This is the weekly open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also:
1. Comments of the week are PSJ on college and timetraveler3_14 on sugar and obesity.
2. One of my posts has been placed on the short list for the Golden Giraffe Award. The final winner will be announced at a party December 18 in a restaurant in London. They say if I can’t make it to the party I am supposed to “nominate a friend or colleague who would enjoy attending on your behalf”. So if anyone would enjoy going (+1 included guest) to a blogging party in London that might involve David Brooks and Jeremy Paxman appearing as judges, and might involve free food although they didn’t say for sure, let me know below or send me an email. (found someone, no need for further applications)
3. The rationalist community is having its yearly Solstice party in New York the weekend of December 19th. If you want to come to the kind of church-service-ish main event you can, but if that’s too weird for you there will also be a concurrent free party hosted by “Reasonable New York” at the New York Society For Ethical Culture, 2 W 64th St, New York, New York 10023, December 19, 5:30 – 10:30, for all the people whom the service is too weird for. I will probably briefly attend the party at some point. There is also hope of a more interesting afterparty and/or a meetup Sunday, but right now we don’t have a big enough location. We used to do it at Raymond’s place, which was a big multi-person house in Brooklyn, but now he lives in a less big house and that won’t work; some people are looking for alternatives but we’ve got nothing yet. If anyone knows a big space in New York and wouldn’t mind 50 – 100 people descending upon it for a day or two, we could provide you with interesting conversation and maybe some money.
4. And I will be in the Bay Area very briefly next weekend (weekend of December 12th) and may try to set up some kind of meetup, so watch this space.
5. I am behind on answering various kinds of electronic communication and expect to remain so for the near future. Sorry!
I recall from last week that there was planned an Open Thread book discussion on Garett Jones’ The Hive Mind this week. I’ve not read the book, but I have a question for those of you who have. On Twitter, Jones wrote:
@GarettJones: Hive Mind shows how Machiavellian Intelligence can become Coasian
https://twitter.com/garettjones/status/670258189280018433
I found this mystifying but intriguing. What do you who have read the book think he means by that?
I did read the book and will be posting a review sometime next week. I’d forgotten about the book club and I hope this doesn’t screw it up.
I’ll let you guys decide whether you want to continue having it or else wait for the comments thread of the review post.
In the book, he describes how by Machiavellian intelligence he means that human intelligence evolved to plot against other people and raise our own social status. By Coasian, he means create win-win situations. So he’s saying that intelligence that we expect to use to plot against other people is actually used to plot with them to come up with mutually beneficial solutions.
Review may explain more.
This pattern-matches to your Goddess of Cancer vs. Goddess of Everything Else post.
The Machiavellian thing is definitely true.
If you look at the non-human world, it’s almost completely mastered at a relatively low level of intelligence. Once you’ve got fire and spears, the effect of a marginal increase in IQ is negligible. A few IQ points don’t master disease, which is the main remaining external threat.
Luckily this means conspecifics become the main threat. Hence, Machiavellian plotting. Hence, opposed Machiavellian plotting checks. Hence, continued IQ accumulation.
On the downside, this more or less guarantees that any intelligent species will breach the civilization/runaway technology/whatever threshold while mainly optimized for being evil. You can be Coasian, but it doesn’t come naturally.
On the plus side it turns out evil is imprudent, so eventually that gets washed out too.
Hijacking your comment to say that I posted the “official thread” down below.
SSC SF Story of the Week #2
This week we are discussing “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke.
Next week we will discuss “Inconstant Moon” by Larry Niven.
I am not sure how realistic it is that the aliens were unable to survive the destruction of their sun. They managed to build a vault and fill it with all sorts of cultural artifacts; why not build a habitat and power it with a nuclear reactor instead? Granted, saving the whole species would have probably been logistically impossible, but they could have saved a skeleton crew to keep researching interstellar travel and eventually start anew in another system (presumably with frozen gamete samples to ensure genetic diversity).
Also, I understand how the emotional shock could cause a crisis of faith, but at its core isn’t this just the problem of evil writ large? Well, okay, non-consequentialist moral philosophies make a distinction between what you actively cause to happen and what you passively allow to happen, as well as things which happen near you versus those which happen far away from you. But while these distinctions can be very wise given the way humans actually work, they become a bit meaningless when we are dealing with an omnipotent, omnipresent God.
Closed-cycle life support systems good for thousands of years are a pretty tall order. So are nuclear reactors good for thousands of years, see e.g. neutron embrittlement. And they do need to be refueled every five years or so; that’s an awful lot of highly-enriched uranium. At the end of which the goal is, what, a starship that can be built by a few thousand people with the resources of a blasted Pluto orbiting a dead star in empty space?
There’s a subset of SF where genius inventors working in small groups and austere facilities can come up with whatever gizmo the story requires, including a warp drive. The universe doesn’t usually work that way, and this isn’t one of the stories where we pretend it does.
Huh, yeah, now that you mention it, I guess I forgot to factor in the lack of a global economy. That makes things quite a bit harder.
I agree! If global economy collapses you can’t be a scientist because you’re going to spend all your time trying to figure out how to make a toothbrush out of animal hair instead of doing sciency stuff. Only a massive economy allows the specialisation required for advanced science, especially in the long term.
I feel like this is a pretty good reason to look after the environment, even if you’re not an environmentalist that sees intrinsic value in the biosphere. The large underdeveloped parts of the global economy are very exposed to environmental problems. In half a century or so, we’ll probably be able to start moving heavy industry off-planet and none of that will matter, but we’re in a bottleneck right now where it makes sense to have strong protections for the environment. It’d be great to see this sort of thing talked about more in the rationalist community.
To expand on this, Kim Stanley Robinson recently wrote an article Our Generation Ships Will Sink.
It’s an instance of the problem of evil that strikes at the heart of Christianity, though. Sure, objectively speaking there’s not much moral difference between God causing a civilization-killing supernova that humans regard as an astronomical curiosity and God causing a civilization-killing supernova that humans incorporate into their religion – the civilization’s dead either way – but the birth of Jesus is supposed to “mean” Life, Hope, and Truth, God incarnated himself as a human to bring us all salvation, all that jazz. If the birth of Jesus was marked with the destruction of billions of lives, it’s basically impossible for all of that to be anything other than a hideous lie.
I don’t see how that’s the case, though. The birth of Jesus was already marked with the destruction of dozens (or more) lives; finding this out would certainly be a shock, but it wouldn’t be some huge refutation.
Harod the Great is an agent of Satan. “Satan causes people to do evil trying to thwart God’s plan, but fails.” is a key narrative of Catholicism. But the star can’t be Satan, because “Satan’s powers are purely psychological/telepathic.” is also a key narrative of Catholicism.
In fact, I would argue that the Slaughter of the Innocents – which flowed from the Star of Bethleham, through the Wise Men stopping in Jerusalem to ask directions (Note 1 &2) – rather blunts the impact of the story.
We already know – we believers – that death and misery and loss is woven into the narrative. We already know that the forefathers of Jesus include Cain and Abel, David and Bathsheba, and Boaz and Ruth. God took this rough timber and made Christ of it – just as He took Peter and Saul and built a Church on them.
Note (1) – Which is why guys won’t stop to ask directions to this day
Note (2) – It’s not obvious from the text, but apparently the wise guys (who most likely numbered more than 3, and were more mages than kings) were the intellectual descendants of Daniel (you know, Daniel and the lions’ den) and the rest of the Hebrew scholars of the Babylonian exile, after the destruction of the first Temple. Which puts God on the hook for that sacking and related misery as well, if that’s the way one wants to interpret it.
All believers still die. The promise is not perpetual life on earth or in the universe, but eternal life, and everyone knows what the gate to eternal life is. Putting one’s faith in time is the way to have it dashed — regardless of one’s philosophy.
And, indeed, everything and everyone in this universe is going to die — at the heat death, if no sooner. Having this fact dramatically intrude into your awareness is unpleasant, but it’s still a fact.
I’m going to bite the bullet here, and it ties in with Scott’s question further down about “What religion would you be?”
Christianity is about the salvation of souls and right relationship with God. It is not about being nice, making the world a happy and just place, or helping people live better, fuller, richer lives.
Earthly (and by that term I’m going to mean “all the physical substance of the universe) things – from cultures to the very globe itself – pass away, fail, die. What matters is the things of eternity – and the created soul is one of the eternal things. Worrying about a dead planet is like a hermit crab worrying about the shell that it grew out of three shells ago.
So whether the planet survived to be destroyed in the ordinary way, or whether it was destroyed by an unforeseen supernova, makes little to no difference. The people there are dead anyway. They would, in the ordinary course of nature, have died besides (being mortal) eventually of old age.
“Oh but it’s so unfair of God to kill me when I was six! I was going to have this wonderful life, I had it all planned out, I was going to go places, see things, have a career where I made a difference” – oh, really? You can guarantee that is going to happen? You know for absolute sure you are not going to be poor, sick, or killed in an American shoot-out?
We already give people the right to curtail the lives of beings they created, and we say it’s because foetuses are not children, are not people, have no rights, and the right of the parent over-rides all other concerns. If the parent does not, for any reason at all, wish to continue supporting the life of the new entity, it does not have to.
We invented the violinist thought-experiment. Why is God any more compelled to support the lives of the aliens than you are to support the life of the violinist?
As Judith Jarvis Thompson works out in her thought-experiment, the “right to life” and “right to the means of life” are different things, are they not?
This is the hard, crunchy kernel we all have to bite down on. We were created to know, love and serve God in this life and to be happy with Him forever in the next. We were not created to have long lives, or any assured length of life at all, or happy lives, in this world. Eternity is the higher level of reality than this physical creation which had a beginning and which will have an end. To complain the planet was destroyed is to complain that people were woken out of a simulation to the real world.
(And yes, this is the attitude that militant atheists set their faces against and think should be extirpated along with all those that hold it, and I can respect that).
This does not mean that as humans we get away with being unjust, exploitative or uncaring of each other. But the end of Christian charitable works is not merely easing physical misery, it is to evangelise and witness. That’s why “religion as social work” doesn’t work and it is better and more honest to be purely secular.
1) You didn’t put the violinist in the situation of needing something from your body. God did put the aliens in the situation they are in. He’s God; he’s directly responsible for every supernova.
2) In fact, you didn’t even create the violinist. God did create the aliens.
3) Attaching the violinist to you is a violation of bodily autonomy. For God to refrain from creating such supernovas or save aliens doesn’t violate his bodily autonomy.
4) Attaching the violinist to you necessarily causes you some inconvenience. For God to help the violinist causes no inconvenience whatsoever; he’s omnipotent.
If you had endangered a violinist (#1) and the violinist was your child (#2), and saving the violinist only required some money (#3), and the monetary amount was 1 cent with no prospects of this amount increasing if you saved more people (#4), you would be obligated to save the violinist.
But aliens with a civilization endangered by a supernova are people….
@Jiro:
Judith Jarvis Thompson’s violinist thought-experiment was intended to be applied to the question of abortion. In that context, your points 1 and 2 hold. Whether 3 does depends on whether you think that bearing a child counts as a violation of bodily autonomy.
The relevance of point 4 depends on what you see as God’s purposes and constraints. Being omnipotent doesn’t mean he can do anything you can imagine, because some things are internally inconsistent. It might be that not killing A means not achieving some objective with regard to B that is more important–saving his soul. Or some objective with regard to A.
God is only “directly responsible for every supernova” if you adopt some form of occasionalism, which, whilst not completely unknown in Christian theology, has never been the only option, or even (AFAIK) the dominant one.
God is not directly responsible for every lightning bolt, but if one hits Richard Dawkins on the podium in the middle of a righteous atheistic rant I’m going to be a tad suspicious about that one in particular.
@The Original Mr. X:
I don’t think it requires occasionalism.
The extension of the problem of evil is that if there’s an omnimax god, the universe perfectly matches their values. This is the universe that god likes best, exactly as it is, now and in the future. If it changes in any way, it’s because god wanted that change to occur exactly like that, exactly then, because otherwise god would stop it happening like that.
If there’s an omnimax entity, there are no accidents.
You didn’t put the violinist in the situation of needing something from your body.
According to Thompson, that doesn’t matter. Still not obligated to support the being:
My last word on this is: religion is not about niceness and uplifting concepts that make us all happier and better people. Religion is about darkness and blood.
You say that’s horrible. I say and what else did you expect from something that has to do with humans?
The answer to why this is so difficult has to do with the star’s specific symbol. First off, this isn’t a garden variety naturalistic problem of evil. This is god purposefully choosing to magically destroy a star before its appointed time. The why is the really pernicious part.
The Star of Bethlehem is a symbol of God’s Mercy, his benevolence, of how his values are in tune with human values of goodness. So the symbol of sparing millions of humans (not the act, just the symbol to let them know it was happening) was the murder of several billion non-humans.
Magically?
If it were miraculous, how did they know to prepare for it?
When the Star of Bethlehem isn’t fictitious it’s a miracle. This is the Star of Bethlehem. It isn’t fictitious.
How do you know it’s one or the other? Perhaps it was use of a natural occurrence.
@ Nicholas
The why is the really pernicious part. The Star of Bethlehem is a symbol of God’s Mercy, his benevolence, of how his values are in tune with human values of goodness.
Nodding in. Perhaps next vignette discussed should be Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God”. This sort of thing was a common conceit in mid-century SF, somewhat after the stories that began as hard SF and ended “And their names were Adam and Eve.”
Oh, “The Nine Billion Names Of God” is merely a fun little story. I don’t think that Clarke means it seriously on any level (other than using the SF trope of “suppose this premise were in fact true, how would it work out?”)
I could, I suppose, be very grumpy about how he treats Buddhist doctrine respectfully but uses Christian doctrine to beat religious believers over the head with “Can’t you see this must be wrong?”, but that would be too curmudgeonly even for me.
The last line of “The Nine Billion Names Of God” is sheerly delightful 🙂
@ Deiseach
Yes, sheerly.
I’d have to re-read “The Star”, to check my memory that Clarke wasn’t very serious about it either. Sure, the character and point would be serious if taken seriously (uh-huh) … but I’m sure gimmicky mid-century SF shorts could use gruesome premises while still being not seriously meant. Does TS pick up things Clarke did say seriously elsewhere?
Well, I am told that the God-Emperor protects us filthy xenos.
By the way, what’s with all this talk of a God who isn’t the Emperor? You people aren’t heretics, are you?
Surely you mean protects us *from* filthy xenos, brother. I’d hate to see you purged.
I did mean that, typo, but I can see the Commis-
BLAM
I’ve always liked the Clark story, and the fact that he makes the Jesuit sympathetic.
That being said, as a “Ha! Theodicy that for me now!” it doesn’t work.
For instance, the main character is reflecting upon suffering and the indifference of God as he’s looking at a crucifix. What does he think that represents, for the love of Mike? This is God who has become Man and suffered and died with us!
I resist the urge to make jokes about faithless Jesuits 🙂
But really, the big bang in the end is supposed to be the revelation that this is the Star of Bethlehem and that knowing this will make people all lose their faith overnight? Okay, so Clark was probably raised Church of England and once again, I will resist jokes, but um – 27th December. Feast of the Holy Innocents. All the two years and under boy children killed for the sake of the infant Christ.
It’s a good story, but it’s not the kind of ‘slapping Christians in the face with the problem of pain’ story he thinks it is. And the alien civilisation is every bit as destroyed at the end, with even less meaning, if there is no creator, if this was only a cosmic coincidence because of the way the appearance of the skies lines up with events as viewed from Earth. If Jesus didn’t exist and is a purely mythological figure, the legends associated with His birth are just legends, and if a bright light in the sky made astrologers think this signified the birth of a great king, that was all simply superstition. God did not kill the aliens, Nature did. Hand in your complaint to the Universe and see how far that gets you.
The religious angle takes any bite out of the story, because it makes it like God punished the aliens, in a way just a little bit more complete than he did with humans in the time of Noah.
For a christian like the jesuit this could be taken as proof of God’s existence and a cautionary lesson from Him.
Why should that matter? So he’s suffering himself. That doesn’t reduce the suffering of others. If you didn’t have any money, would you consider it help if I burned all my money so I didn’t have any either?
(Then too, one of the main reasons death is bad is that you don’t come back from it. Jesus being able to come back from it negates the main reason why it is bad.)
I’m not a Christian but I think the idea is that it’s an example. By living a perfect human life despite rather extreme suffering he demonstrates the productive way to respond to it. As a Christian you’re supposed to be emulating that as closely as you’re able to.
The resurrection that you mention plays the same role. In the end (according to Christianity) EVERYONE is coming back from the dead, the resurrection was just a sneak peak.
It’s a different sort of parental role than we’re used to today: a distant role model who occasionally teaches painful lessons as opposed to more nurturing or protective “hoving” behavior. Ultimately still paternalistic but leaving somewhat more room for freedom than something like a Culture Mind or FAI.
If you didn’t have any money, would you really be happy if I burned all my money and then showed you how a poor person could survive?
Or to use an even closer analogy, if every time you had money, I took it and burned it, would you be happy if I also burned my money and then showed you how to live as a poor person? No. What you’d want is for me to stop taking and burning your money in the first place.
The best way, if you’re God, to fix suffering is to stop causing suffering–not to suffer yourself in addition.
That’s what I was getting at with my third paragraph.
Is God’s job as a father to protect mankind from any and all suffering, including the consequences of our own choices? Or is it to give us a set of rules whereby we can grow from suffering or be destroyed by it as we choose?
If you want the nurturing maternal Goddess type of deity then if course a distant paternal God will seem pointlessly cruel. But there are a lot of people who see it the opposite way, and find your paradise tyrannical. It’s not the black-and-white you’re making it out to be.
The race destroyed in “The Star” neither suffered through the consequences of their own choices, nor had a choice to grow from it rather than be destroyed.
(And if you really thought that the good from giving suffering people the chance to grow exceeded the harm from the suffering itself, what makes you think we’re at the optimum level of suffering? Maybe we need *more* suffering and that would be even better.)
I haven’t read the book, but apparently they had several generations worth of forewarning about the supernova. That’s a lot of time for tests of faith, repentance, etc. Remember that from a Christian perspective their deaths aren’t the end: in that framework you can absolutely die without being destroyed or become stronger in death.
We’re starting from the assumption of an omnipotence omniscient being. A bit of Panglossian reasoning isn’t out of place.
“Or is it to give us a set of rules whereby we can grow from suffering or be destroyed by it as we choose?”
This idea that people are somehow to “blame” if they end up in hell because they “chose” to not follow God’s arbitrary, obscure rules seems rather like how a characters in Saw remarks that Jigsaw didn’t technically actually kill anyone, he just put them in situations where they, of their own free will, chose to kill themselves. It’s bullshit in both cases.
Calling the arbitrary and obscure begs the question. Anyone can see that at least some of them are neither. And a sage soul might ponder that a being wiser than he was might have good reasons for rules that seem arbitrary and obscure to him.
And why do you put “chose” in quotes? You are attacking a philosophy that believes in free will. Your personal belief or lack thereof is moot because it’s not the premise they are starting with.
“Calling the arbitrary and obscure begs the question.”
Calling them arbitrary does not beg the question in response to Divine Command Theory, and if someone’s going to claim that God’s will isn’t obscure, then they’re clearly not being reasonable.
“Anyone can see that at least some of them are neither.”
The ones central to Christianity are facially so.
“And a sage soul might ponder that a being wiser than he was might have good reasons for rules that seem arbitrary and obscure to him.”
Whether there is a reason is not the issue, the issue is whether there is a good reason for believing there is a good reason.
“And why do you put “chose” in quotes? You are attacking a philosophy that believes in free will.”
I reject the notion that “free will” applies to choosing results, when the results are not known. If you’re sick, and I hand you a red pill that’s poison, and a blue pill that’s a cure, and you choose the red pill, it’s not accurate to say that you chose to take poison. You chose the red pill, but you didn’t choose to take poison. Just because the result of X is Y, that doesn’t mean that it’s accurate to describe people who choose X as choosing Y. People who don’t follow Christianity aren’t choosing hell, they’re choosing to not follow Christianity. Claiming that they’re choosing hell is sophistry.
If you didn’t have any money, would you consider it help if I burned all my money so I didn’t have any either?
I suspect many would, even if that didn’t admit it (even to themselves). “Reducing inequality” and all that.
That’s also an “eat your cake and have it” attitude on the part of the presumed non-believer in the story: you don’t want an interventionist God, you prefer one who’ll stand back and let the natural laws play out but then you say “Why didn’t God intervene and stop this from happening?” when it’s something like the nova.
The aliens are destroyed. All that is left of them is what records they managed to store, and now those will be read by humans so they’ll have some living in memory but only as long as humans who can or who want to remember them exist, which is still not very long.
Since Clark is writing this to a Christian viewpoint, the Christian answer would be that everything ends. One day there will be nothing left and the universe will be a cool, dead, silent thing. So the only eternity is with God. If the aliens or we humans or the others in the universe are to have any hope of existence and continuity, it is with God.
And if God exists, then the aliens continue to exist. And if God does not exist and it is all the natural laws that bring stars into existence and end them, then there is no-one to blame and no fault.
The only hook that pierces is if the Jesuit continues to believe. If he believes God exists, and that God permitted the destruction of the alien civilisation, and that God used this to mark the birth of Christ (of course, there is the other view that is not expressed here: rather than killing off the aliens to mark the birth, that the reason the birth took place at that particular time – and no other time in human history – was to bring meaning out of the destruction of the star which was foreseen from the creation of the universe).
Clark wipes out all of humanity – unevolved humanity, that is – in his “Childhood’s End” when the evolved human children (who are no longer human as we understand it) ascend to join the Overmind and the Earth is destroyed. Before that, the old species humans have been gradually killing themselves off by suicide and other means; human innovation and creativity stopped stone-dead after the Overlords (the instrumental species of the Overmind) arrived to bring peace and plenty.
Earth doesn’t even exist as a blasted planet with its cultural treasures warehoused for a space-faring civilisation to discover. If the ascended Humans ever remember Earth and its past, it’s not said. It may not even live in memory.
So – is the Overmind guilty for destroying Earth and all that belonged to it in order to mark and usher in the glorious ascension of transformed Humanity? 🙂
@ Deiseach
I wrote my response(s) without reading yours.
It’s a bit scary, the overlaps.
Who says nonbelievers don’t want an interventionist God? Non-believers want a God that intervenes in good ways but not in bad ways. Criticizing a specific intervention by God for being nonsense doesn’t mean you don’t want any intervention whatsoever.
(Also, there’s usually a subtext of “the way you’re describing God is so full of nonsense and ad-hoc justifications that a better explanation is that there isn’t really a God”.)
If killing a civilization isn’t really harmful to the civilization because when they die they will be with God, it equally follows that the victims of a serial killer will be with God, and therefore the serial killer isn’t really causing any damage either (although he is disobeying an arbitrary anti-murder law).
“Non-believers want a God that intervenes in good ways but not in bad ways. ”
Fine if they actually want it. I regret to say that many people want a God that intervenes in ways they like but not in ways they don’t like — without regard to whether their likes and dislikes would be good and bad, respectively. It requires an stunning confidence in one’s knowledge and judgment to be sure you know how God could act better.
@Mary:
“It requires an stunning confidence in one’s knowledge and judgment to be sure you know how God could act better.”
Seriously?
“Not allowing the existence of malaria” seems like a gimme. “Preventing the holocaust”. There’s almost certainly someone being raped, somewhere in the world, right now, and I don’t think it requires much arrogance to note that if you can stop it, you really, really should.
You make ethical arguments for positions. I’ve seen you do it in the comments. That seems inconsistent with the opinion that ethics is so murky and unknowable that we can’t know whether we should let several million people die.
So you think that the problem with Big Brother is that he was too wimpy? Let people get away with too much? Because certainly a suitably beefed-up surveillance state could prevent a lot of rapes. By your logic — if you take it seriously — it is your duty to implement it.
You pick three things out of a hat in isolation and consider them in isolation. You do not even mention that perhaps there might be consequences, let alone that there might be a price to pay for stopping them. Yet we see every day evils that exist precisely because people were trying to prevent evils. That is where the arrogance lies.
The larger the picture gets, the more the Law of Unintended Consequences reigns for merely human vision. If you don’t factor it in. . . .
Who says nonbelievers don’t want an interventionist God?
Every time they say or write or post “I don’t want some god telling me what to do; I can make up my own mind about what’s best for me and the right choice. I don’t think a god going around zapping cities or letting your sports team beat their sports team is any kind of a god I want to believe in, and I certainly don’t believe in any kind of god that will put me in hell for not believing in their nonsense” 🙂
That’s only because I’m human.
God is omnipotent. God never has to worry about consequences if he doesn’t want to.
Jiro thinks that, because God is omnipotent, he never has to think about consequences if he doesn’t want to.
“Can God make a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it.”
The answer, I think, is “no.” God is constrained by consistency. If there is no such thing as “a rock so heavy God can’t lift it,” then he can’t make one–the fact that you can combine words in a particular way doesn’t guarantee that the words describe a thing.
Similarly, God can’t both give you free will and constrain what you do so you always do the best thing.
Well given the homicide rate differs among populations while the ‘free will’ does not, you can simply follow a similar tack.
I find it hard to believe that consistency requires that God use a supernova to kill people.
“God is omnipotent. God never has to worry about consequences if he doesn’t want to.”
Omnipotence is the ability to do all THINGS. Contradictions in terms are not things. It is impossible for God to make us free and yet prevent our acting freely — and for Him to negate all consequences of our freedom is the same as to prevent it.
@David Friedman
Earth is just such a rock. You can’t lift the Earth because lifting something means making it go up, and up and down make sense only in regards to Earth.
@Mary:
If you think the world is perfect as it is and any deviations from exactly as it is are just pathways to worse unintended consequences, why do you make ethical arguments? Why do you have preferred political positions that are different to the current political position?
The idea that an omnipotent, omniscient entity couldn’t do better than what we’ve currently got boggles belief. Every natural disaster had to happen, or things would have been worse. Every murder victim, every rape victim, every illness, every birth defect or heritable condition, all of it couldn’t be prevented, or the implications would be worse.
That includes, of course, classic conservative issues. Gay marriage: part of God’s plan. Every abortion, necessary to prevent worse evils. Every prostitute, every piece of porn, every divorce, every Communist dictatorship, every left-wing politician, all for the best.
I don’t want to live in a police state because, yes, the implications are worse. But I’m rather confident that were I Superman, I could prevent some crimes without setting up a police state. And were I God, well, there’s so many things that could have been set up better.
“But I’m rather confident that were I Superman, I could prevent some crimes without setting up a police state. And were I God, well, there’s so many things that could have been set up better.”
“I’m confident” is not an argument.
“If you think [a lot of things you made up]”
I don’t, and therefore will not defend myself against what you have imputed to me.
“I demand more rigor in your claim that superman (and god) could improve the world!” combined with “I reject the suggestion that I think the world cannot be improved!” makes for an interesting combination.
Looking at the crucifix, he sees nothing there. But the crucifix is “God is not far away and ignorant of human suffering, God came down and suffered as a human”. So if this is really the first time the Jesuit character has considered the nature of suffering, it’s really very late in the day.
Great, so it’s all a big lie. No god, no Christ, no Buddha, no nothing. The aliens are just as dead. Do we all go “Cosmic wonder! Cool science! The marvels of the universe make up for this!” It’s still a problem either way, and the struggle then is to find some way of living with meaning in a universe that spares no-one, not the good or the intelligent or the cultured or the innocent, because the way the natural laws work is that stars go nova and if you are a civilisation living on a planet near one and you don’t have interstellar travel, you are toast.
I don’t know if we’re supposed to take from it “Science! Science instead of superstition will help us!” because science wasn’t enough for the aliens (yet) and it may not be enough for humans if a sufficiently big disaster comes along and knocks us out before we can save the species off-world.
It’s a good story, but it’s not going to change anyone’s mind (unless you’re twelve and it makes you think “Wow, religion is false, now I’m an atheist!” upon first encountering it).
Again, I don’t think this priest is failing to believe if god is, I think he’s struggling with whether or not God is Good. I don’t read him as being convinced that god doesn’t exist, but that the concept that Jesus’ story of totally understanding proportional human suffering is marred by the idea that god used the eradication of a star system as advertising, and he no longer takes emotional comfort in the idea that Slaughters Billions to Give Directions god is watching over him.
(The bit about using the knowledge of when the supernova would reach Earth to plan when to send Christ, as a Newcomb’s paradox sort of scheduling is brilliant, but then why are there supernova at all I guess.)
I really don’t get why non-Christians tend to think that suffering is some difficult thing for Christianity to come to terms with. This is a religion whose founders up to and including Jesus himself were all executed horribly. The peace and comfort of the modern west is the abberation from the Christian perspective.
Want a world without death or suffering? That’s what heaven is for. What right does God have to expect us to put up with the discomfort in the meantime? Well, he’s been there too. He’s not asking us to do anything he hasn’t.
I mean, if you don’t think it’s true, fine, but it’s hardly inscrutable.
Pretty much every religion which has a literal heaven also has requirements for getting in that are bizarre (although some fudge and say “we don’t really know who gets in, so I’m not saying people like you are excluded, but just in case, you really ought to follow these bizarre requirements anyway).
Death is most discomforting because it is permanent. Non-permanent death isn’t really as damaging as permanent death. And this is still like arguing that it’s okay to burn someone else’s money since after all you’re burning yours as well.
“Non-permanent death isn’t really as damaging as permanent death. ”
walks around, eyes, pokes with a ten-foot pole
You do realize that Christianity teaches that point of that whole venture is to make OUR deaths non-permanent?
Mary: If it isn’t bad when people die and go to heaven, why is it bad when a serial killer kills someone? After all, that person too would go to heaven.
“Mary: If it isn’t bad when people die and go to heaven, why is it bad when a serial killer kills someone? After all, that person too would go to heaven.”
