have proven. What you have proven is that your interpretation is possible. And not even all of them, only those where you concede that Summers’ believes, believes and said so, that discrimination accounts for some of the difference in gender outcome. To say otherwise is to deny the text itself, to call Summers’ a liar, to prove to all that you do not care about being charitable, you do not care about being fair, you are not to be trusted, you will lie about your opponent if it serves you.
An interpretation is valid if it is allowed by the text. To be allowed, an interpretation must not contradict any facet of the text. That is all. If the text says these things go in this order, that the order is so. That if the import of each is arranged such the first two are both much more important the third, but that they only account for a fair amount, then the truth lies between, that both statements are true.
To be charitable, it must assume that the text is not malicious, is not misleading, is not meaner than is necessary for the truth. In Linguistic Pragmatics, this is called Grice’s Maxims, or the cooperative principle. This means that a charitable interpretation must assume that the text is true, that if one says “the sky is blue”, one means exactly that. That to assume that the sky is green is to call speaker of the text a liar, that they are not cooperating, so you are not cooperating, that the contradiction between their statement of blue but the sky being green is that they are uncharitable liars trying to mislead, that they violate the Maxim of Quality.
To be charitable, it must observe the Maxim of Quantity. That if what was meant was that the third was nothing, then the text would have said it more plainly. That if the text required that third be nothing, than the text would have spoken plainly. That such was left out of the text, because it was not required by the text. Therefor, the text allows both that the third be nothing, and that third be something. Either interpretation is true.
But that is not the only statement. There are other statements. Statements that say, this third thing, it is not zero. This third thing, it must be fought, because it is immoral, and it is, undeniably so. The text requires that the third be more than nothing. That the third be nothing is not allowed. That the third be something is required. That any interpretation that says the third is nothing is invalid. That any interpretation that says that the third might be nothing is invalid. It is not might be something, but is. That it be nothing is not allowed.
That all those who interpreted Summers’ words as allowing that the third be nothing, that the third might be nothing, were uncooperative. They call Summers’ words lies, they misrepresent his intent to others, they are not charitable, they are not to be trusted.
You deny Summers’ text, you call him a liar, you say he violates the Maxim of Quality, and yet you say your interpretation is charitable. This is not so. Your interpretation is uncooperative, is uncharitable, you are lying when you say it is charitable, you are being malicious to Summers. You are being malicious to me, misleading me about Summers’ words. And this is plain for all to see, your words are there, you cannot take them back.
My victories are precious to me, and I was right. If you did not try to take it from me I would not be fighting you so hard. But you tried to steal my victory, to take it for your own. That I gambled my pride against yours and won, but you refused to pay.
If you pay, it will end. I will stop. But you are trying to crush me, and I will not be crushed. I will not be moved by lies. Speak the truth, and speak it plainly. Believe that others speak the truth, and speak it plainly. Assume that others speak no more than is necessary, but no less either; that if they have said a thing is so, it is because it is required to be, that it cannot be other. Be charitable, and I will thank you for it.
That depends. Does the person think that black people are inferior, and only black people? Or that black people are inferior, and white people are inferior, and asians are inferior, and jews are inferior, and hispanics are inferior, etc…? Is Jill violating the Maxim of Quantity, has she said less than is necessary, has she said allowed for a possibility that is in fact not possible, by leaving out all the rest? Has she denied this person their context? Has she taken “there are innate differences in ability between races” and reduced it to “black people are inferior”? Because that is unfair, and the person will be angry at the misrepresentation of their view, and Jill should expect that anger.
But if the person believes that black people are inferior, but one or more other races superior, that is indeed racism. And it is not unfair, it violates none of Grice’s Maxims to say so. Jill should not expect anger in such a case.
Context matters. What is said matters just as much as what is not said. What is thought matters just as much as what is not thought. To ignore the silences is to violate the Maxim of Quantity, that only as much as necessary was said. If Jill says “thinks black people are inferior”, and nothing else, that she means that and exactly that; that “thinks white people are inferior” may be true and “thinks white people are superior” may be true; that the person may or may not be racist. But if a person is not racist, if they do not think white people are superior, to say that they may be racist, this violates the Maxim of Quantity, that Jill would say less than is necessary, that Jill would allow for an interpretation that she knew she is required to forbid.
It is akin to saying that you are a human or a racist. Because it is truth that you are human. And disjoining a truth always results in truth. So even if you are not a racist, you are still (a human or a racist). But to say so, to say you are (a human or a racist), and nothing else, is to say that I am not saying anything unnecessary, that it is possible you are a racist, that I am not violating the Maxim of Quantity by saying “or a racist”. But if I know you are not a racist, than I am violating the Maxim of Quantity.
So tell me, HeelBearCub, is it fair to say, is it charitable, is it exactly necessary, does it contain no superfluous clauses, does it obey the Maxim of Quantity, to say that you are a human or a racist?
I’m going to ignore everything that has to do with how jealously you guard your wins and losses. I have no interest in that conversation.
You state that you have answered my question, but I have not answered yours. I assume you are referring to the demand that I admit that I was mislead about Larry Summers. Is that what you mean?
Here is what I said originally:
“But my understanding is that he gave the impression to some that he was asserting that gender differences in Academic field selection might be the result of innate differences, full stop. ”
In that sentence, I’m talking about the impressions people came away with. I don’t even make a claim about what Summers said, other than it seems to have led to some people forming those impressions. The only particular claim I make at that point is that Summers himself said he was trying to be provocative. I say Summers should have expected some people to be angry.
So, from the standpoint of what I was lead to believe, I only believe at that point that Summers should have expected some people to be angry after the talk. That’s my only claim at that point.
Now, did Summers claim zero effect of discrimination. No. If you want claim that as a victory, go ahead.
But that wasn’t my claim. My claim was that people came away with that impression. And people can come away with that impression if Summers can be fairly characterized as minimizing the effect of discrimination on the gender gap, especially as they are not reading from a transcript. Grice’s maxims do allow implicature (according to Wikipedia. I do not claim to be a linguist) and I think it is certainly fair to imply from Summers speech that he was minimizing the effect of discrimination on the gender gap in STEM. Not minimizing how bad it was, nor even, necessarily, how pervasive, just minimizing it’s effect on the gender gap.
And with that I am done with this conversation. I find the amount of venom you have put into your last several posts to be highly inconducive to productive discourse.
This is to your detriment, because it was honest communication, it was exposure of vulnerability, admission of weakness. This was not to say, I am angry therefor I am correct, but to explain, I will not back down because I am angry. I am angry because my pride has been wounded, my victory denied me. My greed will not allow me to let go: I was right, my pride was just, and it was mine.
I do not pretend my motives are noble. I only say what they are, in the hopes that you may understand why I do what I do. This is charity. This is kindness. This is cooperation. To lay my vulnerabilities bare, in the hopes that you will not turn them against me, but walk away wiser.
But you call me jealous and turn away. This is how you meet my hand, outstretched in an offering of peace: with disdain.
I speak it thus, you are mind-killed, and I am not. You cannot see the blood on your hands, the wounds you have inflicted on me. But I can see the blood on my hands, the wounds I have inflicted on you. You cannot see the rage on your face, but I know it matches my own.
The truth is thus, that you cannot see yourself, that no mirror will hold your gaze. The truth is thus, that you are too busy feeling to know yourself. The truth is thus, that I both feel and know what I am. The truth is thus, I cannot be moved by mirrors, for they only show me what I already know.
The truth is thus, that you are as jealous of your wins as I, or you would not fight back with such force.
No.
Here is the question you asked:
Here is the answer I gave: “Yes.”
Here is the question I asked:
“I think discrimination accounts for a small but significant contributor to gender differences in outcome.
I think discrimination might account for none of the gender differences in outcome.
These are two different claims. Do you agree?”
You gave no answer.
If you cared what I said, if you meant to communicate, if you were charitable and fair and just, you would have answered. You would not have asked for more from me than you would give of yourself. You would not be so unfair as to deny my what you ask for yourself. But you did, because you are, and I name it thus: unkind. You take advantage of me, that I keep reaching out for reconciliation, that I drop my guard a moment. A moment for you to find another means of attack.
Here is another question you asked:
Here was my answer:
“That depends. Does the person think that black people are inferior, and only black people?[…]”
Here is the question I asked:
“So tell me, HeelBearCub, is it fair to say, is it charitable, is it exactly necessary, does it contain no superfluous clauses, does it obey the Maxim of Quantity, to say that you are a human or a racist?”
You gave no answer.
My words were there, if you cared to read them. It would have been easy to find my questions. Ask yourself, then, why did you miss them?
This is the lie you tell yourself, that what is is what ought to be. This is the lie you tell yourself, that the positive is the normative. This is the lie you tell yourself, that because you can predict their behavior, they are infants who cannot be held accountable for their actions.
The truth is thus, that explanation is not justification.
This is the lie you tell yourself, that because you lose control you are not to be judged. This is the lie you tell yourself, that it is not your fault that you lose control. This is the lie you tell yourself, that the harm you do is the fault of those you harmed. This is the lie you tell yourself, that your wrath is a righteous wrath.
The truth is thus, you choose to let go. The truth is thus, you choose to be angry. The truth is thus, you choose to lash out in your anger. The truth is thus, your anger is unjust.
The truth is thus, you find the truth painful. The truth is thus, you turn your pain to anger. The truth is thus, your anger is misplaced. The truth is thus, you seek to hurt others where you should ask to be healed.
The truth is thus, that it is not Summers who hurt you. The truth is thus, that it was the the truth itself. The truth is thus, that the world is unfair. The truth is thus, that we could make it more fair.
No. You claim he provoked offense, that he desired anger. He did not. He wanted to provoke thought. He wanted to provoke debate. He wanted to provoke the desire to ask the questions. He wanted to provoke the desire find the answers. He wanted to provoke doubt. He wanted to provoke truth.
This is the lie you tell yourself, that you see all possibilities when you only see one. This is the lie you tell yourself, that if your interpretation feels right, it must be true. This is the lie you tell yourself, that the only thing that can be provoked is anger.
This is the lie you tell yourself, that Summers wanted the audience’s anger. The truth is thus, Summers wanted their doubt. This is the lie you tell yourself, that Summers is to blame for what they did to him in their anger. The truth is thus, they chose to turn their fear into anger and lash out, and it is their burden to carry.
Yes, Summers knew they would be angry. And Summers spoke the truth anyways. Not because he wanted their anger. Not because desired to cause offense. Not because he wished to appear brave. But because Summers knew that humans are fallible. Summers knew that some would turn their doubt into anger. Summers knew that some would speak ill of him for what he said. Summers knew that some would not listen. But Summers knew that some would listen. And that the truth was important enough to give to those that would listen, to endure the anger of those that would not.
But it is still their fault for not listening. Summers endures the consequences of their choices, but he does not take the blame of making them. Summers did not make their choices for them. They made their decisions, they made them poorly. They are not children, to be coddled when they throw a tantrum.
This is the lie you tell yourself, that small means the same thing as minimal.
People can come away with any impression at all, depending on what they thought before Summers spoke. This is called bias. This is called prior. This is called knowledge. Evidence moves you from where you stand, where you end up depends on where you started. To you, he was minimizing discrimination, because you assumed too much. To anyone who assumed no discrimination, to a true sexist who thinks that women are idiots incapable of keeping up with men, Summers’ speech would appear to emphasize discrimination, to play down innate (in)ability. To a true sexist, Summers would be too generous by far.
Evidence moves you towards the truth, and the farther from the truth you were, the farther the evidence will move you. And the direction you move is from where you stand relative to the truth.
This is the lie you tell yourself, that you have no biases that lead you astray.
That Summers’ audience had the impression that he minimized the effects of discrimination is true. Because they assumed it. Because they stopped listening. Because in their doubt and their fear they exaggerated Summers into a more monstrous form. So that they would not have to feel their doubt, feel their fear. So that they could name him monster and name him liar and ignore his words and ignore his evidence. So they could ignore the truth. Because the truth was painful, and they could not face that pain.
It is not Summers fault that they misrepresent him. He should not have to be uncharitable, to assume that they are hostile, that they will not listen. He should not have to say, “might be more” when the evidence is “quite possibly much more”.
This is the lie you tell yourself, that Summers must be unkind to be kind. This is the lie you tell yourself, that Summers should lie to tell truth. This is the lie you tell yourself, that this will make the world more just.
Alas, those were not the terms I offered. You had to take this one step back, and no steps forward: that I was right, that you were wrong, that Summers was misrepresented. You would have to make one pure act of kindness, that I could thank you for it and set aside all animus. That we could salvage any trust at all.
You make no concession without barb, admit no fault without insult, give no ground but to spring forward with fresh assault. No compliment that is not backhanded. You are ignominious in defeat.
This is the lie you tell yourself, that there is no venom in your words. This is the lie you tell yourself, that you are willing to be moved by the evidence. This is the lie you tell yourself, that you are without fault.
The truth is thus, that none of us are without sin.
But at least I was right.
Having gotten that out, I leave you the following.
May your future be kinder to you than your past.
@HeelBearCub
Though your words hurt me, there was still truth in many of them. Facing that truth has made me stronger, and I thank you for that.
What’s with the millennial obsession with authentic self expression? Seriously, this isn’t intended as a dig, I genuinely don’t understand this or some of the related things around “identifying as”.
“Identify as” is my pet peeve. Not in the sense that people can define themselves as they wish, I’m fine with that.
But increasingly we seem to be encouraging people to turn their opinions into their identity (no wonder we’re taking more politics personally! Now you’re not just attacking my opinion, you’re assaulting who I am). Or the behavior whereby we’ll take some aspect of you, say your sexual orientation or race, and assume it should define other unrelated things about you (e.g. calling Condi Rice an “Uncle Tom”).
I identify as trans-epistemic rationalkin and I find this post extremely triggering.
It’s important to distinguish between government-imposed restrictions on speech and social or economic pressures constraining speech. I would prefer that there not be much of either, but the government cracking down on speech poses the far greater threat, as it marks the first step down the road towards autocracy. So even if we endorse your if-I-can’t-have-it-no-one-can line of reasoning, your frustrations should only lead you to become indifferent towards others who face social consequences for speech, not those who are threatened with libel suits for daring to criticize the god-emperor. At any rate, I am sorry you find yourself in a milieu that doesn’t value free inquiry. Social pressures have a way of blowing over with time, though, and I hope you will continue to avail yourself of internet anonymity in the interim.
“but the government cracking down on speech poses the far greater threat, as it marks the first step down the road towards autocracy.”
If we postulate that under our current system of government, things that the majority clearly wants usually end up happening, and that the government finds ways to re-define laws such that they conform with common cultural norms, isn’t the culture rejecting the ideals of free speech the FIRST step?
I’ve gone on the record in other places predicting that hate speech laws will be on the books and enforced and survive a Supreme Court challenge in America within the next 20 years (and that this will not require any sort of new amendment to the constitution). Because most people want them and the job of the Supreme Court seems to be to find some esoteric way to allow the people to have what they want.
The decision in Snyder v. Phelps was 8-1, with Alito the lone dissenter. So I’m not too worried about the near future. The supreme court understands the value of the first amendment, even if most of the public does not.
As much as I sympathise, you never have had free speech and you never will. No civilisation provides its citizens with genuinely unrestricted speech.
The Bad Box was always there, it’s just that you’ve wandered into it.
BTW, I don’t have time find the thread up above where this was mentioned now, but if you decide to go to a therapist for social skills issues and you have a lot of anxiety, you may want to look for a psychologist who specializes in “social anxiety”– not just any nice therapist you hear about who might know very little about this particular area of psychotherapy.
You can call the state psychological association in your state and ask for names of psychologists who specialize in this area. Some have had quite a lot of training in it and it’s one of their primary areas of specialization.
Does “social anxiety” cover things like “I’m just not good at talking to women?”
I always got the idea that it was basically a “I’m too terrified to leave the house because of all those scary people out there” sort of thing.
I’ve been getting a ton of Facebook ads for this online-therapy sort of company about social anxiety, but never really looked into it much because I wasn’t sure it was the same sphere of problem.
I would never advise going to online therapy for any sort of social problem. They can’t see you in person and see how you appear, talk etc. Even if they use Skype, that is not good enough.
“I’m too terrified to leave the house” is agoraphobia.
“I’m just not good at talking to women” could possibly be social anxiety.
Re: male privilege
Am I the only one who has been given a bit of a confidence boost by all this talk of male privilege?
Also, if we must counter it, wouldn’t a bit of agree and amplify be in order?
“Yeah, you’re damn right I’m privileged – that’s why YOU have to shut up and listen”
Reminds me of an old Jewish joke.
LOL. A good one there.
From the Russian jokes Wikipedia page: “Rabinovich calls pampas headquarters, speaking with a characteristic accent:” Tell me, is it true that Jews sold out Russia?” “Yes, of course it’s true, kike-schnabel!” “Oh good! Could you tell me please where I should go to get my share? “
If you just want to piss off intersectional feminists, that works fine, but annoying them is simple anyway. But they will attack you for bragging about privilege; that’s the same thing that got Justine Sacco in trouble, after all (with her tweet ‘Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just Kidding. I’m White!’)
I have a counter-line “The only privilege I’ve had as a white male is the unshakeable assumption that anything bad that happens to me is all my fault.” I’ve seen others with similar formulations, some saying explicitly that this really is a positive and not (entirely) sarcasm.
I think your argument demonstrates disagreement rather than exposing contradiction – the key to destroying your opponent is to get them to disagree with themselves.
If anyone criticises my position I can just shrug my shoulders and say “listen, I agree with you – that’s the society we live in” or something to that effect – “I’m a man, you have to listen to me, it’s called “male privilege”, look it up on the faqs”
edit: I think it’d be a lot better if it was “greatest” privilege rather than “only” – then they’ll actually listen to what you say.
You don’t destroy your opponent in a conversation. You can either persuade them or humiliate them. The former requires them to be receptive, and the latter requires a receptive audience. Telling an uppity woman to go make you a sandwich will only “destroy” her in a context already favorable to you.
Rather than persuading or humiliating someone, you might actually seek to understand them. You might ask for examples of what they are talking about, for example, and seek to understand where they are coming from.
Everything in life does not need to be a battle. I know it’s not a popular practice in our bashing society, but people really can strive to understand one another. And people can also be aware that they do not have to agree with one another.
There is a form of conversation called Bohm Dialogue where the goal is to progress from clarity to confusion. The idea is that most of the time, when we think we understand some complex issue, we really don’t. So we can benefit from listening to others, so that we are no longer “clear” and are more “confused” because we are learning things about the complexity of the situation, by considering other points of view. Again, you don’t need to agree– just to look from a different perspective and see if you notice anything new about the situation.
Call me a cynic, but I’ve never seen a problem solved in the long run by that sort of language game. Most of the time it successfully masks the problem, but it sneaks around the back and emerges in a new and invariably more sinister form.
(This includes the rationalist custom of “Taboo”, unfortunately.)
I think you can reach the point where you are in the deep dark forest, 2+2=5, and the only way out is to reject your own central beliefs.
Maybe I’m just regurgitating the plot of inception here, but I think it is possible to plant the seed of doubt in someone’s mind, to persuade them something is wrong, and if that ‘thing’ is central enough to their identity – uh… destroy them (in a manner of speaking).
Sure, no-one is going to break down there-and-then, but people change their minds after exposure to the arguments of others. I’ve had my mind changed before.
And, if you don’t trust me and I tell you a fact, you won’t believe me. But if your own statement provides the initial grounds for my argument, there is less room for doubt.
Anyone using the language of intersectional feminism can be presumed with high probability to be both anti-rational (that is, they do not believe in the use of logic and reasoning to find truth) and not persuadable by argument (particularly not argument from someone who is ‘privileged’). Therefore there is really no point in trying to persuade them of anything.
You can show them contradictions in their worldview, but this will not shake them because they do not accept the reductio ad absurdum.
Trying to destroy your opponent in a conversation is a risky, risky game. Only attempt if you have significantly more social status than the other person ,and you are sure that you can crush them in an insult contest. Also make sure that you dont engage with someone whos social status is low enough that there are no winning situations for you. In high school the people who took the most shots at my social status were those who were sufficiently low in the chain that they lose nothing if they lose the status game.For them a draw was a win , since they managed to siphon some social status away from me and towards them.. For me it was a no win scenario, since even if I win against the low status opponent, well there is no real gain in social status.Plus i look like an asshole, and lose some social status in that. The social status games between me and people of similar status were very interesting, because they involved multiple levels of thought, and the ability to be best-buddyish , friendly, and still competitive. But the general moral of the story is that if you are trying to openly humiliate someone ( a blatant social status grab), be sure as fuck you have you cards lined up.This is why i generally dont recommend blatant humiliation as a social status enhancing strategy , its way too risky, and there is very little gain. Being nice is not just a good thing to do, but it is often best practice for social status and winning friends. Open insult wars please Moloch. Dont please Moloch.
“Holy crap, white men must be gods to do all this! No wonder they should run the world!”
The thing about being told to “check your privilege” is that it’s deployed mostly in situations where the target is actually at a disadvantage. Privilege is very context dependent, and the sort of people who complain loudest about male privilege (and explicitly name it as such) don’t typically frequent the sort of environments where male privilege is abundant.
What if someone claimed the opposite: that it’s deployed mostly in situations where the target is indeed at an advantage? How would you determine which statement is true? Could you even do so?
Having said that, yeah, mostly when I’ve heard it it’s functionally equivalent to “Shut up!” I just don’t have any basis to generalize my personal experience very far.
Damn, I have to try that sometime. Though there’s a decent chance I’d get punched.
One reason not to read newspapers, and to a lesser extent magazines and blogs, is that you only get a surface-level understanding of the issues. It would be far more useful for a layperson to read 100 pages of an economics textbook than 100 pages of the Economist.
Unfortunately, reading standard textbooks is tough. Partly because they can be dull, but mostly because it’s a huge chunk of text that is hard to get into. By contrast, reading (relatively) short posts, via RSS feeds, is simple and easy. (And even slightly gamified; crossing off things you’ve read).
Question: is there a simple way of breaking down (ebook) textbooks into short chunks and delivering them via RSS?
I could split them manually and set them to upload to a free blogging platform, but that’s too much effort and has potential copyright violation issues. If it makes a difference, I use feedly.
“Unfortunately, reading standard textbooks is tough.”
Part of the reason is that the decision of what textbook to buy is made by the professor who assigns the book, not the student who will (or won’t) read it. That gives the author an incentive to write for the professor, who is a very different audience. I remember one horrible example in my field, where the first chapter consisted, so far as I could tell, entirely of hooks to hang references on, with nothing that would actually teach anything to someone who didn’t already know it.
I was struck by this point when writing Hidden Order, which was my price theory text rewritten for the intelligent layman market. It occurred to me that if at any point the reader lost interest, I would lose him. So I designed each chapter to start with a hook, some interesting question or idea that would hold the reader’s interest to the end of the chapter. Measured by sales, it was my most successful book.
So instead of looking for books to be broken up and delivered online, you might look for books aimed largely at the intelligent layman market, people reading the book for fun and curiosity not because it was assigned. My standard example is The Selfish Gene.
Thanks for the advice! I’m in academia (law too), so I’m certainly aware of some of the systemic problems with textbooks.
I’m reasonably confident that I can find relatively interesting texts – I had a look at Mankiw’s intros to economics, for example, and had no trouble staying for a chapter. The problem is delivering the chapters (or parts, if long) into chunks as if it were a blogging platform.
Having said that, the idea of middle market books is helpful. I found Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow revelatory at the time (and was one of the things that lead me here), so I should probably go further in that direction. (And will look up Hidden Order!)
Short answer: Learning requires time, failure, and hard work. In that order. There is no short and easy way.
Also, textbooks are not always what they seem. I wouldn’t call history textbooks reliable sources of information, for one. Plagued with cultural framing, false information, omission, and censorship. Anything that condenses information is robbing you of perspective. That is why good teachers bring in lots of outside sources of perspective and information, to help fix and fill the holes in textbooks. They are mostly reference tools promoting further study. Which is definitely useful.
Look into how the big textbook corporations write their textbooks. Sometimes it is low paid English majors copying information from Wikipedia “in their own words”, sometimes it is genuine people trying to make a difference in education. Big corporations are not exactly known for the quality of their work, and that is who dominates the textbook market. Figuring out which textbooks are good quality and which are poor quality is an enormous task in itself.
It definitely depends on which subject you study. I would call most math textbooks reliable, for example. That would be pretty hard to mess up it seems.
I agree with you that people need to broaden their perspectives though. Textbooks is a good suggestion, though super expensive.
I like your idea of gamified learning.
It’s fairly easy to find university reading lists online. From there you can figure out a rough consensus as to what’s useful, and what’s not. (E.g. discount endorsements by people from the same university). (I also work at a collegiate university, so I can talk to people in various fields for further advice if need be).
I take your point that textbooks are not an end point – I tell my students exactly the same thing. But all those problems you mention are generally worse for newspapers and magazines. In particular, my usual sources tend to involve simplified presentations of new research findings, rather than covering a base of knowledge. This is true of even the best outlets (e.g. Scott on ketamine vs. an intro to molecular biology). My aims are modest: I’d just like to have a rudimentary feel for the lay of the land.
(As to expense, I was assuming that you can find more than reading lists online…)
Much of my time is spent thinking about doing things I don’t really want to do because other people tell me I should be doing them. Probably spent more time in my life on things like this than anything else (edit: not true, spent more time pretending to be doing these things than anything else)
My question – is it possible to identify your own “sour grapes”? It feels bad that I’m not having sex with a thousand women a year, because I fear that the only reason I don’t want to, is I can’t. Same with having a high-flying managerial position.
How can I tell if I’m bad at these things because I don’t want to do them, as opposed to not wanting to do them because I am bad at them?
Same with belief – am I a Christian because I can’t stand the heat of reality, or does Christianity make reality more bearable because there is some truth to it?
I think this is a fairly common experience, certainly I have spent periods where I had similar thought patterns.
For me, the issue frequently revolves around two things. One is just that I have ADD, and so the boring but most “productive” things I could be doing is a huge mental labor.
Second, is that from childhood into my 30s, I did not read social situations very well, and consistently under estimated how well received I was in any particular social situation. This is not a happy place to be, as almost all of us are social creatures. That leads to overestimating what you “need” to do in order to be happy (socially).
I could try to structure my career to get a CIO position, and I would have a very good shot at being successful at attaining that position somewhere at a small company. I have come to realize I would be miserable in that position, at least at this point in my life. I really just want to write code. It makes me happy. I still have ADD and depression, but I’m managing those or accepting them, day by day.
So, as sappy as it sounds, you have to figure who you are, and accept it.
You very probably can’t have sex with a thousand women a year, short of being Genghis Khan or very unafraid of STDs while nomadically roaming the land in search of cheap prostitutes who you haven’t yet slept with. The high-flying managerial position might be more achievable, but it’s still probably out of reach without dedicating one’s life to the goal or having a heaping of natural advantages.
I don’t see what’s so bad about not wanting to do these impractical and/or nearly-impossible things. It would be much worse if you wanted this and still couldn’t, like a personal hell. If you don’t want to, then you don’t want to; there’s no reason to drill this matter.
IMO, you would be trying and failing anyway if you really wanted to.
Why not both?
So all I wanted in the end
Was world domination and a whole lot of money to spend
A little place to call my home, like a planet that was all my own
Well that’s not much to ask, it’s really not
It’s not much to ask, just the same as anybody else
I suppose things divide up into various categories, the examples are for me.
“Things that would be pretty sweet if I could have them, but realistically, it’s not happening, and I’m not worried about it.” – eg having £1 billion.
“Things I think I genuinely believe aren’t actually good, but other people might call sour grapes.” – e.g. immortality. Christians and transhumanists alike might be alarmed by my point of view, but there it is. Also, world domination.
“Things where I have a sour grapes reaction and know it.” – no example here, evidently I’m not self-aware enough in the right ways
“Things which are kind of ambitious, but I’m still a bit cut up about not having access to.” – e.g. becoming a scientist in academia making big important discoveries.
“Things which don’t seem that ambitious but which I’m still a bit cut up about” – e.g. not pairing up, when I’m in the wrong mood.
“Things which don’t seem that ambitious but which still seem out of reach for me, would be kind of sweet but meh, whatever” – e.g. not pairing up when I’m in the right mood, not being able to dance, not being able to keep up with my friends on a bike.
Possibly I’m mis-reading your “sour grapes” – I’ve always read “sour grapes” as “thinking the thing out of reach is worthless” rather than merely not setting your heart on it.
Being modest in your ambitions I think is a virtue, even if parts of society think otherwise. Stereotypically, Americans are less likely to think this than Brits, I don’t know what it’s like in reality.
I guess I wouldn’t worry too much about why I am a Christian if I tended to be overly worried or obsessive anyway. If you worry too much anyway– then if it works, don’t fix it.
As for wanting things that you can’t have– and that the vast majority of other people can’t have either– I agree with Peter that being moderate in your wishes, or at least your expectations– is a virtue.
Ask yourself: What are all the many things I would get out of being a manager or having sex with a lot of women? E.g. money, sex, confidence, feeling socially accepted and not isolated etc. etc. Are there other ways you can get at least some of whatever your needs are, met, maybe just a little bit?
How could you get at least something similar to what you want? E.g. maybe you could take a business class or 2 that would help you if you ever get a promotion at work, or get a better job. Or you could develop skill in a hobby unrelated to work, to boost your confidence.
E.g. If you can’t have sex with 1000 women, why not talk to 1000 women? You could go to churches, or to Conversation Cafes or Socrates Cafes or other social groups or organizations in your area. Then you could practice talking to women. And to men too. And see what it’s like to not be socially isolated, sitting there locked into your own thoughts and feelings of frustration.
Sometimes people want something huge and incredible, partly because they are not getting their more common and smaller needs met. The more frustrated they feel, the more they fantasize about something better and better and more and more out of reach. Not a productive cycle there.
So, rather than focusing on wanting big big things that you are not getting, why not look at what smaller things you can get or do in your life?
And if you find you have major problems functioning, you might consider going to a coach or counselor or psychotherapist for help with that. Some people go, even if they have only minor problems functioning. It can be very life enhancing to get individualized help, focused on what you as an individual need, rather than following general advice.
We’re all flying blind here to some extent, trying to answer your concerns, because we don’t know you as an individual, so your needs aren’t really clear to us.
As someone who is off to college in a few months, what tips does SSC have for college and life in general ?
Study something employable/marketable.
Don’t take student loans.
Get employed (in the field) during college, drop college once with enough experience (you can always finish it later if you really need to; experience trumps education).
Oh, and find a marriage candidate. Higher education tends to have a fair bit of women who want to earn a Mrs Degree. 🙂
Try and find something you enjoy that also has a clear path to employment.
If the choice is to take student loans, or not go to college, take student loans. Keep in mind what the monthly payment on that is likely to be after college and what that means for your cash flow. Don’t take them unthinkingly.
If you like college, finish your degree. Not having a degree lets the person in a hiring chain who knows the least about the job (HR) keep you from even being interviewed.
Form relationships when you are in college. You may find that you form friendships that last a lifetime. We still go on our annual vacation with the same four couples/families, all of whom met and lived on the same floor of our college dorm.
And for God’s sake, don’t use the term Mrs Degree unless you know how to spot, on sight, the kind of person who would be intentionally looking for one and does not mind being referred to as that kind of person, and you know that this is what you are looking for. In other words, don’t use the term Mrs Degree unless you are trying to offend someone.
I struggle to imagine a situation where it is impossible to study without taking student loans in the contemporary west.
Fair point. It’s a good idea to guard against insane bureaucracy; chances are, you’re going to encounter insane bureaucracies.
Also a good point. Some people think there’s something wrong with using college as a marriage market.
The US university system isn’t exactly like the UK, so I’ll go for the most general advice I can:
– It’s very likely going to get a bit crazy in the first few months. Accept it, enjoy it, and for crying out loud don’t try to eke it out over your entire college career or it’s gonna screw you over.
– There’s a non-zero chance that any mental health problems you have will become significantly worse in the next few years. If you start coming off the rails for reals (not just partying too hard and having the occasional crash), then do not be afraid to seek help. Support networks exist and you should use them.
– Student politics feels like it’s the entire world. It’s not, it’s just that there are some people who have built entire empires within academia and they have no intention of letting the icky outside world get in… but you’re gonna be leaving that world relatively quickly, so don’t let them fuck with your life too much.
– Keep fit. Most universities have excellent facilities for sports and fitness and you’ll likely never have such easy (and inexpensive) access to them again. Getting yourself a good base of fitness by your early twenties will do a lot to offset the Mid Twenties Collapse when the hormones start dropping off. (Also it helps with the mental health stuff I mentioned earlier).
Can’t think of anything else I’m sure crosses the Pond. Hope it’s helpful.
You mean “informal interpersonal relations between groups of students”, right? Rather than referring to the people elected to student office? Because Student body president never felt like anything remotely important.
Gawd no, I mean things like activism and tribal tonality of the kind you mention.
Actually I plan to compeletely can politics in college. I am a libertarian however Im not gonna advertise that fact using a massive banner. As far as I can tell, having a strong political opinion can only cause you to lose connections, status, or friends. So I think that I will be as apolitical as possible in college. No need to shoot yourself in the foot for no reason by telling everyone how much you love absolute freedom of association.
Acting apolitical sounds like an excellent idea– maybe not just in college but maybe most places. It seems that usually not much constructive happens in the current atmosphere as a result of political discussions/arguments.
Talk to people whenever possible. Talk before a lecture starts, after it ends, when you’re in line for paperwork, and when you’re doing a lab. If someone is offering you free pizza at a meetup or event, then they’re already interested in talking to you, and if you’re at all interested you should go.
If you’re introverted, talking to people will suck at first, so make sure you start off with non-threatening small talk in a public place or course-related chitchat, where both of you can easily walk away.
I didn’t start consciously seeking out conversations until my last year, but it improved the experience tremendously.
Prefer classes with professors you like to classes with topics you like. A bad prof can spoil any class.
Meet people. Networks are one of the most valuable resources you can have, and college is a good place to build them.
While this is true, I would throw in the caveats that just because you meet a professor and like their personality does NOT mean they will be a good teacher.
And taking the advice of classmates is generally a bad idea. One of my favorite teachers had a terrible reputation among the rest of my classmates. Don’t listen to anyone else’s feelings on this unless you know them REALLY well and trust that they have the same tastes and preferences as you.
Watch your diet, get some exercise, try to balance socializing and schoolwork (remembering that if you’re not learning something of direct use, socializing might help your future more than study), don’t drink too much (either all at once or chronically – getting blasted at every opportunity is bad, but so is having several drinks in the middle of the day, by yourself, just because), don’t smoke too much pot, don’t do anything harder, don’t have unsafe sex, don’t put yourself in any positions of liability, and try to take classes where you’ll be graded by professors instead of TAs.
“Do not go to places where people binge drink” excludes all UK universities, not sure if that was your intention(!)
Something is definitely sick in the UK’s culture. Unfortunately no-one can really agree on what it is, let alone what to do about it.
Mark Atwood: reifying prejudices into laws of the universe for more than forty years!
Something is definitely sick in the UK’s culture. Unfortunately no-one can really agree on what it is, let alone what to do about it.
From what I’ve seen, heard, and read, much of the UK is pretty clear on binge drinking being a big part of the problem. What’s causing the binge drinking, yeah, they don’t much agree on that.
I’m willing to put a significant amount of figurative money on it having an awful lot to do with the near-complete absence of venues for informal social interaction which don’t involve alcohol.
Now, whether that’s caused by Thatcherite “no such thing as society” ideology or de-industrialisation or post-imperial malaise… that’s where everyone dissolves into pub brawls.
I think it is at least partly because we hit the sweet spot between the European culture of drinking moderately with meals from a young age, and American social disapproval of alcohol and high drinking age.
Hmmmm… I dunno… that *is* our culture.
I would be more inclined to say that modern society causes problems for our binge drinking than the other way around.
To be fair, I’ve seen lots of Europeans drinking moderately with meals. I’d even say most of them stop drinking not long after the meal is over.
My experience with yuros is that they drink moderately with meals and drink not moderately afterwards.
Stop oppressing my culture, you ethnocentric bastard!
If at some point you find yourself considering grad school, make sure to get some undergraduate research done. It’ll help you get into a good grad school, but more importantly, it’ll help you decide if that’s something you can really see yourself doing professionally.
Even easier- attempt to attend the meetings the professors have every week where they talk about the latest research in the field. They might not be willing to have additional people, but if you can get in, you get a good idea of what the current stuff people are expected to be studying is.
What Mark said.
Set your alarm in the am to a standard time and get up every day then. Don’t stay up all night playing video games and don’t let your roomie do it either.
During regular work hours – whenever that is for you, schedule at least eight hours a day doing school work – if you are not in class, go study. Like people say – take breaks, chat at people, enjoy the weather when its good and the warmth of the library when its not. But remember that your job is to study.
If you focus on working during “work hours” and spend half an hour cleaning your place/cooking/laundry and making the list for the next day, you will have HOURS every day for gym/wandering in the sunshine/watching movies.
But not if you don’t put the first things first.
Less than ordinary diligence if you are reasonably intelligent and haven’t sought out the toughest classes. Grade inflation is real and massive.
The fact that you’re on here suggests to me you’re probably going to be reasonably studious, and not have any illusions about chasing dreams in a field where there are no jobs.
Although I would suggest talking to recent grads (tutors, lab demonstrators, etc) about job options/markets with reference to whatever you’re doing. It can be hard to discern what things are actually like outside the garden.
The main advice I have would be socially: join clubs that interest you, talk to people in class/outside of class. Go to events. Participate in them. University is basically your last chance to (easily) make friends outside of small, confined circles. The wider a social network you can create (and then maintain), the better. This will help you with career/relationship/general well being later on.
For the average student, the advice from Mark and keranih is correct. (And won’t be followed 100%, but will definitely steer you in the right direction).
But given that you’re on SSC, there’s a decent chance that you’re like me (mumble) years ago: very introverted and sufficiently book-smart so that classes are relatively easy. In that case, here’s what I wish I could have told myself: put a strong emphasis on developing your social life. Go to clubs, parties, study groups, etc, ideally with a reasonable gender ratio. If you don’t drink, learn to do so (RESPONSIBLY). Take any opportunity to date (again, responsibly). Of course take your coursework seriously, but don’t kill yourself going for a 4.0. Once you’re out of college, meeting people is much harder than learning stuff.
And the obvious universal advice: pick a economically reasonable major, get relevant work experience if you can, and actually finish your degree so you can have the employability ticket.
Actually im a bit odd for SSC in that im a massive extrovert. I love to talk to people, and I have above average social skills ( at least in my Silicon Valley bubble). People tend to describe me as charismatically douchey. On the nerd to jock spectrum of high school most people at my school would put me squarely in the jock category. I am concerned for my academics though, because although I am reasonably intelligent (still well below SSC average), I have fairly massive ADD. I get distracted super easily and my library study sesh ends up with me and my friends accidentally going on a hike. I am definitely gonna work on the social aspect of college, make sure i date , get in even better shape, and overall have a blast. But I also want to make sure that I get a good gpa ( trying for above 3.5) so that I have access to well paying jobs and stuff in the future. My parents are sinking a lot of money into my college and I want to make sure that I make the most of it.
But I also want to make sure that I get a good gpa ( trying for above 3.5) so that I have access to well paying jobs and stuff in the future.
Pardon me for a sec whilst I put on my old cranky person hat:
Nobody, but nobody gives a fuck what your grades are out in the real world. Nobody. Freaking forget grades.
Instead, focus on:
– mastering the material
– learning where and how to gather more information
– how to learn the skills (ie coding, article analysis, etc) to complete assigned projects
– finishing projects in a steady, timely manner
– understanding projects and material well enough to step back and look at it from a holistic perspective, so you can ask the next question
– interacting well with others in your field – learn to form working attachments and to push back on group think
To do all that, in my (non-universal) experience, you need to put in the sweat equity at your desk, computer, and library, and you will generally get good grades as you go. But grades themselves? *snort* Nobody will care. Employers will care if you can do the job you’re hired to do. Co-workers will care if you can do the job without being an ass. Subordinates will care if you can do the job and teach them how to do the job.
Can confirm. People care if you have a degree or not, sometimes, but never what grades you had.
Except grad schools. Which maybe aren’t the real world, but they are a real option.
However, doing the things in that list will get you good grades and you’ll learn the important things.
The difference between a 3.55 and a 3.45 is essentially nil. The difference between graduating with some honorific title and not is bigger. The difference between graduating with a 3.5 and 2.0 is actually consequential.
Mostly it’s consequential for what opportunities you get in college and what opportunities you get right out of college. After that, a degree is a degree.
But I agree that if you put in the work to learn, everything else flows from that and stressing about grades in particular doesn’t matter.
One way that I dealt with my ADD (undiagnosed at the time) was that I used my AP credits to let me drop classes that were not taught well or that I did not find interesting. I always registered for a full course load, but I dropped courses 5 out of 8 semesters. That’s one way to help avoid having too many things on your plate that are just a grind.
Yes, what they said. GPA will only matter for:
The VERY elite-level employers in your particular field (this will typically manifest itself as a “don’t bother applying if you’re below 3.5” kind of cutoff, rather than a “we’re going to take the 3.9 guy over the 3.8 guy” final decision)
Grad school admissions – but it’s just one of many factors. You can get away with a lower GPA if the school you’re going to is highly regarded, and/or if most of the bad grades happen in your first year or so (helps you tell a “I was lazy at first and then got motivated and improved” story, which tends to go over well)
I’ve had one employer insist on seeing my college transcripts, and then ding me for them. (They were doing what would later be called negging.) But those were Russian entrepreneurs and Russians are extremely hard negotiators, and they gave me so much bullshit in offer letters and on-boarding that I quit before I start.
I’ve had to show my transcripts once in my life. It was when I was right out of school and I applied to the NSA.
Unless you are thinking of going to grad school, I recommend focusing on classes that will pertain to what you plan to do for a career, and put less effort towards the general education classes. Mastering your subject will be a lot more useful in life than an “A” in your underwater basket-weaving class.
I want to make sure that the jobs in fields like finance and consulting stay open. Consulting looks very interesting to me and I wanted to make sure that stays an open door. And most of those jobs care quite a bit about GPA. That is why I am concerned.
“I want to make sure that the jobs in fields like finance and consulting stay open.”
Probably the better way to put this is in terms of tilting the odds in your favor, rather than simple open/closed formulation.
But you are correct, a high GPA will affect how likely a firm is to want to interview you and hire you right out of school. After that GPA is pretty “meh”, but you still have to get to that point.
I know a guy who was recently hired by McKinsey who insists nobody ever asked him about his GPA (note that this was a graduate-level, not undergad, position).
Others have said this already, but don’t make drinking into a hobby. Sometimes this can be easy to do. One of my big life regrets is deciding back then that getting drunk was a cool and manly way to pass the time.
I wish I had tried harder in college to be more social and outgoing, but it sounds like you have that under control.
Be intentional about what you’re there for and think ahead. If you think you want to get into consulting, start working toward that early on. Seek out internships and the like. Don’t wait until you’re about to graduate to start working on your post-college options. (This is obvious to clued-in people, but a lot of college kids aren’t.)
Yeah, the difference between “people who arranged summer internships freshman year” and those that didn’t eclipsed all the variance between majors.
The question is whether a given person is able to consistently drink as much as is needed to reduce nerves when socializing a bit, without messing up their judgment and so forth – or whether once they start they can’t stop at the right amount. The latter people shouldn’t drink.
^Can confirm as someone who needs to have strict rules about drinking. The first and only drink always makes a second drink seem like a much better idea.
I quit drinking, besides periodic occasions where I’m in circumstances where I can’t go overboard, in large part because 4 to 6 beers makes me feel amazing, but while Sober Me is great at planning to stick to 4 to 6 beers, 4 to 6 Beer Me is not great at sticking to those plans.
“The man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.”
When I first started drinking it wasn’t too bad for me. I didn’t get drunk all that often, I didn’t usually get wasted, and often it was a lot of fun. It took a few years to get to the point where I was drinking at least every weekend, sometimes way too much, and mostly wasn’t even enjoying it any more. You can gradually get yourself into a bad way with booze.
Normally, I’d read everyone else’s reply first, but I don’t have time right now, so sorry if this is repetitive.
1) You don’t have time for the news. None. I wasted at least an hour a day reading the New York Times and sometimes the Wall Street Journal in college, and I wish I hadn’t. They weren’t even as interesting as my textbooks, for crying out loud. If you want to be an informed citizen of the world, you can always start in four years. You don’t have time for TV, either, but I’m not sure if that’s still a thing for present-day 18-year-olds.
2) Work during the day on weekdays. You’re likely to be in a 40-hour-a-week job after graduating anyway, so you might as well start getting in the rhythm. Figure 2.5 hours of lecture or lab a day, plus 5.5 hours of reading, problem sets, papers, and study groups. Nights are for bull sessions.
3) Never plan to do work on the weekends (which I define as 6:00 PM Friday until 6:00 PM Sunday). If there’s a giant paper due and you’re behind, the weekend will be the slack that saves you. If you feel like you should be making some academic progress on Saturday afternoons, use it to do supplemental reading, or peruse journals related to your major.
4) Distractions are distracting. Go study in the library. I didn’t do this until my final year, which was a mistake. If the main library’s full, go find an unpopular library on campus (the Engineering library worked for me). Only take one or two subjects’ materials with you, and nothing else. Disable WiFi if you can, or maybe rig up some kind of portable Faraday cage for yourself.
5) Extracurriculars are great, but you can’t do three or four like you did in high school. Stick with one, try out some new ones, and don’t make commitments you can’t keep. A program house counts as one extracurricular.
6) The main advantage college has over reading things yourself is not the professors—it’s the students. Study socially. Join your major’s student society, if only for the free pizza and beer. Get advice from older students about what courses to take when.
7) Start saying “Hi” to people you don’t know the first day you’re on campus. It’s a good time to start the habit, since all the freshmen will be new and won’t know many people yet either. In college, I rarely struck up a conversation with someone I didn’t know, but those conversations always went well, and gained me not just a couple of friends, but some very interesting acquaintances.
8) Don’t plan to party during the week: that’s what weekends are for. Lower-key social stuff is fine: getting together to see a movie or a lecture, bull sessions (seriously underrated), dinners.
9) If you find yourself getting anxious, withdrawn, or with low mood, get screened for depression. Somehow despite multiple contacts with campus counseling services, and concerned deans, nobody diagnosed mine. I basically wasted half of what I could have gotten out of college (and several subsequent years).
10) You’re probably wise to avoid politics. Consider forming a secret libertarian society, though. You can publish anonymous pamphlets with cool pseudonyms, like those Federalist Papers guys. If you completely cease thinking about politics, the pervasive miasma of campus leftism will probably penetrate your brain, like that thing Khan puts in Checkov’s ear in the first good Star Trek movie.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten some stuff; hope this is helpful. (And bookmark this thread and put a note in your calendar to re-read it the first week of college.)
Lately, it’s really feeling like society considers any method I might have to meet women a critical security flaw in need of immediate patching.
People always advocate social dance events (“There are always way too many girls to go around, everyone will want to dance with you, it’s great!”) First off, it’s flatly not true, at least on the west coast these days: I’ve literally never been to one of these mythical social dance events with a good ratio. I’d be thrilled to see 1:2. Hell, I went to a contra night a while back where there were more men in dresses than women, and no, there’s not an ambiguity in that sentence. But the real knife to my gut was when I started seeing sneering blog posts talk about how awful it was that men went to {blues, swing, contra} with the intention to dance with women and maybe even chat with them. How the community needed to put in safeguards to stop this menace. One commenter recommended expelling or even calling the cops on single men who showed up and approached strange women. As soon as losers started trying to use dance events as a way they could possibly interact with girls, everyone freaked out.
Okay, dance is out. Another thing you’ll see recommended: volunteer at your local animal rescue, or homeless shelter, or other charity de jour! Volunteers skew women (and, some of the advisors will point out, they’re obviously kind women too!) I’d always dismissed volunteering as an inefficient source of utilons, more about resume-padding and virtue-signaling than doing good, but sure, this is a good point–I can spend time doing low-value volunteer work and still donate to AMF. Certainly I yield more utils than just going to a bar, and if I treat it as a substitute for that…
And then I start looking for volunteer opportunities in Seattle. I immediately find an event announced by $PROMINENT_CHARITY, sounds fun, I look for details–and realize the description spends fewer words (yes, really) on what we’d be doing or why it’s goo than on warning us (in caps) that this was NOT FOR MEETING PEOPLE and that ANYONE HITTING ON OTHER VOLUNTEERS WOULD BE EJECTED WITHOUT WARNING. Again: someone found out I might be able to talk to a girl there and, before I even did, freaked the fuck out.
This happens again and again. Anywhere people tell me is a good place to meet girls, I find that first it’s already common knowledge and swarming with other men, and second that our presence is the biggest problem in the whole community. What’s more, let’s not fool ourselves: at all these dance events, people meet potential partners and flirt and sometimes exchange numbers (or saliva…). I’d bet some coffee dates are planned every time $CHARITY has a meeting. But that’s OK for some people and not for others, and we all know which ones are allowed to do this and which aren’t.
Honestly, it makes sense. Take a Hansonian perspective: we want to signal mate fitness, and our potential mates want those signals kept honest. So we build societal infrastructure so that the men given access to good situations to meet women have, by getting that far, provided good evidence that they’re good mates. Any of this infrastructure I can access is, ipso facto, not doing its job, and needs replacement. This is the real reason most people hate the idea (not any particular unpleasant implementation) of PUA-type skills, and it’s why people say things like “just be yourself”: the entire goal of romancing someone is demonstrating that you’re a good mate, and if you can learn to produce these signals without actually having the qualities they signal, that’s dangerous.
But still at this point I’m feeling somewhat akin to the protagonists of the “Untitled” post: I know I don’t have a right to dates…but can we may stop treating my wanting them an unforgivable sin? Is that too much to ask?
I think your pond might be overfished and polluted; the Seattle male-female ratio is very high. I’d suggest you get off the left coast (which will help some with the pollution — that is, anti-male culture warriors) and find somewhere the male-female ratio is more in your favor.
Your problem is that you have no social skills. How do I know? Because you live in Seattle, and no one there has social skills. I used to live there.
Have your heard of the Seattle Freeze? Makes it very hard for people to meet one another. Also, a huge percentage of the population seems to have depression due Seasonal Affective Disorder but doesn’t know it. Almost everybody is depressed and socially withdrawn and trying to pretend that they feel just fine.
I met someone from Maine who lamented how non-social people in Seattle are. Maine.
I agree with the Nybbler that you definitely ought to get out of that place. It’s a fantastic place for an introvert. But for someone who is trying to make social or dating connections, it s**ks big time.
When we lived there, my husband and I were amazed that any single people ever met and eventually got married at all. We couldn’t introduce single people to our single friends of the opposite sex, because we didn’t have any friends either, when we lived in Seattle.
If you want to make social connections of any kind, it really helps to be in a place where people speak and make eye contact. That’s not exactly the way it is there– no speaking or eye contact– but almost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze
http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/our-social-dis-ease-beyond-the-smiles-the-seattle-freeze-is-on/
BTW, I don’t think the social group mentioned there is still going on. It’s hard to keep anything social continuing, in Seattle. Most things social just fall apart.
People do meet in groups that go on and on sometimes. But they are task oriented groups, not social groups.
A fellow psychotherapist from the midwest, then living in Seattle, once proudly announced in our peer consultation group. “I’ve finally figured out the Seattle culture. Socializing is a means to an end here– not an end in itself. “
This is true. I too used to live in Seattle, and will attest to the fact.
(Except in college. In college I met lots of people and had girlfriends. I have no idea how I would have had anything like that success after college.)
What is the worst thing that could happen if you made an advance at someone? Like just started talking to a woman you come into contact with (not at work).
You linked to your Google Page and you seem to have a reasonably handsome face and are in really good shape. I can’t imagine you making an advance would be a huge deal.
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.
The issue you face is that your thinking is dominated by ‘meeting girls’. Think about the first few people who went to dance clubs and found they were good places for potential dating; chances are they went in the first place because they were interested in dance and it just happened that they could also meet people with similar interests. It would thus be easy for them to interact and flirt with others since their primary interest is not flirting, and this is obvious. It’s fairly natural that people with an interest in dancing would be able to hook up and have a relationship, however even if the well wasn’t poisoned and you yourself could go to these events to meet people, chances are you would find it considerably more difficult just because you don’t share the common interest. The people that initially recommended such ideas likely did so because it worked very well for them, and perhaps a handful of early birds, but most wouldn’t get anything from it simply because they aren’t dancers or whatever.
In the end, the real reason these events have become hostile to single men isn’t really to do with keeping out ‘losers’ or preventing men from hitting on women, and is about preventing these events being filled with people that have no interest in them. Let me give you a hypothetical: imagine if, for some reason, rationalist meetups were described as an excellent place to meet potential dates. The events would become filled with boorish people with no interest in discussion, solely looking for a mate. How awful would that be for the few people generally interested in rationality?
When people go online saying that dance events, or volunteering, are an excellent way to meet people, the advice to take is not to just imitate them. The advice is that social events in general are a good place to meet people, assuming you have a genuine interest.
Now, I’m sure at this point there are some crying out “But all the things I’m interested in are dominated by males! It’s impossible.” OK, obviously you’re not going to have much luck with a [insert your nerdy hobby here] meeting. All I can recommend to you is to find a new interest and work at it. Do you think if you went to a bunch of dance lessons and got really good at it, that anyone would have an issue with you flirting at some social dance event? I’m gonna say no. You would be there for a legitimate reason. You would be an actually interesting guy with a range of interests that you pursue actively. Anyone that has several social hobbies that they enjoy would have no trouble meeting partners.
I’m told there used to be social events arranged by the local (parent) community with the primary purpose of exposing their kids to each other, and arranging marriages between the mutually acceptable. I wonder if anyone resurrected them yet under some business venture yet.
There appears to be something along those lines for Jewish singles.
Anyone that has several social hobbies that they enjoy would have no trouble meeting partners.
Hahahahaha hahahahaha hahahaha. This is not my experience. It might work for some, but not for others.
Groups of people who get together to volunteer for a political candidate shouldn’t be that picky.
I do think that these events, definitely volunteering activities and most likely also general social events, are hostile to male sexuality. I volunteer at my university, and it’s quite apparent that some people go to our events to find friends or engage in social activity. This is often even explicitly advertised as one of the reasons to join by similar events or groups. For some reason, people assume that a person who considers a group of people to be good potential friends has the right personality for the cause, but a person who considers a group of people to be good potential mates is creepy.
Status, innit.
(I’m on a roll with these unhelpful comments, I have to say!)
When I was in Philadelphia, quite a few people went to dance events to meet people for potential dating. Both men and women. Those who succeeded were of course interested in dancing (I tried it and unfortunately it turns out I’m terrible at dancing, but that’s not a problem with the event), but going into it with the social/dating factor first and the dancing second wasn’t a disqualifier. The great advantage of dance in particular, is you’re expected to ask women to dance and to dance with them; this gives you a chance to check each other out in a setting that isn’t explicitly dating.
I completely agree. I think I am mediocre at dancing, but I enjoy it. With practice I could (and hope to) become reasonably good, probably not great though, but that’s fine. I don’t share the experience Andrew has with dancing events at all. Of course, I live in a different city, different continent even and sometimes go to a local salsa party. I also attend a dance course. I met a girl that way with whom I have/had kind of a romantic relationship (it is more complicated than I would like it to be or would care to explain 🙂 ) and met a lot of other people, mostly women, with whom I am in regular contact with (I live in a relatively small town though, around 100 000 inhabitants, even though it is a university town, i.e. more people in their 20s and early 30s than average, if you go to a salsa event, you know you will meet a lot of the people you know). I also really like hiking, so I organized some trips and met some other people that way..and through those people I met others.
What is important is that while meeting people (and particularly women) was one of the objectives of those activities, I would not try to figure out “the best way to meet women”, I would just try to do stuff I like anyway which involves other people and which does not necessarily involve the same old group of people I know from work for example. That way, you meet a lot of people in a short time and then you get invited to some of their events and there you meet even more new people. This is generally the best recipe to meet a partner I think – just be exposed to people enough and try to do it while doing something you like anyway. That has two advantages. One is that you actually enjoy yourself in the process instead of regarding it as a chore and therefore you are more likely to do it often (I also just tried going to bars and talking to strangers, but that was quite stressful for me, I had no idea what to talk about and given the rather random nature of the people who you meet at a bar, probably not the best way to find a good match either). The second is that you have both a topic to talk about (the activity you are doing) to people and a common interest. Both make making friendships/romantic relationships easier.
And as mentioned, the great advantage of dancing, especially if you are rather shy with women (like me) is that you are actually expected to come a to a woman you don’t know and ask her out to dance (of course, I am talking about the kind of music which you dance in pairs to). Then the conversation starts in a much more natural way than if you try to start it with a stranger in a bar. Also, for me at least, the feel I get from the dance with a particular woman also has an influence on how I feel about her, I feel that you actually can tell something about the personality of your dancing partner from the way he dances (obviously not as much as by actually getting to know him but it provides more information than you usually get in the first few minutes).
You and I clearly have very different definitions of the word “shy”.
@Anonymous: Ok, so the difference between this and between coming to someone random in a bar and starting a conversation is that here you have sort of formal way to do that where it is entirely clear how you start – you just come to her and ask if she’d like to dance. So in this sense, it is definitely easier.
“Think about the first few people who went to dance clubs and found they were good places for potential dating; chances are they went in the first place because they were interested in dance and it just happened that they could also meet people with similar interests.”
As it happens, I met my current wife at folk dancing. The reason I was there was that a friend’s wife had suggested that it was a good place to meet girls (this was after my first marriage had broken up).
One of the ways in which my second wife was better suited to me than my first was that she rapidly figured out that I couldn’t dance. We did, however, have other and more important things in common.
In general, it seems to me that we have largely lost the social/cultural ability to matchmake for fairly boring average people who just want to find a tolerable mate, have some kids and grow old together. The requirements to successfully find a partner in life seem to have been grossly inflated.
Dude, you’re splitting your infinitives.
I’m disappointed beyond words that this of all Gravatars doesn’t produce a swastika shape.
“I know I don’t have a right to dates…but can we may stop treating my wanting them an unforgivable sin? Is that too much to ask?”
All that stuff about these social systems acting as some sort of effective selective mechanism is rubbish – the society we live in (particularly the dating aspect you are talking about) is very recent – it’s a mutation that hasn’t yet been subjected to selective pressure.
I don’t think anyone thinks it’s a sin – you’re probably just over-sensitive about what people might think of you (and that’s what people are talking about when they say “be yourself”). Check this out -http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3koh9x
I dunno… maybe try a dating agency?
Yes, a lot of people seem to have success with on line dating.
Really? What sort of success?
I’ve heard of people getting married as a result. Even I have managed to get the odd second date off it. Then again, I’ve heard of people winning the lottery.
All that said, it’s a lot of effort and a lot of heartache for most likely not very much reward; it’s probably a better strategy than buying lottery tickets and hoping to flaunt your millions, but only probably. I’ve also heard it said that people who get success from online dating are also the sorts of people who can get success offline but who just want to speed things up a bit.
Online dating is pretty much the only way I can ever get any dates at all. So in that sense it has been “successful.” But it has not led to anything even remotely resembling a functional, long-term relationship – so in that sense it hasn’t been successful.
And what Peter says is absolutely correct. Don’t enter online dating thinking that you’re only competing against others like you who have no other recourse. The “normal” guys who don’t “need it” are there too, and they can out-compete you there too. The only real viable strategy for making it worth your time is coming up with a reasonably clever introductory message, and copy-pasting it to literally every girl the site matches you with. Any reasonably cute/interesting girl is getting hundreds of messages a day – mostly from guys you can assume are more attractive and better at talking to women than you are.
> people who get success from online dating are also the sorts of people who can get success offline but who just want to speed things up a bit.
Probably so. So if a person doesn’t have social skills, then they need to go to a community college course, or to a coach or therapist, or somewhere to learn social skills. If a person doesn’t have social skills first, then here is where they are going to be able to find a romantic partner is: nowhere.