Just because a landlord has the right to evict you doesn’t mean that a random stranger off the street has the right to evict you.
Personally it’s because I read the Book of Job.
Just because a landlord has the right to evict you doesn’t mean that a random stranger off the street has the right to evict you.
But if everyone who gets evicted from their apartment is whisked away in a limousine to their new luxury mansion provided by the extremely generous public housing authorities, well, the stranger doing the evictions might not technically have the right, but it doesn’t sound terribly bad. And that was, I believe, the question.
I think you’re being vague here about exactly what you’re saying about God. Are you saying that when God kills you, it doesn’t hurt you (at least more than it helps you)? Or are you saying that when God kills you, it does hurt you, but God is permitted to hurt you?
The argument “people killed by God go to heaven” is about the first one, but the landlord analogy is about the second.
It’s also worth noting that (under normal circumstances) the landlord has a right to evict you because you signed a contract setting out in what situations you could be evicted. And you are in the apartment in the first place because of that same contract that you signed.
None of us chooses in advance to come into existence, and if we somehow did, then assuming a) this earthly existence is valuable enough that we should want to delay death as long as possible even if death is then followed by a positive-sum afterlife, and b) the proto-us that would be doing the choosing has values sufficiently aligned with earthly-existence us to be reasonably considered the same entity, then most people would presumably negotiate for a contract that says that we get a decent lifespan.
If a) is not true, then we shouldn’t object to being murdered; indeed we should actively welcome it. And if b) is not true then we’re back to the situation where the caprice of a murderous human is not morally distinguishable from the caprice of a murderous deity.
if everyone who gets evicted from their apartment is whisked away in a limousine to their new luxury mansion provided by the extremely generous public housing authorities
IF.
We’re talking about Christianity here. Not some hypothetical religion. You do not get to ask us to defend a doctrine we don’t hold.
“None of us chooses in advance to come into existence”
It was, in fact, a gratuitous gift. Something, unlike the contracted apartment, for which you give nothing in return. This does not strengthen your position; it weakens it. If you did not sign a contract with God stating that God will give you a year of life in return for X, Y, and Z, if God decides to cut off the spigot, it is not an injustice.
Just as (in sane jurisdictions) staying as a guest in someone’s apartment gives you fewer rights than signing a lease.
“The argument “people killed by God go to heaven” is about the first one”
People are really arguing that?
One notes it is not a Christian argument.
Deseach made that argument:
I really don’t get why non-Christians tend to think that suffering is some difficult thing for Christianity to come to terms with. This is a religion whose founders up to and including Jesus himself were all executed horribly. The peace and comfort of the modern west is the abberation from the Christian perspective.
I’m often had similar thoughts about the problem of suffering more generally: people seem to be much more exercised about it now, when we all live lives of hitherto-unimagined ease and luxury, than back in the bad old days when there were no painkillers and most people could confidently expect to die of a toothache before they turned thirty. Maybe we just tend to over-estimate how bad suffering is through lack of acquaintance with it.
Mary, if we follow that logic, it applies from parents to children as well.
Additionally, normal concepts of obligation break down when you have literally infinite resources at your disposal.
If someone is living in your apartment but you have the ability to instantaneously clone the apartment with just a thought, which takes place outside of time and has no opportunity cost, that’s different than if the apartment costs you even one cent.
The parents are not the cause of the child’s continuing life, as witness that they can die and not affect it.
And you are not entitled to gratuitous gifts regardless of the difficulty of them.
> And you are not entitled to gratuitous gifts regardless of the difficulty of them.
Let’s dig deeper. Why?
Typically, I would expect an argument that it puts a burden on the other party. But if the cost is literally zero, then there is no burden.
I notice that you seem to be certain that the burden of proof is not on you to prove that you do have a right.
And you also assume that the only conceivable cost to living thus is to God.
Jiro says:
“Mary: If it isn’t bad when people die and go to heaven, why is it bad when a serial killer kills someone? After all, that person too would go to heaven.”
I think it would be reasonable to believe that when each person comes into being, that their existence is tied to their purpose for being. Every person has a job to do, so to speak. God calls you to Heaven when you complete your job, you don’t get to go to Heaven if you choose not to do your job, and a serial killers are bad because they interrupt/prevent you from completing your job, and are not doing the job they should be doing.
tomkob: That’s no answer because you can say that someone’s purpose is whatever you want to say it is in order to make the argument come out right, and it would be unfalsifiable.
Also, it would suggest that saving lives could thwart someone’s purpose just as much as killing them, if their purpose was to die at a specific time.
> I notice that you seem to be certain that the burden of proof is not on you to prove that you do have a right.
Well, under a typical Consequentialist ethics, it’s pretty much a no-brainer if you have literally free-as-in-violates-TANSTASFL-and-is-unlimited to just give stuff away.
Also, the opposite strikes me as an oddly anthropomorphizing way to think of something that’s supposed to be beyond time and space. As in, here you are, thinking in terms of essentially private property when there is something that isn’t bound by essentially any of rules the class of creatures that created that idea in the first place are.
Aside from that, there should be an argument that can be mustered against it.
Admittedly, some of this on my part is a refusal to believe something so grand could actually be as incredibly petty as is indicated in religion. Like, if the creator of the universe is in some way, wouldn’t that way be incomprehensible to humans and not cares about shellfish?
> And you also assume that the only conceivable cost to living thus is to God.
Well, see, here’s the thing with the infinite resources cheat code. If you do that, you’re capable of splitting off entire universes and pretending to be all the people therein. I’m not saying that’s an absolute obligation, but I feel like a lot of people don’t fully work on what literally infinite power actually means.
What lie? Most of humanity never believed your nonsense in the first place. It’s not even a lie. Lies bear a distinct relationship to the truth: they cover it up. This is just bullshit.
No, of course not. We change it, the slow way and the hard way.
That’s not a problem. The meanings are already built into you and how you relate to events. They don’t have to “come from” somewhere supernatural, they’re already a more-or-less innate part of how you get sapient, sentient agents in a natural world.
@ cypher
Another way of viewing it is to look at why we make moral
judgements normally: We want to encourage or deter some
behavior by praising or blaming it, to either make the person
more or less likely to repeat it, or to make other people who
are similarly situated more or less likely to behave that way.
Given an omnimax deity – what’s the point? Anything it wants,
it has (if it is that powerful and is rational). One might as well
praise or blame a dawn or a hurricane.
I liked the story for about the same reasons as you did. Even as a non-Catholic it’s nice to see the Church getting the respect it has earned in places where it is more often treated with disdain. And, theological details aside, it was a good look at what a crisis of faith might feel like from the inside.
Bounced off the ending in a different direction that you, though. The Star of Bethlehem just plain doesn’t work as a mundane astronomical phenomenon, either natural or placed by divine will. No such thing can plausibly both lead “wise men” from “the East” to Jerusalem, and then from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. And long before I managed to read The Star, I had become tired and dismissive of silly attempts to pin the star to this comet or that conjunction or maybe it was Venus refracted by swamp gas or whatever.
Even putting on my theist hat and dialing faith up to maximum, that only works as an outright pious fiction, as a vague recollection of some other astronomical event of about that time that Matthew finally wrote up the tale a century or more later, or as the Lord God Almighty pointing to a spot maybe a thousand kilometers above Bethlehem and saying “Let there be light! (only not so much as last time…)”.
What’s the Roman Catholic Church’s take on the literalness of the Star?
So that part of the story breaks my suspension of disbelief, as either an Act of God or of nature.
I thought the Star itself only led them to Judaea, and then they went to Bethlehem itself because of a prophecy that the Messiah would be born there. I could be misremembering, though.
As for the cause of the Star, AFAIK there’s no official Catholic position on the matter. Personally though I tend towards the “Guys, it’s a miracle, it doesn’t need a natural cause, stop overthinking it” school of thought.
“After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. ”
– Matthew 2:9, New International Version.
The Star led the Magi approximately west to Jerusalem, waited for them to have an audience with Herod, then led them due south on the road to Bethlehem, and told them where to stop.
I don’t think this is an atheistic crisis of faith. The priest is wrestling with maltheism. His model of god would have declared “Murdering 9 billion aliens to advertise the location of Jesus” to be an unforgivably wasteful act of evil. And then he finds out that that’s a thing god totally did. And now his model is updating toward “God exists, and he should be worshiped for all the same reasons Kim Jong Un should be, that he’ll hurt you. But he doesn’t actually love every sapient thing equally as his children.”
And as I understand it, the Massacre of the Innocents can be placed at the feet of Herod and/or Satan. God didn’t send the angel of death out to miraculously kill all the infants.
But he did that in Egypt.
Yes, but that was the old vengeful God of the Old Testament. Who had earlier killed off nearly the entire world in a flood. The God of the New Testament is supposed to not do those things any more.
The God of the New Testament is supposed to not do those things any more.
Good is not Nice
Good is not Nice
When someone is covered up to the elbow in baby-giblets chanting “blood for the blood god!” it’s hard to argue that they’re really either nice or good.
Firstly, there will be no Khornate Chaos bullshit up in here.
Second:
No, Good is reflectively coherent, a posteriori effective nice. If your “good” is just the commands of some benighted Warp entity pulled from the imagination and given form by religious belief, you don’t get ascribe any genuine moral property to it.
But the Massacre of the Innocents is a foreseeable thing (after all, God is omniscient) arising out of the birth of Christ. You could equally say “Why didn’t God change Herod’s heart” or “Why didn’t God send down a legion of angels to protect the infants”.
Clarke is writing using one of the theories about the Star, that it was a nova (other theories are that it was a conjunction of certain planets and as the Magi were astrologers they interpreted such as omens of a king). I’m not too sure what the current consensus is; older, more literal views dismissed the idea of conjunctions and supernovae and plainly said it was a miraculous event (due to what you point out, the nature of it being a moving, guiding light).
So the Catholic Encylopaedia of 1906 would have robustly rebuffed Clarke’s version in favour of the miraculous 🙂
Me, I’m not going to swallow the camel of the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation and strain out the gnat of a miraculous guiding light like a star in the sky that moved 🙂
Nor is it, apparently, in any way Good.
“What does he think that represents, for the love of Mike? This is God who has become Man and suffered and died with us!”
There’s a rather big difference between taking on suffering yourself, and imposing it on others.
“All the two years and under boy children killed for the sake of the infant Christ.”
They weren’t killed for his sake, they were killed to try to kill him.
I don’t think you understand the view you’re criticising.
Sure, if there’s no God their deaths were meaningless. But the argument isn’t so much that that would be better, the argument is that their deaths are inconsistent with the existence of a good god, so either god exists and has unknowable values which have no alignment with anything we call ethics, or god doesn’t exist.
This is pretty straight-forward.
Seriously. Theodicy is a long standing well-known problem with an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God. People have proposed answers, but they are all more or less unsatisfactory.
It’s not as if us atheists are just ignoring the arguments. Many of us know them very well.
Obligatory SMBC cartoon about theodicy, in case anyone’s not seen it.
And contrariwise, it’s not like believers in all traditions have not noticed that “Oh gee, bad things happen to good people! How about that, huh?”
I don’t know if Clarke was seriously proposing that “find out the Star of Bethlehem was a supernova that killed a nice race of aliens, lose belief”; I rather think not and that he was just writing a mood piece. It’s a very good story, as I said. But even in the time since it was written, it has probably lost some of whatever shock value or thought-provocation it had, and as time goes on, it will lose more.
In the Happy Future Days of Rationalist Freethought, when nobody believes any of that jazz, reading this story will be akin to “Well, duh, of course there’s no deities!” It may be a historical curiosity about “So that’s what it was like back then when people believed in gods?” but that’s about all. There will be no more emotional affect (and yes, I don’t mean “effect”) than in saying “water is wet”.
Actually, somebody should write the updated atheist version of this 🙂
The nice, hopeful, “humanity is immanent god” type who believes in progress and society is getting nicer and nicer and the more we know, the better we can be. Who then comes face-to-face with Lovecraft’s cosmic indifference because here a nice progressive species is wiped out in what is (in cosmic time terms) the blink of an eye, and this leads them to question all their values and beliefs.
You mean communist deconversion stories?
“they are all more or less unsatisfactory.”
You say that as if it were an absolute. As C.S. Lewis observed, all the worlds’ religions were practiced for millennia in a world without anesthesia. Some people must conclude they are satisfactory.
The nice, hopeful, “humanity is immanent god” type who believes in progress and society is getting nicer and nicer and the more we know, the better we can be. Who then comes face-to-face with Lovecraft’s cosmic indifference because here a nice progressive species is wiped out in what is (in cosmic time terms) the blink of an eye, and this leads them to question all their values and beliefs.
It seems like you’d need a different type of event to have that impact on a pro-science transhumanist type. I mean, the sort of person you’re describing already believes that the universe is cold and indifferent and liable to wipe you out in the blink of an eye, which is why they’ve embraced a philosophy of wanting to do everything possible to improve a crappy reality. A supernova destroying an entire species wouldn’t conflict with their existing beliefs. If anything it seems like it would spur them to want to do more.
On the other hand, if you have a seemingly nice progressive species that does something horrible in the name of its ideals (while remaining consistent with its ideals), that might serve as a kind of crisis of faith.
Come to think of it that describes a lot of dystopian fiction (THE GIVER and everything onward), except that the main character in those stories tends to be a regular schmoe who just accepts the cultural narrative in the beginning, as opposed to a progressive crusader.
Look idiots: you manage to bite the philosophical bullets of your primitive religions in ways that make your beliefs sound abhorrent to nonbelievers. What makes you think that atheistic naturalists won’t bite the bullets of their primitive beliefs in ways that make them sound abhorrent to nonbelievers?
Because, trust me, I’ve seen it.
And if God does not exist, they are still just as dead, their culture just as lost, and there is no redress at all because there is not even the imaginary hope that they continue to exist in eternity.
Really the story is saying “There’s nothing to all this silly superstition, now Cosmic Wonder! Yeah, sure the aliens are just as dead, and it’s all down to the workings of the natural universe so it sucks for them, but hey, Cool Science!”
The main character has just as much right to be upset about the workings of an indifferent cosmos rolling along the lines laid out by natural laws that cares nothing for the good and beautiful; that crushed this people into dust, and will do the same for Earth one day. That there is no meaning in any achievement because it makes no difference that these were peaceful cultured people instead of cannibal torturers; they existed due to local conditions and the properties of matter, they died for the same reasons.
So likewise it makes no difference if you are an Ethical Altruist or Stalin. One day you will be dead. The people you helped or hurt will be dead. The Earth will be dead. The universe will be dead. Suffering or kindness is all valueless because it’s down to whim: you like how it makes you feel when you ‘do good’ or when you have the power to condemn others to slow death in Siberia with the stroke of a pen. There is no ultimate difference. You can’t stack utility.
“So likewise it makes no difference if you are an Ethical Altruist or Stalin. One day you will be dead.”
That only follows if you assume things that last for eternity are the only things that are valuable.
“Suffering or kindness is all valueless because it’s down to whim: you like how it makes you feel when you ‘do good’ or when you have the power to condemn others to slow death in Siberia with the stroke of a pen. There is no ultimate difference. ”
Why do you think ethics has to be backed by the nature of the universe to be important? People value sports despite soccer’s rules not being woven into the fundamental nature of the cosmos.
I’m genuinely confused that you think this is even remotely relevant.
Yes, it sucks and is awful that the alien civilisation is destroyed. An atheist in the same position would have every right to be upset. But it’s not evidence against the atheist worldview the same way it’s evidence against omnimax deities.
But for now I’m alive, and defecting is for scrubs.
Really? You complain that theodicy arguments have been done to death, and then bring up the old chestnut about how all atheists must be nihilists who don’t care about good and evil?
>Really the story is saying “There’s nothing to all this silly superstition, now Cosmic Wonder! Yeah, sure the aliens are just as dead, and it’s all down to the workings of the natural universe so it sucks for them, but hey, Cool Science!”
How on earth did you read that into this story? This story doesn’t feel the slightest bit triumphant. There’s no indication that the narrator found any comfort in science after losing his faith. What happened to the anonymous alien race was a tragedy and the only solace you can take is that they left something behind.
The only difference is, the atheist can just come out and say that it’s a tragedy, rather than try to find a reason that it was really a good thing because God did it.
Aegeus says: Really? You complain that theodicy arguments have been done to death, and then bring up the old chestnut about how all atheists must be nihilists…
Well one is basically the logical flip-side of the other.
The choice to believe that action “X” has some sort of moral property/value, or in the existence of an external reality at all, is an epistemological leap on a par with theism.
Good choice for the book club. I would appreciate more examples (they don’t have to be theological) of examination of deeply held priors in light of new evidence.
The story seems to set up a conflict between grief for lives lost senselessly and righteous anger at deaths caused for a whim, or to serve some other, capricious purpose. Either the deaths were deliberate, in which case God is a vicious, murderous monster – or the deaths were random, and the Sign which foretold the birth of the Son of God to all the nations –
– it was the star which led the first of the Gentiles to belief in the Messiah, and whose witness led to the Slaughter of the Innocents –
– or else that sign was nothing more than what came of the physical interactions of atoms – no more meaningful than the particular path of a flower petal as it fell from a cherry blossum.
I suggest two things: firstly to assume that one knows all of the history of one nation from a solitary vault is rather…suspect – what would one think of the parades in the Red Square? Of the history that the Third Reich would have left, had they the opportunity to do so? I am rather struck by the fact that the narrator “does not know what gods they worshiped” – did no ceremonies nor practices that were recognizable as religious appear? Or…had this civilization done as Sodom and Gomorrah, and turned their faces from God, and despite all the warnings of their doom, refuse to repent? Was the Vault their Tower of Babel? Who was their Jonah?
Secondly…death comes to us all. Is this evil? Is it more evil when death comes to the spiritually unprepared (the young, the unrepentant, those not expecting it) than it is when it come to the devout and the elderly? Death is written into the fabric of the universe – as entropy, if naught else. Every flame, eventually, snuffs out. Every day comes to a sunset. Every atom stills. Is this evil? Is it wrong that in the structure of this universe pi is equal to the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter, that light crosses less than 3 meters in 10 to the eighth seconds, and that all flows down to entropy?
Or is it not still possible to say that there are things between heaven and earth still undreamt of in your philosophy?
Suggestions for further reading:
From Narnia to A Space Oddessey: The War of Ideas Between CS Lewis and Arthur C Clark.
The novella “Pots” by CJ Cherryh (found here and here.)
Well, that depends on what you mean by “wrong”. But in the sense “has a wrong been done“, then the answer is “if it is caused by natural forces, no, if it was caused by an entity who thinks and plans, yes”.
…I think you might say the same of the surgeon, who thinks and plans out the process of cutting open the patient, with blood and pain and all the mess.
And I am reminded of Job and God, as revisited by Scott.
I am open to the possibility that I could not be what I am, without my faults.
And when surgeons are all powerful, the analogy would work.
I’ve been reading a lot about genetic modification and embryo selection. This seems pretty feasible in the next 20 years. It strikes me that Asian countries have a sort of memetic comparative advantage when it comes to genetic enhancement of humans. I’m pretty sure the West will lag behind the East in enhancing its human capital.
What sort of long-term investments might one make on this assumption?
Are you asking about financial investing or something like, “should I move to China so I can make sure my kid is genetically modified?”
I can’t answer the former, but I believe that embryo selection and gene editing in humans will be allowed in the West in the future. In fact they was just an international conference (including China) held in DC and AFAIK they issued language against editing human embryos, however, they they didn’t enact a moratorium on gene editing in humans.
There are prominent geneticists in the US who are arguing for human germline editing. I believe that there are are too many incentives, e.g. elimination of simple recessive diseases, for it to be banned here.
More here: http://www.nature.com/nature/outlook/genome-editing/
I think you’re too optimistic. I’ve seen people condemn “elimination of simple recessive diseases” as evil, via the argument “removing defective genes from the gene pool? Isn’t that what the Nazis were trying to do?” For them, eugenics is a singular entity, morally speaking: to approve of any attempt to improve peoples genes is to approve of Treblinka. It’s all the same to them; eugenics is eugenics is eugenics, period.
I also seem to recall arguments made in various forums that the UN should interpret its Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights to forbid not only reproductive cloning, but also germline engineering, on the grounds that the human genome is part of common heritage of mankind, and thus that germline engineering should be considered morally and legally equivalent to, say, vandalizing the Parthenon.
In fact, given talk I’ve heard IRL, I expect the eventual emergence of a real-life Blue Cosmos.
If only Gundam Seed were a better show that wasn’t constantly torn between nostalgia for UC Gundam and constant pandering towards the loudest fans.
Pinker recently did an interview condemning bioethicists.
Gene editing is going to be controversial for a long time to come in the west, but embryo selection is less so, is still quite powerful, and is already here, as in viable commercially. If one is selecting for intelligence, which we know the Chinese will, non-iterative embryo selection is powerful enough to reverse regression to the mean at least, and iterative is a whole other crazy bag that’s impossible to predict.
Then again, if it’s only the Chinese doing it, they’re already damn smart and somehow still have a disproportionately small amount of, say, Nobel prizes, so I dunno what they’re doing over there, but I’m skeptical about future world domination.
I would be very skeptical of stories discussing chinese superscience. They tend to be written for the fears of the west rather than an accurate reflection of the facts on the ground.
China is equally conservative, it just doesn’t manifest itself in the same ways as in the west. There’s been a massive backlash against GMO food here already. The medical sector is also conservative and slow to innovate, theres a reason the rich go abroad for treatment.
> I’m pretty sure the West will lag behind the East in enhancing its human capital.
Even if embryo modification happens in China it would be at a very small level compared to the overall population. You’re talking a population of 1.4 billion with massive wealth inequality, the majority of people still don’t have access to decent primary healthcare. So assuming no technological or legal barriers you might see a few of the super rich having genetically modified children, but the economic impact would be negligible.
If I was to guess I would think Israel would have a good chance at being a world leader in genetic modification. They have the resources and a small subset of the population (Tay Sachs carriers) with a large interest, and also expertise in the screening steps (again due to Tay Sachs carriers) that are crucial to modification.
I was thinking about this earlier and if I were Muslim, I’d want to be Shia; if I were Christian, I’d want to be Mormon; if I were a more religious Jew, I’d want to be Hasidic; and if I were Buddhist, I’d like to be Vajrayana. Anyone else have preferences?
Interesting. Would you mind elaborating on your preferences?
I’m… at least nominally Mormon, and if I remain any kind of Christian then I’d like it to be the Mormon kind, because (IMO) it lends itself more easily to transhumanism, compared to other Christian faiths.
It’s not just your opinion. There is an objective measure: there exists a Mormon Transhumanist Association and not other religiously affiliated associations, as far as I know.
There are Catholic and Evangelical transhumanists too. I’m not sure about the level of organization among either of those denominations, however.
I’ve definitely heard of some fairly devoted efforts at reconciling Catholic theology with transhumanism. I’m not sure if that’s anything inherent to the beliefs of the the Catholic Church, though.
My suspicion is that’s it’s more about a long history of Jesuits, logicians, and attempts to reconcile Catholicism with all sorts of other things.
I don’t know much about other branches of Christianity, but Mormonism seems to say that everything is around getting our bodies. And as I transhumanist I don’t think it’s very impressive. Are we assuming that “body” is some kind of metaphor?
It isn’t just getting a body, but getting a “glorified” body like what God has (Mormonism teaches that God has a physical embodiment, unlike most other Abrahamic faiths, which teach that God is non-physical).
Getting a mortal body, with all its drawbacks, is just one of many steps on the path to getting a perfected body (or perfected “physical embodiment”, rather).
I think a lot about what kind of Christian I’d be if I actually converted some day. The Amish and some Mennonites have very interesting characteristics, but their lifestyle is way too hardcore for my taste. The Mormons form extremely functional communities, and I was particularly impressed to learn that they make prepping a part of their faith, but the two-year mission requirement (that you pay for, no less) would put me off (on the gripping hand, that’s probably how they weed out the insufficiently committed). Catholicism has centuries of tradition and experience backing its instutions and doesn’t require that much of its adherents, but currently seems to be in decades-long state of decline. And I don’t know enough about Russian Orthodoxy to give it a thorough evaluation.
So I guess if you put a gun to my head and told me to choose, I’d go with the Mormons, too, but not by a huge margin.
You don’t have to do the mission, in fact they outright reject a decent chunk of the guys who apply to do it. (unless you want to try and climb the church hierarchy anyway, as that’s the first step).
There’s a strong stigma against not serving, though.
What happens if you apply and get rejected? Does the stigma still apply, or does that count as having made a decent enough attempt?
Jeorgun: It depends on the reason. I would rank “getting rejected because you were considered immoral in some fashion” to be as bad as not applying at all. “Getting rejected for a disability” carries a stigma to the degree that a given person believes that it’s valid (e.g. you’ll have an easier time if you were rejected because you’re in a wheelchair, than if it were due to bipolar, because you’ll find more people who don’t consider bipolar to be Really That Bad).
Disclaimer: Speaking from personal experience, not from studies, so this is anecdotal and based purely on my own understanding of the culture. Among other things, this will probably vary depending on location (e.g. Utah and Idaho are stricter and more orthodox than Missouri, which is stricter and more orthodox than New Zealand, etc.).
My experience (as a Mormon) is that the stigma does wear off pretty quickly as you age out of the eligible window (about 25). The stigma — which is definitely real — is mainly focused on getting young men who can go but don’t want to to do so. Once you can’t people largely forget about it as long as you stick around and participate in the usual ways. There also would be no stigma at all if you were to join the church as an adult.
I have very strong preferences for being Sunni and Catholic (or, failing that, Orthodox) respectively. I don’t have any particular justifications for either, except that they appeal to my sense of aesthetics more than the alternatives.
Throw me in the pot for Catholicism. It’s the sexiest denomination, and it has a king, which is anachronistic enough to merit my amusement, if not my respect. Also, I fucking love ritual, and I mean *real* ritual, not the garbage we who have lost all our traditional cultural ties try to make up.
Same here, though I’m biased, being raised Catholic.
But Catholicism does the whole “ancient pomp and ritual” thing better than any other Christian denomination. It’s easy to FEEL something in a big cathedral, even if you don’t believe. Plus it’s pretty easy to find every sort of Catholic from the easy-going to ultra hardcore.
I can’t stand the sanitized mega-churches of Protestantism-light these days. If religion is just going to be “do whatever you want, but sing soft rock Jesus songs in a conference center once a week” what’s the point?
Hm . . . I associate the mega-churches with more fundamentalist teachings, particularly a rejection of evolution, rather than Protestantism-light. Is there a specific church you’re thinking of?
Really? By “mega church” I mean literally a very large church building, not a large denomination.
I live in AZ, and “mega churches” are these big, modern buildings hosting large non-denominational congregations with names like “Cornerstone” and “The Grove”. Many of them have attached bookstores/coffee shops and “community centers”. They don’t seem particularly fundamentalist or particularly strongly for any position other than “Jesus is pretty cool”. It’s basically church for people who want to be culturally Christian but not get too hung up on the specifics.
I actually went to a summer camp as a kid that had much of this ethos – not because our family was particularly hardcore Christian but just because it was an awesome summer camp. It was distinctly Christian but in a soft warm fuzzy way – we said grace before meals, sang acoustic Christain rock around the camp fire, and had once a day “Bible sessions” that had more in common with motivational seminars than Jesuit scholarship. Mostly we rock-climbed, zip lined, kayaked, and rode BMX bikes.
Maybe you’re thinking of something else, but that’s always how I’ve heard “mega church” used.
Anyway, now that I e described them hopefully my point is clearer. To me these sorts of things break the “suspension of disbelief” you need to really get into a worship session. That’s a weird phrase to use about something that is theoretically all about belief, but I dunno, it would be like if they tried to set Jedis with lightsabers in 20th century New York. Doesn’t work at all, even though “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away” totally does.
EDIT: the best definition of what I’m thinking of is in the Wikipedia page on “McChurch”.
All I know: I’ve been Baptist, and I’m not going back. On the other hand, my cousin is doing a lot of cool “debunking the complementarian marriage structure” stuff, and trying to make internal changes to the Baptist church.
I still consider myself a Baptist, though my current church is nondenominational – could you expand on those changes your cousin’s trying to make?
I am a Catholic, and I prefer it theologically and morally and ritually etc., but when I drive through small, suburban towns in Utah I find myself wishing I could be Mormon, because they seem to have erected stronger barriers between themselves and what I can only describe as Anxious Internet Liberal culture.
Unfortunately, I would read to those people—mostly correctly, so far as it concerns them—as an Anxious Internet Liberal, and it’s vital to the continued survival of their promised land that they keep me out of it.
This gets at something that doesn’t come up as often as it should: grey is the only tribe that you can voluntarily join, you have to be born into the other two. Reds and blues rarely welcome defectors from the other side. This has implications for the whole atomic communitarianism thing
I don’t think that’s entirely true.
While anecdotal I am aware of at least a few people who grew up “blue” or “grey” now firmly ensconced in “red tribe” circles.
Blues welcome defectors from the other side as long as they disown everything from their former life, and even then, they’ll have noticeably lower status than the people who were born into it — not that the people born into it all have the same status, of course.
How much do Reds care about whether or not you were born into the tribe? I don’t think they do.
“How much do Reds care about whether or not you were born into the tribe? I don’t think they do.”
My Grandmother is the minister for a church that contains a Phd, a doctoral candidate (her), a businessman who owns his own small plane. There are a few older stereotypically church ladies who don’t seem to be particularly wealthy or educated and one man who has a long string of drug arrests and driving felonies. Everyone seems to more or less get along pretty well (obviously everyone would be pretty pissed off if he continued to use drugs).
How much do Reds care about whether or not you were born into the tribe?