Social skills are essential.
I met my wife through online dating, and have several friends who did likewise. I also found online dating to be incredibly helpful in improving my ability to deal with women.
@Salem
Good point – I may have been unnecessarily bitter about the whole thing; I was writing with tunnel vision about the end goal and forgetting to remark about the good stuff to be had along the way. My bad.
It does indeed seem to teach something. I could feel my skills getting noticeably better, year on year… for a while at least. That’s strong motivation to keep at it. And the experiences to have along the way can be quite nice too. Putting too much pressure on myself to get The Result I think was what made it hard for me, every now and again I think of going back to it.
In my bitter moments I had the thoughts, “I’m learning social skills here, and if we extrapolate, success is at the end of the line – however, it looks like dying of old age is likely to happen first.”
Regarding social skills, here are some social communication classes that might be helpful for those willing to put in the effort. For those who are not willing to put in any effort though, of course, it’s not the thing.
It’s important to realize, in our desires or goals
—which ones we just want to fantasize about
— which ones we just want to get a few tips about and try them out and see if we get any results
–which ones we are willing to put in the time, effort, and possibly expense, to try to make some substantial progress.
Nonviolent communication workshops, classes, and practice groups
https://www.cnvc.org/
And here is an communications expert of a sort, where maybe the web site could help you find a workshop, class, or coach in your local area.
http://www.susancampbell.com/
I would have to think more carefully about it to know for sure, but I would guess that half the people I know in long term relationships got there through online dating. I never tried it (I probably should have), but from what I’ve seen, it’s been very effective.
I met my wife online. But not on a dating site. I got zero results from any place I paid a membership to.
By zero results, I mean zero in-person dates.
I met my husband on a dating site, and we’ve been married over 5 years. It definitely didn’t happen instantly – I was on the site for a few years and had unsuccessful dates with several other men I met there before I met him.
I advise you make several million dollars as soon as possible. That’ll fix all your dating problems right up.
Well, that’s about as practical as most of the impractical practical advice out there, but at least it’s honest about it.
I don’t have any good dating advice for him. My entire romantic life, pretty much, has consisted of “sit in rock clubs being pretty and get hit on by aggressively sexual women”. I don’t know how transferable I can make that…
(Also, since I’m not 21 any more, I really REALLY plan on keeping hold of my current partner. I would hate to try to meet new people now I’m no longer a pretty boy.)
Sometimes the acknowledgement that there’s no good advice to be offered is all that’s needed.
It’s also not as much of sure thing as people tend to assume. Unless you use that several million to just buy “dates” outright, but he could probably afford that already.
I’m actually legitimately curious about this. I’m not nearly at the “several millions” phase but I recently accepted a job over six figures in my early 30s. Generally frugal – good with money – no debt, so my expenses are low.
How do I start transforming this money (such as it is) into dates, short of activities that are obviously illegal?
If I were you, I would shop around to find a highly competent life coach or therapist, and use this money to work on my social skills. It would be best if the person had experience in helping people in that particular area. And if one can’t help you, it’s very possible that another one will be great for you. Different therapists and coaches work in very different ways.
I would also make sure I join social groups and organizations, so I have somewhere to practice social skills.
@Matt M,
It’s about presenting yourself as successful. The money per se isn’t the big draw, although it is a pretty big one, but rather that it signifies that you’re a winner.
Ironically, that means your frugality is working against you. If you had a sleek car and tastefully expensive tailored wardrobe it would advertise you as a man who can afford to drop money on luxuries. But by not indulging in those luxuries, the money you save doesn’t really impress anyone.
Think about it as if you were a medieval lord rather than an accountant. You’re supposed to be doing to modern equivalent of throwing lavish feasts and scattering jewels amongst the peasants from your carriage. Visibly watching your expenses makes you seem like you expect to suddenly lose your wealth, and makes you look more boring.
1) Live in a place where six figures puts you reasonably close to the top. I.e. not the Bay Area, NYC area, or LA.
2) Put photos in your dating profiles that subtlety but unmistakably signal wealth. A picture in front of your Ferrari is gauche, a picture in front of the Eiffel Tower is perfect.
3) Be open to dating women in their late 20s and early 30s. Bonus points if you are open to women with a child from a prior relationship.
4) There is no four.
@Jill:
Do you have any evidence that life coaches actually work, provide useful help? My casual and cynical impression, based on very little data, is that “my coach” today is the equivalent of “my shrink” forty years ago, with the only advantage being that the coach doesn’t have to acquire expensive degrees before going into business–and that neither was/is terribly useful. It’s someone you pay to pay attention to you.
@Matt M
Buy a Porsche. Be seen in it. Carry the key visibly. Include it (with you in it, not in front of it) in your profile pics.
It’s not quite the same scale – but I bought a (used, but only a couple years old at the time) Lexus when I was 25 at a time when everyone in my relevant peer group was driving beat up Subarus. Didn’t do me any good whatsoever. Seemed to make zero difference.
Lexus sends the wrong message (except the sport coupes, maybe). A used Lexus a very wrong message. A Lexus is a more or less sensible luxury car. Boring. The idea is to get attention. A sports car is better. New. In a bright color. I don’t guarantee it will get dates, but it will get female attention. Parlaying that attention into dates is up to you.
Of course this works best in areas where you can be seen driving it; not so well in NYC (but in NYC you’d be competing with multi-millionaire bankers anyway)
Just curious – but do any of you personally know someone who traveled this path? (socially awkward – near zero success with women, became wealthy, and was then swimming in available dates)
It seems like one of those “conventional wisdom” things that people just tend to believe must be true.
I also feel like wealth and social skills probably correlate well enough that it’s something of a confounding variable. Basically – even if you’ve noticed rich guys having a ton of dates, it’s entirely possible that they also had a ton of dates before (I’m more willing to believe that being rich increases the “quality” of the women who will consider you, just not necessarily the quantity)
Unrealistically optimistic suggestion: I’ve heard fan fiction communities being recommended to rationalists, because women are in the majority and also of the nerdy type. Due to the format, you can demonstrate your value by your writing before being labelled a creep, whereas at a dance or volunteering event it’s more difficult to prove you are not a loser. I have, however, no idea how these communities work and how you are supposed to meet them in real life.
Realistic, but depending on your circumstances maybe impossible, suggestion: The only thing that reliably still works for the average guy (sadly only for white people): go to Asia. Since from your google profile it seems that you are quite decent in shape and practice martial arts, I presume a little self confidence and less worry about being shamed might be useful. You will have no trouble getting female attention in China or Japan. If you are a student, you can maybe join some exchange program, if you graduated already you will find a job teaching English easily. The biggest surprise will be how it’s like to have people (including girls) just be *nice* to you, even without any sexual interest.
Since you appear to know something about this – what do you think is the upper age for a white male to get that sort of attention from pre-Christmas Cake women there?
Can only speak for China, but one teacher I was friends with was in a serious relationship with a girl who just graduated from college. He was in his mid 40s. Since that is the concern coming up most often: She was not out to get a visa out of China, quite to the contrary, their relationship ended when the guy was not willing to commit to settle down in China.
Very interesting. My boss recently divorced and moved to HK, and told me that the parents of his new Chinese wife were annoyed at his globalist, lots-of-flying job – that he wasn’t settled down enough.
How common is that notion – that moving to China is the vastly preferred solution in mixed marriage?
I don’t know how much it’s vastly preferred, but I also know of cases where the parents live in China and would prefer the whole family to come live in China rather than having their daughter live in some faraway land. I don’t think *that* big a proportion of Chinese people want to move out.
I am by no means an expert, but my uneducated impression is that the expectation is for children to take care of their parents in their old age, and this is the reason the one-child law led to a superabundance of boys in China. Presumably the same circumstance would lead the parents to strongly disapprove of their one child leaving the country entirely (and no doubt many old Chinese people would look upon the prospect of moving to a Western country as only marginally better at most, even supposing the daughter and the in-law were to make the offer).
Over 60 definitely. I remember attending a restaurant opening party and having my mind blown by meeting this international school teacher with a girlfriend who was around 30, spoke very good English, had lived in England and gotten a Master’s degree while living there. That’s in Shanghai. A different guy, who I know more than glancingly met and had sex with multiple girls on a two week holiday in Japan. He was a balding early 30’s nerd with bottom quartile social skills. A friend told me last week about meeting a 19 year old Filipino girl whose boyfriend was 70.
In the Philippines there does not appear to be an upper limit. The same is true for Vietnam/Thailand/SEAsia but there appear to be a lot more mercenary girls.
Personally I’d recommend the more first world Asian countries or the first tier cities in China. It is only a little harder and you won’t be dating peasants.
And what’s bad about peasants?
I also think that “go to Asia” is sensible advice, and a disproportional number of geeks seem to have Asian girlfriends/spouses (including myself, tho I didn’t meet her in Asia).
A friend of mine’s son just got married in Thailand. He has Asperger’s or something on the autistic syndrome and could never find a woman here ever. But he got a girlfriend very quickly in Thailand. He is a professor though, and I think that’s a well respected profession there.
Where isn’t it?
It’s more respected in Asia than in the U.S.
If every time you meet a group of people they come away from the encounter thinking you are a creep, have you considered the possibility that you are indeed a creep? I mean just as an alternate hypothesis to the whole “these people are so hostile to male sexuality” thing.
Good point. If you are a creep, then you probably should get a coach or therapist, and learn both social skills and how to not be a creep.
Kick people when they’re down much?
Well, he might have said that more gently. But the truth is often useful even when it hurts. If someone comes off as a creep to others, then they need to look at getting their creepiness fixed- getting coaching, counseling, taking a community college class in social skills etc.–, rather than blaming the other people.
If EVERYONE thinks you are __________, then the problem is more likely to be your own weaknesses, not the other person’s. The rare exception is in a place like Seattle, that is so non-social that no one appears to want to connect with anyone else. But even there, a person could learn social skills and then go to groups to meet newcomers to the area, who are still social people.
On the other hand, a wild, and insulting, guess is not welcome. Furthermore – it wasn’t just him that could have said it more gently. You echoed his words and boosted his signal and did precisely nothing to make it more gentle.
Back in a previous thread I talked about all the things that add insult to injury, that all add to the OMG I must pair up so I can shake this accursed stigma thing. You, and the things you’re saying here, are a part of the problem. As big a part of the problem as the locker room crowd. For me, I think, bigger. Substantially bigger.
Yeah, there’s a million-and-one hoops that people could try jumping through and magic fixes they could try taking, a million-and-one ways people could be beating themselves up for not trying hard enough or having X, Y and Z things wrong with them, and at some point, you just have to say “enough”.
I’m sure you’re familiar with situations where lots of “well-meaning” people keep offering “practical advice” that turns out to be deeply unwelcome for all sorts of reasons.
My meta-dating advice: don’t take “hard truths” from people on the internet. Especially not anonymouses. It can quite literally be bad for your mental health.
“taking a community college class in social skills”
This is the second time you have mentioned that. I didn’t know such classes existed–indeed still don’t.
Does anyone here have any experience with such things and evidence as to whether they work?
I had a clinical psychologist who attempted some social skills training when I was seeing her. It didn’t do very much and we soon gave up on it. Admittedly… it had the problem that things I was more-or-less capable of doing when they actually needed done, just not very well, turned into huge stressdoom nightmares when the pressure of it being “social skills training” was on, and so we ended up calling it off because of the distress.
Possibly another roll of the dice would given me a different outcome, therapists are a bit chancy like that.
Good way to burn money though.
I didn’t realize this was supposed to be a safe space where we whisper sweet nothings to each other.
That’s one way to avoid coming off as creepy.
@Jill:
Overall his point is indeed useful, if only because there is no point in blaming or hating other people, it’s not going to change anything.
Practically, he didn’t at all say that he comes of as a creep all the time. If I read the OP correctly, all he wants is a socially sanctioned place to meet girls without fear of being shamed. He does not act entitled, he explicitly acknowledges that he has no right to date, he just does not want to be labelled a creep for even trying. His problem maybe his insecurity or his desire to be socially agreeable, creepy as a catch-all term on the other hand basically says that everything about you is wrong.
“taking a community college class in social skills”
This is the second time you have mentioned that. I didn’t know such classes existed–indeed still don’t.
Is that a bug or a feature? Usually when the king tells the hero to go slay a dragon or whatnot before courting his beautiful daughter, the actual intent is that the guy go away and never pester the king’s daughter again.
@Anonymous:
No, this is not a safe space, but it’s a place where people try to be nice and charitable to each other. Your point brought a new idea to the discussion, which is good, but could have achieved the same thing without being mean.
Too bad your experience with the clinical psychologist didn’t work out, Peter. It sounds like you needed some way to deal with the emotional distress that came up in these situations, but that particular psychologist wasn’t knowledgeable in that area.
People get very different results with different therapists. Some folks interview a few therapists before beginning therapy, in order to get a feel for what therapists of different backgrounds and schools of therapy will do to help someone with their particular problem. I know someone posted a how to get therapy url. Here is the one on web md.
http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/how-to-find-therapist
There are many others too on the Net if you google it. But I don’t see the one that someone posted here recently.
Yes, there are community college classes in assertiveness training for sure (I’ve seen plenty of them listed in catalogs I’ve received in the mail) , and perhaps in other kinds of social skills. If one can’t afford therapy or coaching, then that is another alternative. Even if one is already assertive, one could take the assertiveness training course if that is the only social skills related class the community college has.
And then one could talk to the teacher, after the class, after he or she knows you a little better, and ask for recommendations of how and where to learn the particular social skills you need most.
When I was younger, I took an assertiveness training class at a local community college. I was very impressed with the teacher and talked to her after class sometimes. I was learning a lot. And I could see that there were different layers of learning and that one could end up very skilled eventually, if one kept going deeper and adding more and more different skills. I ended up so skilled that I ended up becoming a psychotherapist for a living and doing quite well at it.
I don’t have Asperger’s, or any autistic spectrum disorder, as some here do though. So there weren’t many limits on my capacity for going very far in learning advanced social skills.
I did echo whoever’s words those were who called him a creep. And I could have been more gentle too. But if this person is dealing with all the stress of feeling rejected already, being called a creep is likely not going to make it much worse. And it may very well be accurate that people do think of him as a creep. And if so, he needs to face it and do something about it– whether resigning oneself to not having a romantic partner but gaining some trusted friends over time, or whether learning social skills.
Life does not treat people gently whom other people perceive as creeps. Life can be considerably crueler than the comments section here.
The guy did ask for advice. And it’s true that sometimes even asked-for advice can be unwelcome. And if he is in the habit of taking unwelcome advice or unwelcome other things, then he DEFINITELY ought to try an assertiveness training class through the noncredit class section of his local community college.
And again, we’re all flying blind here. These questions about social skills are best handled by people who have SEEN you interact socially, and who also have your best interests at heart– such as a competent life coach, therapist, an assertiveness/social skills teacher at your community college, or a particularly stable trustworthy person you might meet at a church or Conversation Cafe or other organization you have joined.
He doesn’t need to face the fact that he’s a creep, he’s obviously aware of it from sentences like:
Calling someone a bad writer isn’t constructive criticism; saying “dude your sentences are too long” is. Maybe you can’t give constructive criticism without seeing someone “in the field”. I certainly couldn’t. That doesn’t make calling them a scribbler acceptable.
But if this person is dealing with all the stress of feeling rejected already, being called a creep is likely not going to make it much worse
And you think it is us who need the social skills training??? Seriously, this is Not Unnecessarily Hurting People 101 – you don’t need to be neurotypical to manage that. You could also do with a refresher course in basic reading comprehension.
The guy did ask for advice.
Where? Anonymous responded to SolipsisticUtilitarian, who responded to Andrew Hunter, the OP. I didn’t see any request for advice in any of those posts. He’d been talking about advice he’d been given, but the post was not a request for advice. I saw questions:
I know I don’t have a right to dates…but can we may stop treating my wanting them an unforgivable sin? Is that too much to ask?
That doesn’t look like a request advice, that looks like a cry of frustration. And a request to stop adding insult to injury, which of course lots of people answer with an “implicit” no and proceed to do the thing they were requested not to, to drive the point home.
Neither can I see anything in what the OP said where he personally called creepy. The guy said he’d been given advice, followed some of it in reasonable depth, followed other bits of it in a lot less depth, and people were calling the thing that he had been advised to do creepy. That’s very different.
“These questions about social skills are best handled by people who have SEEN you interact socially.”
As a side point, I recently had the opportunity to watch recordings of my social interactions, and uh… the things that seemed like awkward, potentially insane moments to me as I did them, actually looked entirely normal from the outside (for example imagined awkward pauses were actually more or less instantaneous reactions). So, if you’re feeling socially awkward, might be a good idea to get your reactions recorded to see if things are as bad as you think/ if there is any room for improvement.
Also – on creeps -I’ve met really socially awkward people before, and I think that calling people ‘creeps’ for being awkward, as opposed to aggressive is a fault on behalf of the person making the accusation. It’s a kind of bullying.
That said, it is possible that someone might be aggressively sexual and insensitive in their social interactions, and that large numbers of people might call them a ‘creep’. But 1) real creeps probably don’t care, 2) the greater problem is people calling *themselves* creeps, and imagining that others might think the same, when they probably don’t.
FWIW, and I lean strongly towards this meta-debate about how nice or not nice I am being a waste of time, I was referring to SolipsisticUtilitarian not Andrew Hunter.
The sentence that triggered the response was “Due to the format, you can demonstrate your value by your writing before being labelled a creep, whereas at a dance or volunteering event it’s more difficult to prove you are not a loser.” coupled with the earlier post that said “I do think that these events, definitely volunteering activities and most likely also general social events, are hostile to male sexuality.”
Finally, my entire post was framed as contingent — hence the first word.
@Anonymous:
Oh, I was already surprised why you replied to me. If you disagree with my statements, sure attack them, but I see no point in merely attacking me, although I can see how what I wrote may sound creep-ish.
And since you brought it up: I dont have the problem of being labeled a creep, simply because I rarely feel attracted to total strangers and whenever I do feel attracted to a girl it’s because there is at least some mutual understanding between us. So I was not speaking from a place of personal resentment.
Jill: So, I have a suspicion you are using the word “creep” differently than many here are used to. Like, you seem to be using it in a morally neutral manner, where “creep” is just a neutral descriptor of those who have, for whatever reason, done something that resulted in another person being creeped out.
But the word “creep” is frequently used with… rather stronger moral implications or connotations than that. To say that someone is a creep, in this context, is to say that they are a bad person. And often not merely a bad person, but an entitled rapey priveleged sexist misogynist, etc., etc., etc., who should be barred from civil society and never taken seriously by anyone ever again.
So yes, it’s quite a difference. Being rejected just means you failed to get what you want. Being called a creep means you’re evil.
I have a suspicion that you may not be so familiar with this point of view, especially what it looks like from the other side. It’s a nasty trap, and it’s hard to escape from. When you’re convinced that the slightest step out of line will get you publicly outed as a monster — and you’re not a monster, you just did something you thought was inoffensive, you don’t deserve this — but you are a monster, you did it, obviously you should have known better, the worst part is that you entirely deserve the exile you’re facing. Isn’t that contradictory? Yes. People’s thoughts often are, especially when you constantly threaten them (explicitly or implicitly) with that same fate for questioning the matter at all.
(Meanwhile, the people pushing these norms on you don’t actually follow them. They say they follow them, and they honestly believe they follow them; but that’s because they don’t know how to take things literally, how to notice what they’re actually saying. They keep filtering it through their common sense — but it’s the common sense, not the stated norms, that is actually doing most of the work. As such it’s more or less impossible to get them to admit any instance of their behavior contradicting their stated norms, since they’ll just tell you that actually it matches perfectly, why don’t you understand that?)
Maybe this is familiar to you, I don’t know. But I suspect you’re lacking some background here (this is about the zillionth time this sort of thing has come up here, it’s a familiar go-around by now). Here are some links I would recommend, which while not necessarily the most relevant to the matter immediately at hand I think are very good for understanding the situation more generally.
Hugh Ristik’s “When You Have Feminist Guilt, You Don’t Need Catholic Guilt”
On our host’s old blog, the “Meditations” series — here’s the first one, you can page through for the rest, except the (crucial) fourth one which was taken down but there’s an archived version here. (Also, various related stuff both on this blog and the old blog.)
Scott Aaronson’s “infamous” comment 171, and also a good note on the matter by The Unit of Caring
A good observation by Ozy on one particular manifestation of the stating-false-rules problem (but it goes way beyond that)
Like I said, apologies if this isn’t all really so directly relevant right now; but this is one of those interminable discussions that (used to) come up all the time here, and I thought maybe I should help you get up to speed somewhat.
That’s not what’s meant or how it’s understood by most people. As much as I sympathize with people that have crushing mental issues, I don’t thinks it helps anyone to validate wildly irrational responses. And because these reactions are so irrational, I don’t see what good changing the word would do. An entire paranoid edifice could be built up over whatever new word was picked to mean “those who have, for whatever reason, done something that resulted in another person being creeped out.”
The problem is that “creep” is one of those words that is so ill-defined that in a practical sense, it seems to mean “whatever it is that I do.” Telling someone “don’t be a creep” is completely useless unless you can identify specific things they are doing and teach them how to improve.
The first step is admitting you have a problem, as opposed to everyone being out to get you.
On “creepy” guys.
Related to the above, reflecting on it, I think the number-one key to my eventual romantic success, such as it is (hardly Don Juan, but I’ve had a few decent LTRs and am now engaged), is improving my ability to sense when women are and aren’t interested.
If a woman is interested, she is not going to rule lawyer you about how one is not supposed to be hitting on people at the social dance. And if she’s not interested there’s no way you can possibly pursue her without possibly being dismissed as a “creep” (which usually is code for “man I find unattractive hitting on me”). But most women prefer men to make the first explicit move.
Perceiving interest, or the lack thereof, without straight up asking “want to go on a date,” then, is crucial.
Mostly it is experience, but I would offer the following general tips: women who are interested in you romantically will also seem to be very interested in everything you have to say in general. If she is easily pulled away from a conversation with you, or seems able to easily ignore your presence, that is a bad sign.
That said, a woman being nice and friendly to you is NOT a good indicator of romantic interest. In some cases they’re just genuinely nice, friendly people. Others have a “flirtatious personality” (these are the most dangerous)–a habit of acting flirtatious with people in general, and that must also be distinguished.
Obviously nice and friendly is a better sign than cold and uninterested, but generally speaking, a woman being super comfortable around you right away is actually NOT a good sign. Just think how you feel when meeting a woman you find really attractive–probably a little nervous right? Same thing.
Last tip, which sounds almost circular, but isn’t: women who seem interested probably are; women who don’t seem interested probably aren’t. If you’re like me, you will tend to have a bias toward wishful thinking and find it hard to be objective when attempting to read the signs of female interest or the lack thereof. It is easy to come up with reasons why the person you’re really interested in may actually be secretly interested in you, even though there aren’t many obvious signs of it; conversely, it is easy to overlook or willfully ignore interest on the part of women who don’t interest you, or whom you assume to be “out of your league.”
Imagine instead that you are evaluating the interaction from an outside perspective: if you were watching how this woman were behaving toward you in a movie would you say “oh yeah, she’s so into that guy?” The signs of interest and disinterest are actually pretty obvious when viewed from a disinterested perspective–one that is hard to maintain when it comes to something so emotional.
I think SNL defined it best.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/295600
I don’t get the point of a youtube video that’s just someone talking at you. This is why we invented writing.
Anyway, it is completely true that very attractive people can say and do things that unattractive people can’t. You can either rail against the unfairness of the universe, or you can take that fact and from it conclude:
1) It is a terrible idea to take romantic advice from / emulate people that are much more attractive than you are.
2) If you want to have romantic successes it is a good idea to do those things that are in your power to be more attractive.
“2) If you want to have romantic successes it is a good idea to do those things that are in your power to be more attractive.”
This is true – but it’s also why people get annoyed at the “creepy” descriptor. It seems to be a term that was entirely invented so that girls can say “No, you’re too ugly” without actually saying that – because in our current society, caring about physical appearance a great deal makes you “shallow” and is considered to be a net negative attribute.
So instead, we pretend that the man’s actions are at fault, because it’s not shallow to reject someone for poor behavior. But this is all a smoke screen – a lie we all seem to accept.
And of course accepting the premise of the lie and trying to modify your behavior as if the lie was true (“I just need to find better places to meet women and ask them out”) will yield no positive results. The venue isn’t the problem. You are. And the problem is deeper than “figure out a few good pick up lines” or “take a class where you learn social skills” or anything like that.
@onyomi
Yeah. There was this time when I was at a party with a friend, and got a bit of an odd feeling, and asked another friend the next day, “this sounds silly, but do you think she was flirting with me?” and got “wasn’t it completely obvious? She was all over you” and a couple of parties later I made a move using an incredibly embarrasingly cheesy pickup line and it wasn’t a problem at all. Alas for complicated extraneous reasons this didn’t have the potential to last more than one night.
It would be kinda nice if this sort of thing happened more often than once every two-decades-and-counting. It would be nice if the actual mores were in actually in favour of actual open communication and not relying on
mystic telepathywhat may as well be mystic telepathy or just permanently keeping your mouth shut.Most of the time, I’m pretty fine with women, they’re no more complicated than men, I’ve got quite a few female friends, it’s all good, except when I get the stupid idea that I might be interested in one of them, and doom results.
Also a nice thing about being only-mostly-straight and only-mostly-male is that you occasionally get to sample things a bit from the other side of things, there have been a couple of times where some guy does something, and I thought, “I could get mortally offended at this and think this man a complete creep, or I could roll with it and see where it goes.” Both times I tried rolling with it it went somewhere rather nice. Ah, a temporary exit from the male gender role. Bliss. Again, circumstances meant there was no long-term potential and we all knew it. And, y’know, the other side of “only mostly straight” is that I can’t see myself in a long-term relationship with a bloke – that side of my sexuality feels pretty fragmentary and half-formed, whereas the straight guy side feels more complete (likewise I don’t foresee a permanent exit from the male role working out for me, not something I’d even want). Apart from the interest-detection thing.
I like when people offer an audio version of some written text, though it is nice if there’s a transcript too. I process information well aurally, and like being able to do something else while I listen.
And being attractive means not just physically but having– or learning– social skills also.
“Other men were stronger, faster, younger, why was Syrio Forel the best? I will tell you now. The seeing, the true seeing, that is the heart of it.”
Physical appearance isn’t 100% of the equation, but it’s probably over half (in my own personal experiences, at least).
And you make “social skills” sound like this simple thing. It isn’t. It deals with the complete entirety of how you interact and relate to people outside yourself. It’s a HUGE part of what makes you, “you” and you can’t simply “learn better social skills” in the same way that you might learn to line dance. It’s going to be a very long and very painful process whose end result is a dramatic change in your identity and personality. If someone is up for that, then fine, by all means, a community college course might be a reasonably affordable and available place to start. But if you aren’t up for that, nibbling around the edges will be no more effective than a PUA seminar that teaches you how to properly “neg” or whatever…
Matt M, that’s a good way of putting it. I’m not really sure that woman going around saying you are ugly would feel much better than you are a creep, at least for most people, but I see what you are saying.
It’s deeper than that, but not all that much deeper. The dirty little secret of the romanceless is that IME they tend to have a fairly narrow criteria for what they are looking for (not universally, but a strong tendency). There’s nothing wrong with that per se, people are attracted to what they are attracted to, but it saps a bunch of sympathy.
If you are a relatively unattractive guy and you aren’t interested in relatively unattractive women then how sympathetic am I supposed to be that you aren’t having any luck?
True that most people aren’t really willing to go to the effort and trouble of learning social skills if they don’t have any or many. It’s a lot of work.
And if you aren’t getting something you want, because you aren’t willing to do the work, well then you don’t get it. It’s like wanting a great career but not being willing to get the relevant training and experience, not being willing to learn the skills needed, because it takes too much time and effort.
@ Peter
It would be nice, yes. On the other hand, many people already are willing to use open communication when others are OK with it.
You can create local deviations from the standard customs during the conversation. For instance, you could have asked, “Are you flirting with me?” (works best with a smile). At worst, you would get an awkward few seconds, at best — both a romantic opportunity and more open communication.
@onyomi: These are actually really good points.
Maybe one more – if a girl gives you her phone number don’t celebrate. There is still a good chance that she will just be “busy” the whole time (this happened to me even with a girl who actually came to me at a party on her own accord and who, when I asked about her for her phone number told me “well, I’ll just give put my full name here”) or that she is not looking for a romantic relationship but just a friend. I guess it is uncomfortable to say “no, I won’t give you my phone number” (it actually happened to me maybe once or twice only, and the last time the girl told me she is in a relationship and that she’s sorry but she does not give out her phone number to anyone), also people usually try to be nice (although I prefer this to being given the number and then being told she does not really have time to meet me), or possibly she can simply be unsure about you and change her mind later.
At the same time, my previous relationship, which lasted two years, started in a pub where every one of my friends this was just a flirtatious girl (well, she actually was a little bit) and either a one night hookup for me or nothing. She would also mention having a boyfriend on our first date, at which point I actually expected that to be over (not just the fact that she had one, many women simply switch one relationship for another and are almost never actually single, but the fact that she would mention him). But sometimes things go against your expectations. Generally, I kind of subscribe to the idea of not overcomplicating things. If you feel like there is an interest, there probably is and at the end of the day, that is usually all that matters. Also, in retrospect when I go through some previous attempts, especially those during my teens (but even one when I was 26 actually), there were cases where the girl was obviously very interested but I just could not see it at the moment. But it gets (very slowly) better. Also, some women show interest more obviously than others (and I prefer that, on the other hand those also tend to be the kind of “flirtatious” women who sometimes show interest even when there is none, so if she acts like that with everyone one should not celebrate just yet 🙂 ).
This is not wrong, but it’s incomplete. As Scott said in “Radicalizing the Romanceless”, it’s “a kind of social skills which is not necessarily the same kind of social skills people who want to teach you social skills will teach”. Getting better at job interviews or public speaking isn’t going to help much in this context.
Improv is the best mainstream “training” I know of that might be useful, especially if you can learn to role-play somebody with higher status.
We (well, not me, but you know what I mean) rail against a lot of injustices in the universe, and spend a lot of resources to fight them. I’m not sure why this one is particularly different.
If anyone has even vaguely reasonable ideas about how to fight the unfairness of disparate attractiveness, I have yet to hear them. You know the serenity prayer?
The complaint is not actually that attractive guys have romantic advantages over unattractive guys. That’s just the strawman.
The complaint is that social constructions are put in place (by women) which inflict unfair punishment on unattractive men for wanting to pursue romantic relationships. These are, of course, definitionally not applied to attractive men.
Now, you might agree or disagree that these constructions exist or that the punishment they inflict is unfair. But just pointing to the existence of attractive men and saying “WHATCHUGONNADO?” doesn’t really seem to engage with the argument.
I’m late to address this, but..
I don’t speak for all autists, but even so I will say that yes, it would feel much better.
Being called a creep is outright maddening. It is very intangible, and can lead to any one person getting immensely frustrated over what they’re doing: is it my body language? Something I said? A joke they took wrong? To someone who already isn’t very good in social situations, this is the exact kind of thing that makes you throw up your hands and say ‘fuck it’.
In comparison, being called ugly is simple. The end result is the same: no romance for you, not interested. But even then, it is more to the point, as being ugly is a problem anyone can readily work on, understand, and keep in mind. Being called creepy in maybe a truthful maybe not maybe it’s this maybe it’s that way is much more frustrating than that.
This might sound a little vindictive – but I ‘d also prefer it because it would force the woman to admit (to herself) that she’s rejecting me for largely physical reasons – and deal with the implications of that.
People can accept or reject me for any reason they want – such is their right. But as I’ve already discussed, the purpose of the word “creepy” is to get rid of a guy who you dislike for his inherent traits, while pretending you are uninterested due to his behavior.
It’s worse than that, even. The point of the word is to provide a catch-all, inarguable and unrecoverable means of inflicting social damage on someone else, in this case specifically on a man that’s trying to initiate romantic or sexual interest. A superweapon.
Now, the reason for using that superweapon is probably quite variable. The woman may be put off by the suitor’s manner, looks, or anything else that takes their fancy; they may fear a social status hit from even permitting an advance from someone that low on the status ladder; they may be aware that the person in question is disliked in their social context and wish to bolster their status by attacking them. There are a LOT of reasons why someone might pull out the “creepy” bazooka.
None of this, however, is encoded in the word itself.
“Ugly” is an information statement. “Weird” is more difficult to interpret but still actually tells you something. “Dodgy” is a good one I’ve seen used; “Handsy”, “Rapey”, and so on tell you particularly nasty things. But they all actually contain information about why the person isn’t interested.
“Creepy” doesn’t. “Creepy” doesn’t tell you why the person is unhappy with you. It’s not meant to. It’s a statement which says “I wish to do you social harm.”
Funny how the “oppressed” group are so easily able to create social superweapons to use against their “oppressors”, isn’t it?
That may be what you want to talk about (and talk about and talk about) but it isn’t what the discussion you joined was about.
The “punishment” in question is not for “wanting to pursue romantic relationships”. It is for violating social norms. These social norms include different rules for the attractive and for the unattractive both absolute terms and in terms of the difference between the two people in question. Unattractive people are allowed to pursue romantic relations but they can’t do so the same way that attractive people can. That’s the unfairness that one can either rail against or accept. Disregarding it isn’t an option — well it is, but it is going to get you labeled creepy.
Separately, anyone, even someone quite attractive, is going to get called creepy if he continues to pursue a woman that has clearly (if not verbally) indicated a lack of interest. Don’t do that.
—
I can’t speak for non-autistics, but I don’t want to be called ugly. I don’t want to be explicitly rejected when implicit will do. I don’t want a world where everyone is always saying hurtful or embarrassing things because “it’s true!”.
These preferences seem diametrically opposed, and there are more of us than there are of you.
“No, you have to accept MY framing!”
Yeah, turns out I don’t. That’s not actually an argument, GreenAnon.
In addition… if you’re willing to repeatedly visit a thread to accuse someone of being a desperate creepy asshole in whatever way you can in order to attempt to undermine their post about their anguished fear of being a desperate creepy asshole, then there’s someone here who wants to “talk about and talk about” it, and it ain’t me.
As for the rest… your attempts at implication are, to be honest, kind of insultingly crude and you should either find a new tack or maybe an easier group of marks. As far as I can tell, no-one here is particularly interested in your approval, no matter how large a group you darkly hint at representing.
The point of the “creepy” thing is that unattractive people aren’t allowed to pursue romantic relationships at all. The claim that “Unattractive people are allowed to pursue romantic relations but they can’t do so the same way that attractive people can.” is the basic lie of “creepy”; there’s nothing different that unattractive men can do to avoid being labeled “creepy” except
1) As SNL suggests, “be handsome, be attractive, don’t be unattractive”. This is somewhat impractical, after a point.
2) Do not pursue romantic relationships at all. This is what the people using “creepy” want; if it works, it means they’ll have a population of suitors depleted of unattractive people.
The way out is that when the “creepy” word gets brought out, it’s not a “what”, it’s a “who”. That is, 99% of the time, as onyomi pointed out, “creepy” just means “a man I find unattractive hitting on me”. So, take it as a rejection but not as an indictment of yourself. If someone is pontificating about a whole class of people doing normal things like approaching women for dates as “creepy”, they can simply be ignored; as John Schilling said, they’re the “enemy”.
The other 1% of the time — the part that’s used as cover for the use of the word — you’re doing something wrong. But if so, someone will probably use other words to describe it.
Whatever Zorgon. Have fun stewing in your resentment.
—-
@The Nybbler
You are missing a who — who are you hitting on. Is it really so wildly unfair that someone that refuses to spend even 30 minutes a day on dressing and grooming isn’t “allowed” to hit on someone that spends hours every day on those tasks?
Then there’s the issue that onyomi pointed out of continuing to pursue someone after being rejected. Again, is it so terribly unfair for there to exist a social norm against that, even if it isn’t universally enforced?
Ain’t nuthin’ like a victory on a cool June evening.
I think the best thing to do when someone seems interested in you sexually or romantically whom you are not interested in, is to let them know “You’re not my type” and leave it at that.
A lot of people are attracted to a lot of other people. And a lot of people are not attracted to a lot of other people. What difference does it make, why? Just move on and keep looking for your type. And be realistic, in that, if you are not great looking, you’re probably not going to get a great looking partner. Not that you need to turn them down, if they show interest, but it’s unlikely.
Women go through something similar, but it’s actually worse. They’re called fat pigs and all kinds of other names. Look at what Donald Trump has said about women he didn’t like– and they were not even hitting on him. They were just going about their lives, doing what they do, and he had the urge to insult them.
I think there are a lot of misunderstandings in general when people try to communicate anyway. There are tons of misunderstandings on this board. But sexual/romantic interest situations are worse than most, because people want so much to be attractive to people who are attractive to them.
Also there is this shame factor that seems to originate in more than one place– traditional religious attitudes toward sex for one origin. Another origin is both traditional and current rank and status hierarchies among humans.
There are wealth, career, attractiveness, small group, and social status hierarchies that people pay attention to. And if someone is lower than you are in rank– or you consider them to be, then maybe you abuse your rank and insult them, which is unnecessary and quite unkind.
There is a recent and excellent book about abuse of rank. It’s not specifically about unpleasant interactions where someone is searching for romance, but those are certainly one subset of what the author is talking about
Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank Paperback – April 1, 2004
by Robert W. Fuller
https://www.amazon.com/Somebodies-Nobodies-Overcoming-Abuse-Rank/dp/0865714878/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465586411&sr=8-1&keywords=Abuse+of+Rank
Another book that’s great by a psychology workshop leader about how he facilitates conversations about abuse of rank, among other issues, is this one. A terrific book. Very amazing and forward thinking. Shows ways to get groups to function more effectively by talking about subjects people usually are afraid to talk about.
Sitting in the Fire: Large Group Transformation Using Conflict and Diversity Paperback – September 17, 2014
by Arnold Mindell
https://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Fire-Transformation-Conflict-Diversity/dp/1619710242/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465586749&sr=1-4&keywords=arnold+mindell
@Anon: “You are missing a who — who are you hitting on.”
Nah, this isn’t really true. I know a girl who is significantly overweight, recently flunked out of community college, unemployed, not particularly intelligent or well read, I could go on and on.
All she ever does is complain about all the “creepy” guys who message her on dating sites.
“Creepy” isn’t just “you are hitting on me but instead you should target someone more to your own social level.” As others have said, it’s “you are generally unsuitable and should be eliminated from the dating/relationship pool entirely for the good of ALL women.”
Jill,
I don’t think anyone here would object to being told “You’re not my type.” It’s not particularly helpful or actionable, but it is fair, and reasonable, and carries no particular ill-intent.
In other words, if a woman says “you’re just not my type” (and honestly means it), she might entertain the notion of say, introducing you to one of her single friends.
As Zorgon and Nybbler pointed out though, “creepy” is not this. Creepy is code for “you should not be ANYONE’S type.” If you get hit with the “creepy” label, they are also actively insisting that their single friends avoid you.
Orange Cat, improv would be excellent, for those willing to try it. However, many people who are not particularly anxious on the whole are nervous about taking an improv class.
But even if very nervous, you could just throw yourself into the class and ask the teacher to help you.
For other folks, practicing talking to people in social groups, or taking a Nonviolent Communication class
https://www.cnvc.org/
or getting therapy for those who can afford it and are willing to do the work, might make a great difference.
Business communication classes, like Dale Carnegie, would actually probably be of help, although they are not aimed at this particular purpose. But there is a fair degree of overlap between business and personal social skills. And there is the added benefit that they could also help one in one’s career.
@oyonomi, you give good advice. However it is only something that can be learned by doing, and doing it wrong makes me a creep.
I don’t think “creep” is simply just code for “ugly”. As others have said it also includes a sense of violating social norms. One of those being “unattractive people shouldn’t hit on attractive people”.
My cynical thought is that a large part of “creep” is that when a man flirts/hits on a woman who isn’t attracted to him its a blow to the woman’s esteem. Consciously or not its a statement that this unattractive man thinks this woman is at his level, and is therefore just as unattractive. Hence the vitriolic response, not often said to the man, but to her peers. This man was *wrong* to hit on her, he was a creep.
My first assumption would be that hasn’t happened much in, you know, real life, but mostly in the overactive imagination of someone with severe anxieties.
It’s not even that. As far as I can tell, he’s not imagining people calling him a creep, he’s observing the use of social manipulation by influential people in those contexts painting people like him, with an extremely broad brush, as creeps by default.
Now, internalising that and developing anxiety as a result is probably indicative of a tendency toward anxiety, true. But the observation of the phenomenon is separate from his reaction to it.
Thanks, Sniffoy, for the links.
I do think that the whole romantic interest conversation area needs to be revised in our society so that people are clear that lots of people may be interested in lots of other people, and that that is nothing to be ashamed of. And there should be very clear signals that people know they ought to give if they are not interested in someone who is interested in them.
This is embedded within shame issues, status hierarchy issues, and habits of passive aggression that are used in a tons of other situations in our society also. It would be better if people can just say No to unwanted attentions and leave it at that, without any insulting going on.
This kind of thing has gone on forever. I haven’t watched the new movie about Anita Hill, but in real life this was a situation where the woman was shamed for having supposedly shown interest in a man at her work place, who then eventually sexually harrassed here. And some took the attitude that she brought the harassment on herself if she did indeed initially show interest in him. Of course, no one really knows for sure what happened in that case.
Anyway, women are often caught in these shame and status and sometimes passive aggression issues too. Sometimes people are too passive to say out loud directly and immediately “I’m not interested.” So the other person keeps trying for a long time, because they don’t know.
As someone said somewhere in this thread earlier, a lot of the problem here is that people can’t tell when someone else is uninterested because people are often indirect about it. So until society changes in this way, people can benefit from learning how to read the indirect signals that uninterested people give.
I remember thinking when I watched Gone with the Wind. “Darn it, Ashley, just tell Scarlett out loud directly that you are not interested, so that she knows that. ” So she won’t be devastated when she finds that out, years later.
There are lots of issues here, for both women and men.
One thing to remember about China, and other Asian countries, is that (for obvious reasons) the local majority doesn’t see themselves as a minority and that you are the exotic stereotyped foreigner.
For China in particular:
*Most Chinese have a great deal of difficulty telling white people apart by our faces. Combine that with the popularity of Hollywood movies and you’ll “look like” a movie star to a not-insignificant percentage of the population.
*Even in the big cities, most white guys are either foreign buisnessmen or college-aged english tutors. So depending on the image you present, you might be seen as rich or a philandering bum.
*Speaking of, we have a horrible reputation over there for cheating and generally being very sexually aggressive. Don’t count on a girl’s parents or friends being very supportive of a relationship.
*A lot of girls have a very predatory mindset to dating, particularly in Shanghai (they have a reputation for being particularly materialistic and vain, look up “zuo”). So make sure that any girls you pick up are actually interested in you rather than immigration, money or just having a white boyfriend as a fashion accessory.
*Nobody expects you to know any Chinese at all, so even picking up a basic grasp of the language will impress a lot of people. No level of fluency will stop people from thinking you’re an easy mark though.
That said, I like Chinese girls and the Chinese culture. It’s a good suggestion, especially if one doesn’t want to learn the skills needed to date American women.
One potential issue with the “go to Asia” advice is that it ignores the potential ramifications for ego/pride/societal acceptance.
The OP hasn’t told us much about his mental state and his motivations for seeking a partner. But if the motivations include things like “I feel pressured by society that this is a thing I should be doing – that I am less of a man for not achieving it,” then uprooting your life and moving to a place where the entire practice is assumed to be easier will not necessarily solve that issue.
When I was in the Navy, a decent amount of guys picked up their wives while stationed in or passing through Japan/Korea/Thailand/PI/etc. While nobody would come out and say it aloud, there was always something of a floating stigma to this – something like “What’s the matter with Joe – couldn’t figure out how to get an American wife so he had to use the money/wealth angle to entice away some poor Thai girl?”
If you are 100% sure that companionship is the only thing that really matters to you, this may be a reasonable strategy. But if there’s some sort of “I need to live up to society’s expectations for me” part in this, you might not find the end result totally fulfilling…
Maybe he wants to mate and breed, like most any reasonable living creature.
Hey, some of us want to reproduce by budding.
Darn, that’s my sexually-reproducing-species privilege showing. Mea culpa.
“Maybe he wants to mate and breed”
If it’s just mating – then prostitutes are almost certainly the most efficient (even factoring in the conditional probability of legal problems – which is VERY small if you do some research on the matter)
If it’s just breeding, then you should probably exclusively target 35-40 year old overweight Christian women.
But most people don’t adopt those strategies, which indicates that for the vast majority of us, there are in fact other competing values in play.
Sure, sure. Prostitutes are fairly inexpensive compared to a lifestyle of clubbing while trolling for one-night stands.
What? By that age, those women are highly likely to be infertile. Could take years to make even one kid. And the Christian part would just make convincing them to join his harem of desperate baby-wanters more difficult.
If one wanted to relatively safely, if dishonestly, maximize their offspring, they ought to go into the sperm bank business and provide (almost) exclusively their own input.
Curious here, do prostitutes ever decide that they will just keep a baby with a wealthy man?
It sounds easier than being a prostitute.
I’d be extremely surprised if that had never happened.
Common, though? No idea.
This sounds like one of those things that are a lot easier said than done.
That’s more a mistress thing than a prostitute thing. A high end prostitute makes a lot more money than she’d get in child support from all but the wealthiest man. Maybe not if you count 20+ years worth, but certainly in the short run.
It has happened at least once. I would be surprised if technicians employed in these institutions don’t at times add their own contributions when nobody’s looking.
I can understand your frustration as being treated the way you are – but on the other hand, I can understand the people organizing those social activities not wanting them to have the mood spoiled by *too* many people primarily motivated by looking for dates, and not interested in the thing itself.
I don’t know what I’d do in your place (I’m married now and all that), I’d probably still try to join clubs and the like, but carefully avoid giving the impression that I’m primarily there for dating (and the best way to do that is to *not* primarily be there for dating, e.g. be interested in the thing itself).
For some perspective on this, maybe see what women have to say about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskWomen/comments/150gxk/md_post_faq_qa_where_is_it_appropriate_to/ (tho they’re saying “Conventions, hobby groups, book clubs”, which seems to be what you’re doing)
This is unfortunately going to be completely useless for Andrew (who is, I believe, atheist), but just in case there is someone reading whom this will help:
If you are a Christian man, hands down the best place to find a mate is going to be at a church (or — better yet, if you are in college or grad school — a parachurch organization such as InterVarsity).
1. There are many more women than men who are active in church and religious organizations; I think it approaches 3:2 in many churches.
2. Women who go to church or participate in parachurch orgs are more likely to marriage-minded, and the culture is not going to be opposed to young people looking to get married.
3. Presuming you’re not going to church disingenuously (only to find a mate without actually caring about the religion part), you’re likely to have substantial things in common — including values, which matter a lot — with other members.
Looking back on it, it’s kind of amazing how many people I know who got married to folks they met in InterVarsity (either undergrad or grad school): upwards of 50% among people I knew in grad school IV. (I met my wife there as well.)
I checked out some pilgrimage stats in my country – some two-thirds of participants were women, out of which nearly 40% were in the 15-25 age bracket. And (more than nominally) Christian women are preferable to the alternative too (as the Romans found out); lower chances of promiscuity, adultery and divorce.
No, it’s not useless. If he is an atheist, he can join a Unitarian Church. There are plenty of atheists there. And there are a number of different Unitarian churches in each major city in the U.S.
I think you need to develop some social skills. A community college course might be of help there. Take any class related to social skills, even e.g. assertiveness training even if you are already assertive– just take whatever they have.
You also need to expand and try to meet different people, not just girls to date– guys, platonic female friends etc. Then your platonic friends, besides being great in other ways, may help you to find people to date.
If you must stay in Seattle, it’s not an extroverted place at all. But when I lived there, I found it possible to connect with people who “just got off the boat.” That is, if they just recently moved to Seattle, then they may have moved from a place where it is considered normal to be social. So, unlike born and bred Seattle people, they will know how to connect socially and will want to do so.
“You also need to expand and try to meet different people, not just girls to date”
That was one of my conclusions, thinking about what I should be doing after my first marriage ended. Expand your social network. Friends have friends, some of whom might be women of potential long term interest. And, of course, some of what you want a girlfriend for is non-sexual social interaction, which isn’t limited to potential girlfriends.
Did it work? Yes and no. As I mentioned in another comment, I met the woman I am now married to by following the advice of a friend’s wife (to go to folk dancing), but she wasn’t actually a friend of a friend.
But you probably went to that folk dancing event with a friend (that friend?) and would be less likely to go there alone. Or not?
This is another way friends can help you with finding a romantic relationship – they go places with you, so you don’t just stand there awkwardly knowing nobody and trying desperately to look for someone who might talk to you 🙂 Of course, it is easier if it is a more “formal” event, such as a dancing evening, but still it is more pleasant to have someone there with you.
“But you probably went to that folk dancing event with a friend (that friend?) and would be less likely to go there alone. Or not?”
Not. I went by myself.
After the dancing, people were sitting around eating. I heard Betty explaining calculus to one of the others and fell in love on the spot. At least, that’s how I like to remember it.
Yes, I can see how that’s attractive 🙂 An interesting thing is that when I find a woman attractive intellectually or personality-wise, I even see her as prettier physically (or rather I am unable to distinguish those two sources of attractiveness afterwards). Also, if I find her intellectually unattractive, I usually start seeing her as physically less beautiful as well. I guess that physical beauty works the same way and clouds the judgment of character and intellect, but it is harder to observe the influence on yourself (because the moment you see someone you know what he looks like but not what he is like).
Anyway, bad example I guess, but generally, friends go to places and it is usually more pleasant to go places with than than to go alone, at least for me. There is of course the danger of just hanging out with the friends the whole night instead of meeting new people, but it is not so likely to happen if those friends are not the same old friends the whole time (of course it is also nice to meet with those and talk the whole night but usually not when one intends to meet new people).
I don’t think social skills in excess of what he has should be required to find a girlfriend/wife, and something is very, very wrong since they are.
Your claim that “something is very, very wrong” is noted.
How do you know what level of social skills he has? Have you met him in person?
Why would it be something very very wrong if his social skills were less than great? A lot of people’s social skills are not very good.
My reading of his point is that OP’s skills shouldn’t have to be great. “Your social skills are less than great, therefore you can’t find a wife, go practice them” sounds like a really effective way to wipe your society from the face of the earth in a couple generations by making all the people whose skills are less than great stop reproducing.
Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premises.
Population growth, to say nothing of maintenance, doesn’t require every member of society to reproduce.
Premises:
A lot of people’s social skills are not very good.
You need great social skills to have a high chance of reproducing.
No polygamy.
Conclusions:
Population growth goes negative as many people fail to reproduce, OR
The slack of those failing to reproduce is picked up by a few serially monogamous Chads and single mothers.
Is that better?
EDIT: I’m dumb, of course it can also be picked up by normal families having lots of kids; if one in five men has great social skills, the average family needs to just have six kids. Ignore me..
I looked at his Google+ page. He isn’t some kind of abnormal shut-in. He appears to have considerable non-work-related interaction with other people. I’d approximate his social skills at average+.
What yellow shuriken anon said – one shouldn’t need to have great social skills to find a mate. In the 1960s (I can’t find any good data on before that), 85+% young adults were married. Now it’s more like 50%. The average age of marriage has gone up six years. I sincerely doubt that those former 85% had truly exceptional social skills.
This, to me, suggests a rather serious problem – for whatever reason, young people now are having difficulty finding mates and getting married. Where previously, only the least capable 15% – whether by inclination or inability – could not find a life partner. Now the lower half of the bell curve can’t do it. The trend isn’t very optimistic. Will it be, in fifty years, that only one in four young adults will be able to find a suitable spouse?
It is possible to have a society where most people find wives/husbands, as evidenced by the relatively recent past. What changed?
I don’t think the current marriage and reproduction problems will wipe the society out. It’s just that the future citizens will overwhelmingly be descended from dissenters against common norms – criminals, Amish, Quiverfullers, tradcaths, Muslims, etc. – and also quite possibly from a lot fewer men than women, given that *effectively* we do have polygyny (polygamy is prohibited, but there’s no law I know of that prohibits having multiple girlfriends and impregnating them). Whether that’s good or bad is a matter of opinion.
Thinking about it – one good estimate of lesbian/gay numbers is around 5%. So given that 85% was pre-gay-marriage, that leaves us with 10% unmarried, which I’ve always correlated with Lizardman’s Constant. And I have no idea if lizardmen marry, but I assume probably not with humans.
Since that graph is context-less I don’t know what young adults are defined as. Whether or not it supports the conclusions you draw from it depends in no small measure on the definition. The second chart leads credence to the idea that we need not worry. The average age of marriage for women is still 10 years before their fertility starts dropping off a cliff. Finally, you are a equivocating between marriage and reproduction and begging the question as well as assuming that desire for a “life partner” can be held constant and it is the ability to do so that is falling.
It’s from this article. Young adults are defined as ages 25-34.
10 years at already somewhat reduced fertility is not a lot of time to have more than 1-2 kids. Especially if you’re not particularly zealous about it – how many couples have unprotected sex every day? The US total fertility rate is already below replacement, especially so among native-born. Further, a late start on childbearing increases risks of complications during pregnancy and childbirth, not to mention causes all sorts of bad things for the offspring, due to advanced parental age. The cliff is a lot closer than you think.
That is what the institution is for. Attempts at separating the two so far have had very meager results.
I am not. I did mention “inclination or inability”. Apologies if I weren’t clear enough. I put them in the same bag, because for the purposes of the point I was making, their differences are not relevant – it doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t marry and have kids because they can’t find a partner, or because they are unwilling to find one.
This is worth calling out and, frankly, writing in the sky with fireworks. We’re talking about the most basic human — hell, biological — urge there is, to pair up and reproduce. All those lonely awkward people out there are by definition descended from people with similar lonely-awkward-prone genetics who were able to find a mate in the past. Why is it so much harder now?
What went wrong with our society, and how do we fix it, and fast?
This is not necessarily true. Your loneliness and awkwardness may not be genetic in origin, and if they are they might be recessive or arise through some other more complicated form of gene interaction, or (if we’re still talking about men) they might not be passed through your dad’s side of the family.
We could even be dealing with one of those sex-differentiated-fitness situations where the trait improves reproductive fitness for girls and decreases it for guys. Wouldn’t that be hell?
Twelve kids. If there’s no polygamy involved then we’re also looking at five frustrated spinster aunts.
@ blue Anonymous at 4.13
What has changed?
Well, for one thing, women have more options now, other than marriage. They can have careers, be single moms if they want to, be in a poly group, have a female partner, etc.
And for another, and I suspect more significant, thing, men have the option of sex without marriage, thanks to reliable contraception and legal abortion.
That’s the central point of the Akerlof and Yellin explanation of the increase in single mothers–the precise opposite of what was supposed to happen as a result of those changes. In the past, women were reluctant to have sex without a guarantee of help supporting any resulting children, which made it difficult for men to have sex without marriage, or at least a commitment to marry in case of pregnancy. So most men were willing to make such a commitment.
Now, women who like sex but don’t want children have that option and so are willing to sleep with men without any guarantee, and their competition makes it harder for women who want children to get a husband.
I would also guess that the self-esteem movement has something to do with this.
People feel more entitled now – everyone is taught that they should find a partner that meets every possible criteria. People will date (or sleep with) someone with flaws, but are reluctant to marry them. Ease of divorce has made failed marriages more publicly noticeable (in the past, your imperfectly matched friends may have fought a lot at home, but kept up appearances in public and stayed together for the kids – now they separate and you get to witness them both trash each other on Facebook). Meanwhile, people are dating and cohabitating for longer periods before getting married at all (giving you more time to find/expose a flaw that you can easily convince yourself is a “dealbreaker.”)
@Matt M:
That sounds correct. And it’s something both men and women do – both men and women, in general, seem to feel entitled to someone who is, to be frank, higher quality (in various ways) than they are.
The distaff counterpart to the heterosexual male complaint “why don’t girls like nice guys” is the heterosexual female complaint “where are all the good guys?”. Difference seems to be that the latter is usually found in women late twenties or older, whereas the former is timeless. You get articles by men complaining they didn’t get the hottie they were promised, and articles by women complaining that now that they want to settle down, where are the decent reliable respectful men that they promised? (Quick answers: with more desirable men/with women who snagged them earlier).
That there’s a sense of entitlement on both sides of the equation as to the partner they should get can’t be overstated: for every guy who’s of average or below average attractiveness (physical or otherwise) who thinks he deserves a supermodel-calibre virgin who is still somehow amazing in bed, there’s a woman of average or below average attractiveness who thinks she deserves a 6 foot tall lawyer-doctor-CEO with abs. Neither of them is remotely likely to get what they want, and if they just paired off with each other instead of holding out for a hero they’d almost certainly be happier.
@dndnrsn,
You have a good point, but I think you’re lumping two distinct complaints together.
The guys saying “I can’t find a good girl!” and the girls saying “I can’t find a good man!” could solve their problems by lowering their standards. The problem is that, as you’ve said, they vastly overestimate their own value as partners.
The guys and girls saying “I can’t find anyone!” have a different problem though. Lowering their standards doesn’t help, because they have some issue which essentially renders them undateable until it’s fixed or compensated for. Telling them they’re too picky is anti-advice, since it gives an out to avoid looking for and focusing on the underlying issue.
@ dndnrsn
if they just paired off with each other instead of holding out for a hero they’d almost certainly be happier.
This makes me think of the old, old thing of common interests. Things you both like to talk about or do. Someone to do those things together with.
Which activities conveniently give you a chance to meet someone else who likes them too.
“This makes me think of the old, old thing of common interests. Things you both like to talk about or do. Someone to do those things together with.”
And my point is – I think this USED to work, but I’m not sure it still does. I think in the past, the pressure to marry and the sense that it was a somewhat practical arrangement meant that you found someone with one or two good qualities: Maybe she’s attractive OR intelligent OR funny OR you share common interests. Maybe you demand two of that set. But that would be enough to give it a go, and marriage being deemed somewhat “sacred” through societal peer pressure meant that when you had differences, you did your best to work them out.
But today is different. We are brought up to believe that there is a “perfect” partner out there for us who is attractive AND intelligent AND funny AND shares common interests. The OP of this discussion, who goes to dances to meet women, might have done well in the former society – where potential partners would see the common interest and allow him in to the decision set. But today it’s reversed – they see the lack of social skills/attractiveness/whatever and immediately exclude him from the decision set. There is no societal pressure to marry – so you can be as picky as you like (until you wake up one morning and you’re 35 and the only people left on the market are overweight unemployed single parents). If you date someone for awhile and find imperfections, you break it off and move on. If you marry them and find imperfections, you divorce and move on.
I’ve had multiple relationships end by my refusal to tell the woman I was seeing that she was literally perfect. The notion of “being settled for” is more abhorrent to most, by today’s standards, than the notion of dying alone. Maybe this will diminish as I age, but so far, any sort of honest/rational approach to dating is almost a guaranteed failure. You either lie and pretend that you totally agree that life works out just the way it does in romantic comedies – or you are seen as some sort of bottom-feeding jerk who is simply using a woman for sex.
@Matt M
Your comment about people not liking to feel that they’ve been settled for reminded me of a throwaway joke from the beginning of Zootopia.
The main characters parents are telling her that when they got together, they were simply settling for each other (“We settled hard.”) This is treated as one of the biggest laugh lines in the scene, and for the characters. However, from everything we see from them, they have a stable, loving relationship. It’s like the writers had to get a little dig in about settling for a partner, but still recognize you can be happy. I think it can say something interesting about how we look at romantic pairing these days.
@Dr Dealgood:
I think the lines get crossed, to some extent at least. A lot of people saying “I can’t find anyone” are exaggerating – they can’t find anyone they think is up to scratch. When in fact there’s an imbalance between what they have to offer and what they think they deserve. I recall an article by a woman with the “where are all the good men?” complaint that included her saying, roughly paraphrased, “where’s my dream piece?” – the thought that, now that she’s decided to settle down, a perfect guy isn’t waiting for her doesn’t seem to have occurred to her. The same thing is true of mediocre-or-worse guys who think they deserve a hottie.