Do cultural Blues ever try to go cultural Red? I can imagine a converted Liberal being celebrated, but someone claiming to have changed from liking opera to liking Nascar would just be laughed at.
How very unlike the attitude of every other group to converts!
@houseboatonstyx:
If you actually really like NASCAR, in the way red tribe does, you would be welcomed, I’m fairly sure. I mean, any convert to anything is usually suspect, but I don’t think that is a special problem.
So, if you appreciate and are interested in why people used to/still hate Jeff Gordon, the history of Dale Jr. and why he now drives 88, what a bump draft is, what a restrictor plate is, etc. then many NASCAR fans will happily have a conversation. If you also like 2 meats and 3 sides you are well on you way. If you think more people should go to church on Sunday and fear god’s wrath you are practically there.
But if you like NASCAR because it represents the circular nature of man’s essence, then you have an issue.
I mean, one big question is are you converting or a member? If you show up in brand new gear to the deer blind and do everything wrong, insisting you are right because you read it in a book, well, you aren’t actually a member yet, so you get treated as an outsider.
@houseboatonstyx:
Are you sure about that? My impression is that a fair number of Reds (particularly the “real America” variety) would be delighted to welcome an ex-Blue who said some variant of “Opera is totally boring and we Blues mostly just pretend to like it for social status, I’m so glad to have joined a group where the entertainment is actually fun!”
See also: any movie/book/music video where City Slickers encounter Country/Hillbilly culture and are converted by its simple pleasures.
I was born into a Red family and went blue. Nobody has had anything like the reaction you describe and I’m curious where you’ve seen this. On the other hand, some (but far, far from all) Reds in my town became anywhere from annoyed to violent when a cultural Blue entered their spaces (although this may have been driven partially by race). I’m not sure I’d believe that either tribe is particularly more exclusionary as a whole, but rather different areas have different receptivity.
^I realize now that you are thinking about 20-something online activist blues. I just want to say that this is far far from a majority of us, and over amplified because 1)online and 2)activist
To describe one common route, people come from small red towns, go off to college, and effectively join the Blue Tribe and get a job in the city and never go back. Happens all the time. All those silly email forwards about atheist college professors are based on a real Red Tribe fear of deconversion.
I don’t have particularly finely tuned status radar but I don’t see any evidence that such people somehow enjoy lower status either.
I think the charitable interpretation of “being born into” a tribe would have to encompass being educated into a tribe. At a minimum, neither Red nor Blue exclude or stigmatize adoptees from other-aligned cultures. And most everyone I think extends tolerance for the “still learning what you want to be when you grow up” phase through undergraduate college education.
So the real question is I think, do the tribes differ in their openness to “conversion” after graduation? Are you still welcome as an equal even if googling your name brings up that antifeminist/antichristian/whatever screed you made on your blog when you were 25?
Red tribe has the advantage in this respect of being closely aligned with a religion that explicitly allows such conversion and offers forgiveness for sins; if a former Blue’s realignment is thorough enough to encompass becoming actually Christian (or convincingly faking it), they’re in. Blue to Secular Red might be harder, but I think it’s still doable.
Blue tribe has the disadvantage in this respect of having aligned its Purity&Hygiene moral axis with the left/right political one, such that the antifeminist blog post is going to be a sticking point. Certainly people have been accepted into Blue Tribe on the basis of piously, vocally denouncing their past beliefs and everyone who still holds them, but I don’t know if it is possible to quietly join Blue Tribe after having been outed as Red.
I’ll grant that if you wrote a bunch of HBD posts and then tried to start posting regularly on SJ sites you would probably have to do some thorough and convincing denunciations of your old views.
But “activist Tumblr” is not the same thing as “Blue Tribe” as conventionally defined. If you’re just talking about someone from Texas who gets a job in the Bay Area, moves there, and then starts to absorb the culture over several years, going to church less and less while gradually realizing he enjoys visiting Europe on vacation, until eventually he has generally picked up native Bay Arean tastes, politics, habits, etc? No one will care.
“Bay Arean” is probably the most amusing thing I’ve heard all day.
How are blue and red tribes conventionally defined? Because I haven’t seen these terms used anywhere but here, where multiple definitions could fit (or maybe they have changed over time?).
@Anonymous
Scott’s rather facetious definition gives you the general feeling:
The Red Tribe is most classically typified by conservative political beliefs, strong evangelical religious beliefs, creationism, opposing gay marriage, owning guns, eating steak, drinking Coca-Cola, driving SUVs, watching lots of TV, enjoying American football, getting conspicuously upset about terrorists and commies, marrying early, divorcing early, shouting “USA IS NUMBER ONE!!!”, and listening to country music.
The Blue Tribe is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it, getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots, marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America, and listening to “everything except country”.
This is something I’m curious about, given these definitions. I feel that I vaguely grok Blue vs Red tribe, but I’m not certain where I fit in:
I have conservative political beliefs, heretical Methodist beliefs (rapidly trending towards Catholic), believe in evolution, support gay marriage, I have no desire to own a gun but also strongly support the right of my fellow citizens to own them, eat steak, pretty much drink nothing but water, read lots of books, enjoy American football, loathe terrorists and communists, marrying late, enjoy visiting Europe but also believe that the US is clearly the superior civilization, and don’t really listen to music at all.
The Grays’ atheism and technophilia has always put me off – I am a lover of history and literature and think of computers as vague magic boxes, so I don’t think I fit in there. Going by politics I’d say I was Red, but by lifestyle I am apparently generally Blue. (I vaguely recall a LessWrong post about this issue but can’t be arsed to look it up).
@Chevalier:
I think you are getting at one of the reasons Scott coined the terms. Although there is strong affiliation between the tribes and the politics, they do not overlap completely.
Obviously, they aren’t really tribes either, but two divergent clusters of somewhat overlapping interest bubbles. Like any regular mapping of things that are not regular, the mapping is necessarily imprecise.
Eating steak doesn’t make you red tribe, but mocking people who don’t is. I’m guessing you probably don’t do that. You understand why people choose not to eat red meat, or go vegan. You understand why people say Budweiser sucks, etc.
“Urbane and Multi-Cultural” might throw a blanket over “Blue Tribe”.
@ Chevalier Mal Fet
“Going by politics I’d say I was Red, but by lifestyle I am apparently generally Blue.”
Which I thought was why Scott coined those terms. Culture and politics are different axes.
Edit: Leaving this up as an object lesson in why I should not post before reading down the thread to see if the wiser HeelBearCub has already said something better. 😉
Yeah, I had the same kind of question as Chevalier:
What if you’re a bit left of center, atheist, accept evolution, support same-sex marriage, don’t own guns but support Americans’ right to do so, eat neither steak nor arugula (well, do flap meat and kale count?), drink neither soda pop nor fancy bottled water (where does “tap water, carried when necessary in a Nalgene you originally bought for actually camping” fit?), drive an SUV, read lots of books, are an autodidact, neither enjoy nor mock American football, [used to] *play* soccer, would rather not get conspicuously upset about anything but when you do it’s about violations of civil liberties, married early, haven’t divorced and don’t plan to, are proud to be an American but not shouty about it and also enjoy (and have heard of!) “For he is an Englishman,” and listen to country (and, obviously, Gilbert and Sullivan too)?
HUH HUH CAN YOU TELL ME THAT?!?! 😉
I am pro-monogamy and anti-open borders so don’t *tell* me greay tribe. 😉 Honestly if there’s an “opposite” to greay tribe just like Red and Blue are “opposites,” I’m probably that.
Hmm…what’s the opposite of “grey thinking”…”black and white” thinking right? Hmm…
…wack tribe? 😀
Cord shirt sounds pretty clearly blue Chevalier Mal Fet pretty clearly red. Not every member is going to be a central example. Also it’s a social thing – you don’t like country music or eat arugala respectively, but you probably know people that do.
Finally, there are also people that fit none of the above. The South Asian guys that attend the mosque down the block regularly are not red, blue, or gray.
I don’t see polyamory or open borders as defining points of the Gray Tribe; some of the grayest people I know are in long-term monogamous relationships, though I’m having a harder time thinking of open borders opponents. If you’re so opposed to either that you can’t stay in the same room without getting in a fight, that might disqualify you… but you’re posting here, aren’t you?
That being said, you sound Blue to me, if a slightly grayish blue.
@anonymous:
Thanks, this suggests what you think is and isn’t important for cultural classification.
Can I ask, what tribe are you? What tribe did you grow up in?
Chevalier and I both (to quote them) “believe in evolution, support gay marriage…have no desire to own a gun but also strongly support the right of my fellow citizens to own them…pretty much drink nothing but water, read lots of books…enjoy visiting Europe but also believe that the US is clearly the superior civilization.”
But one of us is “clearly red” and the other “clearly blue”…
Where do we differ?
Chevalier is politically on the right, I lean a bit left;
They are religious, I’m atheist;
They eat steak, I eat flap meat (and kale);
They enjoy American football, I enjoy soccer;
They loathe terrorists and communists, I try not to loathe people;
They married late, I married early;
They “don’t really listen to music at all,” I listen to country (and other genres).
So are you saying those are definitive? Politics and religion, is that what you’re judging on? Or is it American football and steak vs. flap meat and soccer?
Personally, *I* would say I’m about as blue as Ronald Reagan was a Democrat.
And yes: That *is* a reference to his famous line: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”
I’m certainly a raised-blue, but…
But.
I’ve spent a fair amount of energy trying to restrain/redirect Our Kids, but…
But.
But I can see the writing on the wall.
@Nornagest:
(I see you said elsewhere you grew up blue…)
First, I didn’t say much in “Setting the Default” for a reason.
Second…
“If you’re so opposed to either that you can’t stay in the same room without getting in a fight”
…when you’re talking about someone who (a) has always enjoyed the “we’re pursuing truth together, brainstorming together and bouncing ideas off each other” frame and has always disliked the “we’re competing” or “we’re play-fighting” (never mind real fighting) frames; and who (b) now also has been through two “accidentally said the wrong thing” mobbings that they’ve not yet recovered from…
…”can’t stay in the same room without getting in a fight” just…is not an accurate metric.
“Can’t stay in the same room at all” might be a better metric…for which I refer you to point #1.
Third…
“some of the grayest people I know are in long-term monogamous relationships”
Yeah not into the “Oh of course polyamory is the best, but, heh-heh, poor little me, I’m just too weak for that, I’m just, heh-heh, one of those pitiful few ‘natural monogamists’ (who, as we all know, are on our way out)” thing.
On Thing of Things someone commented that to greay tribe, polyamory was supererogatory.
Which is my point. I don’t see poly as an ideal to shoot for, supererogatory or not.
Debate isn’t what I was trying to gesture toward. I’ll debate a lot of things, but there are only a handful of issues I’ll fight over — mainly those I see on some level (and not necessarily correctly) as existential threats to my agency or my culture.
As to polyamory, the people I was talking about take an approach somewhere between “I don’t really get it, but if you want to, that’s fine” or “I could probably do poly, but I don’t see it buying me anything over the relationship I’ve got, so why mess with it?”. I wouldn’t call that supererogatory. “Optional” would fit.
(Personally, I’ve historically been happier in open relationships of some kind, but I’m increasingly unimpressed with poly ideology.)
How have we gotten this deep in a thread with nobody mentioning accents and fashion sense?
Oh right: we’re on SSC.
You lose a lot by ignoring that kind of thing. How many red-associated accents/dialects do you hear in San Francisco tech circles, despite the high non-native population?
Bay Aryans don’t offer dhimmi status to economic immigrants, and participating in economic life means adopting their cultural norms–from dress to accent to trendy beers.
There’s a lot of talk about “tribes”, but a more appropriate word is “caste”. The same kind of system that stopped my grandfather from getting a bank account, because as soon as they heard him speak they told him to come back through the tradesman’s entrance.
@Cord Shirt
Those are just my impressions based on the short vignettes and my understanding of the concepts. I’m, of course, in no position to define either of you for yourselves or others.
That said here was my thinking:
For you, besides the obvious — left (or at least left-ish) political views and non-religiosity, there was also kale and Gilbert & Sullivan, both of which could easily have been tucked into Scott’s original list. Of course there were some countervailing indicators — the strongest being support for gun rights but the overall impression to me was blue with some heretical political beliefs.
As for Chevalier Mal Fet, again there’s the obvious conservative political beliefs, but beyond that deep Christian beliefs are a very powerful red signal. There are some old line protestants that are very involved in church life and still very much blue, but if you are at the point where you are very interested in Church doctrine and considering switching over the Catholicism for doctrinal reasons, I don’t think that’s a pattern that matches. “Enjoy American football, loathe terrorists” and “believe that the US is clearly the superior civilization” were just gravy.
As for me I’m a Blue poster boy. I have Blue parents. I grew up in a Blue suburb of a Blue city now live back in that city. I love sushi, don’t own a car or TV, am an atheist (but not in any movement sense), have a graduate degree, am unmarried in my mid-30s, read lots of books, pro-gay rights and pro-gun control, and so forth so on.
There’s maybe a tiny bit of gray because I’m a computer programmer but I’m not a libertarian, don’t think I ever heard filk, don’t get tumblr, have no interest in poly/pan anything, and I don’t have any tattoos. Besides, I’m not sure that gray is really a thing outside of the bay area.
I know Grays in Portland and Seattle and Boston, a few in DC, and at least one in LA but he’s originally from Northern California. But they’re densest in the Bay Area, and it probably wouldn’t be too far off to describe it as an urban Blue insurgency, from what I’ve seen. John Schilling or someone like him is welcome to tell me I’m wrong, though.
Filk is hella embarrassing, and I’ve heard it but I wish I hadn’t. I don’t think it’s a marker of the Gray Tribe, though, so much as of old-school fandom and people linked to it. There are lots of Grays in fandom, but it’s older than the Gray Tribe and less tribal; the solidest Red I know is also arguably the biggest fan, and then on the other side you have people like the Nielsen Haydens.
I disagree about the difficulty of switching: the Reds were happy to take Blue-born me, and I’m certain the Blues at universities try to get every Red-born they can to switch to the Blue tribe.
I think what stops people from switching is themselves: aesthetic preferences for cities vs. non-cities, complicated food vs. burgers, and hanging out with everyone they already know vs. having to build a whole new social circle. Plus in some situations your job may depend on maintaining your current tribal affiliation.
(Is it me, or do “Blue-born” and “Red-born” sound kinda Game of Thronesy?)
Well…to quote myself (an old wrote-but-didn’t-post)…
—
Yeah…after having been mobbed twice and unpersoned during the second one…I’ve really had to depart from blue tribe. I’m very open to being recruited elsewhere (as Norma McCorvey aka “Roe” of Roe v. Wade was)…but it doesn’t really work, at least not so far. I mean, one blog that claims to welcome everyone who’s been unpersoned by SJWs, also has a tradition of calling everyone to the economic left of Rand Paul a “vileprog.” So…
My experience of red tribe is pretty much that every time I think of maybe starting to trust them, one of them says something ranging from thoughtlessly dehumanizing (FIL habitually uses “humanist” as an all-purpose insult) to hostile–like this. (I mean, I like a lot of those commenters as individuals…but…nice attitude to have toward those who were looking to ally with you…and if your reaction to having those feelings is to gleefully indulge them rather than to soberly acknowledge and then control them… :backs away slowly:)
And if greay tribe were to begin supporting monogamy, then I might join it, otherwise it’s a big nope. So as for me, right now I’m basically no tribe. :shrug:
—
So is it me? Sort of. And is it them? Sort of. I mean, is it that I don’t like their attitude toward potential converts, or is it that they’re not willing to change their attitude toward potential converts in order to become more welcoming? Well…both.
You don’t specify what sort of Shia. All variants strike me as at least somewhat nuttier than Sunni, what with the final Imam still invisibly around, and the various sevener variants nuttier than the twelvers.
What is your reason for preferring Shia?
Christianity: (pre Vatican II) sedevacantist catholic
Buddhism: Theravāda branch, Dhammayuttika Nikaya order (founded in 1833 by Prince Mongkut, later King Rama IV, who most of you probably know from The King and I).
Chinese philosophy and traditional religion: Xunzian Confucianism.
“Christianity: (pre Vatican II) sedevacantist catholic”
My man. Although like everyone else ITT I gotta acknowledge that the Mormons are on to something.
I’m not even sure Mormons count as Christians. At any rate, I don’t see the point of being Christian if you’re not going to be Catholic.
OTOH, if I were born Jewish, I would definitely stay Jewish. I mean, a religion whose central distinguishing tenet is that I’m better than everyone else? That’s got to be hard to beat.
I’m not even sure Mormons count as Christians.
If not, they are playing a very deep game indeed. What with that whole “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” thing.
It just depends where you draw the boundaries of Christianity. Lots of conservative Christians don’t think Mormons count – extra holy books, the Mormon take on Trinity, etc. are seen as too much.
I have even talked to evangelicals who say that Catholics aren’t Christian!
Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet of Islam. Are they Christians too? Also, some earlier Christians took Islam to be a Christian heresy, not a separate religion.
http://www.stpeterslist.com/11698/islam-as-a-christian-heresy-8-quotes-from-st-john-damascene-a-d-749/
I would argue that a good definition of Christian would be “Individual who accepts Jesus as the Christ / Messiah.” Restricting it to acceptance of the Nicene Creed retroactively un-Christian-izes all of the pre-Nicene sects that would have disagreed with it.
There were scientists — good, legitimate scientists — who accepted phlogiston. That does not make it illegitimate to say that people who accept it nowadays are not scientists.
I think the crucial difference is that the reason no respectable scientist could now believe in phlogiston is because the phlogiston conjecture has now been experimentally disproved, and an explanatory framework that better explained the data is now in place. Whereas no one to my knowledge has ever experimentally disproven the pre-Nicene variants of Christianity; they just lost a culture war (or in some cases, actual wars) that the Nicene variant happened to win.
But I’m not very well read-up on the subject. If someone has devised a reliable test that can show Nicene Christianity to be more probably than pre-Nicene Christianity, then I’d be interested to hear about it.
Though in general, I think the important thing to remember is that ‘Christianity’ is a leaky generalisation; in reality there are a myriad different Christianities, some much further away from a hypothetical weighted-average compromise Christianity than others are. The simplest thing is to provisionally accept that any group that calls itself Christian counts as Christian, then argue about the specific claims.
Heck, there are even a few people practising a deliberate syncretism of Christianity and Islam. Worrying about whether they are Christians, Muslims or both is unlikely to get you a satisfactory answer; even worrying about where to draw the numbers if you want to consider them X% Christian and Y% Muslim is probably not much more useful.
Of course, ‘scientist’ is also something of a leaky generalisation…
“. If someone has devised a reliable test that can show Nicene Christianity to be more probably than pre-Nicene Christianity, then I’d be interested to hear about it.”
Here we go again. Christianity’s standards of evidence MUST be science’s.
I remember the last time it came up. No one had a coherent answer for the question of whether you have a reliable test that your mother loves you.
“Here we go again. Christianity’s standards of evidence MUST be science’s. ”
Why not? The existence of something fits neatly into ‘requires evidence’ bin.
“I remember the last time it came up. No one had a coherent answer for the question of whether you have a reliable test that your mother loves you.”
… really? You don’t think ‘someone who provides and cares for you’ is evidence that a person loves you?
Not necessarily. But you were the one who brought up the comparison when you said “There were scientists — good, legitimate scientists — who accepted phlogiston”. But in any case they ought to have some standard of evidence that is better than ‘being the one variant of Christianity that happened to win the culture war against the other variants of Christianity on offer at the time, if you are going to make that comparison.
And note that I did not say ‘give 100% unassailable proof that Nicene Christianity is correct and the other varieties are false’ – I merely said that you should be able to provide some test that shows Nicene Christianity more probable (excuse my misspelling in the earlier comment) than other variants of Christianity.
Samuel Skinner has already had a go, but if someone puts up with my shit for decades, consistently pours resources into my upbringing, consistently takes an interest in my wellbeing, in ways that she does not do for people who are not her child (and in ways that people who are not my mother do not do for me), then I would say that that is pretty good bayesian evidence in favour of the hypothesis that my mother loves me, relative to all the other hypotheses.
If you genuinely meant the comparison – if you genuinely meant that the non-Nicene Christianities have been as thoroughly intellectually discredited (as opposed to economically and militarily conquered) as the phlogiston conjecture, such that a modern-day believer in a non-Nicene version of Christianty can no more reasonably be considered a Christian than a modern-day phlogiston-believer could be called a scientist, then you ought to be willing to show how that intellectual discrediting happened.
” I mean, a religion whose central distinguishing tenet is that I’m better than everyone else?”
I don’t think you get Judaism at all.
@Ilya Shpitser:
I don’t really have a “dog in this fight” but religious Judaism has a couple of salient features a) It maintains that Jews are the chosen people of God, and b) It is not evangelical and does not seek converts.
I mean, that maps pretty well to think the Jews are better than other humans, but still insignificant before God. It seems like a valid point but I’m happy to learn otherwise if I am wrong on this.
Yes, the way you phrased the chosen thing is a common anti-semitic trope. There is some phrasing to this effect in early texts, but mostly it’s something like “chosen for more scrutiny — blessed if you do well, cursed if you do poorly.”
My impression has always been that Jews held their place as chosen people and the fact of the awesomeness of their God as two separate things.
It wasn’t “we are awesome, therefore God picked us” so much as “Our God is DA BOMB – are we not the luckiest sumbitches on the face of the planet? Yes, yes we are, all ya’ll wish you were us, but nope, can’t touch this!”
(I also suspect that certain rival tribes held that the Israelites and their God richly deserved each other as no deity and people had ever done so in the history of the world. A jealous, judgmental God and his stiff-necked rebellious people – you guys have fun, there.)
My sense of it is that having been “chosen” is (from the inside) seen as more of an obligation than an honor. It doesn’t indicate Jews are better than others. Indeed, it’s something one might resent. eg:
Q: “Why do we have to follow all these rules when nobody else has to?”
A: “Because God said so, that’s why.”
I’ve heard the joke expressed something like: “Apparently we are God’s chosen people. Please, God, choose someone else next time.”
If I were a Muslim, I’d want to be Qur’anist (for eschewing the hadith); in Christianity, Catholicism (and especially the Jesuits) would appeal to me the most. I don’t know enough about Judaism and Buddhism to choose a denomination. Other than that, I find Sikhism to be quite an interesting and attractive religion as well – its tenets appear to be compatible with and encouraging what I consider a virtuous and productive life.
If I were to be a Muslim, I think i would be Sunni and Mu’tazilite. But then, I’m a fan of al Ma’mun.
Not sure which madhab.
I’d never thought about the question, but I’m so temperamentally agnostic that I’d go for the most insipid modern version of whatever religion.
My fundamental agnosticism points me in the other direction, or two. Since I can’t imagine actually believing anything, I’d go for the most extreme and colorful, or dark and dramatic.
…Nobody here would be any sort of Protestant? (Unless you count the Mormons.)
Is there any point to being Protestant?
Any point to being Protestant?
Changing church families at the drop of a hat when your current pastor turns out to be an unsavory type. Speaking as a Catholic, it’s a lot harder to pry a bad priest out of the frame, and while Mama Church attempts to compensate by requiring a long period of education and scrutiny, it’s pretty clear that process has some failings.
It’s not like Catholics aren’t allowed to go to church in a different parish if their priest is not to their liking. And there’s a big problem with “church shopping” in general, as described here.
If you actually believe that’s a problem with church shopping, you’re halfway to atheism already, because you’ve just admitted that churches are subject to memetic evolution and survive for reasons unrelated to the truth of their teachings. Once you’ve admitted that, you may as well realize that that applies to present-day churches as well as future ones and you only believe the teachings of your own church because of a process unconnected to truth. (Even if church shopping itself wasn’t popular in the past, there are other memetic forces that certainly affected the popularity of your church. What’s the real difference between “this church only got big and popular because of selection pressure from church shopping” and “this church only got big and popular because its adherents happened to be able to kill and forcibly convert lots of people”?)
>you’ve just admitted that churches are subject to memetic evolution and survive for reasons unrelated to the truth of their teachings
No.
Long-term survival of a church is entirely related to the truth of its teachings. Church teachings aren’t just some boiler-plate that is just there to be there, and without relevance to the world. Falsehood within teachings is like genetic load; as it increases, so decreases the ability of the church to reproduce and survive. Teachings that are good and true are useful, improving the fitness of their adherents. Teachings that are evil and false drag them down.
A church that strays sufficiently from what is true will suffer extinction, eventually. Nowadays, our particular circumstances of great affluence and isolation from the consequences of our actions simply delay and minimize the negative outcomes of taught falsehood. It’s similar to how modern people survive infancy due to medicine, where they would die due to otherwise life-threatening genetic conditions.
Suppose an anti-natalist church becomes popular, a not altogether unreasonable supposition, given widespread anti-natalist attitudes – that church, while initially gaining popularity, will eventually die, because it will be like an elephant graveyard, where people go to die, not to reproduce, as anyone susceptible to becoming a member and internalizing its teachings will be damaging their own fitness.
Similar points can be made about a myriad other teaching-matters.
Can the rationalist community stop conflating “true” and “useful” for one goddamn second?
But that’s the whole point of that criticism of church shopping that you linked to. The argument is that church shopping causes the churches that survive the best to be churches which match people’s predilections.
That amounts to special pleading: memetic evolution leads to the wrong churches surviving just long enough to be a problem, but not long enough that it calls into question why my own church survived.
“The argument is that church shopping causes the churches that survive the best to be churches which match people’s predilections. ”
That’s an argument against Protestantism with its endless schisms, not “halfway to atheism”.
“For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers”
Of course the Protestant could counter-argument that he is relying on the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The argument assumes that things other than truth spread a religion. The argument only mentions some of those things. The ones it *mentions* apply to Protestants, but the ones it didn’t mention apply to your religion as well.
It may be that only Protestant religions are spread by church shopping. But *your* religion’s history includes killing or forcibly converting lots of people. Surely, if religions can spread by church shopping regardless of truth, they can spread by killing and forcible conversion regardless of truth.
Not a chance. Sacrificing sacred truth for mere winning is our taboo trafeoff.
@Jiro
No, the complaint is that church shopping encourages people choosing their church according to how it matches what they already believe, rather than how true, how good, or how useful its teachings are. That way the theological landscape comes to match the zeitgeist, rather than shaping it. From teaching it comes to merely repeating what extra-church influences are saying.
Memetic evolution in circumstances of isolation from consequences of error permits the survival of greater amount of error than otherwise. Error is hardly good, and damages society’s ability to deal with the world. Encouraging it is not good, either. What exactly is it that you’re objecting to, here?
Anonymous: Your description is the same thing as what I said, except you worded it differently. Church shopping leads to churches that match people’s predilections becoming more widespread.
But if you admit that, then you have to admit that your own church got widespread by killing heretics and converting people by the sword.
That you admit that other religions spread for memetic reasons when it comes to church shopping, but you don’t admit that your own religion spread for memetic reasons, or consider the implications of that,
Right.
In part, yes, but that comes much later in the story. The church really got going by offering a superior set of ethics to the alternatives at the time. The pagan Romans were decadent, and the early Christians were not. Christianity survived by providing its adherents with what they needed to outcompete the rival faiths.
This is the first time I hear orthodox Catholicism called populist pap, I must say. If you mean a heavily americanized, decadent Catholicism, then I suppose you’re right.
Offering a set of ethics that allows you to outcompete other groups because of the behavioural consequences of adhering to that ethical framework is a very different proposition from offering a set of truth-claims that allow you to outcompete rival groups because those truth-claims are more accurate than the truth-claims of those other groups, which seems to have been what you were claiming earlier, assuming you are the same Anonymous who said
It is easy enough to imagine a memeplex which contains a large number of manifestly false truth-claims and some useful ethical precepts outcompeting a memeplex which contains a large number of true truth-claims and some profoundly maladaptive ethical injunctions, as long as the truth-claims are about subject matters which do not impact too strongly on your ability to live and compete in the real world.
Example?
Example: The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints.
Or, heck, just about any major religion.
Of course, you have to acknowledge that “true” means “true” rather than just “useful.”
That’s not what I’m saying. If I meant that I’d have just said “it gets you to atheism” rather than “it gets you halfway to atheism”.
It didn’t spread by being populist. But it spread because of forced conversions, and killings, and missionaries (even peaceful ones), and the emperor declaring it the official religion of Rome, and the coincidence that the people who had it managed to do well in war even when the war wasn’t for Christianity, and teachiongs opposing birth control and abortion, and all sorts of other reasons. Some of these reasons were violent; some were peaceful; but what they have in common is that just like populism, they help ideas to spread regardless of whether the ideas are true or false.
The pink Anonymous has a good one there, with the LDS church. But just to make the extreme point, let’s say you have a group that believes that, say, mice are the projections into this dimension of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings that created this planet to settle a philosophical question, that Bigfoot is real and hiding out in the mountains, that people who do not have children can look forward to a lifetime of ennui and regret but that those who have many children are especially happy, that fairies will abduct anyone who tries to go and join that other group across the river and that Freddy Krueger will kill anyone who doesn’t keep some savings and prepare for emergencies.
Meanwhile, across the river lives a group that believe the Earth was formed from the gravitational collapse of a cluster of interstellar gas in the same process that created the Sun and the other planets of our solar system, that there are no large apes that we have not yet discovered, that people who do not have children are no less happy on average than those who do, and that Freddy Krueger and fairies don’t really exist.
In many circumstances we would expect the first group to eventually outcompete the second even though the second technically has a more accurate set of beliefs overall.
That has been a cartoonishly exaggerated version of the point, but I hope you get why people are keen for you to understand that there is no necessary correlation between the truth and the usefulness of an idea.