I also think there are a lot of people (mostly male, as it is generally down to men to initiate in heterosexual relationships) who are actually more appealing than they think they are, are unreasonably afraid of rejection, don’t really have much of a clue of what to do, etc.
@Matt M:
First, we should note that the OP neither flat-out said he’s awkward etc, nor outright said he has an anxiety problem or whatever, and more than one person here (myself included) has observed that he’s a good looking guy. So, we don’t know what’s going on. My money’s on anxiety. Or maybe Seattle sucks as much as everyone here says.
I think to some extent the problem is that everyone – regardless of gender – has been sold a life plan that only ever really worked for men of fairly high status (socially and economically): have fun in your 20s, and then when you’re an established and successful in your early 30s, settle down. This doesn’t work for men who are not going to be successful, and maybe not even established. It flat-out doesn’t work for women: witness all the women who are established and successful in their early 30s wondering where the good guys are. This is heterosexual-specific: as I understand it, people pursuing same-sex relationships have different problems.
I think to some extent more opportunities drives pickiness. The longest relationship I was in was a “meet-cute” situation, basically. I think both of us tried waaaaay harder to make things work than there is an incentive to do with, say, people met online: it is actually not that hard, in my experience (and I am not especially good-looking or suave, and my job is neither glamorous nor lucrative) to get dates and get into relationships. “If I break up with this person, I could find someone else in 2-6 weeks” does not really lead to “therefore, I should try really hard to make this work.”
I take the fact that the OP was reading articles about “where to go to meet women” as evidence that he has some type of social problem (exactly what it is I don’t know – but it isn’t particularly relevant).
The alpha bros don’t read those articles. The women find them wherever they happen to go.
You probably aren’t going to like this as I assume you’ve already tried it and not had much success – but if you’re someone who is particularly sensitive about not wanting to come across as creepy/desperate/whatever, you may have to just stick with the dating site game.
Yes, I know the selection is poor. I know that the response rate is probably below 1%. I know that it’s generally a soul-crushing experience. But it’s also the one venue in which the social expectation is that you’re going to be asking the person out.
Other than that, my advice is even worse and more depressing. You seem to recognize that you don’t have the “romantic skills” necessary to easily obtain companionship in regular settings. But as you are discovering, the same skills apply regardless of the setting. So you need to stop looking at the problem as: “Where can I go that my lack of skills won’t matter?” (because the answer is: nowhere). Start looking at the problem as: “How do I improve my skills such that I’m able to deal with women regardless of where I may find them?” (Don’t think of this as PUA stuff exclusively – social skills are near universal. The same general skills needed to attract women are the same ones needed to attract male friends, network in a professional environment, etc.)
If you don’t think that’s possible for you – I would recommend starting to mentally adjust to the likelihood of remaining single for most of your adult life. I know that sounds terrible, but once you resign yourself to it, it can also be somewhat liberating…
Speed dating is also good in this regard, probably even better because it guarantees that you’ll have a chance to introduce yourself rather than adding your message to an overflowing inbox.
I went to hang out with a friend for a week in Seattle. It was during one of the fusion dance exchanges back in October. During the week I went to the weekly Wednesday blues dance and then on Friday I went to some other blues dance.
As someone else said, Seattle seems to in general have more men than women, and I think this has led to a lot of the sort of antagonism towards men looking for dates in the dance scene over there.
The fusion dance I went to seemed to have a good ratio, maybe more women than men, but that’s more than likely not representative of typical dance nights in Seattle.
The dance I went to on Wednesday had a very low turnout, but everyone there seemed really cool (caveat, I’ve been dancing for 15-20 years, and helped run a dance scene for a bit, so I probably don’t come off as someone just looking for women). It also had about a 1:1 ratio, but with only about 10 people total.
The Friday night dance seemed to be a bit more standoff-ish towards my presence, being a new face and all. Someone actually pulled me aside and said that I could do certain moves… certain moves that I had been doing at blues dances for like a decade!
So the attitude that you shouldn’t go to dances to meet people/women might be more pronounced in Seattle than elsewhere, based on my experience in my one week visit there.
In any place where there are significantly more men, I’ve observed a vicious cycle of
1. men get aggressive,
2. women get defensive to deal with the aggressive men,
3. but when the women want dates, they just turn down the defensiveness a little bit and take what comes in, so it is the most aggressive men (who were disliked in step 2) who get the dates
The inconsistency between #2 and #3 blew my mind, and made me buy into the “women only like jerks” thing, which doesn’t help anyone.
So I’d recommend trying some place else, too.
The inconsistency between #2 and #3 blew my mind, and made me buy into the “women only like jerks” thing, which doesn’t help anyone
Well, it seems to help the most aggressive men. And the women in those places aren’t changing their strategy…
Note that “place where there are significantly more men” includes virtually every Internet site (all dating sites for certain) with the exception of maybe some sites devoted to very niche female-dominated hobbies (I’d guess that forums about horses are female dominant maybe?)
No.
This is where I get stubborn and say “I simply don’t believe it. They are lying because it benefits them to claim this.”
There was that scandal with Ashley Madison and all the fake accounts. I suspect something similar is going on here.
Edit: Or that women are far more likely to visit but not register, or register but not be very active, or be very active but not proactively message, etc.
I can only speak for OKCupid, but they release a great deal of data (or did, a while back when I used the site) about their demographics and user behavior. At the time, I seem to recall the userbase being significantly but not catastrophically slanted male (which makes the current near-parity interesting), but almost all conversations were initiated by men, and a message sent by a man to a woman was vastly more likely to go unanswered than any other situation.
You needn’t treat that as a deal-breaker, but it should inform your strategy if you want to go that route.
Okay, dance is out
Why is dance out? Just because lots of people there don’t want you to achieve romantic success there and are hostile to your efforts in that area? Those people are your enemies; they don’t want you to achieve romantic success anywhere. Well, not anywhere near them anyway, and there are some of them everywhere you might go. What do you care what your enemies think, and why are you letting them make these decisions for you?
If you were planning to go to the dance to meet women, go to the dance to meet women. Expect that you will eventually be kicked out, or made so unwelcome that you might as well be kicked out. But you’ll learn something along the way, and you might meet someone who isn’t your enemy – because there are some of those everywhere, too.
Also, whatever the raw gender ratio, if men are generally discouraged from “hitting on” women, the actual competition you’ll be facing is smaller than the raw gender ratio suggests, and your doing it anyway will demonstrate self-confidence and non-conformity.
Some not so nice areas of the internet might call the last paragraph “passing the shit test”. I don’t think they would be totally wrong.
This. Quoted wholesale for emphasis; I can’t tell you how much I agree with this.
I find in general that a serious problem for “nerd-types”, for lack of a better term, is that they tend to take the word of this type of person as *) representative of “all the normal people”, and *) gospel, rather than the noise of an equally insecure enemy. (I believe also that part of the allure of PUA culture is breaking this supposed law and discovering that actually, nothing bad happens and good things may, producing a rush of freedom.) In fact, these people are pissy nobodies, and the correct attitude to them is “Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross”.
Have you considered PUA as a serious solution?
I haven’t been part of the scene for a few years: for obvious reasons I stopped picking up women when I was with my ex and haven’t “checked in” on them again after I got back into the dating scene. But there was a lot of solid advice out there: both step-by-step guides to picking up women at clubs / bars or in casual daytime environments, as well as general fitness and fashion advice for generally making yourself more attractive. As I was leaving I even saw some data-driven advice for building successful dating site profiles. There’s some stupidity mixed in, so you have to approach things with a skeptical eye, but it’s still leagues above any other advice you’ll get from mainstream sources.
Anyway, it’s kind of a cliche now but getting “redpilled” actually does improve a lot of guys’ romantic success and, contrary to the what people say, make them a lot less bitter about women. As long as you come into it with realistic expectations on the learning curve and the knowledge that you will be rejected before you start racking up successes you should be fine.
Some thoughts:
1. I sympathise with your problem, and have been there myself. That said, if you want a broad societal change in how we treat you “wanting” to get dates, that is too much to ask. Society is not going to change how it feels about single men just for your benefit. Fortunately, you don’t need that. What you need is (a) to find a supportive group of friends who can help you with your problems, and (b) to find a suitable partner. Both of those are in your control. Focus on what you can change, not the unfairness of your situation – dwelling on the latter is unhelpful, and will only make you come across negatively.
2. Make yourself more attractive. You’re focusing on meeting women (good!) but you also need to improve what you have to offer, in the same way that if you’re unemployed, you should be looking for available jobs, but also looking to improve and demonstrate your marketable skills. Personally, I find PUA materials extremely helpful, in that they helped me realise that “be confident” means “project confidence,” and that you need to give women reasons to like you, rather than just hoping that some magic will happen. “Just be yourself,” which you mock, is actually good advice, if you take it to mean that you shouldn’t treat a girl as someone special if she hasn’t earned it – just treat her as you would anyone else. She’ll like you more that way. But much PUA stuff is just flat-out unnecessary; you don’t need to go around “peacocking” or “negging” if you just want a girlfriend.
3. Online dating is great. You sound like you have difficulty meeting women, and so getting rejected by one you like is a huge deal. This understandable makes you nervous and less attractive, and it also means you have less opportunity to get better at dealing with women. But online dating will let you practice being more attractive, as in (2), in a relatively consequence-free environment, where you won’t be kicked out of $PROMINENT_CHARITY just because you’re clumsy.
More, I found that once I’d absorbed the lessons in (2), spending a few hours a week on OKCupid gave me as many dates as I could handle, so now I genuinely didn’t care if someone wasn’t interested. Once you’re in that place, you will find, paradoxically, that women are much more interested in you, and so you will be the lucky one who has no problem getting dates at your dance scene or $PROMINENT_CHARITY.
“(2), spending a few hours a week on OKCupid gave me as many dates as I could handle”
*Results not typical.
I spent months on OKC and got zero dates. I had better luck on POF and Tinder, but the quality of the women I was seeing was pretty low. I’m not the most amazing catch myself, don’t get me wrong – but still. And this was hardly “as many dates as I could handle.” It was like, “one new date every other month or so”
I don’t think our experiences are that dissimilar; when I initially joined, I was getting a new date about once a month. It doesn’t sound like much, but that was so much better than my offline abilities that the practice was incredibly helpful, and the confidence boost immense.
It was only once I got much better that I was able to get 2-3 dates/week. That required practice.
OK, I am going to second God Damn John Jay: you are a good looking guy. You’ve got a nice face, you’re in good shape*. Maybe try a different haircut – I always think that guys with sorta-curly hair at that length end up looking goofy – but I’m not your target audience. Also, I have no idea how you dress. Anyway: you seem to be going into this with the assumption that you’re not a fit male, but you’re a good looking guy in good shape who practices a legitimate martial art and is confident enough to compete and do OK** at what I am guessing is one of the “middle of the bell curve” weight classes, where there’s the most competition.
Plus, you don’t seem to be describing getting rejected, getting called creepy, getting kicked out of volunteering, etc. You’re describing seeing stuff that you interpret as saying that. How often do fit, good-looking, decently-dressed guys with OK social skills get excoriated as horrible creepy weirdos without doing something objectionable? So, without more details from you, I’m guessing either you’re bad at social skills and/or do objectionable stuff, or you have issues with anxiety and so on, or both. It’s possible to learn social skills, and it’s possible not to do objectionable stuff, and anxiety can be dealt with.
My advice is online dating. I’m less pretty and less slim than you are, and I’m hardly a ladies’ man, and I did OK (I think I was batting something like a .100 or .200 for getting first messages returned and lots of guys complain they get like 1/100 returned, I went on a bunch of dates, I went on a few second dates, and had a couple of relatively short-lived relationships out of it) on OKCupid. Generally, making sure your profile is good (the old OKCupid blog has some stuff about this), your messages avoid the most common greetings, and making sure that your messages briefly indicate you’ve read her profile and you have shared interests while giving her something to respond to, seems to do the trick.
But overall looking at the photos of you it seems like you are not the unfit male you seem to think you are. You should have yourself in higher esteem than some random internet person.
*also I am pleased to see I’m not the only member of the commentariat who does BJJ. Also, straight ankle locks are fine at white belt, but toe holds aren’t – I’m surprised they would be teaching toe holds to white belts, as they’re only legal at brown and up. With a straight ankle lock you’re fine as long as you don’t reap or do anything that might hit the knee (if the other guy rolls the wrong way and explodes his own knee, that’s his problem).
**2-2 and 3rd place in first comp is good. Caveat: I am neither an avid nor a successful competitor.
1)
Yes, it is. The sin has to be on you so that it’s not on them. If you are a man with low social skills, people don’t want to be around you. However, they cannot simply say “you are beneath us, begone”, because their culture makes that a sin. Instead, they have to make you the sinner: you cannot simply be less fortunate, you have to be malevolent and predatory.
2) It becomes much easier to meet girls if you stop caring about dating girls. I know that sounds like bullshit, but it’s true. Just try to make friends, and soon you’ll have more girls in your life.
Nobody wants to ride a thirsty horse.
While I get what you mean, I don’t get the metaphor. Why wouldn’t someone want to ride a thirsty horse? I mean, presumably it’s better to ride a healthy horse, but why is the horse’s thirst a deal-breaker?
Because the horse pulls toward water no matter where you try to make it go.
To be honest I think the best thing you can do to get a date is to stop caring so much about getting a date. Which sounds paradoxical, I realise, but if you don’t feel like you need to be in a relationship it’s easier to avoid coming across as all creepy and desperate and scaring the women away. That’s been my experience, at any rate.
I’ve had similar experiences, but on the other hand it is easy enough to say you could have gotten a date when you never actually asked (i.e. because you were in a relationship).
Can confirm, every relationship I’ve ever been in fell into my lap when I didn’t care and wasn’t actively looking for it.
Now if only I could stop caring about money and happiness…
Then you, too, can be Kramer?
How well does that work as a strategy if most of the activities you enjoy doing are solo activities? Woodworking, programming, etc. For some people, the only reason to go out and be social for something other than work is to find a spouse. Otherwise, they have better/more important/more enjoyable things to do.
I’ve had the same issue with swing dancing here on the east coast. The people who run the thing pulled me aside once or twice to comment, in a very serious tone, that someone had complained to them that they’d had an impression that I might be hitting on her. At the time, this caused me to have a borderline panic attack. It’s only later that I realized how ridiculous their complaint really was. (Rationally; emotionally is harder)
It helped when I realized there are two kinds of people who go to those things. To put it bluntly, the crazy SJWs as the normal people. (This isn’t completely fair, since there are a number of reasonably nice people there who believe in SJW ideals, but they tend to be subservient to the crazy ones). And while it’s a problem that the crazy SJWs are the ones running it here (and thus are the only ones who show up reliably every time), the other group is there, would probably be perfectly fine with being asked out, and I can still have a good time if I go on a night with a good nice people/SJW ratio (and when I’m not letting the SJWs psych me out).
I spent quite a while noticing this phenomenon (SJWs taking over social clubs and turning them into minefields of unwritten rules designed to exclude) and getting terribly conspiratorial about it.
Then I suddently realised, They Live style, that the people in question hadn’t actually changed from a few years previous. They were still ubiquitously female, middle class, comfortable socialites with an extremely active interest in other people’s doings; it’s just that now they have bright blue hair and problem glasses as their cultural signifiers.
Turns out I was mistaking busybody fashion trends for entryism. How embarrassing!
Go to church. It’s the only social milieu that I’ve been in where dating and getting married is positively encouraged, and it’s accepted that the single men and women in the church will all be actively checking each other out.
(People might look down on you if trolling for dates is the only thing you do, though. Also, you’ll have to find a church that has a significant number of singles, which may be a non-trivial problem, especially in Seattle.)
I don’t know how helpful it is, but every relationship/intimate connection I’ve been in so far has started through me, uh… doing some blogging and people becoming interested in *me*. Including the one not-so-long-distance thing that I had, and also my current primary.
So yes, have a casual life/interests/chit-chat blog like a tumblr, and express yourself and make people interested in you. I personally cannot conceive of trying an online dating app even when I’ll actually have the life circumstances to use one (right now it’s a non-starter) – but I think blogging is much much better for actually establishing connections in a non-forced and non-awkward way.
Seconded that you are pretty damn good looking.
Step 1: be less bitter. Catch more flies with honey, etc.
This post kind of makes me feel better. I was damaged in my early years since the impression I got from society was anyway I could interact with women was wrong (“in need of patching”). There were no examples of “correct” expressions of male sexuality, and even asking for help w/ such things made me a bad person. So I did nothing, as I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do. Eventually I just figured something was wrong with me and gave up.
It wasn’t until I encountered theredpill that I realized there was nothing wrong w/ my desires, and that many things I had told were taboo actually aren’t. But at this point I’m not even sure its worth going through to learn the skills I should have learned in my teens and 20s.
Right now I’m just focused on improving my quality of life in other aspects, but I don’t know if I just say that as an excuse to avoid learning how to interact romantically with women.
Re: “Creepy”
It’s not just “slightly less attractive than me and having the nerve to hit on me” – it’s code for “likely rapist in waiting”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/brock-turner-creeped-women-prior-2015-rape-article-1.2669094
What he’s described as doing in that article seems to be pretty unambiguous sexual assault – he was going to parties and groping women without their consent.
Terms like “creepy” and “creeping on” seem to have a really wide range.
Go to any club or party on a weekend with young people and everything described in that article (minus the rape) will be absolutely common and often completely welcome, if done by the right sort of person
“Groping women without their consent” is also known as “dancing” these days.
The funny thing is, according to that facial-criminal-appearance, women are less accurate than random chance at spotting rape convicts. Which sort of stands to reason – successful rapists would tend to be those that women don’t run away from at first sight.
I’m assuming you’ve seen the Godfather movies. Remember how they keep saying, “Nothing personal: just business”? And remember how riraghnyyl lbh ernyvmr vg’f NYY crefbany?
Same thing with “no looking for a mate”.
Related to the bee culture topic of recent memory:
Urban farming in the 1600’s – Fruit Walls.
For me, the most interesting part was tracking the shifting construction of greenhouses – and the assumption that modern, all-glass houses require significant (fossil fuel) heating.
I am not sure that I buy that older styles had less overall cost, in terms of outlay, upkeep, and limited space. I would have to check the math.
I’ve got fig trees growing on the south side of a wall, and it’s a tremendous advantage. They wouldn’t even survive without it—by the end of winter every branch that grew outside the wall’s protection is wind-scorched and dead.
Even a hippie can grow food in spring and summer: you can just spread seedy compost on the ground and water it. It’s keeping a good supply of greens going in the winter that makes a really interesting challenge. Nothing beats a good coldframe against a wall for that.
I’d actually consider living in a city if walled gardens, thick stone walls, and interior courtyards made a comeback. Maybe we’ll see it when energy prices start going up? Although we’d need to rebuild the US concrete industry from the ground up for that…
But boy, all those comments about how fossil fuels “did humanity a disservice”…
Guess they’re the kind of people who think they were a duke eating english-grown pineapples in a past life, rather than a factory worker living on black bread, old sausage, and a saucer of jam a week.
I’d actually consider living in a city if walled gardens, thick stone walls, and interior courtyards made a comeback.
This is where I actually think that Europe has a better idea. The notion of each home having an English style lawn is…well, we’ve had better ideas.
But boy, all those comments about how fossil fuels “did humanity a disservice”…
*sigh* Upsides and downsides to everything.
Anybody know why fruit trees seem to have fallen out of favor in America? There are lots of trees that you can grow that will produce year after year with minimal effort (although apples and pears probably aren’t), and fresh fruit is much better than what can be had in the store. And yet, we put useless maple trees everywhere instead.
It seems like just about every suburban home grows tomatoes in the summer, so it’s not like we’re opposed to growing our own fruit. Yet edible landscaping is rare.
One issue is that fruit trees require a lot of clean up compared to a tree that doesn’t fruit. There’s no way you could eat all the fruit off your tree unless you have a giant family or you like to give away a lot of fruit, but even then, picking the fruit is time consuming and labor intensive. However, if you only pick what you eat, then you are going to have a large amount of rotten fruit sitting at the bottom of the tree that is messy and smelly.
The most popular fruits for Americans are: oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, watermelons, strawberries, and peaches. Banana, orange, and peach trees can only be grown in small parts of the US and watermelons, grapes, and strawberries don’t grow on trees. That leaves just apple trees among popular fruit, and as you say they are fairly labor intensive.
Fruit trees that actually yield edible fruit are something of a hassle to maintain. I grew up fairly out in the country and we had three pear trees. They required yearly pruning, yearly insecticide spraying, having to pick all the actual pears once they were ready to be picked, etc.
My parents have two apple trees. No maintenance, but picking the fruit is a pain. Pretty sure if mom didn’t do it nobody would, we’d end up with a bunch of rotting apples on the ground, and then dad would chop them down before the next year.
Each year it results in many baskets of apples whose numbers we can’t really put a dent in with just eating. Mom has tried making jam from them, but a lot eventually spoil in the baskets.
So yeah, all we have to do is go pick the free fruit and it’s still too much work because there’s more of it than we want.
That’s another inconvenience though that I forgot to mention. Even with just three trees you end up with bags and bags and bags of pears that you have to do something with.
And yes, as a child, one of my chores was to pick the rotten fruit up off the ground and throw it in the compost (in addition any pears we didn’t get in time, we had a wild (inedible) apple tree that contributed to the rotten fruit on the ground issue)
Apple sauce is a good choice. If you jar them correctly it’ll stay good until opened for quite a while. Not even that much work if you don’t mind pink.
Cider is a traditional choice but I don’t know what’s involved in that.
Making cider is a good half day-long effort for a small group, assuming you already have the apples picked/gathered and ready to go. It also requires a cider press, which is a fairly large and expensive piece of machinery, but you can usually rent them just for a day (a neighbor up the road had a lot of apples, and used to do this as a yearly event for everyone nearby to come help out and take some cider when it was done)
My grandma had a cider press when I was a kid, and filled a few gallon jugs every year with juice from the Gravenstein apple tree in her backyard. Pretty simple work, if moderately strenuous and liable to make everything you’re wearing a little sticky.
You could probably home-ferment it into hard cider with a little more work, too, if you don’t mind microbe wrangling. No personal experience there, but cider’s supposed to be one of the easier alcoholic beverages to get right.
(Crabapples can be used to make pies and chutney, incidentally, and probably applesauce too. The harder flesh isn’t a problem if you cook it long enough.)
So yeah, all we have to do is go pick the free fruit and it’s still too much work because there’s more of it than we want.
Let us all give thanks for having so much food that we will let it go to waste like this.
A more cynical me would make the same note about paper garbage, random couches, and loose aluminum cans in “impoverished” neighborhoods in the USA – that the people there ain’t that poor, because if they were, every bit of something that could be burned for heat or sold for scrap would be off the street within hours of being tossed on the curb. If American poor were *that* bad off, they’d be grafting blackberries in backlots and alleyways.
But the problem is far more difficult than that, and realizing this crimps my joy at the existence of cheap food quite a bit.
OTOH – there are oilmen in the Dakotas and orchard keepers in Idaho who earn their bread off the laziness of the rest of us. Tis an ill wind that blows no good.
I remember reading some article about propaganda that mentioned that regime in North Korea brags that there are no rats in North Korea.
This is technically true, but not because the country is really clean. It’s because any non-human mammals roaming wild would immediately be killed for their meat – rats included.
Or how the vast bison herds found by the Europeans were not the natural state of affairs – that the end of a cyclical drought and the death of (at least) hundred of thousands of American Indians due to disease allowed the bison population to explode.
Or – and this is better yet – the vast thorny wilderness of the African savannas populated by Cape buffalo and elephant were there only because the native cattle populations – and the people who depended on them – had died off after bovine plura-pneumonia swept across Africa (*).
We humans wreck change on the environment, it’s what we do. But we do much more when we’re starving.
(*) In one of those relatively rare instances where a disease going into Africa caused devastation – the trend is very strongly in the other direction. The loss of the cattle was important because cattle grazing kept the population of specific varieties of tsetse fly down.
Store them properly, if they’re the right variety. Good ones will last 9+ months in a box in the basement, and you can pull a few out at a time for chopping into breakfast cereals, cooking, etc.
IMO – time preference, and a failure to appreciate the fruits of indigeous/regional varieties.
(By failure to appreciate I mean mostly “having not been exposed to” – there is no accounting for taste.)
Fruit trees take time to mature – and even with the modern dwarf trees, we’re talking three to five years – more time than the purchase-to-sale horizon of the 90’s and oughts.
Brambles are much faster producing, but messy. Blueberrys are picky about soil acidity. Figs are great but temperature sensitive.
If I had my way, far more American households would be planting Chickasaw plums, persimmons, and pawpaws, as well as the multitude of apples and pears adapted to each region. But, again, there is no accounting for taste.
I’d also like to spread the word about hardy kiwis, aka kiwi berries, which are basically grape-sized furless kiwi fruit that can survive an actual winter. If I had more yard space, I’d grow them myself. (They are, however, a vine rather than a tree, and will need something to climb on.)
For those who might be interested in exploring this more…
The Backyard Orchardist by Stella Otto (she also did a decent book on various berries) and Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden by Lee Reich (this one is now on kindle, woot!) are good starting points.
Thanks for the links keranih! I keep a regular list of various orchard sites, plant lists, and a set of rotating favorites at any given time. Once I get some space (i.e. not living in an apartment) I intend to break ground right away on some blueberries, cherries, and maybe even walnuts. Too bad my climate is too cold for growing Japanese plums, but I might give it a go anyway with some of those south facing walls, they are cold hardy enough for my region but a late frost will kill its early blooms and it won’t fruit.
Anyone in a higher hardiness zone 6/7-10 want grow Ume trees and send me their fruit? I can send you back delicious Umeshu every year.
http://www.treesofantiquity.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=10&products_id=574
Your last paragraph is close to what I was going to say. Sure, apples and pears have a lot of pest/disease pressure (perhaps due to their popularity). But those are hardly the only options. Why have we neglected the American persimmon, which is candy on a tree, and completely forgotten the pawpaw, which is native, almost pest-free, and huge? It’s not like we had to stick with European and tropical fruits.
(Mulberries are also underappreciated. And if you’re interested, Kousa dogwood fruit is good eating, and great for urban foraging, because it’s a popular landscaping tree and nobody knows they can eat it.)
(And even with apples, I’ve foraged up fruit that was pock-marked and black with sooty fungus, and was still just as good as store-bought. Don’t judge a fruit by its cover.)
You originally said that fruit trees had fallen out of fashion. Were you talking about native fruits? Were they ever popular in the colder suburbs? Or was it only apples that were ever popular?
American persimmon was traditionally cultivated, but I don’t know about pawpaw.
Personally I’m a big fan of quince, which is non-native and can’t be eaten raw (you can eat it after bletting, but I wouldn’t recommend it), but which is frost-hardy, prolific, and delicious when made into pie, chutney, or jam. I don’t have the property anymore, but for years I was giving jars of quince jam to everyone I know.
In recent years, one fellow has taken on the challenge of making pawpaws more commerically/backyard viable – see here.
Mulberries are great but make a tremendous colorful mark on cars and sidewalks.
The persimmons and pawpaws won’t grow as far north as I am, but the dogwood certainly sounds like something to add to my list of possible fruit trees to get when I have land. Mulberries would also work in my winter zone 5a-5b but everywhere I’ve seen them they make a horrific purple mess and also turn birds into purple poop dispensers. Also geese like them and geese are the biggest jerks.
There was a large backyard mulberry tree in the house my parents bought when I was a child, but they had it cut down after a few years. Partly so the space could be used for other things, partly because it made a godawful mess. I remember liking the fruit, though.
Geese are pretty delicious though.
@Jaskologist:
Candy on a tree? The persimmons I buy from the supermarket are, admittedly, a bit sour, but passable. (Although every fruit or vegetable we get from our farm is better-tasting than the supermarket version.)
Speaking of which, about a year ago or less I had the worst experience with supermarket tomatoes. I bought a bag of tomatoes which were unusually red for that season. When I cut them, they bled with a purplish juice or fluid. Same as Easter egg dye. I gather that it was purple dye, meant to make orange-ish tomatoes look bright red. Really, just how low can producers go?
BTW, nice topic. I’m trying to grow my first ever avocado trees in my apartment. We had a series of seeds which failed to sprout, and now my first ever seed has cracked on the bottom. Any idea what to do next?
I… what? No, tomatoes are not dyed. That wouldn’t even be cost-effective, let alone legal. Some varieties of tomato are just juicy.
“Personally I’m a big fan of quince, which is non-native and can’t be eaten raw (you can eat it after bletting)”
I was going to suggest that you were confusing quince with medlar, but I checked online and quince can indeed be bletted. I should try that. I use the quinces from my tree for cooking, including a very simple and tasty quince preserve from a 10th century cookbook.
@Nornagest: That’s good to know. Custard… hmmm… I guess I’ll have to make some once and taste it myself. Heard of it, but I mostly mistake it for mustard.
@Homo Iracundus: Tomato juice is not purple verging on blue. If there’s anything I know about vegetables, it’s that. Try being in a country without very strong rule of law.
Oh, custard’s easy. Basically just a cooked emulsion of eggs and cream. If you have an oven and can operate a whisk and follow timing directions, you can make a pretty good custard.
I’m not sure what to compare the flavor to, though.
American persimmons and Asian persimmons are different, though I am a fan of both. The Asian varieties have developed for thousands of years, so they’re much bigger, but I think the taste of the American is more interesting. However, you have to eat them when mushy and wrinkled, or you will regret it, which is why you probably haven’t seen them in the store.
On quinces, keep in mind there there are two different fruit under that name. One is from a Japanese bush usually planted for its flowers. That fruit is rock-hard, but you can still process it into a good jam. I’m not sure if bletting would also work. The other is a close relative of apples and pears, and looks like a lumpy cross between the two. I’ve only had a few, but I liked them, and they didn’t need any special processing.
The quince I was talking about is the one related to apples and pears, and the specific cultivar I grew ended up looking like a fuzzy, yellowish pear, about the size of a regular pear but rounder. (I’ve also seen larger, bare-skinned quinces at farmers’ markets.) When grown in the Bay Area it never softened enough to be edible without processing, but Wikipedia informs me that some types can, in hot climates.
The jam they make is astonishingly good, tasting something like apples crossed with rose hips.
My quinces also are cydonia, not Japanese quince. Also grown in the Bay Area. I haven’t tried bletting them, but when they are picked, or fall, they are suited for cooking, not eating out of hand.
I like to describe a quince as smelling more like an apple than an apple does.
American persimmons are ambrosia, surenuf. Yes, they have to passed through the astringent phase, but oh, my.
As for “purple” tomatoes – there is a fairly popular American heirloom tomato called the Cherokee Purple – it’s been a few years since I grew any but the fruits are deep red and the juice had a distinctly violet/mulberry shade. I doubt it’s the only strain that does that. I’m having a hard time working out the physics of injecting a purple dye into individual tomatoes, but I suppose it could happen.
I haven’t grown avacados, sorry.
I have grown avocadoes. The larger of my two trees has quite a lot of fruit on it at the moment.
One odd thing about avocadoes is that they don’t get fully ripe on the tree. You pick them hard, put them in a paper bag, and in a week or so they are soft and good.
I wouldn’t be inclined to grow one from a seed if I wanted it for fruit. Fruit trees generally don’t grow true, which is why they are grown from grafts. But I don’t know about the specific case of avocadoes.
My tree took a long time, I think more than ten years, before it started bearing, and it bears irregularly, I think about every other year. But now, when it bears, it bears heavily. And the other side of not ripening on the tree is that the fruit stays on the tree for a very long time, so we have avocadoes available for several months.
Unfortunately, I’m the only one in the family who really likes them, so we give a fair number away. There are five in the back of the car at the moment, to be given to Betty’s brother in Denver, where we arrive this evening. If it turns out that he and his wife don’t like Avocadoes, we will be visiting friends near Chicago in another few days.
Cherokee Purples are the biggest thing missing from my garden this year. They’re the best tomato ever—so thick and juicy you can eat them like steak.
I am not sure if this is violating any of Scott’s implicit rules and to reflect my uncertainty I am posting it here, which would have less visibility–but I invite readers to read my blog, Battle of the Forms, which I think would appeal to a subset of the people here.
Feedback genuinely welcome!
I mean, it would be more compelling if you gave an elevator pitch about the subject of your blog? But I’ll definitely give it a shot.
Sure thing, an elevator pitch. The blog applies insight from law and economics to a a very diverse groups of daily issues. Some examples: using Bayesian thinking to write literature, using preference transitivity to be a better parent, thinking in terms of risk, not gain, to advance peace, and a very random one on grocery shopping.
Just want to say, love the name. I still remember studying 2-207 for my contracts exam even though it was 10 years ago. I’ll check your blog out for that reason alone.
What does the commentariat think about ranked ballot voting?
https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative_%282016%29
To the extent that democracy has upsides, I think that the upsides are maximized when voters can express their preferences in more detail. I’m a little surprised that these types of initiatives don’t get more attention, because they seem like the rare process improvement that is almost all upside. Maybe that lack of controversy is why it doesn’t get attention?
It’s a chicken and egg problem. In order to generate interest in voting reform you need a relatively strong third party pushing it (because the duopoly parties have a disincentive to do so), but you are unlikely to get a relatively strong third party in a system with single member districts and plurality voting.
Well, what do you mean by “ranked ballot voting”? Any decent voting system requires ranking the candidates. That’s not a specific system. Apparently the specific proposal you link is discussing Instant Runoff Voting?
Well, since you didn’t specify, I’ll discuss the topic in general. Short answer: 1. It depends on the system; 2. Most of the ones people actually propose would be an improvement (presumably); 3. Personally I’d say the correct answer is range voting; 4. There may be a way to get around brad’s chicken and egg problem.
So, #1: The basic problem with first-past-the-post is vote-splitting — having multiple similar candidates decreases the chance that any of them wins. Ideally we want a voting system that is “clone-independent”, i.e., one where as we add duplicates of a candidate to the candidate pool, the chance that that candidate or any of their duplicates wins remains the same. Most of the ones people actually propose have this property. But one must be careful! Because, say, the Borda count has the opposite problem — teaming. Multiple similar candidates increase the chance that any of them wins. That sounds even worse to me; imagine if every political party were constantly trying to nominate as many candidates as possible.
(It is of course not obvious that switching to a more democratic voting system would actually improve things over the 2-party system, but I, like you, would certainly expect it to, anyway.)
#2. So, yeah. If you get rid of the vote-splitting problem and don’t introduce any other problems that are too horrible, sure, sounds like an improvement to me. Personally I am wary of IRV because, y’know, non-monotonicity. But it’s what seems to actually get used when places implement ranked voting systems. Presumably because it’s simple to understand; I think it’s safe to say you’re not getting anywhere to implement Ranked Pairs or something, or at least not straight off the bat!
#3. As I said above, my favored system is range voting (with some sort of quorum or fake-vote-padding to prevent “unknown person with a few fanatic followers wins” scenarios).
Why? (Note: A few of these arguments I’ve basically copied from http://rangevoting.org/ )
It’s basically free of pathologies — Ordinal voting systems are subject to Arrow’s Theorem; range voting isn’t. It’s as monotonic and independent as you want. Nothing crazy going on here. Its definition alone makes that pretty plain.
(The downside of a cardinal voting system, of course, is that it’s not at all clear what on earth a vote means. To which my response is, so long as the system works better… who cares?)
It’s extremely simple to understand — This seems like it’s been a big barrier to improved voting systems. But range voting is simple. Apparently it can even be implemented on existing voting machines.
There’s very little to be screwed up by people voting strategically — Do you want to deal with people trying to vote strategically in an IRV election? Ugh. But strategic voting under range voting just turns it into approval voting, and that’s hardly so bad.
Nursery effect — Approval voting, though, while better for outsider parties than FPTP, is still hard on them. But range voting, if people vote honestly, provides outsider parties with a path to the spotlight; if a whole lot of people vote for them a little, well, next year a whole bunch of people may be putting them first.
All that said, IRV may still well be an improvement on the current system (despite non-montonicity), and for whatever reason it seems like that’s the one people tend to rally around.
#4: So how can we beat brad’s chicken-and-egg problem? Well, here was rangevoting.org’s strategy, when it was at all active; it’s up to someone else now, I guess, to try to carry it out. The strategy is, convince the existing parties to use it for their primaries (especially prominent early ones). They want to nominate the best candidate, right? (Perhaps 2020 could be ripe, if the Republicans want to avoid a shitshow like this year.) If that ever happens, the path to getting it accepted in official elections becomes a lot easier.
Now OK presumably the parties know this. But, well, there’s two of them. It might just be possible to get one of them to grab for that momentary advantage over the other. Also, primaries are run by the state parties, not the national parties. Those may be more easily influenceable.
#5. Note that there was a big push for a ranked voting system in the UK not too long ago. It went to a referendum, which failed. Probably worth looking into why it failed if you want to make a push for it elsewhere!
Of course, for the most part the issue just doesn’t come up. I think the reason it usually doesn’t get much attention is the obvious one — it’s too “nerdy”. Too complicated, too non-obvious in effect, and lacking in obvious opportunities to directly “stick it” to the outgroup. (OK, I suppose that last one is a little bit like “not controversial enough”, but…) And I suspect that to a lot of people, voting just means first-past-the-post; they don’t even think of it. Finding a way to sell it to most people will be crucial. But again — it’s been done before, or at least gotten to the point of a referendum. So that problem does seem solvable.
I was one of the people who voted for the Alternative Vote system in the UK referendum, and I think I even did a little telephone canvassing for the cause (well, I did *something*, because I remember turning up to an office, but I can’t remember the specifics, it was a while ago), and the AV lost badly. Then there was the Scottish independence referendum, and the independence campaign also lost conclusively, but not by nearly so big a margin.
I was surprised, because Scottish independence seems like an obviously non-one-sided issue, with pros and cons on both sides, whereas going from First Past the Post to Alternative Vote seems like an obvious improvement*, albeit a small one – but one which could be leveraged to eventually get to something much closer to a proportional representation-like system. Yet from my perspective, ‘obvious small improvement’ was rejected by the electorate far harder than ‘genuine good arguments on both sides’.
I raised this issue on Facebook and someone suggested that AV lost so badly because it was the flagship policy of the Liberal Democrats, at the time the UK’s third-biggest party (who obviously stood to benefit from it) and the referendum was one of their conditions for entering into a coalition government with the Conservative Party, who didn’t have quite enough seats to form a government on their own. Once in coalition with the Conservatives, the Lib Dems then reneged on their manifesto pledge to oppose any increase in tuition fees, and the hypothesis is that many people voted against AV to punish the Lib Dems over tuition fees.
I’m not sure how much there is to that – either FPTP has major advantages over AV that I’m just not seeing, or a hell of a lot of people are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.
*I do remember trying to explain AV to my grandfather; the conversation went something like:
-AV allows you to pick second choice candidates, so if your top choice doesn’t win, you still have some influence over which of the other candidates will win.
-But I just want to vote for the Conservatives.
-You can still do that under AV; if you are genuinely indifferent about all the other candidates, you can just put a ‘1’ against the Consevative candidate and ignore the rest. But for people who do have a clear second choice, AV allows them to do that.
-But I just want to vote for the Conservatives.
-Seriously, nothing about AV prevents you from doing that
-I’m still against it because I just want to vote for the Conservatives.
-[repeat ad nauseam]
I think it was a combination of nose-cutting, and the fact that both of the largest parties opposed it. I get the impression that most Conservative voters are far less tribal than Republicans across the pond, but many are still willing to vote whichever way their party says, regardless of the details of the evidence.
Both you and the electorate agree that AV is a watered down version of, and a step towards, PR. The difference is that the electorate strongly prefer first-past-the-post to PR.
The purpose of elections is not to choose a legislature. It’s to influence government policy, and to hold governments to account. That necessarily means coalition formation. The question is, do we want to reward politicians who present their coalitions to the electorate before the election, thus maximising the electorate’s input (FTPT), or do we want to reward those who form their coalitions after the election, thus giving maximal leeway in post-election bargaining (AV, PR)?
As the former is obviously preferable to the latter, the AV referendum was an easy win. Proponents of AV, still fixated on the idea that the composition of the House of Commons is what matters, missed the boat.
Your grandfather may have been cleverer than you realize. Suppose for instance that he lives in a currently solidly Conservative district but where the Lib Dem candidate takes votes solely from the Labour candidate who would win if he had those votes. It’s much in his interest that the eliminated Lib Dem voters don’t get a second shot. (And indeed, this may seem unfair to many people; why should they get to vote twice? It’s very common to dismiss this type of concerns as a partisan of something, especially of the rational-leaning sort, by going “pah, I have constructed in my mind a logical (or in many cases ‘logical’) argument for why it isn’t unfair! So that’s not a concern!” and forget that people still think it is anyway, despite your masterful elench.)
Also,
Many voters probably agreed with you on the latter part here, and (IMO correctly) saw this as the thin end of the wedge for changing the UK system to a proportional-vote one, which they strenuously did not want. Electing specific candidates for specific districts does have strong, obvious, and major advantages over merely voting for national parties whose candidates are answerable to the party alone, rather than to any specific set of constituents. I myself would oppose PR on this basis.
It’s been a few years, but I seem to recall that a lot of the pro-AV arguments were about how voting yes would help lock the Tories out of power forever and let Britain’s “progressive majority” take its rightful place at the helm of government. Naturally this made AV a hard sell to anybody who didn’t self-identify as part of said progressive majority, which as it turns outs is rather smaller than some people believed.
On the other hand, UKIP were pro-AV, and Labour were a bit ambivalent. On a side note, my favourite political statement on the Wikipedia page: ‘The Socialist Party of Great Britain adopted a neutral position, arguing “what matters more is what we use our votes for” in the context of class struggle’.
AV helps “minor” political parties and hurts “major” political parties. In the UK it would hurt Conservative and Labour and help the Lib Dems, UKIP, Monster Raving Loony, etc.
More people supported Conservative and Labour than everyone else combined. Thus the AV referendum failed.
Abandoning plurality voting can be in a major party’s interest when you get dynamics like Australia, where the allied Liberal and National parties were winning a majority of the votes together but splitting the right-wing vote so Labor ended up with a plurality. But that’s pretty unusual. (Yes, the Australian Labor Party uses the American spelling in their name, and no, I don’t know why.)
I just realized that Scott has already written about voting systems
http://lesswrong.com/lw/dp6/imperfect_voting_systems/
Plurality voting < ranked ballot voting < range voting < futarchy < ???
The first three are for all the reasons others gave earlier. Futarchy adds in one wonderful new feature: there's a connection between "what people want" and "a good policy for achieving what people want" that doesn't rely on your average voter knowing what policies are useful.
The last item, which may not exist, would have a way to transform "what people want" into "what people would want if they didn't believe falsehoods".
I’ve been kind of beating around this bush for a while, but would like to try discussing it explicitly:
I’m going to take a strong anti-intellectual property position here (though could possibly be convinced that some much weaker version than we have now is advisable or necessary):
Ethical case against:
Intellectual property is not “property.” It’s an idea. You can’t own an idea. If I taste your delicious tuna casserole and start cooking it for my guests you don’t lose the ability to cook tuna casserole. If I love the design of your house and decide to build one just like it on my property, you still have your house. Property is a claim on something scarce. Ideas and specific arrangements of words, sounds, and concepts are not scarce. By telling me I can’t arrange certain words or sounds or concepts in certain ways without paying you, you are actually claiming a right to control how I use MY body and MY property.
Practical case against:
We produced lots of great literature, art, inventions, etc. before IP. Certainly certain kinds of creativity are helped by IP and would be hampered without it, but the reverse is also true. Hollywood films now are massive affairs and this, in part, is made possible by a certain guaranteed revenue stream over a long period of time partially inspired by IP; but I’m not entirely sure this results in more good movies.
Consider how hard it seems to make a new movie not based on an existing franchise. Weaker or non-existent IP might result in a larger number of lower-budget, higher risk movies (or books, or songs…) getting produced. Total consumer satisfaction with this state of affairs might actually be higher, and though there would probably be fewer megastars (maybe JK Rowling would have net worth 10 million instead of 1 billion, but I’m sort of okay with that), there might be more opportunities for people to make a merely decent living as an actor, musician, author, etc.
Some industries like fashion and cooking have no IP protection and they seem to do fine; if anything, very competitive and fast-moving, but thriving.
And there’s also the issue of most people underestimating the degree to which most or all creative work is somewhat derivative. If new book, movie, or song seems completely new to you, it’s probably just because you haven’t read or listened to the person’s major influences. Also, certain types of creativity which freer IP would enable are unambiguously curtailed. Should Vanilla Ice have been allowed to sample Queen’s “Under Pressure” for the backbeat of his new song? I don’t see why not. He was still creating something new which people enjoyed.
Not sure about the effect on new drug production, but I’m generally pretty unimpressed with the new drugs created in recent decades, most of which are for things like erections or else are sexier versions of things we could already kind of do more simply before. In order for this to work, the FDA requirements might have to be weakened or the approval process streamlined, but it’s not at all clear to me that IP protection is necessary for new drugs to happen.
One area where it seems to me that weak IP might be more necessary is trademark. I’m okay with telling customers to do their own research to some extent, but if some company in China is allowed to exactly imitate all the labels on your product while putting in a completely different, presumably lower quality actual product, then that seems like a problem. Maybe this could be handled at the distributor level: Wal Mart would guarantee to buy only legit brands and not their imitators, but not sure. Or maybe it could be considered a form of fraud and therefore not require recourse to IP?
You may want to look at Against Intellectual Monopoly, which is a book arguing the anti-IP case.
Intellectual property is not “property.” It’s an idea.
No, it is an execution of an idea.
“Bunch of swashbuckling rebels brings down the Galactic Empire while one of them carries out a Cambpellian Hero’s Journey” is an idea, and it is not intellectual property, it cannot be patented, copyrighted or trademarked. “Star Wars”, as executed by Lucasfilm et al, is intellectual property, and it is far more than an idea.
The idea that IP means restricting “ideas”, is a common and pernicious misconception.
By telling me I can’t arrange certain words or sounds or concepts in certain ways…
When I tell you you can’t make copies of “Star Wars”, I am in no way telling you that you can’t arrange certain words or sounds or concepts in certain ways. Because when you show up with a bootleg “Star Wars” DVD or novelization or whatnot, we both know full well that it wasn’t you that arranged those words etc in that specific way.
Property is a claim on something scarce
There are a finite number of “Star Wars” DVDs. There are a finite number of opportunities to watch “Star Wars”. This is scarcity.
It may be trivially easy for the guy who creates this scarce resource to expand those opportunities nigh unto infinity, but he is not obligated to do so and you don’t get to decide for him.
“Because when you show up with a bootleg “Star Wars” DVD or novelization or whatnot, we both know full well that it wasn’t you that arranged those words etc in that specific way.”
I own paper; I own ink. If you tell me I can’t sell my paper and ink because it spells out “Chewbacca,” then you’re telling me how I can use my property. My paper and ink are scarce. The idea of talking about a furry guy in space and arranging the ink so it spells “C,” “h,” “e…” is not.
Re. your distinction between “idea” and “execution,” I don’t see the difference. “Hero named Luke Skywalker goes on a journey in space” is just a more detailed version of the idea “hero goes on a journey.”
I believe the point is that there’s a (probably fuzzy) threshold of detail beyond which scarcity does in fact come into play. Mathematics might not be a precise analogy, but I think it’s relevant here: many solutions to equations are (much) harder to generate than confirm, and likewise many solutions to real-world problems are harder to solve than to copy.
The thing that is “scarce” are “opportunities to sell / otherwise monetize” the idea.
Intellectual property rights are intended to ensure that the creator gets first crack at the loot the idea can generate.
gdub, yes. Mega-corporations might love there to be no patent rights, because they would get 100% of the loot. The creator would get nothing at all. It’s amazing that we still do have patents, given how controlled the world is by mega-corporations. But I suppose patents are also of use to mega-corporations in some ways, so I guess that’s why they exist.
I don’t see why no IP would disproportionately benefit “mega-corporations.” If anything, I’d expect the opposite.
It’s companies like Disney, as well as smaller patent trolls, who prevent small start-ups from springboarding off their ideas and “properties.”
Independent artist, Nina Paley, on the difficulties faced selling her movie, which used 1920s vocals in a completely novel setting:
“It’s about the songs themselves. All the research I did was on the recordings, which are not covered by federal copyright law, which is great. However, the compositions that underlie the recordings are not only controlled, they’re controlled by corporations that have no regulation on what they can charge. For me to get permission from them to use these 80-year old songs would have cost me more money than it cost to make the entire film. The songs were supposed to be in the public domain in the ’80s, but everything’s been extended by big media corporations for various reasons. It poses quite a challenge to tiny little low-budget artists like me. What they’re asking for is a really a drop in the bucket for a big studio or a big production. But it’s completely untenable for me.”
This is almost totally backwards. It’s true that patents were historically intended to spur innovation by guaranteeing a revenue stream for inventors and other small innovators, but that has very little to do with how they’re now used: you should think of them less as revenue centers and more as legal tools (or, in the degenerate case, legal weapons). Larger companies generally having better-developed legal departments, that’s where you’ll find most of them: places like IBM file for thousands of patents without making a penny off licensing, just to defend themselves from patent trolls.
On the other side of things, it’s actually not uncommon for smaller companies to deliberately avoid filing patents for processes or inventions that can’t be trivially reverse-engineered, because patents are publicly available and they have to include details that could give away essential points of competitive advantage.
It’s kinda perverse, but adding more legal and regulatory superstructure generally favors big organizations (not necessarily, but including, corporations) over small and small ones over individuals. The reason for this is resources: compliance usually involves large fixed costs, and the bigger you are, the more money, bodies, and connections you can spare to throw at them. Pharma’s the famous case, but there are lots of others.
@Nornagest:
No, it’s not completely backwards. Or if it is, then its opposite is also completely backwards.
In other words, I think it goes in the category of “not even wrong”.
In a world with no IP, you will have some perverse occurrences. If anyone comes out with a decent idea, corporations large and small will rush to copy it. My bet is that the largest corporations over time will be those who do the “best” job of copying.
But the biggest companies of today would not love this, because one way they got big is by knowing how to play the IP game correctly, and eliminating IP would destroy that edge they have over the market.
I’m… not seeing how that contradicts anything I said?
I don’t think you want zero IP. You just don’t want IP to extendible indefinitely, which is where you’re seeing the most abuse (e.g. Disney). The other area of abuse is in getting patents on vague things that aren’t really nonobvious innovations, and/or that you have no intention of actually monetizing except through lawfare. But giving an inventor or author 10-20 years to make bank before opening things up seems reasonable.
As for who a no IP regime would favor, probably depends on the product. Complex inventions would be hosed without IP because the startup costs for R&D and production are huge. Little guy needs a big guy to help him get to market, but with no IP, little guy has no leverage to strike a decent deal.
On the other hand, for creative works, no IP would probably help the smaller businesses that could piggy back off of existing properties.
Really, it’s not feasible for GE to continue making a ton of money on an 80 year old invention without continuing to innovate. But Disney can sit on Mickey forever, because it’s not like you can make a cartoon character obsolete.
Short IP seems best for both worlds.
By the way, I have met the creator of Sita Sings the Blues, which I highly recommend everyone watch and support, and she said she made more money off the film, in the end, with the “creative commons” license she was forced to release it under (due to inability to pay for rights to the music) than she ever expected to had she released it with the normal copyright protections. It just required thinking of different ways to monetize it.
@Nornagest:
Well, the way it contradicts what you said is that you imply that small companies will win when IP is done away with, and I think that is flatly incorrect.
Large companies will still have a big advantage, but they just won’t get an advantage from their IP lawyers.
Certain large companies will, in fact, make lots of profit off of this, and will love it. Amazon, for instance, could very well love, love, love it.
Because the game becomes exclusively one of “how fast can I get it into the consumers hands” and they already excel at that part. First cut out the high markup guys with novel products by going to the cheapest/best knock-off shop. Then potentially build the knock-off shops yourself.
You already see this with various Amazon branded products that aren’t subject to IP now.
Big organizations get their advantage from applying leverage, integration, and economies of scale. Small organizations get their advantage from agility and specialization. Stripping some or all IP protections could lead to opportunities for either, depending on the details, but in the specific context of patents, I think the present scheme gives such an advantage to large players that removing (specifically) those protections would be an almost unalloyed loss for them.
The situation around copyright, for example, is more nuanced.
@Nornagest:
If Amazon can start selling Fitbits that have no connection to the Fitbit company n months after the Fitbit company does, surely that has a negative effect on the Fitbit company? n being how long it takes their crack “product acquisition” team to reverse engineer their hardware and software.
If you are saying Amazon couldn’t do this due to TM or copyright, then we have different interpretations of what onyomi means when he says “all IP”.
Well, as I said, trademark strikes me as a harder case, and I’m less sure about it. Amazon making their own “Fitbot” to compete with “Fitbit,” is one thing, but Amazon making “Fitbits” which are superficially indistinguishable from the other company’s product seems almost to border on fraud, unless they make it clear to the customer that that’s what’s going on.
But the thing about Amazon releasing their own Fitbit in n months is that the Fitbit team has had that much time to get rolling on the next step in the fitbit development. Amazon will always be behind Fitibit, unless they decide to put their own spin on the product or take it a different direction. They’d have to sell cheaper or be available to people who couldn’t get the fitbit due to limited supply. But, unless they somehow make the fitbot cheaper than the original, their profits are lower or non-existent. If they start to innovate the base design on their own they are doing what every mobile phone company has done with regards to the iPhone.
“And they asked me how I did it; and I gave ’em the Scripture text,
“You keep your light so shining a little in front o’ the next!”
They copied all they could follow, but they couldn’t copy my mind,
And I left ’em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.”
My favorite description of first mover advantages.
@Dice without Rulers:
But that is still worse for Fitbit than Amazon not being allowed to just straight up steal it. If I have no protection for my IP, I will need to act as if my IP can be legally stolen, and that affects how I behave. You end up putting a lot of effort into protecting the IP by other means.
@onyomi:
Sure, and I think another line of argument that holds some water is that Amazon won’t want their brand tied up with the idea of being a “knock-off”.
But what if Amazon’s take is: “The Amazon Fitbot, every innovation in the Fitbit, but we can sell it to you for less. We have carefully reverse engineered it (and our Fitbot is even made in the same factory).”
In other words, every technical innovation becomes a commodity with incredible rapidity.
But worse enough to create a policy that could stifle someone who can take the base tech of the Fitbit and turn it into an ultra-cheap health monitor for the elderly? It isn’t like fitbit was going to invent its product and then sit around making money doing nothing, it is going to keep innovating and improving anyway. Plus there is already the current threat of another company just making a product that does the same thing already, see the iPhone, personal mp3 players, etc. Unless we have a weird set of laws requiring that companies publish their blueprints but not have a monopoly over them, competitors have to spend effort reverse-engineering, copying the basic idea, or coming up with their own product.
Basically, I think it is obviously bad for plagiarists to win, but I don’t think IP law actually stops plagiarists. They are a fringe case at best, and hard cases make bad law. The overwhelming majority of cases are going to be competitors and innovators trying to work with, on, and around their competition’s products. We had this at my last job where we’d see how our competitor controlled their adhesive mixer, and we adapted their best ideas into our next iteration while keeping our own best ideas.
“In other words, every technical innovation becomes a commodity with incredible rapidity.”
Sounds like it might result in more innovation?
@Dice without Rulers:
IP law doesn’t stop the plagiarists that IP law doesn’t stop.
There is another set of potential plagiarists that IP law does stop, and you can’t prove anything about the size of that set by referring to the fact that the first set exists.
In other words, every technical innovation becomes a commodity with incredible rapidity.
Every technical innovation that is actually made and not subsequently kept as a trade secret. That’s a smaller set, and how much smaller depends on how innovators respond to the proposed change in incentives.
@onyomi:
You know that sword has two edges, and I am really surprised to see you play the naif here.
What is my incentive to innovate unless I already know I can “outmanufacture” the competition?
To me it looks like established companies fight viciously with each other and try not to release products until they think they are hard to reverse engineer. Huge efforts are put into secrecy. The little guy doesn’t even try and compete on that front, they just try and build a niche brand. They have no incentive to make something new unless it also in some way bespoke.
It becomes a very different world when a company that already has a a good reputation can straight up steal your product. I don’t want to buy Fitbit, I wait for Fitbot, because it’s going to be cheaper and better. This is a really different situation than buying a “Fitbjt” knock-off.
And there are other failure modes as well.
Have you noticed how you frequently see 2 or even 3 movies released withing months of each other, all based on the same expired or non-IP concept? And how they are all almost always not very good? Do you understand what is going on there?
Someone writes a script and starts shopping it, some studio buys it, but two other studios that lost the bid write “similar concept” scripts and then they all rush to try and release first. You don’t get great innovation, you get rush to market.
@John Schilling:
In other words, unless you can do something to make sure your innovation is unable to be reverse engineered, you have less incentive to even pursue it.
Which means you spend a great deal of effort turning your “simple” idea into something that can’t be copied. Which is ultimately dead-weight loss, and I am doubting that dead weight loss is better than the dead-weight loss we have in IP protections today.
I certainly don’t think IP protections are without trade-offs, if that is what anyone is seeing me as arguing.
But, if I can come into your field and pick the fruit from your tree, and it’s completely legal, what is your incentive to plant, water and fertilize the tree for the four or ten years it takes to get the tree to maturity?
I definitely don’t claim that weakening or eliminating IP would have all upsides. Any level of IP, including no IP will incentivize or deincentivize different types of creativity. The question is which is better, on net.
Also, this strikes me as analogous to the immigration debate in that I think we set the default wrong. Most people work with a default assumption that a nation shouldn’t have to let anyone in unless they have a very good reason to come. I think you should need a very good reason to stop someone coming in, as the default assumption should be that if you want to buy some property or work for someone and a local wants to sell to you or hire you, then you should be able to do so unless the local community has some very good reason to stop you (say you are a known violent criminal).
Similarly, I think the default assumption right now is that content creators “own” intellectual “properties” like they own physical property and should be able to therefore exercise a high degree of control over how they’re used. Other people have to ask your permission to implement your idea even with their own property.
For the ethical reasons listed in the OP, I believe this is the wrong default. There may be some very good practical reasons for needing some level of IP, but I think there have to be reasons. The default assumption should be that someone else’s intangible, non-scarce, non-rivalrous ideas shouldn’t restrict how I can use my actual body and physical, scarce property.
@HBC You’re right about set theory and that aspect of it. I tend to think that the marginal plagiarists stopped by IP law are not very numerous and the ones that are already unscrupulous enough are already doing it or are already adjacent to it in things like patent trolling or in the knock-off industry or bootlegging. I wonder though, now that I think about it how much the culture of being against knock-offs and plagiarists (or against them in terms of not seeing them as high quality or valuable) might change if we change IP law but I don’t want to turn this into another thread on Chesterton’s Fence. I mean, why is there such a big kerfuffle about who Chesterton sells his ill-gotten and plagiarized goods to, anyway?
If you mean reproducing Fitbit’s functionality, patents aren’t what’s stopping Amazon from doing this; Fitbits aren’t far off from commodity hardware (microcontroller, heart-rate tracker, Bluetooth, some accelerometers), and while the company certainly has a number of software patents surrounding the concept, they can’t effectively stop other companies from doing slightly different things that hash out to the same feature. Lots of companies do: your smartphone’s health app for example is basically a Fitbit in a different form factor. They can sue those other companies for patent infringement, but software patents are incredibly murky and it’s not clear to what extent a lot of them are enforceable. Companies often just decide to go for it anyway.
If you mean Amazon releasing its own knock-off and actually calling it a Fitbit, that’s not covered by patent law and so it’s not what I was talking about.
The default assumption should be that someone else’s intangible, non-scarce, non-rivalrous ideas shouldn’t restrict how I can use my actual body and physical, scarce property.
If the idea was truly non-scarce, you’d be using one of the many others rather than the copyrighted one.