[Edited to add: of course, the theory of memetics adds a further complication that an idea or set of ideas can be useful to itself as it spreads in competition with other sets of ideas, while being actively anti-useful to the people who believe it, measured either in happiness or in genetic success. And of course, all else being equal we would expect there to be a correllation between truth and usefulness on average; it’s just that we cannot infer truth from the fact that an idea has proven adaptive.]
Okay. I see your point.
I’m not sure I would agree with the implication that the acceptance of these beliefs by ascendant groups is unrelated to their truth, especially their perceived truth. Who, indeed, comes to believe a thing they understand to be false? I expect nobody with a properly functioning mind does*.
Evidently false beliefs will make a faith less competitive, both in conversion of others, and in retaining homegrown members with non-broken minds.
* Excepting false conversions, of course, which do occur. I don’t think they’re the norm – otherwise we’d have seen a “everybody is a secret atheist perceiving everyone else as true believers” scenario happen in the Soviet Union.
Not in theory, no. I somewhat doubt that it’s uncorrelated in practice.
@anonymous:
The spread of religion in general refutes the idea that spreading and truth are related. The core truths of several major religions are antithetical to each other, and yet spread anyway.
Does the Church tend to put the worst priests into the graveyard shift? Literally. Burials. I’ve yet to see a burial priest who does not show up drunk or has a serious speech impediment or other forms of undercompetence at the job. Maybe for actually religious people they tend to have their own priest speak over them, but when you have this normal Euro case of grandma not having been church in 40 years and yet the family wanting to give her a church burial because his hubby is in the same graveyard, we seem to get these graveyard shift priests who aren’t very competent.
I’m a (non-denominational) protestant, so I’d say there’s a point. Unless evangelicals get their own category now I guess, in which case I probably fit that one most closely.
Calvinists are pretty neat:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3656
I briefly toyed with Quiverfull, but one of the benefits of religion is supposed to be a strong community, and the Quiverfulls don’t really have that. And like I said, the Amish are too extreme, plus there is also that troublesome pacifism of theirs. So, yeah, no real standouts among the Protestants.
Yes: Presbyterianism (for their humility).
I could do Pentecostal, Amish, or Shaker light.
I don’t really wish to be anything else but Catholic. My only regret is the decadence of the west and its faiths in general, which includes mine. Fortunately, we have risen from ashes more than once now, and I expect our descendants will live to see that resurrection.
I am imperfectly content with the Roman Catholic Church, and look forward to an increasingly deep relationship. Having said that:
Mennonite for Christianity, Orthodox Zionist if Jewish, and Taoist for the Eastern faiths. Regretfully, I don’t know enough of the general practice of the various American Indian groups (which would probably not even be an option, due to genetics, although the Wyandot(Huron) seem appealing) nor of the various Hindu sects.
I prefer a faith that emphasizes rejection of materialism and of self-interest/self promotion in favor of community service and attention to the natural world, combined with a human awareness of…things beyond? That what is seen is not everything? Humility in the face of the great unknown? Something like that.
FWIW
– All the Mormons I have met have been at least attempting to follow Christ, they count as Christian to me.
– I was under the impression (please correct me if you have advanced knowledge) but Sufi isn’t a third branch of Islam, but a style of practice, like, say – high church vs low church in the Anglican traditions. There are other subbranches of Islam, most of which divide themselves into Sunni vs Shia, but some hold themselves as separate.
You are correct that sufi is not a third branch of Islam. Sufis can be Sunni or Shia.
I get the impression that a lot of needlessly unproductive argument stems from the accidental confusion of ‘materialism’ in the sense of consumerism; the desire to gain status by accumulating material wealth, and ‘materialism’ in the sense of philosophical naturalism, the position that, sure, we don’t know all the facts, there remain great unknowns, but we can provisionally reject the hypothesis that reality contains anything supernatural (in the technical sense, articulated by Richard Carrier here, and endorsed by Eliezer Yudkowsky on Less Wrong here, of containing ‘ontological basic mental elements’ – things that have mind-like properties such as desires, intensions, emotions, while not being subdivisible into simpler elements that individually lack any mind-like properties).
I’d say that rejecting materialism in the sense of trying to get off the hedonic treadmill is probably a good idea, but that rejecting materialism in the sense of explicitly embracing supernatural explanations is probably not … at least if you care about your beliefs being accurate – it’s possible that you could be more happy in a group that believes false but comforting supernatural claims than you could in a group that rejects such claims. But given all we have discovered so far, it seems more likely that supernaturalism is a bias that the human mind is prone to, rather than a true fact about reality.
I appreciate the distinction you’re making here, and the clarification, but to be clear – I would prefer to reject the materialism of stuff-I-have-to-get-and-have (which I was talking about, above) and the materialism of there-are-no-unseen-forces (which I wasn’t.)
But given all we have discovered so far, it seems more likely that supernaturalism is a bias that the human mind is prone to, rather than a true fact about reality.
This is an intriguing idea, and I’m not inclined to reject it out of hand. (It seems to fall into the sorts of general biases that humans have, like “preferring clustering with genetically similar people”, “not finding siblings sexy” and so forth – things that we do which lead to racism, but don’t make bigoted beliefs real (or strangers particularly hawt.) However, I find my faith and my God sufficiently real and useful that I’m not inclined to accept the implicit rejection of religion.
(I hope this comes across as mildly and pleasantly as I mean it – I really do appreciate you pointing out the potential confusion between the two terms.)
>I get the impression that a lot of needlessly unproductive argument stems from the accidental confusion of ‘materialism’ in the sense of consumerism;
No – sufficiently trad Christians at least fully accept the human desire to “better our conditions” i.e. be consumerist-materialist. Though they often prefer it the older fashioned ways (get an expensive painting if you want to brag, not the latest iPhone). There is a difference between improving our condition materialistically and between being a stupid consumer who buys the latest fads instead of long term value things like antiques. Trad Christians tend to approve of this materialism as long as it does not become this kind of stupid fleeting things, so as long as it is about things of a lasting value.
>But given all we have discovered so far, it seems more likely that supernaturalism is a bias that the human mind is prone to, rather than a true fact about reality.
On one hand, yes, I blogged about this here: https://dividuals.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/towards-a-more-mature-atheism/ it is the overdetection of agency.
On the other hand, be aware of how many intelligent people buy the we are living in a simulation / brains in the vat agreement. That is the same as religion – the Simulator being omnipotent, omniscient etc. And advanced intelligent theism always said god isn’t just a lvl 1000 wizard in the world but behind in the way that the universe is basically his thoughts.
Thus it seems we have the common cases of agency overdetection from voodoo to Plantinga type primitive personalist theism, and then we have the actual theology of Aquinas etc. who are a whole different class, something similar to the simulated universe argument…
Sufism is sort of “esoteric islam.”
On the Christian side, Catholic for sure. Just look at their art! Look at this thing, do Mormons have anything like this: https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/gvl8oqkphithnwtvxcbq.jpg
And this isn’t just a relic of the past. Pynchon, DeLillo, Richter, von Trier. In every medium, Catholics dominate. Even in the Protestant countries, it’s the Catholics who make art.
I’m not a fan of Mormonism but they have some cool art. Although it is weird to see an almost Norman Rockwell quality painting of Christ preaching to native Americans.
If I were Christian I’d be a Quaker. I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the Quakers yet.
Seems to me that someone who would become a Quaker if they were Christian should consider becoming a Quaker anyway. From an official looking FAQ
Agreed that Quakers have a lot of admirable features, and that you probably wouldn’t be happy as a Quaker if you were actively antagonistic to Christian imagery.
The Quakers have their own schisms. The FAQ you’re quoting comes from some damned dirty Hicksites. Not all meetings are going to be like that and, personally, the so-open-minded-your-brain-falls-out attitude that leaks from it really, really bothers me. Quakers are Christians. If you’re going to start calling non-Christians Quakers you’re just using the same word to mean something different.
Given MichaelM’s comment about Quaker diversity, a similar organization is the Unitarian Universalist Association. It’s formerly Christian, and is now officially post-Christian, but it isn’t unusual for some members to be Christian. (Most members now are staunch atheists, pagans, moralistic therapeutic deists, or undecided.)
OTOH, Quakers have their own unique rituals and shared commitment to peace, which many prefer.
And even the pacifism part is subject to some interpretation. Richard Nixon was a Quaker.
whywouldyoudothat.jpg
Mormons tend to be fantastic at creating communities, extol and enjoy the virtue of industry, and are really good at being the grown-up in every room. And there’s a halo effect: communities with substantial Mormon populations tend to be nicer places to live, even for non-Mormons (social stigma for not being a member of the Church is exaggerated).
Slightly off-topic, but when we colonize Mars, it should be Mormons. All the cultural competencies are in place for stable communities, and it plays right into the handcart pioneer mythos.
Not to mention, they’d be on another planet! >:P
/is LDS himself, but will remove this comment if it terribly offends someone
My choices have always been if I’m not Catholic, then I’m atheist. But Tibetan Buddhism very strongly seconded (there’s a ceremony for giving water to the dead which pings all my ‘prayers for the souls in Purgatory!’ buttons).
Especially if you look at the more “Red hat” stuff practiced more in East Tibet like the Khampa people – http://www.remibenali.com/culture_and_tribes_khampas/index.php
Why would you make atheism (rather than deism) the alternative to Catholicism, unless you think the existence of God fundamentally unlikely?
I would choose Catholicism or Orthodoxy because they allow for many different paths, from being a cultural christian to being a hermit. Plus they have old, beautiful churches, lots of paintings and music to go with their elaborate rituals and lots of saints with interesting lives.
Animism always appealed to me so I would choose Shinto over Buddhism.
I would prefer polytheism like Hinduism over strict monotheism like that of Judaism or Islam.
Not sure if this is sort of what Scott is getting at, but personally I’d want to be the most mysticism-oriented version of whatever religion, which also has the advantage of offering more overlap: Sufism (subset of Shia), maybe whoever studies Kabbalah, Vajrayana is pretty esoteric (and lets you eat meat, which might be what Scott likes), maybe Eastern Orthodox?
There are also just aesthetic issues: Eastern Orthodox>Catholic>Protestant in terms of just the beauty of the vestments and stuff, imo.
My personal list combining above factors: Russian Orthodox Christian, Suffi Muslim, Kabbalah-studying Jew (not sure if one subset of them like Hassidim study it more), Japanese Zen Buddhist, Shiva-devotee Hindu…
I like being a Lutheran, but mainly for the cultural externalities stemming from it being the state religion in Scandinavian / Nordic countries, and I like being from Scandinavian / Nordic countries. It has had an ability to be quite unsavory at times in the past and tendency of producing not always very pleasant evangelical sects, but so has about every Christian denomination, but the mainstream version today seems quite easy to adjust to even as a secular person.
For a similar reasons, if instead of choosing a specific Buddhist tradition one is allowed to choose just from geographic neighborhood, I might tempted by Shinto.
Don’t know enough of different Islamic traditions to differentiate.
Hasidic seems like an odd choice to me, what with the personality cults, the mysticism and the redicoulus shokeling. Assuming MO was out, I’d go litvak.
But do the Litvaks get shtreimels?
All of those things seem like they might be considered pluses to some folks. (And what is wrong with swaying? I know plenty of autistic people find it pleasant enough.)
If I wasn’t worried about being shouted at for cultural appropriation, I would totally wear a shtreimel. They are one hell of a hat.
There are litvak groups that wear shtreiemls, especially the ones associated with old yeshuv yeshivas I think.
@WS
I don’t think the haradi know about cultural appropriation, but they are eye wateringly expensive. Even the Lubavitch fedora is expensive.
As might be expected in this culturally appropriative and generally silly era, try searching on As might be expected in this culturally appropriative and generally silly era, try searching on “shtreieml” and shopping and you’ll find cheap knock-offs.
In case anyone was wondering, the baseball cap with the Hebrew letters says “shtreieml”.
The site claims I already posted a version of this with the shopping link, but that comment isn’t appearing.
I am Mormon and really like it, but I have often remarked that if I couldn’t be for some reason then I wouldn’t mind being Catholic, especially if I could be a monk. As a quiet, contemplative type who likes routine, good deeds, and singing, it kind of seems like the life. Also, as someone else already mentioned, Catholicisms artistic and musical heritage blows Mormonism out of the water (they’ve got like a thousand years on us though!)
If I had to not be Christian my first instinct is to go Sikh. My experience is that it is a practical, no-frills sort of religion that gets things done. Once when my wife and I visited the big gurudwara in Delhi we were standing around in a mass of people looking a little confused about what to do with our shoes, when a Sikh woman walked over, asked if we were visiting, directed us where to go, welcomed us, and walked off. She didn’t work at the gurudwara or anything, she was just visiting too. That’s the sort of practical kindness that I want my religion to help me develop. The free-meals kitchen associated with every gurudwara is another manifestation of this.
My inability to grow a beard would be a downer, though.
A Sikh, so I could match a colorful turban to my tie. In a business-formal environment, Sikhs always look the coolest.
In Judaism, I would heartily recommend Ashkenazi Religious Zionism (Rabbi Kook style). You get the benefits of a tight-knit religious community AND being an elite in the military / tech / political sector (unlike the withdrawn Orthodox). Plus, you have nationalistic success reinforcing your religion, as long as Israel is prospering you’re basically seeing proof of your faith in every detail of day to day life.
” Anyone else have preferences?”
How the devil would I know? I’m not a Catholic because I prefer it but because I think joining any other sect would be entering a culpable state of schism. Were I convinced of another religion’s truth, I would want to join whatever sect of it I thought best on the basis of what convinced me.
You’re Catholic. Is that why you’re always so cross?
I think this hinges heavily on what you mean by “be” and “want.”
The Mormons and Chasidim stand out as being particularly good at family and community formation. All of the churches are suffering a tremendous attrition problem, except Mormons. The Chasidim and other Orthodoxish groups probably have the same thing going for them. So from that POV, these faiths seem the most functional.
But both of these groups are highly natalist, and you aren’t even married and don’t seem to have any desire for children, so why would you “want” to join a religion where you are clearly instructed that one of your duties in life is to make and provide for children?
You might “want” that if you already believed in Mormonism or Chasidism, but then we could also say that if you believed in the Amish religion you’d want to live a simple lifestyle, and if you believed in Catholicism you might want to be a monk.
Since I have children and like children, if I were choosing a faith to believe in, (if one could do such a thing,) and wanted to be sure it got passed on to my children, Mormonism, Hasidism, and Amish-ism would be top picks. But if I were starting from the perspective of really believing in Christianity, I’d head either to the Catholics or some Charismatic/Messianic Jewish variety, because the idea of a Christianity that isn’t Jewish just seems to be missing the point of the entire first 2/3s of the Bible.
ETA: Some form of Eastern Orthodox might also satisfy my criteria; I just don’t know much about them.
But for you, why not just be a Unitarian Universalist? Or a Quaker? They seem more your style.
(I can’t comment on Buddhism–or lots of other religions I don’t know much about, like Jainism–but the Shia/Sunni split is clearly an ethnic thing, so why chose one ethnic group over another?)
“but the Shia/Sunni split is clearly an ethnic thing”
???
Iran being Shia is a relatively recent development–originated under the Safavids in the fifteenth century. Egypt and much of North Africa were (a different variant of) Shia for quite a while under the Fatimids. And there are a variety of Shia groups scattered around the world that are not Persian, which I’m guessing is the ethnicity you are thinking of.
Currently, it looks like most Shiites–even those outside of Iran–are in areas where Iranian languages are spoken. And “dispute over succession” sounds like the sort of thing you get in a dispute between two ethnic groups, not a religious debate. I could be missing something, of course.
A lot of Christian splits are ethnic, too. I wouldn’t expect the Church of England to be of much interest to anyone besides the English, of course.
Recently I’ve been thinking that most splits among religions, and even between religions are really more about giving an ethnic group its own unique version of god than any real theological dispute (though the latter are often the cited reasons for the split). Isn’t “Allah” just the Arabic word for “God,” for example (and isn’t He, moreover, supposed to be the same god of the Israelites)? Why do we not translate it as we translate most other Arabic words we talk about in English? Because “Allah” doesn’t just mean “God” in Arabic, it means “Arab God” (except when it means “Persian God,” in which case we have a different sect for you).
Even with the Protestant split, it seems, at its core, kind of like a cultural disconnect between Northern and Southern Europe.
I’m not entirely sure I buy this theory myself, mind you, but I’ve been thinking more in terms of ethnic politics as the Democrats and Republicans continue to sort themselves into the “Non-White” and “White” parties. And if that latter contention is true, it could also explain why even an originally non-ethnic differentiation (Sunni v. Shia) could tend to become one over time, as the Republican and Democrat parties were not started as ethnic parties.
EvolutionistX:
Pedantry: The Church of England is, of course, English, but there are related (and technically subordinate) Anglican churches in many different places, and their makeup is far from being only English diaspora.
We used to. The transition seems to have started by the Victorian era but wasn’t complete by the Edwardian — the Burton translation of the Thousand and One Nights uses “Allah” throughout, but the Lane-Poole translation uses both, “God” more often.
“And “dispute over succession” sounds like the sort of thing you get in a dispute between two ethnic groups, not a religious debate.”
That makes sense for the third and least successful part of the split, the Kharijites. They rejected the claim of the Quraysh, Mohammed’s tribe, to the Caliphate, holding that the Caliph could be any Muslim.
But the Shia/Sunni split was between supporters of Ali, who became the Shia, and supporters of Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, who became the Sunni. Both Ali and Abu Bakr (and the other two of the first four caliphs as well as the next many) were Quraysh, not only the same ethnicity but the same tribe.
The link between Shia and Persia developed many centuries later.
The state of Sunni/Shia split today looks ethnic, but historically it looks a lot less ethnic than Christian splits.
That is contrary to my understanding (which could easily be wrong). Are the Shia in Iraq ethnically different from the Sunni in Iraq?
At the coarsest ethnic level, they are all Arab. Well, except for the Kurds and arguably the Madan; the latter are negligible on account of being mostly dead but the Iraqi Kurds are a major, ethnically distinct Sunni force in Iraq.
Among the Arab population, the Sunnis are a predominately urban, rich minority that is accustomed to being Iraq’s ruling class since the days of the Ottoman Empire if not before. The Shiites are descended from the relatively poor, rural tribes who have been generally oppressed since the days of the Ottoman Empire but are now, because someone said “Poof You’re A Democracy!”, Iraq’s ruling class.
The religious divide I think follows the cultural one in this respect. The poor rural tribes were Sunni through at least the fifteenth century, but were not well served by the faith of their urban overlords and open to anything different.
Okay, is this a “This is the kind of thing I could believe” choice or “Studies show this variety has good social effects” in which case to hell with it? ‘Religion as social work’ is neither fish, flesh nor fowl.
I don’t like social religion, because I think it does no-one any good. Be honest and be secular if you’re looking for “something that fosters social cohesion, healthy living, and charitable interactions”. Either honestly believe in miracles, or honestly say that “This is a fairytale and I don’t believe it”. Otherwise, you end up with Ice Floe Jesus which satisfies nobody.
The last convenient possible world is the one where atheism and secularism inevitably have a negative effect on social cohesion and quality of life, such that you have to choose one or the other. And, unfortunately, it’s starting to look an awful lot as if we actually live in that world.
I must disagree. Cohesion is another word for nationalism or tribalism (cohesion and altruism for the ingroup necessarily counter-balanced with at least suspicion for the outgroup) and this has always been the primary goal of Pagan religion. For the Athenian, the cult of Athena and the city-state of Athens were one and inseparable. It was 100% about identity.
Catholicism got Germanized, Paganized in the Carolingian which then flowed back to Rome during the Otto emperors, and then flowed out from there eveywhere. And during this process it got a more this worldy focus, more of a focus on national cohesion. Classic example being the Nordic state flags.
National-tribal identity HAS to have religious symbols. The alternative, of turning secular symbols into quasi-religious is usually far more destructive.
I liked Ice Floe Jesus. 🙂
If I were Jewish, I would definitely be Hasidic or other Orthodox.
If I were Islamic, I’d be Sunni, in one of the less-iconoclastic sects.
If I were a non-Abrahamic, I’d be Zoroastrian.
If I were non-monotheist, I’d be Asatru or some other form of reconstructionist paganism.
For Christianity, Catholicism and Orthodoxy have equally strong truth claims, with the Greek Orthodox Church having an advantage in interpreting what the Apostles were saying, while the RCC is more into expressing the faith through rationalism.
For Muslims, I like the Ismailis, but fear that the fundamentalist Sunnis are the ones who get Muhammad’s truth claims right.
If I were Buddhist, I’d want a Theravada sangha that hasn’t kowtowed to Western interpretations of Gautama Buddha. I just couldn’t bring myself to believe in Mahayana truth claims about sutras that only seem to postdate the Buddha by 700 years but are authentic because they were written down by nagas and then hidden.
For Hinduism, most varieties aren’t really available unless you move to India. Otherwise you’re practically limited to the sort of ecumenical temples that serve the Indian diaspora, or the Hare Krishnas.
I’d be happy to elaborate on any of this if anything seems unclear.
No pretend Hindus here? I don’t know the many, many sects which fall under that umbrella, but it long struck me as the only (non-Christian) worldview with enough breadth and depth to be interesting. I’d fall back to that one.
Or Stoicism. That would be easy for me; I’ve already got the temperament.
Hi. I was a convert to Hinduism, having been convinced of Hindu truth claims by independent reading of Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. I attended the nearest temple, learned hatha yoga and some vague theology from an acharya, and met a couple of gurus. I still admire Hindu culture, but was frustrated by how few scriptures were accessible and the so-open-minded-your-brain-fell-out tolerance for dubious intellectual propositions (astrology works, Jesus is an avatar of Vishnu, etc.)
Sufi and Quaker — if we’re not allowed to pick esoteric ancient cults. I’m insufficiently read on Judaism and Buddhism to have a preference.
Someone commented about preferring whatever lends itself better to transhumanism, but honestly I feel like a lot of sects or denominations can be read quite positively in that direction.
I presume you are talking about how desirable those things are, and not how likely the religions are to be true. Which religion do you think is most likely to be actually true? Or is the probability of all of them so low that you have never thought enough about the question to come to a conclusion on that?
I’d love to hear your reasons for some of these. In particular, Mormonism is a thoroughly non-central Christian faith, so I assume there was some specific pull outside of “high social status” or “core, devout version of faith”. One guess is that these sects all include directly transferred knowledge from teachers and tight-knit communities relative to the overall faith (Vajrayana stands out here) but that makes Shia something of an odd one out.
My first-pass answers were all the “lite” versions of each faith, because it was the smallest leap from my current beliefs. Giving proper weight to “if I were X” means abandoning similarity my existing beliefs and gives some more interesting answers.
Christian: Catholic
Jewish: Reform
Buddhist: Zen
Muslim: Shia, but I’m not knowledgeable enough here
Beyond those, I have a certain sympathy for esotericism and ritual/mystery groups from every branch: Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Vajrayana, Sufi.
Hasidic? Why the hell not Modern Orthodox?
The weekly open threads here are starting to feel overdone. One possibility is to have open threads here even numbered weeks and on the subreddit odd-numbered weeks. I can link the subreddit thread somewhere prominent on the sidebar. Is there any way to make a single stable link that will go to whatever the current subreddit open thread is?
>Is there any way to make a single stable link that will go to whatever the current subreddit open thread is?
Don’t think this is possible to do in a trivial way – would require a bit of code.
(EDIT: This used to explain how to do it, but then I just went ahead and did it instead.)
Use this URL: http://tinyurl.com/ssc-reddit-open-thread
It will automatically update once per hour to point to the latest open thread on /r/slatestarcodex.
It could be done client-side.
Yeah, but I don’t regularly do web scripting so I am much more familiar with how to do it server-side, and I didn’t want to spend ages working this out when I knew how to do at least something that worked.
If you want to code that up, send it my way 🙂
Just merge with the link posts.
160 posts in less than 12 hours; clearly there’s a demand for open threads.
Is the Solstice service and/or party recorded at all? I’m much too far away to attend (Atlanta) but always found the concept interesting and worthwhile.
There’s some songs from various solstices on YouTube. You can start at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDCN6I1n6o4 and find the rest in the links on the right bar.
Sorry you can’t make it! I’ve recorded video of some, but the fact is I think the video provides a kind of lackluster experience – you’re not in the room with people and not really feeling the energy so a lot of moments feel more awkward on video than they do in person.
That said, this video from a couple years ago is representative of what the opening section is like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwbpG69VHE
And most of the other music (the ones I own or acquired the rights to publish) are here:
https://humanistculture.bandcamp.com/
There you go: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhH76Ztpl1UIHsSvxSsHhoPLc95n_s_6N
The main camera failed miserably (my fault, won’t happen again, hopefully), so the picture is only from a crappy secondary audience camera.
Also, this year I will attempt live broadcasting again, and will probably post a link to LW and some other related places.
[[I’m removing this because I’m not sure about the ethics of popularizing a thing that’s that mean to a named member of our community. I hadn’t fully read through that part when I posted a link to that blog earlier. If Ozy says they don’t mind I’ll unremove it. – Scott]]
I didn’t read the criticism as mean in the sense of mean-spirited, more on the lines of tough-but-needed, but I understand if you don’t want to risk public drama.
I agree it wasn’t intended as mean-spirited, and for a certain amount of social cluelessness I could even believe they didn’t expect anyone to be upset, but yeah, I’d prefer not to rub it in, and I already feel really bad for popularizing that before I really knew what was in it and this is my way of signaling contrition. Thanks for being so understanding.
On reflection it might have been better if they had censored the names of everyone they quoted, since there was no need for any of it to be personal (of course you could just google the text but few people would bother).
Yeah, I think just using a hypothetical person instead of a real one would have been a better idea, if only to avoid the chance of hurting someone’s feelings or creating a wagon circling effect in their tribe. It’s a good piece with plenty of stuff I hadn’t thought about in regards to how people signal their mental health
[edit: I really need to learn to refresh the page before commenting.]
Give Scott some credit; I doubt he’s just trying to avoid ‘public drama’. I found the post in question interesting, but it’s not hard to see why publicly psychoanalysing someone in order to hold them up as an example of Bad Mental Health Coping Strategy might be considered a dick move, and why raising it to prominence for further discussion in a place like this might do real harm.
I don’t know. It’s not like this was revealing privately shared information, or even tracking down something the person in question had thoughtlessly posted years ago on some message board without considering how it could later come back to haunt them. This was stuff that they shared publicly, for the purpose of showing what mental illness is like and, I’d wager, to tell the rest of us how we are supposed to react to it.*
But why should we be obligated to agree with an activists’ interpretation just because they use themselves as an example? If you put something in the public arena, you’ve got to expect to be challenged.**
* Correct me if I’m wrong here. I don’t follow Ozy.
** It is, of course, different when it’s somebody you actually know, as opposed to somebody on the internet.
Is it public? I haven’t been able to view Ozy’s tumblr for months so I assumed it was set to private somehow. It’s possible they blocked me but I don’t know why that would be the case, considering I’ve never interacted with them or anyone they know
If it wasn’t public then everything I said is forfeit, and OP is clearly in the wrong.
I think it is… unkind to examine and critique harshly, in fine detail, publicly and non-anonymously, everything someone has said on a casual personal Tumblr/Facebook account/Twitter feed about how they feel and how they want to be treated and think others like themselves should be treated.
Yes, it’s self-advocacy, and being politically active, and so if the choice when responding to it is between being unkind and being silent, we must let people be unkind. But I don’t think the choice *was* that- they could split the critique over multiple sources rather than making it a take down of a single person, or just plain be nicer to the person while critiquing them. Try not to “rake them over the coals” quite so much.
They could acknowledge that failing to show rigour in a short, dubiously grammatical post on a personal Tumblr is not on par with failing to show rigour in an NYT editorial, and so not act so… surprised.
I wouldn’t condemn them for it- failing to be kind in a blog post is hardly the worst thing ever, and to criticise them harshly for it would, in turn, be an unfair demand for exceptional virtue. I can definitely understand not wanting to popularise people who have been unkind, especially people who have been unkind to people you know, though.
I appreciate the point that Hotelconcierge was trying to make (recently expanded on this on Tumblr), but completely agree that there were probably much better alternative ways to make it. Even if he wanted to use someone’s blog posts as an example, I suspect (admittedly, I’m not sure) that it wouldn’t be too difficult to dig up similar posts by someone else — a person such that they and their friends are much less likely to stumble across the critique — and quote them anonymously. I agree — and I think Hotelconcierge himself agrees — that the critique itself could also have been made more kindly, but that is slightly trickier. Anyway, while I think what he did was over the line, I’m pretty convinced from his response to Scott’s comments that he had no malicious intent and will probably try to be more conscientious in the future.
It was posted in April, when Ozy’s tumblr was still open.
Anyone want to put odds that it’s TLP? Odds that we’ll ever know?
Did remind me of TLP a bit but TLP was never so rationalist in content or tone, plus the article didn’t mention narcissism so it can’t be him :P.
The writing style is reminiscent. There’s some stylistic things – the use of all-lowercase without full punctuation in picture captions. There’s some things that seem like direct callbacks to stuff TLP wrote (the line about dilaudid, for instance).
It kind of reads like someone taking TLP’s style and formalizing it.
I joked about it, but I don’t think it is. For one thing, he mentions “I am not a doctor” at one point, which is surprising – he seems to know about the experience of medicine (not just textbook stuff) that he must be either a med student, nurse, or something like that.
For another, he has a little more insecurity about him. TLP was always perfectly self-assured; this guy tries at it but sometimes just isn’t sure and seems like a normal person with normal person concerns.
Works in an ER, I think.
TLP got into some serious trouble, which resulted in the loss of his job, his medical license, or in general his ability to practice medicine. He stopped blogging because of the upheaval in his personal life. Unable to work as a psychiatrist any more, he eventually found work as a concierge in a hotel, which gave him enough stability and time to start blogging yet again. But the experience, and the fact that he is “not a doctor”( any more), has left his confidence somewhat shaken.