But the default assumption has nothing to do with someone else’s ideas, which as already noted are not IP. And it has nothing to do with your physical property, because whatever it is you are upset about not being allowed to do there are an infinity of other things that you are allowed to do that are physically indistinguishable except for their intellectual content.
The default assumption is that the agreement you made when you acquired a piece of knowledge, whether physically manifest or not, restricts what you can subsequently do with that knowledge. And that when you e.g. buy a legal copy of a “Star Wars” DVD, you are agreeing to not make any unauthorized copies of it or write stories using the characters from it or whatnot.
We make this the default agreement because we know full well that nobody is going to pay a hundred million dollars to make “Star Wars” without also binding everyone they sell tickets, DVDs, novelizations, etc, to not make copies and to not pass on the original without so binding the new owner ad infinitum, and we’d rather not deforest the Amazon basin for the otherwise-inevitable paperwork.
What if I don’t buy any authorized versions of any Star Wars merchandise and therefore never agree, explicitly or implicitly to not copy the idea “hero named Luke Skywalker has a journey in space”?
And then I make my own movie about a guy named Luke Skywalker going on an adventure in space. Why is the default that I “owe” it to Lucasfilm or Disney or whoever to ask permission to use this idea when I never committed explicitly or implicitly not to (and they never asked Frank Herbert, either, btw)?
And “100 million dollar movies won’t get made if we don’t have laws saying people get exclusive rights when they make 100 million dollar movies” is just a statement about how things might change; but it’s not prima facie better for one 100 million space opera to get made instead of 10 10 million space operas.
@onyomi:
I’m just going to repeat the argument I already made:
Have you noticed how you frequently see 2 or even 3 movies released withing months of each other, all based on the same expired or non-IP concept? And how they are all almost always not very good? Do you understand what is going on there?
Someone writes a script and starts shopping it, some studio buys it, but two other studios that lost the bid write “similar concept” scripts and then they all rush to try and release first. You don’t get great innovation, you get rush to market.
I wouldn’t dispute the notion that weakening or eliminating IP would likely result in a larger absolute quantity, and probably a higher percentage of lower-budget, lower-quality films getting made. Though I’m not at all sure that the absolute number of good films floating to the top of that number would be lower, and have a sense that more innovative, risky ideas with unknown actors and unknown premises might get tried.
It might very well be more like the fashion industry which is definitely competitive and fast-moving, but also quite profitable and innovative.
I wouldn’t claim to be certain that overall artist and consumer satisfaction will definitely be higher without IP, but the arguments thus far that they would be much lower are also not nearly convincing enough, to me, to overcome what I see as the prima facie ethical reasons to oppose IP.
What if I don’t buy any authorized versions of any Star Wars … and then I make my own movie about a guy named Luke Skywalker going on an adventure in space?
Then you are a fictional character yourself, because the odds of any real person doing that are about nil and the law isn’t required to pretend otherwise.
Well, I can think of some plausible scenarios, but they all involve deliberate fraud. And the law isn’t required to facilitate almost certain fraud either.
This strikes me as more status quo bias/question begging: taking what “the law” say now as a given and then working from there.
For one thing, even under the current legal regime, I don’t see how me buying a bootleg copy of Star Wars or just reading about its story somewhere else would constitute a legally binding contract, nor do I see why buying a bootleg constitutes fraud of any kind.
And anyway, even buying an officially licensed copy of a movie which says on it “copying is prohibited,” really isn’t a legal contract, it’s just a warning saying we can prosecute you if we want to under the current legal regime.
Now if every book or DVD said in big letters “by buying this you are promising never to try to make any money off the ideas herein!!!” then that would be one thing, but I think people would also be a lot more careful about what they buy in such a case.
But without IP, no one would buy copies of anything that legally bound them never to make use of the ideas therein, so in the “no IP” hypothetical, it’s moot. Stating what people are or are not agreeing to, explicitly or implicitly, when they buy something in the current system, again, is question begging, because the question is whether or not the current system is justifiable.
My first reaction is “Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Snort. Gasp. Oh that’s a good one.” (Not kind, I know. Sorry.)
More seriously, have you read what is in the “standard” software disclaimer? How careful do think that people are about this?
Also, you and John are talking at cross with each other. You are talking about bootlegs and he is talking about people who have really never seen Star Wars.
Well yes, the point is taken about people not reading the fine print, but that’s a whole other issue (and, I think, a real problem–not with the buyers but with the legality of including so much fine print that no one will ever read it until it’s too late). And we are also talking about media companies, not just individuals.
But generally speaking, when I buy, say a DVD from a store, even now, I’m not entering into a contract with the media company who produced it. I’m engaging in a transaction with the store. If the store had to buy it from the media company then maybe they are committed to not, say, charging admission to show the film without permission, but I am not committed to the same agreement just because I bought the DVD from a store that bought it from the original content creators.
And even if John can convince me that yes I AM committing to that by buying a DVD covered in fine print, that still assumes the current legal framework, which is what is at issue.
@onyomi:
Unless the producer requires that the distributor requires that the theater stipulate such as part of the ticket sale contract.
Just like how, when buying software through a reseller, you still end up agreeing to the same contract.
Edit (based on your last paragraph edit):
But the right to freely contract is part of your overall philosophy, the framework you are trying to fit this into, right? I don’t think you have a leg to stand on there. You would have to make those kinds of contracts illegal to accomplish what you want and that seems to be in contradiction to your stated philosophy.
Now if every book or DVD said in big letters “by buying this you are promising never to try to make any money off the ideas herein!!!”
You are, I suspect deliberately, conflating ideas with specific exmpressions. Ideas, for I think the third time, ARE NOT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. They cannot be patented, copyrighted, or trademarked. Your thinking on this subject would be clearer and your arguments would be more persuasive if you never used the word “idea” in this context again.
That said, every book or DVD sold in the civilized world today comes with an implied but binding legal agreement to never try to make money by using copies of the specific, novel expressions therein(*).
And anyway, even buying an officially licensed copy of a movie which says on it “copying is prohibited,” really isn’t a legal contract,
It is close enough as makes no difference under the present legal regime. And under your preferred legal regime, make no mistake, it will be an actual contract, quite possibly ink on paper in the presence of a notary, that you have to sign before you can open your account at Amazon and order your first book or DVD.
Which, incidentally, means that “no IP” in law gives large corporate enterprises even more power in the real IP market, because they can better absorb the overhead of a network of pedantically detailed explicit agreements between everyone who trades in IP.
* Modulo fair use, licensed use, etc.
Well you still haven’t explained, so far as I can tell, the difference between “idea” and “execution.” Maybe you are working with a narrower definition of “idea” than I am.
To me, the idea of writing a story about a hero on a journey and the much more specific, detailed idea about a hero named Luke Skywalker who goes on a journey with Leia, Han, Chewy, et al are all ideas. If all that is just “idea” and not execution, then is it okay if I copy the script and not the movie based on the script? At what point does the script become detailed enough that it is “execution” of an idea and not just an idea?
Is the actual movie an “execution” of an idea? Okay, but it’s still an idea in the sense that it is not tangible. The “movie” is not any particular film reel. The movie is a particular arrangement of information. The movie, like the script it’s based on, IS an idea to arrange sounds and images and pixels in a certain way, else it would not be reducible to 1s and 0s for copying onto my computer.
And if it were really about the physical instance of the idea, then once the movie was copied onto my hard drive, playing on my monitor, through my speakers, then it would be mine. But it’s not, of course, because what Paramount or whoever owns is not the speakers playing the music, but the right to arrange information in a certain way. Information arranged in a particular way is what I call an “idea.”
If you want to split hairs and say IP is not owning a particular arrangement of information, but rather owning the right to arrange physical property, like hard drives and paper and ink, in a particular pattern according with a specific arrangement of information, then okay. That still sounds a lot like “owning” an “idea” to me.
Star Wars was an $11-million-dollar space opera, which is roughly $44 million in today’s dollars. The original budget was $8 million ($32 million).
Compare with Jaws, whose $4 million ($16 million) budget had ballooned to $9 million ($36 million).
I think the proper treatment of intellectual property requires a balance, there should be rewards for creating something, but the rewards shouldn’t last all that long either.
Personally, I’d prefer to see either a short max of 2 18 year terms (so the creator of a work gets an automatic 18 years exclusive use and can renew that once if they wish to pay a modest fee) or some sort of system that had an exponential cost curve (so Disney can keep Snow White protected as long as they’re willing to pay but the cost 50 years after the fact is well into the billions of dollars). With the exponential curve aimed at allowing small works to profit for a few decades, and major works to profit for 30-50 years depending on their market value. That way things are falling out of copy protection before they’re too long forgotten.
I would certainly be in favor of making it harder/more expensive for companies to keep renewing the rights.
But I think the idea that IP law must strike a balance between incentivizing and rewarding creation and not preventing further innovation is somewhat question begging. It assumes that some IP (if not maximal IP)=more artistic creation, which I don’t take as a given.
Right now, for example, Marvel and Stan Lee could not make an X-Men movie if they wanted to. I understand they sold the rights and have nothing against a contract saying, in effect, “we won’t make a movie with these characters for x number of years,” but that shouldn’t bind everyone else, which is what Sony owning the “rights” to X-Men effectively does.
In other words, we’d probably have more X-Men movies by now without IP than with, and the original creators would probably be making more money off it too.
So stronger IP=more art, more rewards for creators does not seem a given to me at all (nor that there is a “sweet spot” of moderate IP encouraging maximal creativity; what if no IP is the sweet spot for maximum creativity? I’m not saying I’m sure it is, but I also don’t think we can take it as a given that “some IP”=more creative work.)
The funniest part of that agreement was that Fox and Disney had to go before a judge and argue whether Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were Avengers or X-men.
That sounds hilarious. Does a transcript exist?
A few years back, Marvel argued that the X-Men are not humans. (Because “dolls” are taxed more than “toys.”)
Popehat brings to our attention a legal brief, complete with choice proverbs in said language, arguing that Paramount can’t own a copyright on the Klingon language.
We can take that as a given because of a thing we have called history. IP developed because the natural standard is no IP and that caused tons of problems with adulterated bootlegs, creators being disincentivized to create and so on — issues that exploded after the invention of the movable type printing press. So authorities started issuing bans on copying for five, ten, or fifteen years; a so-called motu propio. (Goofy as this fact is, the best place I can think of to easily get hold of a translation of one of these to see what it was like is Mondschein’s translation of Agrippa’s fencing treatise of 1553.) Those eventually evolved into the modern system of copyright the same way everything else evolved into modernity.
(In fact, long before the printing press and the Renaissance there were some famous copyright cases, such as that where an Irish court in the early middle ages determined that the owner of a book also had the rights to determine who could and couldn’t copy it — a famous book was stolen so that an illicit copy could be made, then returned; the owner of the original demanded the copy be turned over to him. Cattle breeding law was applied to determine the correct principle, IIRC.)
A lot of pirate types tend to treat IP as though it were a tool developed by Disney to shit on the little guy’s (apparently pure and entirely unmotivated by potential financial gain from use of a well-known character) desire to make his own Mickey Mouse comics, but in truth it’s a gradually developed mechanism to deal with observed real-world problems.
The history you describe could just as easily be interpreted as: with the rise of printing technology, opportunities to make money selling writing exploded, but it was really competitive and the producers started lobbying the crown for various protections to make it easier on them.
China had no effective IP, but popular literature still exploded around the 15th-16th c. Publishers took various means to distinguish their editions as official, “authorized” editions–including special commentaries and illustrations, etc.
Why shouldn’t the little guys be able to use a well-known character like Mickey Mouse?
Copyright is supposed to be temporary. It’s supposed to expire at some point. The big companies have lobbied to extend copyright so far that people have started thinking that permanent copyrights are the natural state of things. And yes, Disney is one of the biggest ones.
@Jiro:
So, Universal is the little guy now?
I am a composer. Do you think I should have ownership over my own works?
Intellectual property is very important in music. It helps to prevent direct plagiarism and is very simple for the composer, legally, so that no one has to apply for special licenses or pay anything. If you make something, it is protected, unless it is a direct copy of someone else’s work. Simple.
Arrangements of other people’s compositions, recordings of public domain works, among other things, are technically intellectual property. People rip off of others all the time, that is 99.9% of music, but they rarely plagiarize.
Sure, it creates inconveniences for listeners when people don’t give 100% free and wide access to their music, like Prince, but those are their rights to do what they see fit with their music. If you don’t want to pay for the music, that’s fine, but you shouldn’t expect the artists to work for free. Works enter public domain after something like 130 years, too long imo, but publishers like their money. I think it should be shortened to something like 80 years. That doesn’t mean I think we should strip composers rights and tell them that their music is not theirs because they heard someone else play a certain chord progression or listened to Bach once.
There is a reason people don’t want someone like Trump using their music at his rallies. It creates an association that could be damaging to the music itself. Therefore the composer should have the right to prevent that damaging association. Kind of like how you would not want McDonalds setting up a billboard on your front lawn because “the earth should be for everyone” or something, especially after you have put so much time and energy into the landscaping.
All music is cleverly disguised thievery, but that doesn’t mean it is stolen, and it certainly doesn’t entitle everyone else to take it. IP may not be important in every situation in the world, but that does not mean it isn’t important in some.
I’m pretty sure there was nothing approaching our idea of intellectual property in 18th c. Vienna, yet Mozart and Beethoven still managed to get credit for and get paid for their work.
Plus, the internet may make it easier for people to copy and distribute one’s songs without paying (with or without IP), but it also makes it easier for smaller artists to reach an audience without the intermediary of record labels, etc. I get the impression that things like “patreon” (reminiscent of the “patronage” people like Mozart enjoyed) are probably more profitable for a lesser known composer to get paid directly by a small core of fans than being paid cents on the dollar for CD sales. Without IP, I’d predict you’d get fewer mega-stars able to make hundreds and millions of dollars off their creations, but a larger number of people able to make a decent living.
You also concede that most composition is at least somewhat derivative. How do you draw a non-arbitrary line about who gets to “own” these ideas (and that’s what a song is, really: the idea to arrange sounds in a certain way)?
The idea of McDonald’s setting up a billboard on your front lawn is not analogous to a politician you don’t like playing your song at their rally. The lawn is a physical, scarce piece of real estate. Whatever part of it is occupied or blocked by the sign is part of your lawn you can’t enjoy.
A politician you don’t like playing your song at his rally doesn’t detract from anybody else’s ability to enjoy the song, and I don’t see why anyone should get control over how their ideas are perceived. We would certainly think it ridiculous if an author were able to sue someone for writing a negative review, for example.
While the general distinction between rivalrous and nonrivalrous goods is well taken, this can actually be untrue. Acquiring bad associations can detract from people’s ability to enjoy a work of art. (Albeit in ways that may or may not have anything to do with IP.) A fair number of people avoided Wagner’s works in the post-WWII era due to the music’s associations with Nazism, even though Wagner himself obviously predated the Nazis. I likewise suspect it’ll be a while before we see “The Cosby Show” in wide syndication again, even though nothing has changed about the show itself.
If a particular song becomes associated with a political figure, it’s not unlikely that it will inspire revulsion in that figure’s enemies for a while afterward. Whether that should give the creator (or the copyright holder, which in popular music probably isn’t the creator) the right to prevent its use is a separate issue, but it’s not an imaginary concern.
To clarify, I don’t mean to imply that songs and other works of art can’t acquire all kinds of associations in the minds of all kinds of audiences–some of them, I’m sure, the artist wouldn’t be happy about. I, for one, can certainly not think of “Like a Rock” without thinking of a Chevrolet truck.
But I don’t take it as a given that an artist should have control of how others perceive his work. If a critic can hurt peoples’ view of a piece of work by writing a negative review of it, why should a politician have to ask permission before playing a particular piece of music at an event, especially assuming he’s not charging admission?
This also relates somewhat to the issue of defamation, which seems a somewhat harder case, but I’m also not sure one is “entitled” to a particular reputation in the eyes of others. I find it really despicable (though seemingly pretty impotent most of the time), for example, when businesses try to threaten people into taking down negative online reviews (has happened to people I know). One can certainly imagine more pernicious cases of personal defamation, which I guess would count as “libel,” but that sort of gets into another territory(?)
For the first part, Are you an expert on 18th c. views of intellectual property? I am not, but I will guess that you aren’t either. That is a weak argument to make, and way beyond the scope of this topic. Though I will make one assumption, plagiarism was taken as seriously then as it is now. Maybe more.
Second part, specifically how something is sold will always be in flux, and this has nothing to do with the topic. I am also going to assume that you don’t know much about this area and are guessing still.
Third part. So what? Everything in existence is derivative. That doesn’t make ownership of material or intellectual property null. The language we speak is entirely derivative, but we do not make literary works public domain because the language used for them is not 100% original. I don’t think it is possible for humans to make a non-arbitrary line. I would love to see them try. I am happy that people made a choice to protect artists in their legislation.
The fourth part. This is where it gets VERY grey and disputed. Here is where the actual issue lies. The analogy isn’t good, it’s true. But it’s not entirely bad. When I said “It creates an association that could be damaging to the music itself.”, I should have said, It creates an association that could be damaging to the reputation of the composer. which could then be damaging to the music itself. Which is still a weak argument. Do people have a right to protect their reputation? I don’t know, I suppose it is not a question that can’t be answered generally, it is situational.
And no, I don’t think authors should sue over negative reviews, though that is also entirely situational. Think of the libel laws that were in place to prevent intentional smear and slander by rivals, etc. They were horrible pieces of legislation that led to gross ambiguities and censorship of speech, though they probably had good intentions. That’s how experiments in political science work. It is complicated.
Music is universal, yet I want to be acknowledged for the hard work and time and money it takes to create interesting music. And there is always a market for music. The intellectual property rights exists so that musicians can survive in an already intensely competitive world. If musicians couldn’t own their own compositions, I think there would be new meaning to the words “starving artist”.
See online piracy
See libel laws
Debates about this issue are all over the place
I realize that some of what I write comes out somewhat condescending. I apologize for the tone
“Music is universal, yet I want to be acknowledged for the hard work and time and money it takes to create interesting music. And there is always a market for music. The intellectual property rights exists so that musicians can survive in an already intensely competitive world. If musicians couldn’t own their own compositions, I think there would be new meaning to the words “starving artist”.”
This strikes me as question begging.
Musicians deserve to be able to make a living writing music. Therefore, laws which supposedly exist to protect that ability function as intended and are a good idea. Doesn’t follow.
Indeed, that is a very strong argument against intellectual property. The existence of laws causes people to care only about the enforcement of laws and not actual plagiarism.
Yes, notice that the same people who made “Copying is not Theft” and “All Creative Work is Derivative” also made “The Attribution Song.”
I think you might be placing too much emphasis on the patent troll kind of people and the ones that abuse the system. Like focusing on the rotten apple instead of looking at the healthy ones. The only time most musicians care about IP laws are when they hear someone else copying their music EXACTLY, like sampling, or so close to exactly that it is not likely it was accidental. Because the possibilities in music are approaching infinity, making a series of notes and rhythms the exact way someone else did is extraordinarily improbable, barring out things that are basic. You can’t copyright a chord for example, or a progression. Harmony is a language, but melody is like a series of words in a sentence. There really are not many musical plagiarism cases.
What the big music corporations do is strictly business, in the name of making money, and entirely different. Their laws are mysterious and oppressive, don’t confuse them with actual musicians who just want to protect their work. These guys twist and interpret laws incorrectly, and spend unholy amounts of money making sure the law works exactly the way they want it to to maximize profit. That’s a fault of our justice systems, not IP laws.
You might find Carl Jung’s collective unconscious concept interesting.
I understand why IP laws are in place, why people want to own things, and I also understand that some people think ownership of materials or ideas itself is a strange concept.
I’m not sure if you guys create things, but once you put yourself in that position, your view might change. Maybe the feelings of ownership and protection are primal, like the instinct to protect your child. They are selfish, but the right kind of selfish, the noble selfishness.
Also, B.F Skinner has some interesting view on this exact topic in relation to music in his book Walden Two. It’s only a few paragraphs, I’ll see if I can find them later.
I am an academic writer who has published articles and who is currently trying to get a book published.
As David Friedman has described elsewhere, I fear more that no one will steal my ideas than the reverse. I released my dissertation under an open license making it free for everyone to download online. I would be upset if someone else tried to take credit for my ideas without attribution, of course, but that’s plagiarism–attitudes about which, as stated, seem to be unrelated or even inversely related to strength of IP laws (cultures without strong IP laws strongly frown on plagiarism).
Of course, as an academic, I write for reputation and prestige, which can translate into a good academic job, not for actual book sales, which, outside the case of a very popular textbook, never amount to much, so it’s true my livelihood may not seem to depend on IP as much as that of a professional composer. That said, I do create things and I don’t feel proprietary about them in the way you describe. I worry more about no one reading my stuff than about them copying it too closely, even without attribution (though obviously I’d strongly prefer for people to attribute when they really have been influenced by me).
I think I share the feelings you describe.
I put many of my compositions online for free, I even offer the transcriptions for free if requested. That is slowly becoming the norm. Soundcloud and youtube and bandcamp etc. make all that simple.
But I still value IP because it provides a sense of security. If people could just take my music or my research and call it their own, I wouldn’t offer it so freely. Maybe you don’t worry about your work being copied because plagiarism is so rare. It isn’t a normal thought for most people because there are protections in place. I don’t worry about my work being copied or stolen, because I am used to the sense of security our culture has established in artistic and academic fields.
I’m working on writing a book of etudes, and also some practical analysis of a certain composer. Things like that I would charge a small fee for, because I put so much effort in to them. If I couldn’t claim the works as my own intellectual property, how could I sell the books? Please don’t say charity and crowd funding.
Have you heard of the guy with the enormously expensive violin, one of the best violinists in the world, going into the new york subway, playing, and being completely ignored? That is what it is like when people don’t know your reputation. IP affects reputation and, therefore. often, how people view the work itself.
I suppose if art were directly subsidized by a type of government, it would be a different story. If artists were paid a living wage based on their contribution to the cultural landscape or something. I think some countries have laws that help artists financially, like Ireland. But the US only subsidizes banks and oil. Things like that
See, if it’s about reputation, then I think IP is irrelevant, or even counter-productive. IP is just about having exclusive rights to monetize certain content in certain ways, not about claiming the reputation as a creator. Often times the best way to gain reputation is by giving away something good for free.
There is the case of the famous violinist getting ignored when playing in the subway, but I don’t think the issue was the failure to charge money, but rather the setting. If he had advertised “world famous violinist gives free concert on world famous instrument” at Carnegie Hall, he probably would have packed the place.
Reputation outside pop music and Hollywood films and professional sports may require trappings or expert approval for the average person to recognize (the average person doesn’t know, without being told by an expert, the difference between a nice violin and a Stradivarius or a merely good violinist and a really great violinist), but that doesn’t mean it requires monetization of a particular kind. The reputation in such cases comes from the acclaim of the experts.
Do you have a theory about this? I think you should really explain what you mean, rather than leaving it as a rhetorical exercise.
When you say franchise, it makes it sound like really mean a blockbuster action movie, not a movie in general. Such movies probably bank on the existing fandom. Without copyright on the source material, those dynamics might be very different. If people want to see stories about familiar characters, maybe that could be better provided without copyright and maybe that would be better.
But the general statement is also true. Most movies are based on existing IP, but usually obscure. Film adaptations usually serve as advertisements for the books, rather than vice versa. I recently asked a screenwriter about this and didn’t get much of an answer. Partly it may be protection from copyright suits. But she thought that producers were bad at judging movie proposals and like source material as a concrete thing to grasp onto.
Though I don’t think this is the only reason for the trend (and if I recall, there are some real statistics backing up the apparent increase in percentage of new movies based on existing franchises, and I don’t think that even counts, for example, a new film adaptation of a novel), where I see IP contributing to this trend is the following:
Hollywood films have tended to become bigger and bigger budget affairs. Audiences seem willing to go to the theater, especially, for the “wow” factor a big budget can buy. But big budget=big financial risk. One way to mitigate this risk is by choosing films with a built-in audience (also hiring the same stars to play every role, but that’s another issue): you know there are just a certain number of people who are going to see a new Star Wars or Batman movie no matter how bad it is. Thus, it’s almost a safe bet. It’s not guaranteed to be a huge money maker, but it’s almost guaranteed not to be a loser.
But part of what makes it a safe bet is IP. If there were twenty other independent Batman films being produced that year and your giant budget monstrosity turns out not even to be one of the better ones, then you could be out a lot of money, especially when the unofficial DVDs hit the streets almost immediately.
Thus, without IP, I predict fewer really big budget films would get made, but a much greater variety of lower budget films would get made. I know, this is beginning to sound like Bollywood, but I’d rather watch the best of 10 different X-Men movies that came out this year than the one huge budget movie produced by the one authorized producer starring the same people who are in every movie.
So, I’m not even sure a greater percentage of new films would be completely novel without IP (due to the fact that now everyone can make a Batman movie with soundtrack by Aerosmith without paying anyone), but it does seem like a greater total number of new or unfamiliar franchises (as well as actors) might be given a chance, since the risk-reward ratio would change (seemingly in favor of trying more new ideas and people on lower budgets).
Look up Nollywood, the Nigerian Film industry. It’s the most productive film industry in the world, maybe second behind Bollywood. Yet you’ve never heard of it, the reason being that its films are garbage. Although Nigeria is a large market, it has poor protections for intellectual property, so a week after a film comes out, everyone’s selling bootlegs. As a result, studios have no incentive to invest in high quality writing, directing, or visuals. If they produced a blockbuster, it would be the bootleggers who profited. Instead the best way for them to maximize their profits is to churn out a new film every week so that by the time bootleggers get their hands on one, they’ve already released the next.
Some of what you’re saying sounds nice, but I feel you’re looking at the positives and failing to imagine the downsides. Its just as easy to imagine that in your world, instead of exporting its culture across the globe, the US watches the films of whatever country stepped in to make expensive films a viable investment.
Hong Kong has pretty poor protections for intellectual property. Anything can be bought bootlegged there. Hong Kong still has managed to produce movies for a long time, which we *have* heard of.
Furthermore, even if your argument was correct, it would only mean there should be intellectual property that last at least a week. Not 95 years. There are lots of media that would be lost if it wasnt for piracy, computer games being the most notorious, but also including old time radio.
We produced lots of great literature, art, inventions, etc. before IP.
Yes. Generally of very limited distribution, to suit the tastes of the wealthy who could afford to be a patron of the talented creators.
IP laws allow a means for the creator to sell his wares to the masses without some other creator skimming the profits, and so promotes the Sort of Thing That Is Liked by the common man.
I think the better part of the democratization of media has been due to, well… new media. Books appealing to the common man got produced when printing technology made books affordable for the common man, which also made it easier to learn to read. The gramophone and radio turned every home into a concert hall, etc.
As a sinologist (correct assumption?), do you think China produces a lot of innovation? Because effectively, piracy is rampant and IP does not exist in China , or at least did not up until a handful of years ago.
There seems to be broad agreement that creatively modern China has not much to offer. The Party has to literally limit or ban many foreign shows to make their own people watch Chinese media. They even banned the Big Bang Theory, for god’s sake.
Regarding technical innovation, people often argue that China now files the most patents in the world, but as far as I know this is largely the result of universities being evaluated per amount of patents filed. Again, the consensus seems to be that China has very little cutting edge innovation.
This is obviously a difficult example, since we have some confounding factors, namely an education system built on rote learning and a political environment not exactly conducive to free thought.
The question of whether the Chinese, in fact, are innovative, and if not, why not, is a big one among Sinologists, to be sure. Historically the answer is a pretty obviously “yes,” and they didn’t have IP then.
More recently, I think the answer is still “yes,” but it tends to happen in more non-obvious, incremental ways–lots of little improvements in the way things are done–and may have a lot more to do with culture and style of education than the law or lack thereof. The Chinese education system, for example, famously rewards a lot of rote memorization.
Also, they did lift the ban on Big Bang Theory, which I’m pretty sure was never effectively enforced, anyway.
Intellectual property is not “property.”
The entire concept of property is man-made. Just because you don’t lose it if I take it doesn’t mean it’s not property.
Land is “real property.” That distinguishes it from portable property, like a diamond ring. If someone doesn’t like the concept of people, shudder, owning land, they could simply come up with an arbitrary rule, and say “if you can’t take it with you, it’s not property” or “since I can use it without you knowing about it, it’s not property.” “Do you know some people have ‘property’ and they aren’t even around to defend it? And they demand the government spend time enforcing their, snicker, ‘property rights’?”
Going forward, the interesting things aren’t going to be who can make the most shoes. It’s going to be who can decide what shoes are best.
Yes, property in land and stuff and one’s one person are all just social conventions, but the fact that intellectual property is non-scarce and non-rivalrous makes it pretty different from those others. And, as stated before, IP is really a claim about how other people can use their own scarce, rivalrous property, so that is a pretty big difference as well.
Mmmmm – just arguing for the hell of it.
Tuna casserole case: I and you are both private citizens. You are not churning out casserole dinners based on my recipe for sale. Were I a restaurateur/celebrity chef whose signature dish was “you will not believe plain old tuna casserole could be so good”, and you try to reverse-engineer it and work out my recipe so you can sell cheaper knock-off versions of my casserole in your chain of casual dining restaurants, and your version gets eaten enough so that people think my tuna casserole is the same thing, only overpriced, so they don’t bother eating my tuna casserole which gets a bad reputation due to your inferior version – I think I have a right to seek legal recourse. You are affecting my livelihood, both in taking custom away from me and in tarnishing my reputation (potential customers think all my dishes are probably as bad as the knock-off version you made of my tuna casserole) so that I lose not alone current but future custom, as well as giving me the repute of being bad at my trade (that I am a bad chef who cooks lousy food).
Intellectual property is not simply an idea (that would be conceptual art and if a lot of it stayed at the “this is the idea” stage it’d be better for the long-suffering public), it involves the creation of something. There is physical effort and labour involved as well. I had to think of a variation on tuna casserole, I had to try out different recipes before I found one that worked, I had to source the ingredients, I had to perfect the preparation and cooking and serving of the dish. You had no contribution in all that, you stole my recipe and are using it for your own profit without permission or paying me.
That, I think, is different from “you come to my house as a private person, I cook tuna casserole for the meal, you enjoy it and ask for the recipe, I freely give it to you, you cook it at home for your own family and friends, no money or profit is changing hands or being made by anyone”.
Property is a claim on something scarce. …you are actually claiming a right to control how I use MY body and MY property.
Human bodies are not scarce. We currently have seven billion of them and indeed, we have so many that people are saying it would be best if we lost a large percentage of them. It’s easy to churn out new human bodies, one couple can replace themselves many times over. Human bodies are such a not-scarce resource, you have no claim on “my body is my property” if you’re relying on the scarcity argument. Why shouldn’t a people-trafficker sweep you off the streets and sell you as domestic labour/factory labour? You are not your own property with property-protection rights!
RE: J.K. Rowling – there have been two cases (at least) taken by authors/their estates claiming she had ripped off their work. If we accept your argument, even if she had been a plagiarist, the person taking the case would not have been entitled to recourse and Rowling’s success would have been defence enough – she got rich and you didn’t because people liked what she did with your idea better.
Not sure about the effect on new drug production, but I’m generally pretty unimpressed with the new drugs created in recent decades, most of which are for things like erections or else are sexier versions of things we could already kind of do more simply before.
The reason they’re all making erection/sexual dysfunction drugs is that is where the money is. That’s why the “female version of Viagra” (or rather, something to treat low libido in women) is visualised as such a money-spinning dream; there’s half the population out there that could be tapped for this! Visions of billion-dollar sales led Sprout Pharmaceuticals to buy the licence for the drug, then start a pressure publicity campaign to get the FDA to allow it (after it had already refused it) and then they were sold to Valeant, which doesn’t do R&D itself either, simply buys old drugs and marks up the prices, also because they imagined all that free money lying around to be scooped up. Reality has not been quite so rosy (and I can’t find a shred of sympathy in myself for any of the vultures and jackals involved, from the company founders to the billionaire willing to pump capital in).
I think they might be using ‘scarce’ in the meaning ‘not effectively unlimited’. If you could churn out humans at the rate, cost and difficulty that you can churn out copies of a computer file, then they wouldn’t be scarce in this meaning. But since they’re finite, and it takes a lot of time and effort to raise every single one, they’re not scarce.
You mean, they are scarce.
Mao Zedong famously said “what China has is people.” One can imagine the negative possible consequences of a political leader with such an attitude.
More importantly, human bodies are very scarce for their owners. I only have two arms, two legs, one pancreas, etc. and most of these parts are still not replaceable.
Yeah, I messed up the negation.
“Human bodies are not scarce.”
Then why are wages positive?
So I discovered this wonderful blog about five months ago, and since then I’ve devoured the entire archive and started looking around the internet for more Scott Alexander to read. I’ve been gravitating also towards Less Wrong and the rationalist movement in general, and become a lot more cognizant how I think about certain issues and situations.
Yesterday I noticed something that concerned me a little: I stumbled upon a YouTube channel dispensing very forceful libertarian-flavoured videos, and I was having mixed reactions to them, oscillating between intrigue and a kind of repulsion. Before I knew it I found myself searching Slate Star Codex to see if Scott had ever mentioned the person who made the videos. I realised that essentially I was hoping that Scott would tell me what to think about what I was watching, so that I could feel more certain in my attitude.
Obviously it’s a bad habit to be so enamoured with one particular person or community that you just agree with them no matter what, but on the other hand, after thinking about it for a while I came to the conclusion that reading what other people think about something before you make a decision about it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea – and, of course, nobody has time to exhaustively investigate every controversial issue.
I wondered if anyone had any thoughts on this – is it possible to be surrounded by a certain flavour of opinion without, to some extent, letting those views prevent you from developing your own?
>Is it possible to be surrounded by a certain flavour of opinion without, to some extent, letting >those views prevent you from developing your own?
That may depend as much on you as on what you are surrounding yourself with. Humans influence one another to be sure. If you are concerned about that, perhaps you could read some Left Wing media sources too, in addition to Libertarian sources, to balance things out.
Also, you could do some inner work, through psychotherapy, or meditation, or various personal growth techniques, with the aim of developing a stronger sense of who you are, how you feel, what you think etc. That might help you to have more awareness of who you are, rather than jumping too quickly to imitate others too completely in their ideas or behaviors.
There is left-libertarian as well as right-libertarian. It’s just that left-libertarian isn’t very popular (as compared to right-libertarian).
“Left-libertarian” is the label for several very different things.
Libertarian is used fairly inconsistently, right and left, and certainly I am no expert on either.
Well I think part of your instinct was absolutely correct: there’s a definite hazard in forming an opinion right away, particularly on a topic outside of your area of expertise. You can easily get “stuck” on whatever crazy idea you first settle on, with inertia making it more difficult to adjust your beliefs later as better evidence comes along.
That said, Scott is a very smart guy and an excellent writer but he isn’t the pope of rational analysis. I’m often curious what he has to say but ultimately each field has it’s own experts and fact-checkers. Looking into questions of political economy in principle shouldn’t be too different from looking into a question any other soft science. Find a review on the subject by a reputable author, use that as a starting point to further investigate the issue, and see where it takes you.
I’m not worried about occasional Scott-olatry here because, unlike Big Yud, he actively discourages it. I don’t think we’re overly at risk of falling into cultism here.
HOW DARE YOU SPEAK OF THE RIGHTFUL CALIPH IN SUCH A FASHION!
Opinions are sort of like musical styles. No one’s drops down from the sky without some previous influence.
It certainly isn’t wrong to look up an influential thinker to see what their opinion of a topic is. Instead of treating their opinion as authoritative, treat their opinion as Bayesian evidence.
Opinions are like assholes: the internet’s full of them.
If you’re going to outsource your rationality, there are worse people to outsource it to than Scott. Yeah, he keeps encouraging us to think for ourselves, but seriously, who’s got the time? Especially after spending hours catching up with the comments here….
Scott’s disposition to charitably interpret and evaluate contradicting claims sure does provide some trust that I am not ready to give to a lot of other people. Still, I think that there are some issues where his writing occasionally shows more bias than is usual for him, *cough* sjws *cough*, so I would take his reviews of these topics with a grain of salt.
That being said, if I am totally honest with myself and disregard my cultural conditioning to always form an opinion by myself:
P(Scott being correct about something)>P(me being correct about something)
Anyone in Germany who uses melatonin? Where can I buy some? Amazon gives me lists of green bio-friendly food supplements which may or may not be what I’m looking for.
I am not a legal expert, but I am told melatonin is illegal without a prescription (!!) in Germany. At least, my brother-in-law took a bottle he had bought in American to a pharmacist to ask a question and was told coldly “OK, leave that bottle on the counter, walk away, and I won’t call the cops.”
YMMV!
Yeah, there’s a surprising amount of medicine that’s freely available in my country but prescription-only in Germany. They seem to only sell aspirine without prescription around here, so I really should’ve expected that.
Illegal?! It’s sold OTC around here!
Well then, I suppose it’s confiscated OTC over there.
I think that it is legal to by it from an EU country such as the Netherlands, France, or Italy. That link is the 0.1mg dose. Most people take doses that are way too big. Some people say that 0.3mg is optimal. Others say that the legality of importing changed a few months ago.
Thanks Douglas.
Things have changed, Melationin is now legally available without a prescription, daily doses have to be below 2 gram.
Online some German forums recommend this merchant, I have never orderem from them personally though: https://www.medizinfuchs.de/preisvergleich/melatonin-1%2C5-mg-kapseln-60-st-espara-gmbh-pzn-4128530.html
For some time many people have claimed that top tier universities don’t add much value. Obviously people who went to Harvard do better on average than those who went to a tier 2-3 school. The issue is whether “people who went to Harvard” do better than “people who got into Harvard and didn’t attend a top tier school.”
If you can get into a top tier undergrad you can probably get into a tier2 school with a scholarship (or at least into a tier 2.5-3). Is it actually worth paying for a tier1 education?
I don’t have data, so take it for what it is worth, but in discussions with fellow thirty somethings, the consensus is that it depends on what field you want to get into. If you are planning on going to medical school or law school, it doesn’t add much value. Maybe a slightly better chance of getting in to a top tier one but not enough to make it worth it. On the other hand if you want to go to work in the finance industry (i.e. Wall Street) it makes sense to go to the most prestigious undergraduate institution you can get into. Similarly if you want to work as engineer (including software), a degree from MIT or Caltech will have currency throughout your career.
For what it’s worth, I have math and CS degrees from a third-tier university, and it hasn’t been any kind of a blocker for me in my career. I have coworkers with degrees from prestigious universities, and they aren’t any further along on their careers than I am. I also haven’t seen much difference in quality of employee based off of university. Pretty much all the best programmers I’ve ever known skipped college.
Also, when I’m interviewing potential hires I don’t give the education section of their resume any more than a glance. Maybe if they’ve never had a job before I would put a little bit of weight on a better university, but once the interview starts I couldn’t care less where they went.
Were you professionally active during the crash after dotcom 1.0? That’s the time in my career when traditional credentials seemed the most important.
Also, fwiw I’m on the east coast.
I think that’s the point really, Brad. When employers can’t get enough warm bodies (or if they didn’t go to Big Name U themselves), they don’t care where you got the training as long as you can do the job.
Any kind of crash or economic downturn, where there are more applicants than vacancies, and then they start using credentials as a filtering process: it may not be necessary to have a Big Name U qualification, but if they have five hundred CVs landing on the desks in HR, winnowing them out by saying “Don’t consider anything from Nowheresville College” makes it a lot easier to cut down on possible interviews.
but if they have five hundred CVs landing on the desks in HR, winnowing them out by saying “Don’t consider anything from Nowheresville College” makes it a lot easier to cut down on possible interviews
I don’t think that happens in STEM at least, though it might in more network-dependent fields like e.g. investment banking.
I’m told there will be about forty resumes on my desk tomorrow morning for an engineering position, and I won’t be roundfiling any of them for “wrong school”. What people have done, counts far more – and for recent graduates, that means internships, research, and relevant extracurriculars. If you’ve done nothing but study, I’ll be looking for someone who did graduate work with the best professors in the specific field, which isn’t quite the same as the best schools. If all else fails, coming from a top-tier university is a tiebreaker.
Mostly, if you’re looking for a STEM job, the reason to go to a top-tier university is that it increases your odds of working under a top professor or getting the best internships – but you need to work at those things specifically rather than assume having the school’s name on your resume will do the heavy lifting. And if you know specifically what you want to be doing, look for the professors first.
Hiring of software engineers is full of voodoo. For such a technical field, it’s absolutely packed with “well, it feels right to me” reasoning when deciding who to hire.
My career started in the early 2000s, after the dot com bubble burst, but before Web 2.0 took off. I am in the Bay Area though, so I’m sure we probably had less of a hit than the East Coast did. Also though, my career started with writing device drivers for a gigantic company, so I don’t think that job was all that affected by the bubble burst.
In software, MIT/Caltech/Carnegie Mellon/Stanford (probably a few others) are golden for your first job, especially if you want a job at one of the big tech companies. Late career, not so much. They’re still going to HELP, mind you, but not nearly so much.
There are exceptions, however, that might be good to note. It’s well known that the big tech companies pulls strongly from Stanford… but Apple for some reason gets a lot of people from the far cheaper San Jose State, as does Yahoo. Microsoft pulls from the top-tier but public University of Washington.
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/alumni-network-2/
For STEM the university does not matter
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/728117181171400705
a thought/chart
The claim I have seen is that, if you are accepted to a top school, going to that school instead of one a little lower will give you a higher salary in your first job but not thereafter.
That makes some sense, on the theory that your performance in your first job generates better evidence than what school you went to, but I haven’t read the actual research so have no opinion on how good it is.
It shows engineering/computer science/math flat by rate of return, which would seem to mean that the most expensive school you can afford works out the best.
They are basing it off admission rate though, not cost, so I’m not sure you would want to go to the most expensive school you could afford, you want to go to the most picky school you can get in to. A school like Cal Berkeley is hard to get into, but very cheap. A school like University of Phoenix is very easy to get into, but more expensive. Obviously, you would rather go to Berkeley.
I still think most people, given the choice between getting a Harvard education and being unable to put it on their resume and being able to put a Harvard education on their resume and not actually getting it, would do better on the job market in general with the latter.
Yes, Harvard is absolutely worth it. T1 schools are your single ticket for access into elite society.
This may not make a difference in your ability to get reasonable paying jobs (what those studies tend to measure), at least if you’re looking at basically lucrative fields. (It may if your field is itself about access: traditional, non-quant I-banking comes to mind; you don’t get interviews unless they like your school and Tufts ain’t going to do it.) But it does matter if you care at all about being part of the higher society, which I think you should: they take care of each other in any number of ways. Do you want your problems to be the #1 concern covered by the media? Do you want your personal preferences to dictate national trends? Do you want your political predilictions to dictate the overton window? Go to Harvard and make friends. Either you or those friends will decide exactly what matters and what doesn’t.
Also, the Ivies are the elite’s private dating service. I turned down an Ivy (not Harvard to be fair) to go to a very good but less well known STEM focused school because I thought the physics and computer science undergrad experience would be better. It was. That was also me setting fire to my best chance for ever getting married, at 17, without realizing it mattered. I could seriously kill my younger self. It’s been eleven years and I’ve never had any chance to get that near 5% as many young women interested in stable relationships as I’d have met in my first semester.
My ex got her PhD in [STEM] at [Ivy] and pretty much spoiled me as far as girlfriends go; she’s the only one I could talk about rational-sphere topics with out of all of the women I’ve dated. Indeed, I think if we had stayed together/if I had been successful at getting back together with her fairly recently I would have asked her to marry me.
But that ship has sailed…
“she’s the only one I could talk about rational-sphere topics with out of all of the women I’ve dated.”
I went to Harvard for undergraduate, Chicago for graduate school (physics). Acquired no girlfriends as an undergraduate (one very serious interest who was insufficiently interested in me). Met and married my first wife when she was an undergraduate at Chicago, I a graduate student. That marriage lasted about four years and part of the reason it ended (at her initiative, not mine) may be that she wasn’t someone I could easily talk about ideas with.
My current marriage (thirty-three years and still going) is to a woman I met at VPI, where I was an assistant professor and she a graduate student, and with whom I can talk about ideas without feeling as though I need a translator. VPI is not an Ivy or close.
So some evidence that elite schools are not the only place to look for a romantic relationship with an intellectually interesting partner.
With respect, the marriage market (and society / how we find access to partners) has changed a lot in 33 years.
Also, I think that the fact that you managed to escape the consequences of a bad choice doesn’t imply that it wasn’t a bad one: it seems to me that you’d have been even better off had you known what to look for while you were in undergrad; you could have found someone like your current wife then, and I’d bet it would have been easier, because the population of prospects would have been that much larger.
You seem to be more making a comment about criteria by which to choose a wife, which I freely admit are important, than about the best opportunity to find one.
@Andrew:
I think he was just trying to cheer up people who did not go to Harvard.
I wasn’t commenting on the best opportunity to find a wife, but on an opportunity.
I went to Harvard as a socially retarded sixteen year old, which may have something to do with my lack of romantic success. I met one woman there who I think might well have worked for a long term partner, but she was less interested in me than I was in her, perhaps because of my limited expertise in social matters.
It’s possible that the population of potentially suitable partners was much denser at Harvard/Radcliffe than later, but that wasn’t my perception.
How do you think the relevant marriage market has changed over my adult lifetime? My impression is that casual sex has become somewhat more common–but I was at the early stage of the sexual revolution (I entered Harvard in 1961). Probably more common then than I realized.
From failing memory; Single person households went from 12% to 28% between 1960 and 2000 which would change the market significantly?
I guess I should have clarified that I actually didn’t attend the school that she did. I met her sort of randomly at a social event that we both happened to be interested in.
Some data relevant to the marriage market (from here):
Though, admittedly, it deals with a slightly different level than the Ivy vs non-Ivy distinction.
@Lumifer:
Not all college educated people are the same. I admit that I have a pro-STEM bias but at least in my experience there is not much of a difference between an average non-STEM college level educated person and someone without college-level education in terms of what David describes as “talking about ideas”. Now, most STEM people are like that as well (sadly), but those who are bright and open to ideas are more common, pushing the average higher (there are also probably more people in STEM than in other fields who are full of themselves and arrogant, who are sure that they know everything better…this seems to be especially the case with men though, at least from my experience, so not a problem for me, at least from the romantic relationship perspective).
However, among STEM people, you have more men than women (not in all STEM fields, but on average you do).
My impression is that casual sex has become somewhat more common
That’s probably part of it; it’s a lot easier to get sex without needing to get married first, which has the knock-on effect that people are choosier about marriage. They may cohabit if it looks like a serious relationship, but the whole “marriage mortgage kids family life” package is a really big leap, and it seems to me that people are concentrating quite hard on their careers at that stage of their early adult lives so marriage on top of that is too much to handle.
On the other hand, I think “I’ll find my Life-Long Partner between the ages of 18-22 when I go to university” is a very large expectation that may or may not work out. So the pair of you marry at age 23, but does that mean it’ll work out and you’ll still be married at 30? It’s entirely possible your criterion may be “I want to marry a woman I can talk about Big Ideas with” and after three or four years of that, she wants to leave because “He’s interested in nothing else but talking about Big Ideas, he never does anything I’d like to do”. EDIT: this is not in reference to what Professor Friedman said about his first marriage, this is a general observation. It’s very seductive to meet someone who is also interested in the things you like and can converse intelligently about them, but basing a relationship on a single thing is a shaky foundation, whether that be “We both like discussing theoretical physics” or “We’re the most beautiful couple in the entire university”.
I do see how the chances of finding someone who is on the same level of intellect and general interests are higher when you’re all attending the same kind of courses, but what 20 year olds want and like may change a lot when they hit their 30s, and there is more to a life together than “We like the same kind of things” (though of course that makes it a lot easier).
99%+ of the country never went to an Ivy league school and they usually do get married, often quite happily.
We don’t have a 99% marriage rate, it’s quite a bit lower from its historically high peak in the middle 20th century.
That said, the Ivies are not necessarily the best marriage pool for people seeking marriage. It depends on what you want from a marriage.
That’s an understatement. Fewer than 50% marry nowadays. Some of these stats are really horrific.
“Fewer than 50% marry nowadays.”
That graphic has no text explaining it, but the URL is “young adult marriage” and the label is “Percent married” not “Percent who get married.” If young adult is defined as (say) 18-25 and everyone marries at 26, the percent married would be zero.
From Wikipedia, “As of 2006, 55.7% of Americans age 18 and over were married.” That suggests that your graph shows, for some age group, the percentage who are married, not the percentage who eventually get married.
Especially once you start looking at the very late age brackets you get a lot of people who have been married but are not currently. The majority of people die single.
Getting married isn’t the problem, it’s staying married. Like the quip about respecting marriage so much, the speaker got married several times (like Henry VIII who liked marriage so much, he had six of them).
I think marriage at a young age is probably likelier to end in divorce, especially now that we have no-fault divorces (yes, even in Ireland). Though over here what I’m seeing more of is that people leave their marriages, don’t bother to divorce*, are separated (either legally or informally) and enter into new relationships where they cohabit with a new partner and may or may not have kids by them. And that’s if they ever got married to someone in the first place.
*Probably a holdover from the days before we had divorce when marriages were still breaking down and it became more socially acceptable to be separated. People who wanted second relationships couldn’t legally marry so they simply cohabited. One of our Taosigh famously had a long-term partner and didn’t divorce even when it was legalised, primarily because both he and his ex-wife were happy with the arrangement and his daughters didn’t like the new partner, and nobody in the country made a fuss about it, even though he did get scolded by the Archbishop of Dublin. He actually got more of a slating from (what likes to pass as) the ‘liberal’ media when that second relationship ended, since this particular newspaper was the organ of the opposition political party and its editor and star columnists lost no opportunity to present him as the Devil Incarnate 🙂
I think marriage at a young age is probably likelier to end in divorce, especially now that we have no-fault divorces
Yes, I think it’s held up by the data linked above that the rate of divorce among people who marry young is higher than that of people who marry later.
However, that doesn’t change the difference in rates of being married – people of the groups who marry young are more likely to be married at, say, 40, than people of the groups who marry at 35. Like child bearing, marriage is not just delayed, it is also prevented in current social patterns.
My eyeteeth for a quick and easy solution to the issue, but I don’t think there is one.
Woman who was accepted to Harvard in the 1990s and didn’t attend. I’m a housewife to a husband with no college degree, who works in STEM and pulls a top 5% income, and we have more than two kids. I couldn’t have gotten that attending Harvard. In fact I am unlikely to have been able to have married at all. I might have been the first black female STEM something or other though, and childless and single. Another data point.
Your background sounds really interesting. Would you mind providing more detail? Social class, how you met your husband, how on Earth one gets a high-paying STEM job without a degree, etc?
My immediate social circle has a number of women from very elite schools who are housewives. Getting an awesome degree doesn’t shackle you into the job market if you want to leave it, if you are a woman.
I’m black. An elite degree would indeed have made it much much much harder for me to be a housewife or even get married at all, much less doing the SAHM thing. However, that is not why I didn’t attend Harvard, that’s just something I learned by observing which black women ended up housewives at an age where they could have more than two children before age 40. There’s pressure to achieve First Black Female X status that is probably not there for your immediate social circle’s housewives.
Getting an awesome degree doesn’t shackle you into the job market if you want to leave it, if you are a woman.
Oh ho ho ho, no. But you will be publically scolded by lady columnists for letting the side down, for wasting your education to ‘just’ be a stay-at-home-mom, for not using your opportunities as a mentor in the workplace for other women, for not having an awesome career and thus setting an example for young women to aspire to more than marriage and motherhood, for not working to break down the glass ceiling and Da Patriarchy from your position of power to lift other women up with you – I could go on, but it gets tiresome.
tl; dr – you will be accused of betraying the sisterhood and snide remarks about privilege and class will be made – it’s fine for you, with an expensive education and wealthy husband to support you, to decide you want to play Mommy at home but what about the poor young women of ethnicity who don’t have the same range of choices available to them? You are crushing their hopes and dreams and rubbing their noses in the fact that you could have it all and threw it away while they can’t get out of where they’re trapped!
*Lest you think the “setting an example” scolding is an exaggeration on my part, when Cherie Blair (the wife of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair) became unexpectedly pregnant in her late forties with an unplanned pregnancy, there were some lady columnists writing for English newspapers who tut-tutted that she should have chosen to have an abortion as an example to young women who found themselves with an unplanned pregnancy, to show that it was perfectly fine to have an abortion and you did not have to be condemned to having a baby if you didn’t want one:
There was at least one doctor tuttutting at Sarah Palin for letting Trig live because while she could cope, she might encourage other mothers to do the same, and they might not be able to cope.
That Blair thing has to be just about the most heinously evil thing I’ve ever read.
I’m not even against abortion: I work with stem cells after all, kind of hypocritical to gripe about how the sausage is made. But suggesting that someone should abort a viable pregnancy simply to demonstrate feminist street cred, while adding on the Scrooge-like surplus population argument and weird contempt for the proletariat (in the original Latin sense)… it just hits all the wrong buttons.
Adn then there is this:
Even on a purely rhetorical level, that’s an insane thing to say if you want to claim that your abortions were no problem at all for you.
From my side of the Pond I was under the impression that the Ivies weren’t such a dating service these days. Google for “Harvard hookup culture” – there seems to be an idea that no-one has the time for proper dating anymore, but don’t want complete abstinence either.
Of course, this could be journalists etc. being up to their usual tricks, I’m of the wrong generation and on the wrong continent, what do I know?
Currently at Ivy leauge school. This is fairly accurate for most students (some long-term relationships start, of course, but I’d say significantly fewer than other places with people of comparable age).
I think that “top tier” defined as the top ten or so is worth it. Below that, not so much.
The advantage is not that you’ll learn more better, the advantage is that you’ll spend four years surrounded by very smart people, will be able to plug into a highly useful network, and will have a piece of paper which will open doors.
This is what I’ve heard and find plausible. You can find comparable education elsewhere for less, but you can’t find comparable connections or signalling potential.
Most of what people want the former for benefits from the latter two assets even more.
“For less” is a bit misleading – most of the high-end private schools have very generous financial aid. Stanford, for example, waives tuition in full if your family makes less than $125k/yr.
(If your family is too rich to qualify, marry a fellow student for the duration and thereby redefine your family unit.)
I actually think the most value is not in connections or signaling. It is, to repeat myself, in spending four years among very smart people. That will set your standards and expectations, establish good habits, push you to do your best, and generally keep you on your toes intellectually speaking.
Over in the UK, the argument rages about whether Oxford and Cambridge offer real extra value over the rest, and I have little to add to that beyond “I think so”. Certainly if you want to impress the average Joe then Oxford and Cambridge carry the same weight as Harvard and Yale, and if you look at global university rankings then they tend to be competitive with the top American universities. Imperial isn’t bad either if you’re a STEM type.
It’s quite a different system over here (both at the undergrad and graduate level), but every now and again I hear about Americans pondering between Oxbridge and top Ivies. I have no idea how the costs work out for international students, or how the scholarships work out. It seems to be more usual for international students to come as graduates rather than undergrads.
For people planning on coming right back to the US, HYP edges out Oxbridge. First because the alumni network is mostly here rather than mostly there and second because the degree system is different and so a little harder to understand. That said a random M Phil can be an excellent investment. Again, no one knows what it is, but unlike the undergrad degree they are less likely to dig. Also, especially if it is from Oxford it will unconsciously be associated with the Rhodes scholarship program.
One relevant difference between the UK and US systems is that pretty much all of our universities cost the same (in fees at least, although living costs are higher in London (but so are bursaries)). So the tradeoff people seem to mention in the US of elite expensive university versus cheap less prestigious state university doesn’t exist.
Do Oxford or Cambridge give you the same kind of ticket to success as Harvard? I’m told people in the UK are very obsessed with class and it doesn’t sound like something that attending the right university can give you. In the US, I think it actually works that way to an extent, you go to the right school and bam!, you are now part of effective aristocracy.
I think it might depend on your field; if you’re planning to make a killing in the financial services industry, I don’t know. With some industries… there’s the whole “unpaid internships” thing, but that’s more about money than class as such.
If you’re looking for a STEM job, like mine, then class as such doesn’t really enter into it – people who want to hire smart people stereotypically look out for Oxford or Cambridge on your CV. If you want a top job in the Conservative party, then these days it helps to have gone to a famous school like Eton before going to university.
If you get an Oxbridge education, then one thing that might annoy you is all of the people promoting stupid Oxbridge stereotypes and harping on about Oxbridge graduates and all that. For the class warriors who want to take it out on the toffs, getting an Oxbridge degree is totally enough to make you a part of the hated enemy class.
To a large extent, class is about the accent you speak with, and if that accent is “American” or even “mid-Atlantic” then that seems to be more or less outside the class system. A regional American accent thick enough to be recognisable to clueless Brits, maybe a thick Southern drawl… might be an issue, but I’m guessing here.
I mean, I keep saying class as such. These days no-one’s quite sure what class they really are, all of the things that go towards class like accent and education and accent and money and accent and taste and accent seem to have an effect though.
Put it another way: social mobility isn’t exactly what you’d call “good” in the UK, but it’s there all right, and when people do international comparisons, then the UK comes out as being on a par with the USA, usually slightly better.
My impression is that you could ingratiate yourself with the upper class students who all went to Eton together and join the upper class that way, but that isn’t mandatory (or particularly frequent). Upper class people are disproportionately represented at Oxbridge, but because they are such a small part of the population the majority of students are solidly middle-upper-middle class, including many of those who go on to become politicians (and hence join the actual ruling class).
Haven’t the VERY elite schools (I’m thinking of Harvard specifically here) adopted a model of “If you can get in and if you can’t afford it, you automatically get your tuition on scholarship?” Obviously this won’t apply to everyone in all cases (most notably, those with parents who *can* afford it, but insist the child pay their own way), but in general, I feel like the top universities are working pretty hard to make it so that the “cost” of picking Harvard over, say, UCLA, isn’t all that much.
This is true to some extent (notably Northwestern and Stanford that I’m aware of, not Ivies but still elite), but a) even if “tuition” is free, housing, fees, and supplies still aren’t super cheap and b) the “sticker price” of Ivies and other elite private schools are well above $50k/yr – so you could be getting a pretty substantial scholarship/discount and still be paying as much or more as at an in-state public university (and 125k a year in income might seem like a lot, but it’s certainly not enough to afford $50k a year out of pocket in tuition per kid, unless they live quite austerely).
But dont those schools operate on a need-blind, demonstrated financial need basis? Meaning that admissions and the department of financial aid are indepent in their decisions from each other, and that if you get admitted you will get as much money as you need based on your parents’ income? At least this was the case when I applied to Harvard and Co. as an international student. (This might be a case where the middle class gets the short end, because parents do have reasonable amounts of money but for some reasons can’t use that to finance their kid’s education.)
It’s called perfect price discrimination. They look through your taxes and decide how much you can afford. How nice of them.
(Although going completely tuition-free, as some of the elites do, is a nice move away. Do note that if they give free tuition to people from families making under $125,000, that indicates that there isn’t a huge number of incoming students coming from families that poor.)
(Fuck, when did $125,000 a year become poor?)
A couple of points:
-Financial aid grants can include the full “cost of attendance” including room, board, travel and books.
-The formulas used generally divide parental income by however many students are in college at the same time (but that doesn’t impact expected student contribution).
For example, using the Harvard calculator, a student whose parents had gross income of $125k and non-retirement, non-home equity assets of $200k would be expected to cover $14,600/yr. From that amount $3975 would be for personal expenses and travel, so the actual bill from Harvard for tuition, fees, room & board would be $10,625. With a second child in college that would be reduced to $8,625.
Home equity is counted. You are expected to take out loans on the home to send the kid to college.
https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works
I went to a very well-regarded, internationally-ranked school, instead of a lower-tier but still respectable school where I would have had a free ride. My brother chose the lower-tier free ride. I’m glad I chose the better school, because all the people saying that socializing is what matters are correct. I have a far stronger social life than he does, and it has benefited me in various ways, more than what I studied did – although I did spend a good amount of time partying instead of studying, so take that in mind. Also, I am not a STEM person, so their strange and foreign ways and customs are beyond my knowledge.