Do you have a link to the new blog?
W.T. Dore: judging by the comments earlier in the thread, I don’t think I should post it. Anyway, my post was just a conspiracy theory. It’s possible that this person is just aping TLP’s style and mannerisms.
She claims not to be TLP, for whatever that’s worth.
Being read as feminine while continually claiming to be masculine: ✅
No men on Tumblr.
Just chiming in that everything about this comment thread is utterly maddening with the original link deleted
There is also the Bay Area solstice.
A lot of people claim that the SSC comment section has been drifting right for a while. If we assume that is correct, what is the supposed mechanism behind the shift?
That leftists are more uncomfortable with the presence of a few rightists than rightists are by the presence of a few leftists.
Which I think comes from educated people being mostly leftist, so leftists are used to not having rightists around in most apparently-neutral-spaces but rightists have had to compromise and learn to deal with having leftists around.
You banned the worst of your right-wing commentors a while back, didn’t you? I don’t think any plausible explanation can fail to consider the effects of that. I’d be interested to hear more about your motives, too — obviously you wanted the comment section to be less of a shit-fest, but did you think through the less direct consequences?
Why would banning the worst right-wingers increase the amount of right wing?
Yeah, I realised that my comment was pretty lightweight, so I was just about to add this (and then managed to post it as a reply to my other comment instead…):
I really don’t know what the effects were, and I’m not even sure whether I remember the banning strategy correctly. What I have in mind, though, is that raising the bar for a certain group means presenting the rest of your readers with a cultivated selection of the most capable representatives of that group, unencumbered by the ones that would just annoy everyone and make the movement look bad. Which is fine if we’re really in the realm of pure ideas — why would we need to hear from the shitty advocates of a position when we have access to better presentations of it? — but in a political struggle it seems like a bit of a free kick to the side that you’re ostensibly cracking down on. More so when you’ve done a lot of (often high quality and important) work highlighting the shitty representatives of some of the opposing sides.
To be more specific, and to explain why I care about this: the average reader, when exposed to a random sample of [I think the name of the group I have in mind is tabooed here, so I’ll just say ‘far-right’] commentors, will be put off by the nasty ones who are gleefully racist/sexist/generally unpleasant. But if you ban the nasty ones, you’ll end up with a positively-skewed sample. From a pure marketplace of ideas perspective, that’s great: we all have a better chance of absorbing whatever insights the better class of far-rightist has to offer, without their signal being drowned out by low-quality noise. But none of us are perfect rationalists. The likelihood that we will accept an idea depends a lot on the emotional affect we attach to the idea and its representatives. So if your posts are full of case studies of progressives/SJWs/feminists being nasty and unreasonable, and your comments are sprinkled with an unrepresentatively intelligent & mild sample of far-right thought, your readers are likely to be drawn further to the right than is rationally justified. Since the contest of ideas is always part of a struggle for real-world power, and since the beneficiaries of a lurch to the right will include the nasty characters you’re protecting your readers from, this matters. If, even with the best of intentions, you help the extreme right to gain more sympathy and prestige than it deserves, the result will not be the creation of whatever utopia their nicer intellectuals are selling us.
An uncharitable summary: if you ban the crazies, you support their side. If you don’t ban the crazies, you also support their side.
I think the point they’re trying to make is that you need to ban everyone the crazies associate with, no matter how sane, or you’re providing aid and comfort to the crazies. Not sure if this is more or less charitable, is incoherent worse than villainous?
Seems to me another way out of it would be to ban an equal proportion of crazies on each side? That assumes each side has an equal proportion of crazies, of course…
One problem with “an equal proportion of crazies on each side” is that it requires an objective definition of “crazies.”
In my view, a large fraction of the people preaching the dangers of AGW qualify–because they are going far beyond what the actual science implies into something pretty close to end of the world cult territory. Arguably that includes Obama.
But obviously people who think there is a substantial chance that AGW will produce hundreds of millions of climate refugees and a dead ocean will disagree.
Razib Khan, who is conservative, has mentioned that liberals in academia have privately messaged him in agreement on certain topics. They might be too afraid of dissenting from the current liberal dogma.
Oh good, this came up.
This is true. Can confirm – it’s a large part of the reason why I eventually left* LessWrong and am starting to leave LW-associated spaces (despite not being technically a leftist; I identify with them more in spirit than on object-level beliefs). The acceptance of far-right types or strongly libertarian people is also one of the first things critics of the LW rationality movement and associated people point out and are bothered by. (No idea how come most of these critics are blue tribe.)
However, my suspected cause is a different way of engagement with the opposition, correlated with political sympathies. For some reason I think of leftist echo chambers more likely to exclude their “undesirables”, and then mock them from afar, and of rightist echo chambers more likely to keep theirs around as butt monkeys. The left might just have a lower tolerance for this kind of friction, whether they are in the majority or not. (Uncertainty warning: I’m not completely sure I’m not talking out of my ass here.)
* This is not to say that I reject inter-faction dialogue, or fail to see the value in learning from someone with different beliefs, but for one, the gloves started to come off long ago, and for another, I’ve been doing this for the past two years or so (during which I had ample opportunity to learn about what makes rightists tick, and as you can see I’m still not a convert) and frankly, speaking to people who don’t share most of my values and who probably think I’m crazy, stupid, degenerate or various combinations thereof is simply not a nice way to spend my evenings. Why keep coming back to a crowd to which I have a mildly negative relationship, as long as I don’t get off on conflict?
“and frankly, speaking to people who don’t share most of my values and who probably think I’m crazy, stupid, degenerate or various combinations thereof is simply not a nice way to spend my evenings. ”
Speaking as an extreme libertarian who has been arguing with a wide range of people for something over fifty years now, I think that describes the attitude of people on the left to those not on the left a good deal more than it describes the attitude of most of the right to those not on the right.
I don’t know you, wonder how well you could reproduce the arguments of the people you disagree with. If you really understand their ideas as well as they do, you probably don’t have much to gain by arguing with them–but I rarely encounter people who meet that criterion. Scott is about as close as I’ve observed.
Also, interpreting disagreement as entirely due to different values assumes away the possibility that people might disagree about the consequences of alternative policies. A lot of conservatives and libertarians believe that policies popular with the left produce bad results as judged by left wing values. Those are arguments worth engaging with, unless you are confident that you already fully understand them.
I had a longer reply to David Friedman (about 350 words more), tried to post it several times and failed. Is there a 200-word limit to replies on this level? (Edit: Now whatever little I managed to post out of my reply has disappeared too. Imgur link to the reply. If this doesn’t work either, I give up.)
The link to your reply works. In it you write:
“You are right that there is a ton of disagreements arising out of a different model of the world, where one is right and the other is wrong, but this is theoretically much more fixable than fundamental, psychological disagreements, assuming people are capable of changing their mind.”
So why isn’t it worth trying to fix it by interacting with people who have a different model, parts of which might be correct? If there is any significant chance that policies you support make the world worse, by your values, rather than better, wouldn’t you like to know?
It may be true that at some point you encounter differences based on different values, but at that point, unless you believe there is some way of discovering what values are true, you stop that line of investigation and switch to a more productive one.
Mostly because I have indeed interacted with such people well past the point of diminishing returns, and being correct about politics is not all there is to life. I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time intellectually engaging with people from other factions; I barely ever read material catering to me. All out of a fear of being wrong. There comes a time when you need to assume that at least a few of your beliefs don’t need discarding, take a break from the internet and go do something you actually enjoy for once.
I’ve already assimilated all the logos-based right-wing arguments which my conscience could muster, save for the ones based on complicated economic reasoning for which I lack a theoretical basis. Barring new discoveries about the world or having my brain rewired, I can and will go no further.
I believe that Scott has placed a Taboo on the name of The-Ideology-That-Must-Not-Be-Named so that posts which contain it or its abbreviation, like yours, are now eaten by the spam filter.
What interests me is this talk of all the far-rightists taking over the commentary here on SSC.
There are certainly a few I’d call far-right, but not everyone. And I’d consider myself centre-right, or centrist but on the right side not the left side of the dividing line.
So how right-wing are the rightists here? Is it more a case of very liberal* Blue Tribe people encountering right-wing views and thinking “My gosh, these are so extreme compared to what I know is good, true, right and normal!” that they label them as far right, when really it’s merely “right versus very left”?
*When Scott, in the “Adam and Steve” post, has to go all the way back to the 1800s to imagine a dominant culture where marriage = monogamy, I have to think “okay, very liberal surroundings”.
I’m pretty left-wing, and I certainly don’t consider you as one of the far-right commenters. Far-right views are things like “women have evolved to enjoy rape” and “everyone was better off under racial segregation”.
I’d also bin you in the center-right/main line conservative camp.
It’s kind of funny because I always thought that going back 20 years made more sense than going back 200 years for a time when marriage always meant monogamy.
Thought there was never a time when this was completely true.
This place is still very mixed, but it might not stay that way for long if circlejerking becomes a normal feature of the comments section. I suspect Scott’s writings and network are what maintains the left-of-centre presence here after the social dynamics started discouraging it. If SSC became a forum, the rightward shift would accelerate.
The extremists mostly come and go, but there seems to be at least one far right poster at any given time who is occasionally disruptive, in addition to the regulars with some extreme views that are nonetheless more polite and socially well-adjusted. Then they’re banned and a new wave comes.
It’s not just the bubble effect. I hail from a somewhat traditionally-minded country and don’t have much of a youth presence in my life, and some of the views espoused here still strike me as something that would be considered outside of the mainstream where I’m from.
I’ve always thought of you as slightly right of center.
The marriage!=monogamy thing is Scott’s personal bubble, shared by virtually none of his commenters 🙂
@ Chalid
The marriage!=monogamy thing is Scott’s personal bubble, shared by virtually none of his commenters
I apologize if we haven’t been commenting loudly (or often) enough.
For some reason I think of leftist echo chambers more likely to exclude their “undesirables”, and then mock them from afar, and of rightist echo chambers more likely to keep theirs around as butt monkeys.
I was basically having this exact same conversation with very similar observations (but not as amusingly phrased) earlier today. I think you are on to something.
Most of the liberals I know just aren’t interested in debating with non-liberals. They want to hang out with other liberals where they can further, hrm, purify their thought processes. For the past decade or so (the time period when I’ve been paying attention,) it’s seemed like liberalism (or those who call themselves liberal) made a big shift from being essentially a stable meta-ethic about non-interference (freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, etc.) in the lives of others, to an arrow of change (“progress,” if you will,) in which one is constantly receiving and absorbing new wisdom in order to “educate oneself” and become a better person. So a decade ago, one was perhaps advocating for gay issues, but had never heard of trans folks; today, people are calling for trans folks to be allowed to use the restroom of their choice and so on. A decade ago, one may have proudly claimed not to “see race;” today that same person believes it is imperative to recognize “the violence done by society against black bodies.”
In the process, the meta-ethic of respecting other people’s beliefs fell by the wayside. It’s hard to simultaneously say, “I respect trans people, and I respect people who think trans people are mentally ill,” without pissing off the trans people. Supporting gays, blacks, women, trans folks, etc., is now seen as incompatible with simultaneously supporting the meta-ethic of allowing or respecting other people not to support gays, blacks, women, trans folks, etc.
When you are constantly moving forward and have to figure out what the latest thing you are supposed to believe to be a good person is, you don’t have a lot of time to argue with people who just want to pull you backwards.
On top of that, there’s a personality issue. The liberals I know seem to really like consensus and dislike conflict. Whereas most of the conservatives–even the super-polite ones–seem to be just fine with disagreeing with other people. They might keep their mouths shut if they think it inappropriate to interject their opinions, but they don’t mind the fact that they associate with people who have opinions different from themselves. In a sense, they still believe, vaguely, in the meta-ethic (though if they were in charge, they probably wouldn’t. One’s belief in the meta-ethic probably has a lot to do with whether one is on top or on the bottom.)
@EvolutinistX:
I think you are making a mistake in modeling the meta-ethical thought process.
The “argument gets counter argument, not bullet” point is repeated, and I think this essentially the meta-ethical problem you are identifying. I think it also gets applied selectively, and I think you are doing it here.
Respecting other people’s beliefs is required. But what if they believe they are allowed to “shoot bullets” at certain people they disagree with? How do you resolve that meta-ethical problem?
If A thinks that X is outside the bullet free zone, should that idea be tolerated by the group containing X?
At a very simple level, if your ideas seem to map to “we should be able to discriminate against blacks, gays and women” (leave out for the present whether they actually do) then a liberal can reasonably say “You want to be able to fire bullets at people you disagree with, and that is the one idea I can’t tolerate”
I agree with your point that liberals tend to like conflict less. I think it’s because we tend to actually want what we say we want, which is essentially the elimination of outgroups. Of course being intolerant of conflict is actually a bad way of eliminating outgroups, but that’s a different story.
I’d suggest that you should try to hurt people who you disagree with but are not attacking you personally if they are causing harm and if the type of error that results in them causing harm is particularly inexcusable. Of course, there can be disagreement on what is inexcusable, but I think even a pro-lifer can understand that killing someone who is verbally and in clear German telling you not to kill him is different from killing a fetus. Even if the fetus is a person, thinking it’s not is an understandable error.
@HeelBearCub
I think how broad your definition of bullet is goes a long way toward determining whether you really are following the “argument gets counter argument, not bullet” approach. For example, I don’t think the claim “anyone disagreeing with me on anything is a bullet; I therefore think it should be illegal for anyone to disagree with me; but this is still permissive and tolerant, I just have a different definition of what is and isn’t a bullet than you do” is particularly defensible.
It is my observation that the Blue Tribe definition of what counts as a bullet has expanded over time. Whether they have good reasons for that expansion is a separate issue, but I don’t think you can handwave this observation by claiming that what a person counts as a bullet is totally orthogonal to how tolerant they are of disagreement.
@Anonymous:
But that isn’t a meta-ethical point. That is a problem in execution or application.
I think people all across the spectrum take valid ethical positions and then apply them incorrectly or selectively, but that is very different than not holding the ethical position in the first place.
The problem is, politics is really personal. I am actually working on a right-wing version of how to express our values – obviously very different from yours – on a more personal lifestyle level. Explicit carnivorism, weight lifting for the feeling of physical dominance, tougher martial arts for the same reason, chopper bikes and so on.
My point is, you avoid politics but perhaps discuss forms of exercise. You may or may not notice there are the same basic considerations behind as in politics. http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/half-lifts-workout-says-social-class-85221
So you eventually run into politics anyway. Perhaps the best idea is to discuss, also with people on the other side, like myself, the “metapolitics”, the psychology of it all. My proposal is that everything is about status, left is more prestige status and right is more dominance status.
TheDividualist:
I have seen articles by left-wingers arguing against the idea that personal practices seen as “left wing” are revolutionary/radical – along the lines of “getting high and having kinky sex with lots of people is not going to destroy capitalist white supremacist heterosexist patriarchy”.
The whole Jack Donovan “get together and lift weights and shoot guns and live with your gang on a compound in the woods” sort of deal – isn’t that prey to the same criticism? Jeff Monson, to take the most huge and terrifying left-wing guy I can think of off the top of my head – it’s not as though weights and 84 MMA fights have made him right-wing.
A lifestyle that focuses on strength and violence will exclude those who are neutral or negative towards those things, just as a lifestyle of sex and drugs will. There will be some overlap with political views, in both cases, but is there enough to create hardcore activists?
@ Scott Alexander
That leftists are more uncomfortable with the presence of a few rightists than rightists are by the presence of a few leftists.
For me the problem is not how many rightist commenters there are, but how many comments of a certain style, and how many sideswipe zingers in them.
Disclaimers – I may not be noticing similar faults in my own side’s comments; and I probably don’t represent those people who have left, since I’m still here (though not commenting as often as I’d like).
I’ve spent a good deal of time arguing with people online over the past thirty years or so. The very worst comments I see here are if anything a bit above the average elsewhere.
I don’t care if people post “sideswipe zingers.” What matters is that most people here seem to be trying to make actual arguments for their positions rather than taking the exchange as an opportunity to insult those who disagree with them and boast of their own superior wisdom and virtue.
Which is why I almost certainly spend more time here than anywhere else, probably than all places else combined, online.
@ David Friedman
I don’t care if people post “sideswipe zingers.” What matters is that most people here seem to be trying to make actual arguments for their positions rather than taking the exchange as an opportunity to insult those who disagree with them and boast of their own superior wisdom and virtue.
Hm? What I mean by sideswipe zingers, or any sideswipes, is “taking the exchange as an opportunity to insult [in a condensed form] those [not present company] who disagree with them and [by implication] boast of their own superior wisdom and virtue”.
My complaint with the insult + derail pattern here isn’t the level of vitriol, or a lack of rationality. It’s only with a tendency for people to push certain issues into every comment chain, with a tendency to mindkill any discussion it happens in.
That said, Scott has been very good lately about shutting down needless derailment, and in general the ‘aggressive but topical’ debates here are really quite good. Interestingly, they seem to have a higher rationality waterline than most of LessWrong, which has a larger stream of ignorant or dishonest respondents.
This, basically. I’m not sure if it’s actually so – I’ve recently been trying to keep track of some of the more blatant political-shot-taking in the comments, but there’s mercifully not actually that much (woo! go us!), so it’s not really going anywhere fast – but it certainly feels like if you post a right-wing opinion you mostly get a productive discussion, but posting a left-wing opinion of similar extremity gets a multitude of different replies asking how you can dare (dis)agree with [thing], and not-quite-snidely adding something along the lines of “thats the problem with those leftists.”
If we mostly agree as a community that leftist opinions really are just stupider, well, maybe so, but then we can hardly complain when the people holding those opinions don’t want to hang around. Why stay with friends who speak poorly of you and then insinuate that you’re just too sensitive when you complain?
To boost this idea, “That’s the problem with leftists” is a frequent comment type here (over the last year that I have been active, anyway).
I can’t remember seeing “that’s the problem with conservatives” from anyone who is a regular.
I feel like that this comment type, the broad over-generalization, is supposed to be anathema in this space and that anyone who is liberal here has absorbed that norm, or goes elsewhere.
Do extreme left-wing opinions ever really get posted anymore? I’m basically center-left, probably toward the right side of the US Democratic party, so if you ordered the population on a left-right scale I’d probably be about 75% of the way to the left. And while I don’t read every comment, I feel like it’s pretty rare that I see a substantial comment staking out a position that is more left than mine.
(And when I do it’s usually a grey-aligned idea, e.g. open borders)
Self-selection, yo. It’s no surprise that a blog known for its anti-SJ posts is going to scare away hard leftists. And it attracts anti-leftists commenters whose views and are …less sophisticated than Scott’s, which makes the leftists want to either shut up or leave.
@ HeelBearCub
To boost this idea, “That’s the problem with leftists” is a frequent comment type here (over the last year that I have been active, anyway).
I can’t remember seeing “that’s the problem with conservatives” from anyone who is a regular
+
As someone who when pushed to name their side thinks that “left” is a closer descriptor and who is closer to the “liberal” result on Moral Foundation tests, “That’s the problem with leftists, [thing which boils down to accusing them of all being lying Stalinist power seekers so they can finish the job of controlling all thought in society]” is both a quite common comment type and probably the thing I find most off-putting here.
Especially when you get little chains of people affirming it and agreeing it is common knowledge, I would expect that anywhere this got commonly said would tend to shed left-aligned people and be poorly thought of.
It’s no different to the “Right-wingers are all compassionless sociopaths” thing that goes around elsewhere, and I imagine that, especially when affirmed by groups, makes those communities shed right-aligned people and be poorly thought of by them too.
It’s true that there’s something to the former, but also that there’s something to the latter- people in the two groups have marginally different levels of concern for different values, thus different things they think society is already worrying about too much already, and both usually fail to factor in the concerns that they think society is already worrying about too much in their proposals (and thus produce awful proposals).
But said “something” is a lot milder than the actual statement in both cases, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for being turned off by either sentiment.
@Chalid:
“Do extreme left-wing opinions ever really get posted anymore?”
I have seen perhaps two commentors that match. I can only really remember one, actually. On the the book review of the Brit liberal turned anti-communist there was a fervent communist, IIRC.
The other thing I often see is little cliques of commenters tossing around an assumption that should rightly be questioned (esp. by anyone calling themselves Rationalists), but which instead sits comfy in its own little echo chamber.
To boost this idea, “That’s the problem with leftists” is a frequent comment type here (over the last year that I have been active, anyway).
I might have done this – I don’t immediately recall having done so, but it feels like the sort of thing that I might have done.
I did not recognize this as a significant issue. Looking at it, I can see where this can be a problem. Henceforth, I resolve to try to remember to not use this format, and to question its use where I see it.
That’s the problem with leftists” is a frequent comment type here
It wouldn’t be so bad if this type of comment came with statistics or evidence that leftists are actually being accurately described, but it generally doesn’t. At best it comes with handwavy philosophizing or an anecdote about the poster’s Twitter feed.
I consider myself to be a far-left rationalist (I was raised progressive quaker, and went left-er and more rational and athiest from there). On political test maps (e.g. political compass) I find myself placed so far left that the multiple choice tests don’t often even have choices for my true full views on political matters. I enjoy polite and well-thought-out comments from all areas of the political spectrum. Whenever I consider an unsatisfying political comment, I try to imagine what a smarter, more rational version of that person would say if they had approximately the same underlying values.
Honestly, from my (fairly conventional right-wing) perspective, it looks more like the comments section isn’t necessarily shifting rightward so much as it’s shifting libertarian-ward – you still won’t find any real Republicans here, but there are scads of people willing to criticize the role of the State in society/the latest social justice fad/new gun control push.
We have a handful of Catholics and evangelicals (I’d put myself somewhere in between), but their views also don’t seem to map to conventionally right-wing positions. Basically, what I’m saying is you’d never mistake any of the posters here for a National Review writer.
However, inasmuch as the modern US considers libertarianism to be “right-wing,” I must agree that the comments here have gotten significantly more tilted that direction since I first showed up a couple of years ago. The fact that we can say, “Well, there was that one communist a few weeks ago…” is evidence of this – the communist has become the exception, not the rule.
Straight out communism is sort of crazy though. I mean thinking that a post scarcity economy will use communism isn’t, but thinking the government should run the entire economy… well, it is a bit to off the wall and outside the American Overton window to function.
@Skinner:
But then, anarcho-capitalism is also outside the Overton window, and there are several of us here.
I guess the important difference is the reason- rejection or ignorance of the position, although this doesn’t explain the lack of syndicalists in the comment threads. Does no one on the left subscribe to that anymore or are there simply too few in our area of the internet?
If you can live an in environment that’s 95% free if the contaminant your disgust response might kick in to get you to eliminate the remaining 5%, but if you are always covered in (what your brain kind of processes as dung) then you’re probably best off not feeling any disgust.
My own impression is that there is relatively few regular conservatives around SSC, but that there is an unusual concentration of quite vocal dark-enlightenment-types. Considering that they kinda advocate removing democracy, which is pretty far-right in most people’s minds, I’m guessing that makes the comments seem more right wing than the views of the average commentor, at least to casual or left wing people. I’ve seen one or maybe two communists commenting, which is as left as you can go, but they don’t seem to comment quite as often. My impression of the average commentor is them being grey tribe kinda libertarian crossed with centrist, but I think there’s a big variety and that’s good.
@Citizensearth:
I think it is correct that there are few “regular” conservatives here. But there are few “regular” anything here. I’m not sure that really tells you anything about the balance of conservative vs. liberal thought espoused.
If I had to guess at the tone of the median comment, it would be conservative libertarian.
My 2 cents: SSC seems to extremely liberal about sex and gender, and indeed moderate-libertarianish with kinda bourgeois values about everything else.
So basically standard geeks, something this was noticed about the Eric Raymond type hacker culture decades ago.
If the median commenter is a conservative libertarian, does that mean half of SSC readers are more anti-government or more conservative than say, me?? I find that pretty implausible, though I am mildly tickled to be considered the median anything when it comes to politics. If we’re talking about statistical mode, then maybe.
The types that must not be named are happening because the average conservative is moving to the left, and the average leftist even further left. If you’re an iconoclast of a conservative temperament, you have the choice between the party that accepts gay marriage fast, or accepts it slow. The types that are flourishing some are happening because of that. If the battle is lost, what do you do if you can’t surrender?
I would say the median commenter is a socially liberal libertarian, probably onyomi or Friedman. Deiseach somewhat right of median, myself probably further right, Scott slightly left of median, HeelBearCub and James Picone further left, etc.
I look forward to Scott doing another survey to see if those results match my perceptions.
This may be the first time I have ever been classified as median. I suppose it’s a result of trying to squeeze a multidimensional reality into a one dimensional line.
Instead of waiting for Scott to do another survey, you could use his old survey. You’d have to go back and read the comments of a year ago. You could then compare your perception of those comments to that survey; and compare your perception of those comments to these comments.
I think there might be some value in distinguishing between different senses of holding a position. Like, I “unconsciously and reflexively” exhibit conservative thoughts, I “rationally and deliberatively endorse” more libertarian perspectives, but I will only “verbally argue for” positions that I both rationally endorse and reflexively feel. So this probably places a weird filter on my posting history where I look like a conservative and talk like a conservative even though I identify as libertarian and consistently score as libertarian on all political spectrum quizzes.
Maybe everybody else here is way more consistent then I am in terms of feeling-thinking, but I doubt it.
The “good, righteous” leftists may also be uncomfortable with being argued against constantly. They might leave because they have rounded this space off to “bad, unrighteous”.
Got this from the associated subreddit, thought it may apply.
Meta-blame. That’s the ticket.
I like the current balance. Part of the reason I read/comment here (recently started commenting, long time lurker) is that this community has a good mix of conservative and liberal viewpoints represented. Most internet communities have a hegemony of one viewpoint or the other. If it matters, if pressed I would identify my political views as centrist.
Well pure chance is always something to consider. People come and go, and there aren’t so many frequent commenters interested in discussing left/right issues that you can depend on the law of large numbers to keep things even. I’d guess that the top 10 commenters would make up over half the comment text written about politics here. And of course there tends to be an ideological positive feedback loop.
If I were to look for a “cause” beyond that, though, I’d probably start by checking to see if Scott’s referral mix had changed, which would drive commenter change with some lag. That might also give a clue as to whether his posts had changed ideologically.
Because when Scott identifies things about the current world which are bad and evil, they are almost always things which liberals hold dear or identify liberals as bad. He is much more charitable towards conservatives and conservative ideas.
Scott’s preferred explanation above is another example of this.
But in a way, I think this actually speaks to the fact that Scott still views his primary readership as being fundamentally liberal and/or left wing in some way. Consider his recent post on “setting the default.” It kind of boiled down to “guys, maybe those culture warriors we all dismiss as being illiberal know-nothings actually kind of have a point.”
Consider the opposite case: a post by Scott saying, “you know guys, there are actually some good pro-gay marriage arguments out there.” Almost all of the SSC readership would be like, “d’uh,” which, to my mind, proves that our fundamental assumptions around here are quite liberal (in the traditional sense), if not always blue-tribe/leftist (though I think they also tend that way as well).
Scott likes to be a Haidt-esque contrarian, I’ve noticed. He likes to point out blind spots to his own tribe. If he frequently posts things attacking liberal or leftist orthodoxy I think it’s because he sees himself and his readership as being more likely to have blind spots there, because that’s where most of them are situated.
Also, if a blue tribe member wants an intelligent left-wing perspective on how dumb right wing ideas are they don’t really need to go to SSC. They can just open the NYT or Atlantic.
I agree with your hypothetical about gay marriage, but I think that right-wingers on here tend to be me more liberal about gay marriage (and to an extent transgenderism) than on race or gender issues. I don’t remember ever seeing a left-wing comment on an economic question.
There seems to be a lot of support for basic income type proposals here.
The basic income is an odd concept, as although it does have considerable left-wing support, it also has support from e.g. Milton Friedman.
I think what may be going in with regard to the views of right wing people here on gay marriage vs race and gender issues is rationalism. If you are a rationalist and believe, as may well be true, that there are substantial innate differences in the distribution of abilities by gender or by race, it’s natural to say so–rationalism doesn’t fit very well with “that’s true but saying it is tabu.” But saying it is tabu in blue tribe culture–quite aside from whether it is true.
It’s a lot harder, although I’m sure not impossible, to create plausible reasons why gay marriage being bad is a fact rather than a value, and so speaking truth, being rational, requires you to say so.
Basic income proposals, like a carbon tax, have an interesting relation to pro-market views–which are at least part of what we associate with red tribe (and grey tribe). From the pro-market standpoint, they are the right way of doing something if you are going to do it.
One of the reasons I think well of Hansen is that he gives the correct economic argument for a carbon tax over more direct forms of subsidy or regulation. Similarly, if you believe in the free market, it obviously makes more sense to help poor people by giving them money and letting them decide how to spend it than by a detailed system of subsidy and regulation run by welfare workers.
On the other hand, this assumes that it is something you want to do. My disagreement with Hansen is that he is confident that warming has large net negative consequences, I’m not confident that the consequences are negative at all. And many on the right think having the government use tax money to subsidize the poor is, for one of a variety of reasons, a bad idea—even if done in the least bad way.
@David Friedman
>It’s a lot harder, although I’m sure not impossible, to create plausible reasons why gay marriage being bad is a fact rather than a value
Why, Susan M. Shell provided a decent work here (PDF): http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20080710_20041561theliberalcaseagainstgaymarriagesusanmshell.pdf
It really demonstrates the strength and cohesion of the ruling narrative that a Boston College professor’s article is almost unheard and unknown if it does not match it.
When libertarians talk about basic income i remember the yiddish proverb “Good tidings are heard from far away.”
It costs nothing to advocate basic income in a culture that’s headed the other way as fast as it can.
HeelBearCub: Speaking as someone who agrees with Scott on most things… you’re right.
Scott hasn’t exactly been defending or promoting Red Tribe ideas; but he’s been criticizing Blue Tribe ideas more than Red Tribe ideas. This has made him a sort of unwitting ally of the Red Tribe.
I’m in the same boat as him. Criticizing the Red Tribe is pointless for me because I’m surrounded by Blues. So I criticize the Blues… and that makes me appear Red, even though I’m really Grey.
He wrote two massive articles, one criticizing [tabooed] and the other criticizing libertarians.
Last time he wrote an anti-social justice post was 11/09 with the gift horse post.
Next most recent was 10/23 – A Whiter Shade of Candidate which was not particularly conservative.
Next would be 09/22 – Beware Systemic Change. He wrote a few posts around August defending MIRI/Singularity research, which touched on the aspergish white nerd issue.
Next was 07/22 with Freedom On The Centralized Web. Next was probably
05/19 – Beware Summary Statistics. Next was probably 04/19 – Blame Theory.
04/10 and 04/08 had posts about Growth Mindset. 03/26 – Extremism In Thought Experiment Is No Vice which was not a conservative post but defended a conservative.
02/14 had Drug Testing Welfare Users Is A Sham, But Not For The Reasons You Think. 02/11 had Black People Less Likely.
01/24 had Perceptions Of Required Ability Act As A Proxy For Actual Required Ability In Explaining The Gender Gap.
Finally 01/01 had the legendary Untitled.
This overall comes to about one right wing-ish post per month, during which time he only made one serious insult to a person (and was consistently raked over the coals for it). By contrast he posted multiple works of fiction and heavily researched articles on topics in medicine. By contrast read any post on Slate / Salon / Jezebel and you will see crude caricatures of political opponents and blatant ad-hominems explaining how their enemies are stupid and ugly. If you dislike Scott’s writing I don’t think the problem is that he is being too hard on the left.
I agree with you 99.99%, but honestly, saying “He’s not nearly as bad as Salon/Jezebel” is the faintest praise possible.
@Whatever Happened to Anonymous
Salon/Jezebel clickbait probably was a bad comparison. But still Scott’s political writing is better than 90% of mainstream political writing. This is because Scott 1)tries to understand opposing views, 2)generally refrains from bad faith arguments, 3) doesn’t endorse attempts to personally destroy people who disagree with him, 4)generally concedes blatant errors, 5) isn’t over-confident in the strength of his arguments, 5) assumes that the rights and preferences of those who disagree with him still matter. Sure, all of those should be pretty much universal among commentators who retain any credibility. But in the current hyper-partizan and toxic U.S political climate, they aren’t.
You really want this subject to go away.
He’s one of the more thoughtful, articulate spokespeople for the Grey (or Gray?) Tribe these days, and while this tribe has cultural values mostly from the Blue Tribe (and political positions taken from both other tribes), their main opposition in today’s Culture Wars, particularly in places such as college campuses and anywhere else where tech/gaming/atheist/skeptic/rationalist/geeky types can be found, is the Blue Tribe (the Red Tribe has very little presence in such circles), so that’s what most of his criticism ends up aimed.
Daniel Kokotajlo:
This is kind of the conclusion I’ve come to, although slightly different. I’ve had essentially this conversation with HeelBearCub before.
Being “blue tribe” or whatever you want to call it usually means being surrounded by similar people, meaning that when people you know post dumb political stuff on Facebook, they’re posting dumb left-wing stuff. If you have a majority of left-wingers on Facebook or whatever, it follows that a majority of the annoying stuff (empty posturing, bad statistics, whatever) will be left-wing, and if you criticize something it will probably be left-wing.
I suggest comparing Scott to George Orwell. Orwell was a democratic socialist. He wrote things criticizing both left and right. But the work of his that stands out is his criticism of his own side.
Right (so to speak), which is why I consider Scott a de facto member of the right at this point. An adherence to thinking for its own sake – the rationalist’s bread and butter – will provoke far more probing exploration of the Blue Tribe’s arguments because they’re dominant, and their talking points more tempting to deconstruct.
http://dryhyphenolympics.com/2015/06/14/yes-even-polyamorous-drug-users-are-conservative/
This attitude, right here, is what I find infuriating about the comments section, and it is also why I find what Scott is doing to be harmful.
Now, don’t twist my words. Not harmful on net, not intentionally harmful, etc.
But Scott is in the act of persuading people that “an adherence to thinking for its own sake” is some how the enemy of liberals/the left and friend to the conservatives/the right.
What I find infuriating about the comments section is the large fraction of commentators who take it as read that improving the status of conservatism automatically equates to harmful.
There seem to be two major groups who consider anyone not an SJW to be a conservative. One is conservatives trying to recruit, as Breitbart has been doing. The other is the SJWs themselves, who try to shame other left-of-center people to their position by claiming anyone who disagrees is a *shudder* conservative.
But this is nonsense; there’s more than two groups. There still are _liberal_ liberals, and they still have fundamental disagreements even with more libertarian conservatives. These disagreements are probably smaller than those they have with the current SJW-left, but they’re quite significant.
Check out the comments on r/KotakuInAction (liberal left worker ants) versus AccordingToHoyt (libertarian right, Sad Puppies associated) versus Vox Populi (rather less libertarian right).
The American conservative trio of God, Guns, and Country is very much in evidence on AccordingToHoyt (and more so in other Sad Puppy associated blogs). Also in Vox Populi, with old fashioned racism and hatred of “inferiors” a big part of it. Almost completely absent from KotakuInAction; nobody talks about God or Country, and guns are somewhat disputed territory.
@TheNybbler:
If we could taboo “left”, “right”, “conservative” and “liberal” around here I would be perfectly happy for it to happen.
I don’t think that is possible.
I try (perhaps not successfully) to not use these terms, but find that I am forced to do so because I am responding to comments that characterize left/liberals in one broad weakman.
Edit: And to be clearer, I really try not to characterize “the right” broadly, but rather, refer to specific sub-groups and their qualities. This is especially important for me to do because I am on “the left”.
@TheNybbler
For a comment whose basic point is that there are lots of different ideological groups out there, those three examples are rather … parochial.
@HeelBearClub
There’s at least one regular poster who delights in posting screeds about “the Blue Tribe” writ large, which I find even worse.
@Suntzuanime:
“Making it common knowledge that conservatives Think For Themselves and the left doesn’t” is not the same as “Improving the status of conservatives”. The latter is much more classical-liberal-values-neutral. The former is false.
As a far-left member of the Blue tribe, I’ve never once felt that this indicates any sort of right-wing bend in Scott Alexander or his comment sections or the way he manages his comment sections. I’ve always seen it as him noticing that in this currently world, criticism of bad things in this world that the left hold dear seem disproportionately small compared to the criticisms of bad things in this world that the right hold dear. This may be affected by the environments in which Scott Alexander and I reside, but this seems obviously true to me. Bad actions/politics from the right are consistently derided vigorously and relentlessly, often without much care for honesty or veracity, while bad actions/politics from the left are at best ignored and at worst completely denied and you must be an evil conservative shitlord for even believing that such things could be considered bad.
As such, writing long intricate essays criticizing right-wing evils adds very little to the conversation and creates very little good in the world compared to writing long intricate essays criticizing left-wing evils. This is despite the fact that (to me, and according to my observations to Scott Alexander) left-wing values and politics are unquestionably better than right-wing values and politics by a huge amount. In this situation, someone who supports left-wing values and wishes to push the world in a more left-ward direction can rationally attack actions and policies of people on the left more than they attack those on the right without any sort of dissonance in their thinking.
“This may be affected by the environments in which Scott Alexander and I reside”
Assuming the predicate (that neither you nor Scott want to bend the world in a conservative direction), then this part of the statement seems obvious to me.
Statements about how bad arguments by those on the left are not challenged, but bad arguments on the right are … well, there are just bunk. Bad arguments on both sides are ignored by the more tribal and/or more credulous on that side. The worst arguments of the other side are always signal boosted on your side. There is nothing unique about left/right in that regard.
People on the right don’t mock Jim Inhofe for bringing a snowball onto the floor of Congress to “disprove” climate change. They cite him approvingly, or ignore him. People on the left savage him. But I guarantee that people on the right are well aware of, and savaging Maxine Waters, or the latest graphic that cites “gun deaths”.
I get the sense that perhaps people are not hanging out in mainstream conservative spaces and therefore are only exposed (via a sort of osmosis) to the mainstream arguments of those close to them. The mainstream does not like nuance. The mainstream is tribal. This is not unique to left or right.
I think the lack of sports fandom in these spaces hampers peoples ability to see this clearly. Fans in sports rivalries hate the other side and make brain dead arguments about them (all while being thoroughly convinced that the arguments are irrefutable). Seriously, every rivalry is this way.
To be fair, often the hatred in sports rivalries is a sort of affable hatred, and the tribalism is often cheerfully acknowledged.
The latest Chiefs/Raiders showdown (the Raiders were the examples my parents used to teach young Chevalier what a sports rivalry even /was/) was full of commenters telling the other side things along the line of “I hope you bastards never go away because it’d be a pain to find someone else to hate at this point.”
Political rivalries, on the other hand…
What counts as “right wing.” The set of SSC fans do not seem very liberal to me. Rationalist tumblr is not a fair sample but I follow rational tumblr pretty closely. Recently nostalgiabrist posted that he would be uncomfortable if a person had sex with a dead chicken. The most common reaction on tumblr was something like “there is nothing wrong with fucking a chicken. I am concerned/creeped out that anyone in the in-group would judge someone for something as harmless as fucking a chicken.” This seems like the least conservative community response I have heard of. Maybe we need to post the chicken question to SSC but I think the response is going to be way less conservative than that of almost any community.
What the community is becoming is more anti-SJ. I do not see how this is avoidable. The current LW-sphere contains many people who are either openly anti-feminist or consider HBD likely. A common attitude among SJWs is that people with either belief set do not belong in polite society. As an example: If a SJW was on a hiring committee and knew an applicant was “pro-HBD” the SJW would probably try to block the hiring.
The attitudes of SJWs may or may not be good for society on net. But they are definitely hostile to the LW in group. The LW-sphere either needs to either purge its undesirables/extremists (especially the HBD people) or accept it is not going to be friendly with SJ. It is not controversial that the mainstream SJ view is that being friends with racists is not ok. Where as the sequences say we should “tolerate tolerance.” This is a fundamental conflict. Its unclear which side is right but the conflict cannot just be ignored.
HBD?
It stands for human bio-diversity. Being pro-HBD means believing in cognitive or temperamental differences between the races. :West Hunter” is a human bio-diversity blog and is in the sidebar. Scott often discusses talking to “Jayman” who also runs an HBD blog. Steve Sailer is also discussed positively by Scott and Steve Saler also openly believes in important cognitive differences between the races.
Here is an openly “racist” article from the gene expression blog on the sidebar: http://www.unz.com/gnxp/biologists-some-minorities-cant-do-math/ .
I personally believe in the “tolerate tolerance” idea. But it is just ridiculous to expect SJ types to not be hostile to the community when the community openly tolerates out-right racism.
Your definition of “outright racism” being “factual beliefs, possibly true, about racial differences”?
If so, not “tolerating racism” means not tolerating arguments for factual beliefs one disagrees with. Which I would view as a very illiberal attitude.
To me, “racism” implies something like hostility to people because of their race. Using it to cover beliefs about racial differences looks to me like a tactic for avoiding factual arguments that one is not confident of winning.
Whether I personally consider this racism is not very important. What is important is that a large fraction of people consider holding certain “Factual beliefs” to be racist. And virtually everyone who considers themselves a SJ person/feminist thinks that the “Factual beliefs” + attitude in that article is open, outright racism.
Whether one considers it blue, red, racist, antiracist, or whatever, the attitude “arguments for factual beliefs I disapprove of ought not to be tolerated, and people who tolerate them ought to be shunned” is an illiberal attitude. It makes a very bad fit with rationalism in general and the tone of this blog and its author in particular.
That doesn’t depend on whether it or he is more left or right–it would make just as bad a fit if the factual claims whose toleration was objected to were left wing ones.
@David Friedman:
It’s the title. If it is an attempt at being humorous it is in poor form. If it’s an attempt to infuriate, I’m sure it succeeds. It is trying to stick a thumb in the eye of those who disagree with the approach and conclusions of HBD proponents. It is attempting to sound racist.
So, the fact that you just breeze past the title as if this matters not at all is … interesting.
Khan’s attitude is certainly nasty (check the comments), and the title is inflammatory clickbait. But the reasoning in the article makes more sense than the one it is lampooning, which points to the same discrepancy in scores and concludes “therefore the test is flawed”.
And saying that I find the “differences are real” explanation better than the “test is flawed” explanation would mark me as a racist in the eyes of many. Certainly among all the SJ people I have contact with (but they think I’m horrible anyway). This is true regardless if I include a nasty dig about minorities not being able to do math. In fact, I’d wager that if I didn’t include such a dig, then when the SJ people characterize my positions, they would characterize them with such a dig.
At the graduate level there are other explanations besides HBD or bad tests. For instance, the effect of positive discrimination (affirmative action) earlier on. But that explanation would not make the SJ people any happier.
I apologize in advance for a somewhat off-topic comment about HBD, but I feel my radical left viewpoint is being under-represented. As a radical leftist I believe that equality-of-mind is far more important than equality-of-capital. As a neuroscientist, I see the brain as a machine than can be taken apart, fixed/upgraded, and put back together. Hypothetically speaking, if a radical brain surgery existed which had an 80% chance of upgrading the recipient two standard deviations of IQ and a 20% chance of killing them or making them much worse off, at what level of intelligence should we consider an adult intelligent enough to make the decision as to whether to accept this surgery? My guess is around half a standard deviation above average IQ.(less than that, and it should be mandatory). A good way to figure out exactly where this cutoff should be would be to give each subject a factual document regarding the surgery, and if they then were able to pass a test on the material they would be allowed to make up their own mind.
In my worldview, minor differences between races (although real) seem like a petty and irrelevant topic for discussion.
@Neurno,
When you get to the point that you think killing 14% of the population (~45 million people) is a reasonable move, you should really step back and reevaluate the situation. Are those two standard deviations such a life-and-death issue?
The irony being that, since you subscribe to racial IQ differences, by your own estimation your hypothetical would end up killing proportionally many more African Americans (about 19% or 7.3 million). That’s going further than any actual racist I’ve ever met would admit to.
Might it not be more utilitarian the other way around? My impression is that there are strongly superlinear returns to IQ, so if you could administer the treatment to X people it would be best to choose those who already have the highest IQ. (At least to first order, but it seems futile to consider much more when hypotheticals are generally so underspecified.)
He only proposes letting the population (take a risk that it would) kill itself. He isn’t proposing that *he* kill anyone.
I would personally take the treatment if offered. But is not offering to “let” people take the treatment. He is arguing that anyone below an IQ of approx 107.5 should be forced to take the treatment.
Dr. Dealgood:
You are absolutely correct that 80% is an unconscionably low success rate. I would never approve a mandatory operation with such a low survival rate. I just wanted to start with a provocative number to get people thinking and talking about it. At what survivability rate do you think it would be ethical/reasonable to allow people to choose such a treatment of their own free will? I’m thinking maybe 90%?
NotRobinHanson: You are absolutely correct. Thus, I have only offered such to those who I suspect an increase of intelligence would be of substantial benefit to society, and at the current level of risk made it clear to them that the offer is only valid if they can confirm that they are already in imminent danger of death from a currently-incurable illness (e.g. advanced pancreatic cancer).
The tables have now obviously flipped around lol.
I think people should be able to get any medical treatments they want provided they can show they understand the situation. I would probably institute a waiting period though.
I think people should be able to have doctors cut off their limbs or make them blind if that is what they want after serious consideration. If people want the IQ I do not think society has any right to stop people from undergoing the procedure.
Maybe if this procedure is destroying society we should put a stop to it. But the damage has to be clear, proven and large before we have a right to stop people from getting the treatments they think will improve their lives.
Not just races, that is simply the politically controversial aspect of it. It is all about heredity, where race is merely a really vague, bare-eye-astronomy predictor of heredity. If you run a private school, it would be more HBD like to exclude a child on the grounds that one of his grandfathers had a criminal conviction, and it would be far less HBD compatible to exclude the black love child of Thomas Sowell and Condie Rice – they have demonstrated their good genetics.
David,
I hate to break it to you, but by any earthly measure you are a rigidly biased political partisan who bizarrely condemns others of the same. How is that rational?
The motte of HBD/race realism stuff is “for many innate attributes X, the proportion of people who are X differs between ethnic groups”.
The bailey is “therefore you should revoke moral concern for people in some ethnic groups”, generally expressed as a series of slurs, this being what slurs mean. Sometimes it is expressed more explicitly, e.g. https://www.vdare.com/articles/the-sailer-strategy-updated-three-steps-to-save-america or http://blog.jim.com/war/how-to-genocide-inferior-kinds-in-a-properly-christian-manner/ as linked from http://thefutureprimaeval.net/reasonableism/ lower down in the comments.
I think you are not understanding it properly. Jim’s thoughts are not about *specific* causes to remove moral concern but about a *general* rejection of universal morality in favor of strictly in-group morality, on the grounds that nonwhites do the same thing. HBD-based lower intelligence of plains indians is merely the method. Jim does not say revoke moral concern because they are stupid, he says revoke moral concern because they are not you, and they don’t care about you. And the HBD part is only when he says they can be tricked.
Sailer doesn’t even promote anything particularly immoral, just violating the “sanctity” aspect of liberalism. None of the points are relevant to HBD either – the first is about nonwhite voters voting in their own interests (this actually means they aren’t stupid, the whites are being stupid), the second is about identity politics, and the third is about political math. None are related to HBD.
Anyhow Jims and Sailers ideas rest on the assumption that whites are far too nice with nonwhites, far less than they reciprocate that, and on the idea that universalistic morality harms whites when everybody else is running tribal morality. This is not about HBD.
Actual HBD related political argument would be roughly like this: if you still care about universalistic morality and care about Africa, since they are unable to govern themselves well, colonize them again and provide good governance.
It’s interesting to read Jim’s post as arguing against EA. It works fairly well as that.
Also, his post and the comments replying to it make it clear that there are contradictory passages in the Bible adn you can use them to prove whatever you want *without* much distortion other than by being selective.
I’ll concede that the particular examples of explicit “revoke moral concern” arguments here are only maybe 30-40% based on their beliefs about their own group’s superiority as opposed to simple selfishness. I reached for convenient posts I already knew about rather than looking for the clearest possible examples.
I do think those two are still heavily based on their assumption of superiority of their group, though, and still represent examples of stuff that, once you agree with HBD per the motte position, it is expected that you’ll support via an extended definition. Consider the annoyance for Scott in http://thefutureprimaeval.net/reasonableism/ for not going beyond the motte properly.
Here’s a clearer example, although still not ideal because it’s another one I had to hand: http://www.sunnation.co.uk/hopkins-rescue-boats-id-use-gunships-to-stop-illegal-migrants/
(And no, “use gunships” because they’re “cockroaches” where the answer to “do I feel pity?” is “Only for the British drivers” is not just being strict for the greater good of everyone. You could make such an argument, but this is not it, and it would probably not involve gunships when you did it.)
@TheDividualist:
And “white people” are “you”? Sailer’s argument is one for explicit racially based borders. It implicitly stated that whites and non-whites can have no shared group/national interest. Even though the Republican party is currently super-majority white, going a step further and saying it should explicitly propose policies to help “whites” and harm “non-whites” is quite different. The logical upshot is a kind of race war, wherein non-whites are the enemy.
He explicitly says this is required to “save America” meaning he sees non-whites as an enemy.
@heelbearclub
That is a very good question. I am Euro, and our group identities are far deeper than white and nonwhite, e.g. Serbs and Croats can easily hate each other despite they are not only of the same race but same south slavic subrace and same country for a couple of generations. It was the Yugo civil war that led me to not believing in universal identities and being fairly cynical about humankind ever stopping this tribal bloodshed.
I think, but it is only a guess, in the US white identities merged into one ethnic one, and former ethnic differences with e.g. Irish or Italians have ended. But it cannot merge with the blacks due to the ressentiment culture white liberals stoke and it cannot merge with the Hispanics due to their national loyalty is simply to other countries, because other countries like Mexico are far less ashamed about having their own ethnic culture, so it is easier to preserve that kind of pride that to try to assimilate into an US culture that is no longer proud about itself.
So these fault lines are probably deep.
But the point is that pretty much every culture is all about only ingroup solidarity, because that is natural, except for this liberal universalist ideology, and the normal thing is that there are lot of tribal fighting inside a race too. It happened on all continents. And the only huge exception is white universalism but only in certain cases, it is pretty clear that in Yugoslavia it was not the case for example, nor is it the case between Russia and Ukraine now.
So we see many examples how people cannot for ingroup identity, even within their own race, like in African countries, or between Russia and Ukraine.
Should we expect US whites and blacks are able to form ingroups? Despite black ressentiment fueled by white liberals? This sounds really unlikely.
I think US whites esp. white liberal really want a shared identity, but black and hispanics are gonna refuse that.
Well, unless the _civic_ nationalism in the US is far, far bigger than I thought. But it seems to be in a decline for a long time? I mean it would be a brutal case of exceptionalism to posit that. We have no reason to think American whites and blacks are somehow better than say Bosnians and Serbs.
@TheDividualist: there are plausible arguments that ethnic conflict between different groups of whites is not only still active but a major driving force in US politics, but that we don’t necessarily recognize it as such (and that this is partly because one side won in 1864.). “Coastal urban elites” and “rednecks in flyover states” turn out to map pretty well to historical patterns of settlement from different parts of Western Europe. See, e.g.,
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/maps-of-the-american-nations/
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/more-maps-of-the-american-nations/
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2015/07/04/demography-is-destiny
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/genes-climate-and-even-more-maps-of-the-american-nations/
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/the-genetics-of-the-american-nations/
And David Hackett Fisher’s “Albion’s Seed” for a reputable, book-length, academic source.
@TheDividualist:
“I think, but it is only a guess, in the US white identities merged into one ethnic one, and former ethnic differences with e.g. Irish or Italians have ended.”
There is essentially no ethnic strife in the U.S. between any ethnic groups that came in the immigration waves of the 1800s or who were here voluntarily previous to that. As you get to immigration waves that were closer in time, especially those with still living original immigrants, you will see some ethnic tension. For a less obvious example than Hispanics, look at the various Hmong populations in the U.S., who came in a wave after the Vietnam war.
Compare this to the inter-ethnic strife in various Balkan countries, and it should be clear that there is nothing intrinsic in the gene expression that is causing the inter-ethnic strife.
Compare the relative black-white inter-ethnic strife in the U.S. vs. the UK, and it should also be obvious that there is no intrinsic requirement that blacks and whites be in inter-ethnic strife. But, unlike the U.K., the U.S. maintained that Blacks could be legally separated from whites, and were de facto inferior under the law, even if de jure they were merely “separate but equal” and this occurred within living memory.
Ethnic differences lead to strife when they are enforced (de jure or de facto). Strife (and the differences) fade if they are not enforced.
>What the community is becoming is more anti-SJ.
Surely LW and SJ were always fundamentally opposed. I don’t think this is an ingroup/outgroup issue, but a fundamental disagreement about stuff: SJ is anti-rationality and anti-empiricism (contra Enlightenment in general). What common ground could there be with LW-ism?
Scott’s denouncement of SJ in the anti-reactionary FAQ is perfect:
>Real Progressivism is Enlightenment values – like the belief that free flow of information is more important than any particular person’s desire to “cleanse” society of “unsavory” ideas. Real Reaction is the belief that free expression isn’t as important as making sure people have “the right” values. Upper-class white Reactionaries will try to enforce values protecting upper-class white people. Lower-class minority Reactionaries will try to enforce values protecting lower-class minorities. Whatever. They’re still Reactionary.
>Likewise, real Progressivism is color-blind. It may be sophisticatedly color-blind, which involves realizing that just saying “I’m going to be color-blind now, okay?” doesn’t work, and that affirmative-action type policies may paradoxically lead to more genuinely color-blind results. But it would be unlikely to promote the idea that people should have racial pride, or that one particular race is evil and is not allowed to have racial pride. “White people should identify strongly with white culture; black people have no culture” is the upper-class white Reactionary slogan. “Black people should identify strongly with black culture; white people have no culture” is the lower-class minority Reactionary slogan. “Lots of races have culture but let’s ignore them and let individuals identify with what they personally like” is the academically-neglected but still-popular true Progressive position.
>Finally, real Progressivism opposes segregation in all its forms. Upper-class white Reaction says that it’s necessary to protect white people from being “polluted” by black culture like rap music. Lower-class minority Reaction says that it’s necessary to stop white people from “appropriating” black culture like rap music. Either way, we get white people not allowed to listen to rap music. Progressivism is the position contrary to both: that everyone can listen to whatever music they damn well please.
If Scott thinks this is what drives SJ, he’s got a lot of counterexamples to account for.
I doubt he’s trying to encompass SJ there, though. He might be describing a subset of activists who currently fight under the social justice banner, but it’s probably a small one.
I don’t like mainstream SJ, but I still absolutely don’t like being friends with racists. It’s my personal disgust response, not something I do out of piety.
Can you define “racist?”
I ask because a lot of talk along these lines seems to be getting its emotional effect from “racists are people who want to kill or enslave blacks” and then applying it to “a racist is anyone who thinks there is a significant difference among races in the distribution of innate intellectual characteristics.”
Where on that scale are the people who you react with disgust to being friends with?
The complaints seem fairly bizarre to me. There’s much more diversity here than in most online spaces.
That could exactly be the problem. People who enjoy “diversity” in far mode do not necessarily have to enjoy diversity in near mode.
+1
Related, backing up Scott’s impressions, liberals more likely to block or unfriend on Facebook: http://www.mediaite.com/online/pew-study-liberals-more-likely-to-unfriend-or-block-someone-over-politics/
Conservatives must tolerate liberals lest they’re left with no friends at all, apart from uncle Louie writing from Key West.
Unless you’re defining “liberal” as “anyone to the left of Francisco Franco”, this seems somewhat at odds with the demographics I see on the ground. My liberal friends are probably more likely to be active on Facebook, but I still see plenty of conservative memes floating around. And then there’s the surprisingly robust jarhead propaganda machine.
@Nornagest:
I think there is also probably a demographic selection effect, as the GOP skews older, and therefore is not as likely to be active on social media, and definitely less likely to be active with their peers.
liberals more likely to block or unfriend on Facebook
Sure, but why are we assuming symmetry here? Anecdotal evidence: My (liberal) postings on fb tend to be links to articles or studies, with the occasional snarky captioned pic. My (conservative) in-law’s posts are almost exclusively the latter.
Assuming symmetry between both sides is probably closer to being true than assuming bad faith on the part of one.
@Nornagest:
We have a documented difference. Assuming the difference is real, we do not know causation.
Why is it more charitable to assume something bad about liberals is the cause, than to consider other possible causations?
Well, it looks pretty bad on its face.
I’m open to options other than “liberals just can’t handle disagreement” — it could be for example that the base rates here are so low that the effect’s driven entirely by the Tumblr crowd, and so accusing the left at large amounts to committing the noncentral fallacy. (Anecdotally, the only people I’ve ever seen threaten to defriend others for political reasons are student activists.) Or the stats could be bad for one reason or another, which is never a bad bet with politicized sociology research.
But jumping straight to “oh, this must be a reaction to conservative bad behavior” smacks of writing your bottom line first, especially when your side likes to think of itself as the tolerant, thoughtful one.
@Urstoff:
More diversity here doesn’t tell you anything about whether the balance is left or right. And given that most spaces pattern match to either echo chambers or flame-war battlefields it doesn’t even tell you very much about what the relative balance is.
Diversity is at least some indicator of balance. I’m not sure what more you’d want out of a commentariat, anyway.
@Urstoff:
“Diversity” means that it the comments are not an echo-chamber with a few lone flamers. But it does not tell you how close to 50/50 the commentariat splits (if one could even assume a single-axis measure, which I agree is a poor way to measure).
As to what I could want? I hesitate to point out examples of the kinds of comments I would want to eliminate, as that would necessarily identify specific commentors, which seems like it would be poor form.
But I don’t think I am wrong in saying that one “side” of the equation does not regularly make the mistake of painting the opposite “side” with a broad brush. It does not identify specific groups as “enemies” or “evil”.
This seems to me to be the essence of what Scott is striving for in discussion. Violations of that tend to skew one way (in my opinion, obviously).
SSC, LW, and similar orbits are “liberal/left-wing” in the old meaning of anti-religious strictures, that is basically in favor of Sex, Drugs, and Rock-And-Roll. To the extreme – not only is gay marriage ok, but polyamory is fine, and even per above, having sex with a dead chicken (again, not my example, but it’s funny because it’s true). It’s not “liberal/left-wing” in the current SJW sense of the words, or race and gender identity politics. Inversely, it’s “right-wing” not in the religious sense, but having a very anti-government, pro-laissez-faire, individualistic view of the world. In sum, the old saying, “Libertarians are Republicans who like to smoke pot”.
Just a speculation, but maybe some mostly economic liberal types are drifting off into a (Bernie) Sandersverse, now that there’s an uncommon political mobilization on that front.
Hello? There’s a big circlejerk here at least every months about the wonderfulness of community and ritual and church stuff. In this open thread, there’s like a dozen people all talking about how they are either Mormon or like Mormons. SSC type rightists/centrists might be fedora-tipping atheists re: belief in God, yet they all seem to love churches at least in far mode.
America, stahp
Note, “strictures”, not “structures”. That wasn’t a typo. It’s the difference between regarding homosexuality as a sin because God supposedly said so, and having a nice sing-along on Sunday morning while listening to mild recommendations about being kind and charitable.
It’s interesting you say this though, because that description seems a very close match to my experiences growing up attending a Presbyterian church. Get together on Sundays, sing a couple of songs, and listen to the minister tell you a story illustrating a moral lesson. In fact the Presbyterian church has such progressive strictures (I hope I am using this term correctly) that even now it ordains openly gay ministers. But nobody in that comment thread picked an average, milquetoast Protestant denomination.
The commentators above are intentionally picking the denominations that seem to me to have the most intense strictures (Catholic, Mormon, etc.)
But nobody in that comment thread picked an average, milquetoast Protestant denomination.
I actually picked Presbyterianism. (Reform Judaism would be a close second.)
This is because they are so irreligious that they can say “wouldn’t it be nice to be this?” The people who daydream about living on a south seas island have nothing in common with those who live on one, and if they had to actually deal with the reality of living on said island, would go nuts and probably disdain the islanders.
The people who hate a religion are closer to it than those who view it as a tourist spot with lovely architecture and quaint local rituals
Agreed, actually.
Somewhat unrelated comment: remember back when the same was true for sci-fi fans wishing they could live on a space colony?
As a educated rationalist who grew up in an apparently happy-go-lucky outwardly-cheerful, highly repressive and bigoted but low-crime (other than domestic abuse) small Mormon town as a non-mormon…. I would like to very strongly second Maware’s point. Fie on religious conformity approaching the power of law or uniform social sanction. I can assure you that bad things lurk down that road for free-thinkers.
Perhaps when the AI Apocalypse comes, our machine overlord won’t be converting the entire universe to paperclips or to friendship and ponies after all… it’ll be converting it to high-quality Wikipedia articles and the computronium to host them…
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/11/30/artificial-intelligence-x-ray-specs/
Artificial intelligence service gives Wikipedians ‘X-ray specs’ to see through bad edits
The Anti-Democracy Activist has just finished his a series of blog posts dealing with the decline of America, appropriately enough titled the decline trilogy. “Sinking” is about the loss of the working class, “The Day They Tore Down The Future” is about the unkempt promises of past, more hopeful days, and “Playboy After Dark” is about how even hedonism has become baser and less cultured. It’s a very good series of posts, and I heartily recommend it.
> the unkempt promises of past
This is a typo for unkept, right? I’m mostly sure it is but I had to indulge the part of me that’s imagining which promises could be described as “unkempt”.
Hippies?
I read the “tore down the future” post and didn’t get much from it. Seemed like sentimentalism of a sort that doesn’t really speak to me.
Read all three. There’s nothing that distinguishes them from the usual content-free “things sure were better in the past” thinkpieces churned out by the likes of David Brooks.
There’s a point worth discussing in They Tore Down the Future, but the piece is less about that point, and more about how sad that point makes the author. It basically has to do with two things.
1. In all of American (If not human) history, the subcultural-political groups of every era made promises of the “If we could all just come together and X, then in The Future Y” variety. Every decade, a couple of those “If X’s” come true, and either the Y doesn’t materialize (because X doesn’t actually cause Y) or Y turns out to have unadvertised side effects that make it really dumb to want Y, or the group succeeds in dominating the political landscape of a generation to the point where it just becomes one of the background assumptions of everyday life. In a period going from roughly 1976-94 an abnormally large number of “If X’s” from all over the political scale came true, and basically none of them worked out to be successes. This created a sort of Race to the Bottom in cynicism and skepticism, which has messed up cultural vision something fierce. Jet-packs, orbital jets, Sea Labs, Trickle-Down Economics, The End of History, an Ecologically-Aware Media and a host of other things turned out to be Really Dumb Ideas that Don’t Actually Do Anything Good, so some of the Pizzazz has come off of visions of The Future.
2. In a lot of ways the United States has less Concentrated Wealth than it did in the 50’s, because India and China have advanced their industrial and political power and now the world’s resources are spread more thinly. Within the United States certain regions have maintained and built upon the material prosperity of the 50’s and 60’s, but the result has been that other areas of the United States had their access to resources severely curtailed. That’s why, for example, Iowa and Louisiana are building new roads in cities and highways, but not maintaining rural state roads at all and letting them go back to dirt. So The Future isn’t just unevenly distributed in the sense of not rolling out everywhere at once, but it’s actually seeing some areas loose investments and infrastructure that was already in place, so that even more infrastructure can be built somewhere else. The people who live in these “rollback” zones are unimpressed by a future where they don’t get any new stuff, lose some of the old stuff, and the new stuff other people get doesn’t even make for a cool postcard.
Briefly, I thought its point was more that once society fragments (converging on universal atomic individualism?), the culture’s ability to implement or even imagine a large-scale vision of the future dies out. When our culture is defined by the needs of the individual, its goals shrink to an individual scale as well.
I have no comment.
(Let me just note, however, that Gramsci – whatever his other views – had a raging Puritan anti-sex attitude and complained a lot about the slovenly lecherous Italian proletariat of his time.)
From https://antidem.wordpress.com/2015/11/12/the-future/
That’s probably the best one-sentence summary of the last two or three decades of the US economy that I’ve ever read.
http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/china
China only has a max of 2.3 million in prison. So yeah, their products aren’t likely to be produced by slave labor.
A fun paper on pseudo-intellectual bullshit, and the people who fall for it: http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf
…and some commentary on it by Derek Lowe: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/12/03/sounding-like-deepak-chopra
Not much that folks around here are likely to disagree with or find surprising, but some folks might get a kick out of it.
“Participants were also given an attention check. For this, participants were shown a list of activities (e.g., biking, reading) directly below the following instructions: “Below is a list of leisure activities. If you are reading this, please choose the “other” box below and type in ‘I read the instructions’”. This attention check proved rather difficult with 35.4% of the sample failing (N = 99).”
I admit that one provoked a bit of a chuckle.
Actually, a two-thirds success rate is better than what I would have predicted.
So, I occasionally binge on sci-fi that could be generously described as lowbrow. Stuff by John Ringo, some of the less-great David Drake books, stuff like that. Several of the books I read this past year revolved around the trope where fancy people with modern knowledge end up stranded among savage primitives, and set to work carving out a kingdom for themselves by “inventing” gunpowder, the pike square and other fruits of the renaissance and industrial revolution, which lets their growing band of followers outfight the numberless barbarian hordes in a series of dramatic blah blah blah. I have now read way too many books using this formula.
Lately, though, I’ve been rolling an idea around in my head: what would this scenario look like from our perspective, if a super-advanced person dropped in on us? What would be their best strategy or technological option for making themselves effectively king of the world? Obviously, hindsight is what makes the whole “give radio to the romans” trope its fun, and if we could predict what technologies were low-hanging fruit, we’d just invent them already. On the other hand, this comment section seems to have a pretty good percentage of futurists, tech geeks and sci fi nerds, so I thought I’d put the question to the group.
For someone from the far future stranded in our present, what would be the best method for gaining immense influence and power in a very short time? FAI doesn’t count; with rare exceptions, it ends stories rather than starting them.
Most technologies need to be built with other technologies which need other technologies etc. The main exception I can think of is mathematics. If the future person knew some very advanced (but sub-super-AI) machine learning algorithm that could still work with modern-day computer power, they might be able to make billions in the stock market or something.
The other one might be if there was somehow some easyish method of fusion/FTL/anti-gravity etc hiding under our noses this whole time, in which case they might be able to implement it and get power/money.
There’s a famous paper called “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data” written by a research director at Google sometime in the last decade. The gist of it was that larger datasets has been unintuitively disproportionately significant in improvements in ML (and the blossoming of applications you’re seeing in all the subfields of AI that depend on machine learning). There have been exceptions, of course, but much of the advances we’ve seen use relatively old algorithms on far larger datasets or more efficient usage of distributed “supercomputers” for ML.
That doesn’t rule out your suggestion of course, but it’s interesting to think about whether this trend will continue, which would obviate or at least mitigate its effectiveness.
Are we limiting our Michael Jon Carter to technology that makes any sense, or can he have things like molecular assemblers a la Drexler?
If not, I would bet on materials science being a good choice. There are a lot of crazy things we’re just learning how to do with inorganic carbon that seem like they could reveal some low hanging fruit. For example, you can make graphene wafers with pencil lead and scotch tape and we’re thinking of new potential uses for the stuff constantly.
Sticking on the subject of carbon, synthetic biology is another good area. There are hard limits on what a biological process can do but there will probably still be some game-changers. Like artificial or modified baker’s yeast that can “brew” whatever organic compound you tell it to, from medicines to plastics to biological weapons.
We might be entering a bit of trouble for the solitary innovator to be able to do interesting stuff. It’s not that hard to learn how to put together a radio or a gunpowder. It’s a lot harder to learn how to put together a semiconductor fabrication plant.
To ground things a bit, if an educated present-day persion was dropped in 1900, what could they do, tech-wise? Not a lot of people are going to know how to make a transistor from scratch, though I guess a vacuum tube computer could be a start. Recreating 20th century math and physics as publication-quality articles would be a pretty tall order for most people even if they did have a hand-wavey idea about what’s going on with it.
With the future scenario, the first question of course is what the future is going to be actually like. How much are people in, say, 2130 going to look like present-day people if there hasn’t been a civilizational collapse? With naive extrapolation, the tech stack is going to be more and more specialist-driven and more and more dependent on extremely deep and complex pre-existing infrastructure. And you’re having more and more people, probably the median majority people at this point, who aren’t cognitively cut out for any sort of professional technical work and mostly just consume and maybe produce cultural media that has minimal connection to the workings of the physical reality. You’d basically need someone who has specifically trained to bootstrap technology from a specific level, so maybe your time travellers would need to be something more like a deliberate invasion force than generic Heinleinian Competent Men who end up time travelling entirely by accident.
In a Terry Pratchett story, this happens to a guy (he’s dropped into WWII times) and he introduces McDonalds.
> We might be entering a bit of trouble for the solitary innovator to be able to do interesting stuff. It’s not that hard to learn how to put together a radio or a gunpowder. It’s a lot harder to learn how to put together a semiconductor fabrication plant.
For a very well written post on this topic for computing: https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe
How about pharmaceuticals? I think chemistry in 1900 was advanced enough to make a lot of the most popular drugs of today. They just didn’t know what to make.
How many non-pharmaceutical chemists know anything about that though? “Well, there’s this one pill, that, umm, helps you get boners. I think it’s blue?”
The general thrust of the genre in question is that the time-traveller is competent but not particularly a specialist or genius (although some are “US military unit gets sent back”)
We might be entering a bit of trouble for the solitary innovator to be able to do interesting stuff.
Perhaps, but wasn’t it just a month or two that we were seriously entertaining the idea that Dr. Todd Rider had pretty much singlehandedly eradicated the scourge of viral disease from his basement lab at MIT? Granted, that specific case is looking a bit less likely, but it clearly isn’t obvious that the era of the solitary innovator is over.
And if something like DRACO does turn out to be the antiviral panacea of the 22nd century, it seems like any 22nd century physician or med-chemist would likely know enough about how it works to have a handle on recreating it starting with even late-20th-century tools and libraries.
I think that question demands too much in the way of forecasting what the far future will be like. Their technology will almost certainly include things substantially superior to what we have but capable of being built with modern technology, because that’s been true of every past generation. But what about their educational system? Does it produce genius polymaths who can find those easy breakthroughs, or narrow specialists who are SOL if their field doesn’t mesh with our world, or hedonistic dullards on account of AIs do all the real thinking? Maybe they’re all expert social manipulators, and maybe they can translate that to our society or maybe they can’t. Physiology – are they baseline humans, genetically engineered supermen, cyborgs, or whatnot? And how much of their technology will they bring back with them?
There’s good stories to be written around any combination of these. One that comes to mind, and maybe up your alley, is S. M. Stirling’s “Drakon”. Two people from the 25th century wind up in 1996 Earth, one by accident and one deliberately.
Ms Accident is a genetically-engineered superwoman, of the ruling class of a society that makes you pine for the days when “alternate history” meant nothing worse than the Nazis building their thousand-year Reich. Very good at social and psychological manipulation, armed and unarmed combat, so rather than the bored old “become a warlord via technologically superior firepower” bit, she starts by robbing and murdering criminals nobody will miss (using low-tech weapons with superlative aptitude, then allying with and ultimately taking over their organizations, then moving on to more legitimately wealthy and powerful targets to build a shady business empire that can hire enough physicists to build her a time portal home from her attentive-layman’s knowledge of the field. And come back with a 25th-century army to conquer and enslave our Earth, obviously.
The other time traveler is the assassin deliberately sent back to stop her. Mundane human trained to roughly Bondian levels of competence, but trained to infiltrate 25th century Earth so about as out of place as James Bond would have been in 15th-century England. But, being sent back deliberately, he does have bits of useful technology including a nanotech fabricator. Plan is to go to the authorities and say “Hey, I’m a time traveler sent to help you defeat the time-travelling supervillainess who’s about to enslave your world”, until eventually someone doesn’t lock him away as a lunatic.
It’s a Stirling novel, so he’s a bit too enthusiastic about his evil supervillainess and it almost feels like he regrets having to write the good guys winning. IIRC, slightly less kinky lesbian sex than you’d expect for a Stirling novel as well. I do recall enjoying it.
Thanks to everyone for their replies so far. After considering them, I think I’ve got a more focused formulation of the question: If you had access to science from several hundred years in the future, which fields seem like they’d have the greatest impact on the modern world, and why? What technologies seem like they have the most room to grow in revolutionizing the world we live in?
@Anonymous – “Most technologies need to be built with other technologies which need other technologies etc.”
Sure, and the usual scenario relies on stuff far enough down the tree that all you need is the information. But what I’m more interested in, I guess, is what potential breakthroughs we think could really, seriously change the world. Gunpowder, disciplined troops, germ theory and some knowledge of engineering seem like enough to change the world of 1100 AD. What would it take to change the world for us, to a degree that the existing society couldn’t just integrate smoothly?
“The other one might be if there was somehow some easyish method of fusion/FTL/anti-gravity etc hiding under our noses this whole time, in which case they might be able to implement it and get power/money.”
Fusion underwhelming, rather like iron in the bronze age. it’s better, and it’ll change things, but it seems like a linear advantage rather than an exponential one. What really changes? Suddenly, New York City has unlimited free electricity, and then… what?
FTL or Antigrav (or possibly Teleportation) seem like they might be more revolutionary, but I’d like to try for hard science options before resorting to handwavium.
@Dr Dealgood – “Are we limiting our Michael Jon Carter to technology that makes any sense, or can he have things like molecular assemblers a la Drexler?”
Things that make sense would be optimal. Have people actually proved that Drexler-style MA is impossible? Synthetic biology seems like a decent option; seems more immediately useful and more scalable than something like workable fusion. On the materials science side, how do the materials of 500 years from now make you personally king of the world? It’s not enough to make the society around you run a few hundred percent more efficiently. We’re looking for something that gives an individual or a small group immediate, worldwide significance.
@Rsaarelm – “We might be entering a bit of trouble for the solitary innovator to be able to do interesting stuff. It’s not that hard to learn how to put together a radio or a gunpowder. It’s a lot harder to learn how to put together a semiconductor fabrication plant.”
Good point. On further reflection, I’m not sure I’m that much of a stickler for the castaway having to make everything by hand; some future-tools are fine. Alternatively, maybe the future person is configured such that to us, they ARE a tool. The part that matters is the power of a massive potential tech differential put in the hands of a single person, with the difficulty of realizing that differential providing balance.
“With naive extrapolation, the tech stack is going to be more and more specialist-driven and more and more dependent on extremely deep and complex pre-existing infrastructure… You’d basically need someone who has specifically trained to bootstrap technology from a specific level, so maybe your time travellers would need to be something more like a deliberate invasion force than generic Heinleinian Competent Men who end up time travelling entirely by accident.”
Also a good point. Then again, a specialized bootstrapper might be fairly useful for building up settlements and such to a higher tech level as efficiently as possible with the minimum number of resources. That seems like the sort of thing that might come up if space colonization happens in a big way. …Alternatively, the castaway might have the next 500 years worth of Wikipedia implanted in their skull. The deliberate invasion might be an interesting option, though.
“What technologies seem like they have the most room to grow in revolutionizing the world we live in?”
The current big bottlenecks seem to be that we’re pretty bad at modeling complex nonlinear systems (biochemistry, ecosystems, economies, software, societies) and that most of what we do is bottlenecked by needing to have one or more humans in the decision-making loop to move the thing ahead. The artificial general intelligence, which you pretty much nixed as unwritable is a part of both, but so are intelligence augmented humans and possibly some more handwavy mathemathical advances. Problems with the human condition, humans aren’t very smart, human bodies aren’t always like we’d want them to be, humans get sick, age and die, all need tech that can cope with the massive complexity of human biochemistry and human neurology to do something about. You don’t get to just know which reagents to mix together so that you can start making philosopher’s stones to turn people immortal.
If you want a plot device instead of speculation of likely stuff, you could have the future people have a proof that P=NP and an actual practical method for solving NP-complete problems. Beyond breaking most encryption, this might also let you brute-force all sorts of currently intractable analysis problems by just throwing processor time at them. Of course “build an AI” would probably be there, but so might simulating protein folding and molecular simulation and figuring out lots of new interesting things to do with DNA sequencing. And the present-day internet could probably be quite thoroughly pwned by someone with an ability to mechanically run through source code and identify security holes in it even without an encryption-breaking magic wand.
That’s noncomputable in the general case, and even in the specific case IIRC it’s in a harder class than NP. I don’t know if practical P=NP gets you anything when it comes to mechanical analysis of source code. Don’t know for sure it doesn’t though; I’m much more programmer than computer scientist.
Yeah, you still couldn’t solve the halting problem style things, which means you couldn’t find all the holes. I understand that the actual formal verification methods are based on extracting a sub-Turing-complete subset of a program as a state machine and exploring their state space, and that these run into NP-style limits. With a P=NP magic wand, you might be able to find eg. security holes that can be tripped with less than 100 bytes of input.
We’re talking about* things like room temperature superconductors, materials roughly as strong as diamond but less brittle, nearly frictionless moving parts, lenses and mirrors with really bizarre optical properties, extremely fast computer chips, highly targeted drug delivery systems and the like. Even if all you’re going to do is sell the stuff you made, the profits alone would make you one of the world’s power players overnight. And if we’re talking a standard “fight the barbarians” plot then it doesn’t take much imagination to see how any of these would function as a force multiplier.
*Assuming we’re right that these sorts of things can in fact be practically made. It seems so but a lot of this could be our version of firing people into obit with giant cannons.
The question reduces to: What type of [compelling future] technologies could be reconstructed with today’s engineering know-how.
An interesting example is the claim that NASA couldn’t competently build and launch a Saturn V rocket right now. Not because detailed specs have been lost, but the thousands of technicians required to do Quality Control on each part don’t exist anymore. So any type of complex fusion drive thingy is out.
There is one exception but we don’t know if it exists. There could be a physics “trick” to cold fusion with simple ingredients. The notion of Sonoluminescence and supposed Bubble Fusion are an example of what this might look like.
With arbitrarily powerful synthetic biology though, all you’d need to do is carry back the genetic sequence for a wonder organism. You could synthesize the sequence and boot it up into say a yeast cell. Although you’d start with yeast it could bootstrap itself into anything more useful. So this could be built from scratch today with 2-3 lab workers and couple million dollars for dna-synthesis costs. However, we also don’t know if this technology “really exists” in the future. It could be that rational design can’t be applied to the nature’s biology stack.
The scary future technology strikes me as being able to read people’s minds (more precisely decode the electromagnetic waves) and hack them.
As far as I know, they still look feasible. One way of thinking about them is that they are a generalization of ribosomes, which are also programmable (via messenger RNA) assemblers, albeit purely of proteins.
If you haven’t read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, year of publication 1889, it’s all been for nothing.
And, for a later classic version, _Lest Darkness Fall_.
They would exploit out weaknesses, and particularly our weakness for superstimuli, by inventing a variety of gaming and social media platforms, the later serving as a conduit for their propoganda. having become immensely rich. Having become immensely wealthy and influential, they would then leave fro somewhere better on their privately-funded spaceships.
I mean, seriously, developments in warfare mean being able to do more with less, so the ultimate refinement is being able to control people’s minds and resources without their realising that anything untoward is happening.
what would this scenario look like from our perspective, if a super-advanced person dropped in on us?
S.M. Stirling’s Draka novel has already been brought up, so all I’ll say about that one is that the villain in Draka is easier to boo than most of the “bad guys” in the rest of the series. Which I count as a plus, frankly, due to the really horrific implications of the whole Domination.(*)
I agree with the already presented idea that most of the easy solutions have already been done, and that changes would need to be done in a stepwise fashion. To that end, I would say that energy would be the ideal starter, if only because it would allow Our Hero to make below the radar progress in their Mountain Fortress whilst building up other breakthroughs. Added to this, a gene-engineered bug to eat and destroy crude oil would crash the rest of the planet’s economy, leaving Our Hero controlling the most advanced viable alternative. (Esp if the alternative could produce heat to replace coal-fired metal refineries.)
I find it interesting that no bio breakthroughs have been proposed so far…I wonder if that says more about the commentariant or the possibility for bio impacts. Perhaps something that allowed focused attacks on enemy soldiers or specific persons?
Another example of “advanced person amongst the peasants” – CJ Cherryh’s Morgaine novels. Alternatively, Cordelia Naismith amongst the Barrayarans – there the technology she introduces is biological, and the implications subtle but profound. (And also takes a long time to have effect.)
(*) Edit: The Draka manage to combine several admirable Red tribe qualities (pro-military, politeness, pro-hunting, etc) with universal negatives (rampant oppressive racism) and several admirable Blue tribe traits (sexual freedom, women’s equality, atheism, statism). The books run the constant risk of having the reader “cheer for the wrong side.” I would be interested in the recommendations of left-leaning SFF fans of books which have sorta-leftist villains which have had the same impact on them.
(I meant to make that last comment but forgot.) end edit
Folks, I think you guys are attacking this problem from a somewhat misguided direction. Ie, you’re looking at successes we have now vis a vis several hundred years ago, and expecting that future advances would continue along the same directions. While I will not (to a broad degree) disagree with that assessment, we should take Anon’s point quite seriously: “Most technologies need to be built with other technologies which need other technologies etc.” In other words, things we’re quite good at are unlikely to be low-hanging fruits to implement.
I would suggest a different angle: Look at things we expect to be “easy” now, yet somehow mysteriously isn’t (because of shoddy science or complex systems that are surface-level simple or whatever). Off the top of my head I could think of:
-social psychology
-positive psychology
-nutrition
-exercise science.
-pedagogy (Khan Academy is leaps and bounds superior to the Prussian model, and Salman Kahn’s not exactly a social genius).
Obviously social psychology is very culture-specific, and our story relies on the protagonist a)physically looking close enough to a 21st century human b)quickly assimilating the language, culture, physical cues of people of our time and c)not going into a catatonic shock upon seeing all the suffering around him/her/it/zey.
But it’s plausible to imagine that in a few hundred years, social psychology will be SO MUCH BETTER and people already have an exquisitely subtle understanding of psychological, interplay, persuasiveness, memes, signaling etc (similar to how blantantly unsubtle ads from the 50’s just look comical to us). So we can imagine that if our protagonist is capable of emulating a 21st century person w/o going into catatonic shock, then said protagonist is also capable of easily becoming one of the most persuasive people we’ve ever seen.
A possible means to power is starting a New Agey cult based on Science! (and Technology! Maybe call it Technoscientism?) teaching the ways of Nutritional Methods that Actually Work(TM) and Health Tips that are Actually Useful, and Mindfulness Techniques that Actually Make You Happy. Obviously it will be untrivial for zey to sharpen the true signal among the molasses of noise that is our current landscape of those fields (and it will be difficult to get it past the bullshit filters of people like me), but a) centuries-advanced understanding of the art of persuasiveness will lend our protagonist a hand up and b)on expectation, reality will eventuality bat last. After zey makes a shitload of money, zey will start hiring geneticists to do genomic profiles and offer even more calibrated advice. (Eg, presumably zey will be able to look at your 23andme profile and just point at the five most obvious risk factors that we don’t even know about). Plus, the eventual billions of dollars from this positive psychology/nutrition/exercise techniques/Totally Not Cult organization will allow our protagonist to either a)amass the physical resources to implement Really Advanced Hard Science Technologies or b)Launch a Political Campaign the Likes of Which We have Never Seen Before(what, you think our politicians don’t become better at bullshitting in 300 years?).
In the meantime though, zey will probably devote a lot of resources into ending all the suffering in the world (because man is there a shitload, and there’s strong reason to believe ex ante that we’re currently living in a moral catastrophe: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-015-9567-7 )
I doubt that social psychologist would be able to even understand people from 300 years ago, let alone be able to convince them. I don’t think your grand science of memetism would have much sway for people who live their lives without anethesia or antibiotics, or who live with their cities being emptied out by diseases we eradicated a long time ago.
More likely they’d die. No artificial insulin, no mental health drugs, no antibiotics, poor or no food, etc. The advancements we have are due to interlocking dependent technology. That means they are incredibly easy to break, and we’d feel the absence far before anything.
Oracle by Greg Egan is kind of like this. It takes place in the 1950s.
Easy answer: releasing a weaponized mind-altering virus which made all other humans instinctively loyal and subservient to them on a “gut level”. (Similar to the Pink pill from the pill story posted by Scott) I don’t think exploring that line of technological inquiry would be a net positive for our current international society.
Ringo and Weber really like that stuff (I just read Empire of Man earlier this year, so this question is fresh on my mind as well). Weber, especially, has written that story at least three different times now – the Mutineer’s Moon/Dahak series, Empire of Man alongside Ringo, and of course it’s the entire premise of his Safehold series of books.
Maybe it’s just because we enjoy reading about Rorke’s Drift over and over.
There seems to have been a flurry of long-form articles published about CRISPR over the past few weeks. For example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/magazine/the-crispr-quandary.html http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-gene-hackers https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gene-drives-spread-their-wings
Reading these, I’ve been especially interested in seeing how the mainstream discussion of CRISPR-ethics starts to unfold. For now, the articles seem to focus nearly exclusively on the problems/risks involved with editing human DNA, with some also mentioning ecological risks of gene drives gone wrong in plants or animals. While there’s obviously a lot to unpack with these issues already, I’ve been surprised by the relatively small concern there seems to be about deliberately edited viruses used for bioterrorism, which is the particular risk that scares me the most. Apart from one vague mention at the end of a Wired article from July (http://www.wired.com/2015/07/crispr-dna-editing-2/), I haven’t found anything that talks specifically about CRISPR as a weapon.
Could someone more knowledgeable about biology than I am please let me know why we shouldn’t be completely terrified about this? Is there some reason why it would be insanely, unrealistically hard to, say, make a couple choice edits to an influenza virus and create something way more deadly and infectious? Because right now I’m having a hard time seeing why CRISPR isn’t a “black ball” discovery, to use Bostrom’s term.
CRISPR is a tool that’s mainly used for precisely modifying eukaryotic genomes: viral genomes are small enough that you really don’t need anything very sophisticated to make new viruses. In fact CRISPR is often delivered via a modified and very safe derivative of HIV called a lentiviral vector.
And as for being used as a weapon on its own, the only thing I’ve heard of close to that might be the idea to use it for gene drives against mosquitoes.
Basically adding in “selfish genes” (that are more likely to be passed on) which also code for a particular trait, so that in a few generations much or most of the targeted population would have it.For obvious reasons this isn’t practical as a weapon against humans: even if millions were hit initially and it went completely undiscovered it would still be somewhere on the order of centuries before it would be a problem.(EDIT: Didn’t see you already mentioned gene drves, presumably you knew about that already. Woops.)
Anyway, as a general rule I would argue that we should avoid worrying about things we don’t understand. Wild speculation doesn’t make anyone safer and can distract you from risks which you do have meaningful control over.
We’ve had the technology to make deadly plagues since early 2000nds. Interestingly enough the effort to keep that out of the publics eye seems to have been successful; digging it up is somewhat convoluted.
CRISPR only makes stuff like that easier; so in short, there is every right to be terrified.
As a researcher who has been hacking genomes since well before convenient and powerful tools such as CRISPER… This is a real issue, the world has been in danger from this for well over a decade now, and the government had been scrambling quietly and largely ineffectually to try to reduce this danger. Fortunately, so far, the only people smart/educated enough to be a risk for designing such a weapon have been too wise to do so. Let us all hope that remains true for the foreseeable future, at least until the government comes up with some better defenses. I recommend increasing government funding for counter-bioterrorism research.
Does the government do background checks on people with your type of hacking skills?
I sure hope so! As for me personally, I specifically requested that such be done on me as part of my recent application to a government counter-bioterrorism job.
This week we are discussing Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own.
Next book thread we’ll discuss The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. I welcome any suggestions. As you can tell, the theme is basically social science although that is flexible. Obviously, I’m looking for books that will interest people here but I’m also thinking that we need to try something a little controversial.
After Progress, by John Michael Greer, would be a book that I would expect people to disagree with vehemently, but I don’t know how divisive it would be within these comments outside of the Progress/Decadence split that already exists in the community.
If you want to continue on a similar theme, Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes reads almost like a sequel to The Righteous Mind.
IT DIDN’T DISCUSS THE POSSIBILITY THAT NATIONAL PROSPERITY INCREASES IQ RATHER THAN VICE VERSA. WHY WOULDN’T IT DISCUSS THIS?
He does mention it in chapter 2 although he doesn’t elaborate.
“Any simple story that ‘wealth causes IQ’ has to account for the puzzlingly high average scores found in Taiwan and Hong Kong decades ago, as well as the high scores found in the poverty-stricken but fast growing China we all know about today. A healthy environment helps to boost IQ, but it can’t be the whole story.”
But yes, that question probably deserved a whole chapter. To be honest, I thought the whole book was framed rather weird. He always talked about the “benefits to raising IQ” rather than the benefits of having high IQ. There was this optimism about the ability to raise IQ even while admitting that our knowledge of how to do so is incredibly limited. And he mentions things like Asians having higher IQ while ignoring the possible genetic links. My theory is that he wrote this book as an attempt to get progressives to actually believe in IQ differences between groups but in a progressive point of view so his book wouldn’t immediately be denounced as evil and racist.
I didn’t read the book because it isn’t free yet and I’m poor, but is it possible that he meant “raising IQ” in a national sense rather than a personal sense? Because that one isn’t difficult – you just bring in smart immigrants, or if you can’t attract those you can do some subtle or not so subtle form of eugenics.
He doesn’t mention anything like that, although he probably should have.
You should just “modern library loan” it. Free, illegal torrents of the eBook are readily available from a simple Google search. If this makes you feel guilty, promise yourself you will delete the eBook once you are done reading it.
There are a number of simple (and not-so-simple) interventions which can “raise national IQ”. Simple: Add iodine to salt – iodine deficiency causes cretinism, and isn’t that hard to fix. Not-so-simple: raise living standards to the point where children are never malnourished while growing up. One season of real malnutrition can have permanent effects on a person’s cognitive development.
The difference in average IQ between west African nations and American blacks suggest that there are some big gains to be made through environmental improvements.
Ruled out by adoption.
Adoption of poor babies by a rich household is a direct prosperity injection.
Poverty to the point of malnutrition decreases IQ, same way it stunts height. Beyond that threshold, prosperity does not increase IQ.
At this point it probably behooves me to remind us all that this wouldn’t be a problem if some asshole hadn’t decided that IQ should bestow social status.
I think for this result we have to differentiate wealth from stability.
There are some results suggesting that growing up around violence, death, and instability inflicts a lifetime IQ hit (or equivalent-to-IQ hit). That’s a pattern that can continue beyond the malnutrition line, but isn’t equivalent to poverty. In particular, it suggests that high-stability poverty (religious, rural farming, whatever) is ‘safer’ than low-stability poverty (refugee or urban violence).
Do you happen to know if there are good adoption studies addressing the possibility that there’s an effect here with only indirect links to wealth?
Perhaps because the author thinks that it doesn’t, but the possibility that it does offers some cover against certain accusations so the author mostly ignores this possibility. If the author stated that prosperity doesn’t seem to increase IQ, it would be much more politically difficult for other professors to support the author’s conclusions.
Offtopic, does anyone other than me believe that even sparing, brief, ironic violations of the social norm against all-caps should still be considered beyond the pale?
No, no one else does. You are the only one who believes this.
Yeah. Splitter.
Being against any use of all-caps defeats the whole point of being against overuse of all-caps. All caps is useful as a tone indicator, which is precisely why it’s annoying when overused. But if you proscribe all use of all caps, that’s just as bad as using it all the time: you’ve unnecessarily cut out a useful means of communicating tone/emotion.
I AGREE!!!!
That’s particularly disturbing since there’s a huge body of evidence saying that “prosperity —> IQ”. Whether or not “IQ –> prosperity”, there are a bunch of results saying that everything from nutrition to childhood instability will slam individuals with significant IQ hits.
This is a huge deal because we see a lot of mismatches between populations – for all of the shouting that “African-American IQs haven’t normalized to white American levels”, I haven’t seen anyone eliminate urban poverty as a sufficient explanation for the result. When urban black IQs look more like urban white IQs than African black IQs, it’s time to look really hard at the possibility that it’s a financial/social result.
Not really… Oh, there’s lots of evidence that malnutrition and disease hurt IQ, but none whatsoever to support the idea that they explain the persistent gaps between populations. And we’d be overflowing with such evidence! As soon as you take some sub-saharan africans from the third world to the first, they’d basically shoot right up to par. It has been a long, long while, and they haven’t.
The face of urban poverty is looking rather chubby at the moment. And it’s not like the inner city is overrun by plague and a co-incident antibiotics blockade.
We know, for sure, it isn’t a “financial/social result.” Again, we’d be awash in evidence. Instead, there’s not a shred of evidence that absent serious infection, injury, or malnutrition, IQs can be changed in any significant and persistent manner. And in the first world there’s no ethnic group that is suffering physical damage of the sort that would create the sort of gaps we see. It is every bit as absurd as claiming that Asians are shorter than Blacks and Whites not because of genes, but because they are starving (unbeknownst to anyone, including themselves.)
Instead of evidence, tired, insulting nonsense is dribbled out about various outliers. Have you heard of a gaussian distribution? Well, they show up all over the place, including measurements of population IQ. If you look at the top of the distribution, you have not invalidated or changed the rest of it. Yes, there are smart Blacks. Yes, there are stupid Jews. To say otherwise is to fly in the face of the current HBD position on the matter, not to mention common sense!
“I haven’t seen anyone eliminate urban poverty as a sufficient explanation for the result.”
The wealthiest black kids score lower on the SAT than the poorest white kids. Additionally parental IQ is a better predictor of IQ than parental wealth.
“When urban black IQs look more like urban white IQs than African black IQs, it’s time to look really hard at the possibility that it’s a financial/social result.”
You are not the genius who first hypothesized that that wealth might impact IQ, as opposed to the other way around. Other people have looked into that, they just moved on.
I was originally going to write a more detailed and respectful response, referencing differences in height between West African men and men of West African descent living in the UK, but there’s only so much of this nonsense that I can take before getting snarky and to the point.
Then don’t comment. Some of us consider this an open question and find such discussion interesting.
Do you have any source for your claim that the wealthiest black kids score lower on the SAT than the poorest white kids?
First useful bing hit
http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html
“• Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 129 points higher than the national mean for all blacks.
• Whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 61 points higher than blacks whose families had incomes of between $80,000 and $100,000.
• Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points below the mean score for whites from all income levels, 139 points below the mean score of whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000.
“
I really have to wonder why, if only between (say) 50 and 80 percent of IQ differences can be explained by heritable/genetic factors, the causes put forth for the remaining variation are restricted to simple nutrients (iodized salts and/or folate).
Why ignore culture and education as potential factors?
No-one is ignoring them as potential factors. Indeed, far too much attention is given to them by everyone as potential factors, because it is basically a religious dictum in this society that upbringing just must be behind racial gaps in mental ability.
They have been scrutinized far more closely than can be justified given the overwhelming evidence one immediately comes across that IQ gaps cannot be explained through upbringing. Over and over again it is found that upbringing has about as much impact on IQ as it does on height – that is to say NONE under anything like normal circumstances. Of course, every spurious, nonsensical contrarian argument is trumpeted to the skies, and the obvious reality is restricted (in the elite circles that matter) to whispers.
So based off this book, wouldn’t it be more utilitarian for high iq people to increasingly segregate themselves from the rest of society?
A lot of innovation in this country came out of Silicon Valley and college towns, yes.
I’m not seeing a clear way that low IQ countries can raise their IQs to the level of more developed countries. All of the ways he mentions either seem very speculative or something with small effects. The only exception seems to be nutrition but that still doesn’t lead to equal IQs. His optimism seems very unfounded.
Pay their smart people to have more babies. 🙂
See my comment above re: neuroscience, political orientation, and brain surgery.
Do you think world needs new religion as a unifying and positive force? Such religion should be compatible with scientific and rational worldviews . But main thing it would gives purpose and meaning , answering some of the ethics and moral question in a way not contradicting logic and evidence.
I think last few religions (humanitarian liberalism and communism) failed for same reason old one did – they are simply not true, their commandments are demonstrably false and practical implementation were corrupted and lead to effects opposite of what their sacred texts aim at.
I’ve thought the same at times, but since part of the apparent purpose of religion is to more clearly define Us and Them, even if you got everyone to believe in it you’d probably immediately start getting schisms and corresponding hostility.
Well if you focus religion on division (like Islam or Christianity does) then yes. But Buddhism, Hinduism or Bahai are less divisive and more unifying. I mean thats one of reasons I think we need new one – existing religions are extremely divisive over pretty stupid reasons
I think one of the purposes of religions is to elevate humans to higher moral grounds. One way to do it is to be honest about human nature and to provide guidance according to human nature, not against it.
Suppressing human nature and channeling resulting angst outwards against “others” is the property of divisive religions.
IMO it’s not the so much religion itself that drives division, it’s game-theoretical power struggles. Any religious aspects are just the excuse. So even if you have some religion where schisms don’t matter, it won’t stop people dividing on other lines.
Taboo ‘religion’, I reckon. If you’re using the word broadly enough to include explicitly atheist ideologies, it’s going to cause a lot of unnecessary confusion. And I don’t know how to answer your question, because I’m not really sure what it means.
By religion I mean “ideology which transcends national and racial boundaries and gives philosophical guidance” .
“ideology which transcends national and racial boundaries and gives philosophical guidance” & “they are simply not true”
So, what used to be called a philosophy. Probably best called a science nowadays, so a science that happens to be numinous.
Religions don’t work by testing and rejecting hypotheses, so I wouldn’t use the term “science’ here.
So, what used to be called a philosophy. Probably best called a science nowadays, so a science that happens to be numinous.
Science does not give purpose and moral grounds.
Hence, a modifier, ‘numinous.’ Purpose and morality are hardly immune to inquiry.
I was pondering recently whether part of the “purpose” of religion is to hack the intensely social nature of human cognition to get people to do things. It’s just easier to make people care about doing something if it “makes God happy” or “defeats the demons” than for some abstract reason like “it will make society better.” This seems to still be a true thing about human cognition (for instance, look how angry we get about terrorists while ignoring problems with a much larger body count but no human face.) So maybe we need a religion that includes both untrue-but-psychologically-motivating aliefs (“malaria nets make God happy!”) and true-but-abstract beliefs (“God is just a convenient label for an abstract set of moral principles.”) I’m not sure how well people could handle the cognitive dissonance in practice, but I feel like it would be an interesting experiment.
I’m not sure how well people could handle the cognitive dissonance in practice, but I feel like it would be an interesting experiment.
Trick is to have no cognitive dissonance. Unite and guide without forcing yourself to suppress your logic and rationality
Every time my kid start whining that they don’t want to wash their hands, I am seriously tempted to tell them that they have to do it because “God said so.”
We haven’t had a very good track record with materialist pseudo-religions over the last few centuries, it’s probably for the best to avoid repeating that mistake. I’m also a little fuzzy on why the world needs yet another competing unifying force: if anything it seems like they’re the root of a lot of our present issues.
As for religions compatible with science, why not go back to classical sources? Stoicism is probably the most logical choice, but I’ve heard good things about Neoconfucianism (New Confucianism on the other hand seems like a bit of a mess). If you really wanted to you could even go for something like an updated Hermeticism: alchemy and astrology historically developed into chemistry and physics, so the idea of using those disciplines to seek enlightenment still sort of makes sense.
Materialist pseudoreligions, e.g. Marxism, Gaian environmentalism, have stumbled into the religion niche inadvertently and often in opposition to their founders’ intent to Not Start A Religion Because Religions Are Reactionary Nonsense.
It seems like it would be worth trying to design a few nontheistic religions with deliberate intent and through selective appropriation of the good parts of traditional religions, to see if it would do any better. I can think of one obvious example that shan’t be named, that has turned out to be fairly successful and mostly harmless except for all the vindictiveness towards apostates and critical heretics. Probably we could do better; maybe we could do well enough to base a society on the results.
I think someone may have mentioned it elsewhere in this very thread, but one theory that seems to militate against any such materialist pseudoreligion being worthwhile is that our brains seem to be mostly wired for social interaction, with the other things we do with them being mostly lucky side effects. This is presumably the reason people mistakenly try to interact with the inanimate world as if it were consciously motivated. It’s plausible that this is also responsible for some of the benefits of religion; if the main goal is changing yourself, rather than understanding or changing the world (and there are plenty of cases where changing yourself seems extremely valuable), interacting with the world as if it were conscious may well get more of your brain involved and make it easier to make more extensive changes. Obviously, if there’s any merit to that theory, trying to construct a religion without the supernatural elements isn’t going to be very productive. It may be possible to get the benefits without taking the supernatural elements fully seriously; it’s not clear how this works. But if you wish to do supernatural pretense, there are existing religions that are tolerant of doubt and metaphorical interpretations. No need to invent a new one.
+1 Nicely said.
The kind of “religion of Humanity” which R.H. Benson describes in his 1929 SF apocalyptic novel “Lord of the World”? Based on scientific understanding, where Mankind is the only transcendent thing?
Well not quite exactly (because “Science!”) – man is not “the only transcendent thing”. Anyhow why when painting some anti-utopia majority writers insist that euthanasia is some sort of irredeemable evil which automatically makes the whole idea fail?
Kinda similar to the Man in High Castle show where they paint fairly good society in the background. And then throw random acts of irrational violence and cruelty, draw swastika on it and say – its horrible because Nazis!
they paint fairly good society in the background. And then throw random acts of irrational violence and cruelty, draw swastika on it and say – its horrible because Nazis!
Emm. TMITHC shows a society in the 1960’s which is far closer to the 1940’s in terms of prosperity and material goods, not to mention self-expression and self determination.
I grant that it’s fairly subtle – and so is in line with the quality of the show’s storytelling – but it’s there.
@Deiseach:
This comes from an apocalyptic novel? How odd. It sounds fairly utopian to me so far. What’s the catch?
No, I don’t think the world needs a new religion. No, I don’t think the old religions have failed (or at least I don’t think my religion and its offshoot–Judaism and Christianity, respectively–have failed). No, I don’t think my religion’s commandments are demonstrably false.
Why does religious belief have to be compatible with science and rationality? Science and rationality are tools to help man understand his physical world and its systems. It’s a perversion, even a subversion of religion to presume it has the same purpose.
That’s a variation on No True Scotsman: All those religious believers who think religion tells man about the physical world aren’t really following religion properly.
“Religion isn’t supposed to tell us about the physical world” only came into fashion after we started learning enough about the physical world that what religion told us about the physical world became embarrassing.
Maybe I was unclear, but I don’t think it’s the NTS fallacy. I’m not saying that religion doesn’t tell us anything about the physical world and its systems or that people who think religion does do this are perverting/subverting religion.
But it’s fairly obvious this is not religion’s core purpose (not mine anyway), and I don’t agree with you that it ever was. Many people go to science and rationalism for understanding of the physical world and its systems, and also go to religion for an understanding of something else (usually something deeper that underlies the physical world, or something more personal that can’t be touched by science or rationalism).
Why does religious belief have to be compatible with science and rationality? Science and rationality are tools to help man understand his physical world and its systems. It’s a perversion, even a subversion of religion to presume it has the same purpose
Because when the preacher goes and say something evolution is wrong because “holy book”, and the “love is most important thing” – but said love is very hard to find among its practitioners, when you can see the corruption without even trying hard – you kinda start doubting whole thing very fast. And wonder if your purpose is to spend life on the things which you intuition tells you is wrong in many cases
Old religions worked all right when they were compatible with general worldview. But even then not everything was peachy either – hence churches generally tend to become very corrupt and very violent prone in order to keep population “believing in the right thing”
I don’t know what your preacher said, and I take it as a given that some number of preachers are corrupt, but my general impression of the religious response against evolutionary science comes out of a fear that fallible men will interpret evolution to mean that there is nothing divine or sacred about our bodies, that there is no higher purpose for living besides perpetuating the species, that morality and virtue are relative, etc.
Isn’t such a fear justified?
Nope. Because Truth should be sacred, no matter how much it can hurt.
Yeah its is easier to accept lies and give rationalization and justification for them. “The road to hell is paved with best intentions”
Challenge is to accept that people die, that people commit extremely cruel and violent things – not because of Satan corruption, but on their own volition. Because acceptance of Truth is first step towards understanding and finding solutions.
If you give in to Lies, even comforting ones – that is path… Where to exactly where old religions and ideologies lead us so far
Max:
If a scientist says “The best evidence supports the theory that humans evolved from simpler organisms over a period of millions and millions of years” it isn’t “truth” for some guy to turn around and say “Aha! That means God doesn’t exist because it doesn’t literally say that in the religious text!”
It isn’t science that is harmful, but the way ignorant people (i.e. most people) report on and interpret scientific claims. Scott Alexander has written a lot specifically about that here. You ought to second-guess how well you understand the science yourself.
My religion doesn’t have a Satan. When people commit evil acts, we can’t presume to know God’s exact role or motive in it. By definition, God’s intentions are unknowable to us. That is a basic religious Truth to me. It’s not comforting (or, it’s far from the most readily comforting thing possible, anyway). I suggest you learn a bit more about what religious people believe before you call it “comforting lies”.
More Right had a good post about what a post-rationalist religion might look like. On the other hand, sacrificing some sanity for a better life may be an inescapable bargain of successful religions.
Absolutely not. I see religion as a failing of weak minds. Improve the weak minds, and I predict religion (along with any apparent social need for it) will simply disappear due to disinterest.
See, this is why people dislike us atheists 🙂
I would agree that religion is a failing, from a standpoint of trying to create an accurate map of reality, but it’s a failing of perfectly normal, average-intelligence-plus minds, not just the below-average. The project of raising the sanity waterline should eventually get us to the point where the only people who are able to hold religious beliefs are the far left of the bell curve, and we have, as far as I can tell, been moving in that general direction for a while now, but we are not there yet by a long shot.
You sure? Sweden seems to imply otherwise; they are at what, 40% of the population not believing in God?
Something like 40% explicit atheists, 40% wishy-washy “maybe I believe in Something” and perhaps 20% who would actually call themselves religious. Percentage that attend church services is somewhere in the single digits.
But even though a large share would say “no” if asked “do you believe in God?”, that doesn’t mean most people have well thought out non-religious worldviews. It’s just that here, and many other places in Europe and some parts of Asia, it’s closer to being the default in a way it isn’t in the USA. I assume that in most places and times only a small percentage of people are seriously religious or non-religious by temperament – the rest won’t think about it and will identify as whatever is normal.
“Source”: Am Swedish.
well “improving weak minds” is quite a problem. How would you go about it? Create AI? I also think that AI utility function should include the “ten commandments” of sorts
@Max: Neuroscience. See my comment above.
Is there any idea of why there are so many different neurotransmitters in the brain?
Ok, I understand that glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter and GABA is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter. Excitatory and inhibitory synapses are modeled really well by artificial neural networks with positive and negative weights on connections. But there are also D-serine, serotonin, acetylcholine, dopamine, norepinephrine, histamine and the whole lot of other compounds that somehow stimulate or affect neurons. Wouldn’t it be much easier to drop them and use plain excitation/inhibition networks?
Of course I understand that Nature has her own reasons. Still the question is what do those additional neurotransmitters do that cannot be captured by classic artificial neural networks, and why this function is so vital that they persist through almost entire animal kingdom.
A partial reason is that they do more than excite or inhibit. A lot of the receptors for the less common neurotransmitters are g-proteins, which means they release special signaling molecules inside the cell. This can trigger a complex chain of other reactions, which I don’t think anyone has fully mapped. Sometimes there can be an excitatory or inhibitory effect, but sometimes something gets phosphoralated.
Ok, I can understand that there are some sort of motor-like neurons, which excrete some less common neurotransmitters that activate GPCRs, which in turn trigger other reactions that ultimately lead to changes in pattern of genes expression, secretion of hormones and other rather specific events.
However, take for example dopamine signaling. It functions very much like ion channels: for example, once D1 receptor is activated by dopamine, corresponding G-protein binds to adenylate cyclase, which converts ATP to cAMP, which activated PKA, which phosphorylates Na+ ion channel, which opens, and so action potential is generated and sent down. Binding of dopamine to D2 receptors inhibits adenylate cyclase, so these receptors can be regarded as inhibitory.
Serotonin receptor 5HT-4 works very similarly to D1 – it also activates adenylate cyclase. So, from internal point of view these receptors works very similar. And one of serotonin receptors family,5-HT3, is ion channel that functions very much like other ion channels, causing depolarization when bound to serotonin.
But the distribution and overall effect of these neurotransmitters are profoundly different. Dopamine receptors are abundant in CNS, and are implicated in motivation, pleasure, cognition, learning etc. It’s like I would have two type of electric wires in my house: copper wires for mundane appliances and silver wires for devices which help me to earn money.
I think it would be totally possible to design a brain/mind with a simpler set of neurotransmitters, but that would require a substantial (inefficient) redesign of neurons. Consider, for instance, the frontal cortical pyramidal neurons that receive glutamate/GABA as instructions to increase/lower probability of firing in a near-future time sensitive way. But then they use background diffused dopamine levels to adjust variables such as firing threshold and “mental exhaustion threshold” (poetic license for clarity’s sake!). This could be accomplished as well by having a direct connection from the dopamine-diffusing neurons to every single target neuron to adjust all their thresholds, but that would require far more neural tissue and physiological effort, with high associated costs. So there is no need to code these neurotransmitters into an AI as such, but a substantial need for them in the messy part-digital, part-analogue system of a meat brain.
I can’t even understand how there could be so many different dials, controls, etc. in an airplane cockpit; and yet…
http://etc.usf.edu/clippix/pix/portion-of-a-control-panel-in-an-airplane-cockpit_medium.jpg
I don’t have a good answer, but here’s a crackpot theory:
One of the main ways we get new genes is by mutations that randomly duplicate old genes. The genes randomly diverge for genetic drift, and then evolution gets the chance to do one thing with one copy while leaving the other copy mostly intact.
(warning: the following is a really really dumb toy example and bears no relation to real dopamine receptors)
So suppose that at first all we had was D1 receptors doing everything . Then the gene randomly duplicates, so we have two copies of the D1 receptor gene. Then they drift apart, and one becomes modern D1 and the other modern D2. And suppose by coincidence of whatever drift they’re getting, D1 is expressed more in the reward system and D2 in the motor system. And suppose evolution wants to implement something like “sex should be very rewarding, so when you get sex, increase stimulation of dopamine receptors in the reward system”. And suppose evolution doesn’t want you to be having weird muscle tics and seizures every time you have sex because you’re also overstimulating the motor system, or make you get Parkinson’s Disease every time you have a dry spell. Evolution can make the D1 receptors sensitive to sex, and the D2 receptors not sensitive to it, and get what it wants. Now there’s evolutionary pressure to keep the D1/D2 distinction and it will be preserved.
Fast forward a few million years and you’ve got the modern picture of 5-7 different dopamine receptors plus serotonin, norepinephrine, glutamate, GABA, and a million other things.
In other words, the more neurotransmitters you have, the more finesse evolution can use when tuning different systems up or down. If we only had one neurotransmitter, glutamate, and evolution wanted us to have less sex for some reason, all it could do is tone down glutamate, in which case we’d be generally more tired and relaxed and non-thing-doing. But that would be bad for other reasons, for example, we would also have less food. If there’s a single neurotransmitter involved in sex, then it can just up that.
I realize that this has the problem of neurotransmitters not really corresponding well to simple things like sex, but it may be they correspond better to very complicated hidden variables that evolution frequently wants to tune, or at least they did in the past, or at least as much as they can given that evolution is inherently hard and inefficient.
I have no idea if this is actually true or not and other people may correct me if they know better.
Corresponding analogy in silico, as I understand it, would be “Let’s have a genetic algorithm evolve us the best neural network for some particular purpose. We’ll have several types of neurons and some basic architecture of connections, and the prevalence of each type of neuron (or strength of their connections) will be varied in GA.” Type of neuron in artificial network would then correspond to neurotransmitter/receptor. If we design the network really good, we’ll be able to assign same type label to the neurons that have similar function, and optimize them in GA separately.
Some way to avoid a lot of receptors would be to compartmentalize neurons: have neurons that do a certain aspect of information processing (like emotions, motor control, image recognition) located near each other (like in amygdala, cerebellum, visual cortex – I’m simplifying of course), and then have handles on blood and nutrient flows to that regions. The two ways are very similar from computational point of view – we can label groups of neurons in whatever way we want. Probably Nature uses both ways to control neuronal population responsible for particular task.
A way to test this theory is to engineer a small animal (like a round worm C. elegans) that have all its amine neurotransmitter receptors internalized at some point of life and replaced by glutamate/GABA channels, and then to see how well it would do. The null hypothesis would be that once neural circuitry is established (the animal is adult), and receptors are replaced by their analogues, the behavior of modified animals should be basically the same compared to control group.
However, my gut feeling is that worms lacking all amine (dopamine, serotonin) receptors and enzymes producing those neurotransmitters would not develop normally. So, I expect that apart from being the tools to regulate different information processing systems on evolutionary scale, different neurotransmitters may have something to do with neural development in each individual animal.
Wouldn’t compartmentalization be worse for more general abilities? And for communication between modules?
This was the first thing that intuitively occurred to me. I can’t really think of an easier way for biology to stumble onto selectivity in up/down-regulation than this one, which may simply speak to my level of sophistication on this issue. Are there any examples of organisms displaying high behavioral complexity with few neurotransmitters? And does neurotransmitter complexity correlate decently with behavioral complexity? Sounds testable!
This fits well as a simplified explanation of what I understand the current somewhat-more-complicated scientific explanation to be for the question “how did all these similar but different genes/neurotransmitters/receptors come to be?”
Oops, the response system is unclear without specification! I meant to put @Scott Alexander at the top of my comment here to make it clear that I was referring to that specific comment by Scott.
This seems to be a solid biological path to acquiring more degrees of freedom in a system. That doesn’t reflect on whether it’s the true explanation, but it’s really promising as a way to get more mental states without adding tons of new neurons or whole brain regions. Basic excitement neural nets seem to be fully representative of brains (Turing complete and all that), but we can use more complicated signaling/neurotransmitter systems to shrink those nets.
If you want to have some, but not all, regions of the brain change their behavior in the face of tiredness, sex, etc, you can either add a lot of new neurons to modulate the new effect, or slap some new transmitters on the regions you want to alter and keep brain size the same.
Scott; I am in London and would be very interested in a blogging award! Also if you win first prize I don’t know if they will send you the golden giraffe, but if needs be I can post it to you?
I’m interested in reading some BDSM and rolequeer fiction books. My purpose is to grok the relevant mindset, particularly the competing strategies for power dynamics management. Sort of like someone interested in the Singularity could read books like “Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect” or “Accelerando”. I’ve gathered a preliminary list based on online recs lists (which tend to overlap a lot), but given that there have been some sporadic discussions on the subject in rationalist circles in the last few years, I’m hoping that an explicit statement of purpose will get more results. Do you have any suggestions?
The classic BDSM books, back before bondage was thought of as a more or less legitimate subculture, are Norman’s Gor books. The good thing about them is that he’s a good story teller. The bad thing is that he does far too much preaching. The views he is preaching are weird, but that isn’t, in my view, a bad thing–weird views are interesting. But the preaching gets in the way of the story, especially in the later books.
Oh SSC comments
I hate drive-by comments like this one, that consist exclusively or primarily of snark.
Well it’s even worse when the snark is tied up with some point they seem to be trying to make that you end up too alienated to even take seriously.
My point is that I tried the books, thinking that hey, porn is porn, and they were even more boring + more boringly misogynistic and *earnest* about it than I expected. It’s all some /r/theredpill tier crap.
(I’m against policing such things, “progressive” moralism doesn’t belong in fiction. I’ve read BDSM erotica with sexism, patriarchy, etc in the narration and setting – hell, I like it in kink, actually – and *some* people are pretty good at writing it. Not Norman.)
After reading Houseplants of Gor, I’m pretty sure I don’t need to read the rest.
Did you not notice some issues with consent?
This being said, I’d be delighted if some more benign person would write sf which included riding on giant falcons.
FWIW, Kushiel’s Dart is usually brought up as an example of such a book. Well, bah humbug to that I say, because I’ve read the entire trilogy and found it boring. The protagonist is a classic Mary Sue, the plot relies on an almost literal Deus ex Machina, and yes, it does get preachy in places. I found most (if not all) of the sex scenes to be either boring or silly (I think there may have been one that was ok); but I’m not into BDSM at all, so maybe that’s just my bias talking.
Edited to add: That said, I gotta admit, the alternate-history worldbuilding in that trilogy is actually not bad.
The New Yorker published an article recently about mass shootings as a sort of meme (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence). But I don’t think I’ve seen anything yet comparing mass shootings to the culture-bound syndrome of “running amuk“, despite what seem like obvious parallels. Could we be seeing the emergence of a new culture-bound syndrome, perhaps with similar connections to “male honor”? Stretching the connections somewhat past plausibility, could Daesh/ISIL be a manifestation of the same thing metastasized to an entire social group?
This is one of those things i have a hard time imagining as not being true. If you put a 5-question multiple choice survey question in front of anyone, all of the options will always be chosen by at least single digit percentages of your sample. Doesn’t matter if they are ‘Washington discovered America’, ‘shoot up a school’ or ‘fly to a foreign country and join a militia’.
The range of options for living in society may be infinite, but any particular culture has 3 to 5 that are actually on the menu.
I see Steven Pinker’s quote from “How The Mind Works” used as a response to events like these: hackernews discussion. I linked that one because it also has a quote from Brunner’s “Stand On Zanzibar”
It’s not an answer to your question, but you might be interested in Randall Collins’ examination of the characteristics of this culture-bound syndrome (here), if you haven’t come across it already.
The running amok thing seems to be relevant: You never read about men who have a high sexual market value going on shooting rampages. Though there could always be some other variable that correlates with both which is the actual cause.
Even worse, the men who go on these shooting rampages and live… well, they increase in sexual market value. Hybristophilia seems to be a thing that mainly affects women.
I keep meaning to ask this on one of these threads, but generally don’t get here early enough: has anyone else here read Xunzi?
Yes, though not recently. He used to be my favorite pre-Han philosopher, though over time I’ve gravitated more towards Daoists (Zhuangzi, Laozi). He might still be my favorite early Confucian, though Mencius is more fun as a master of rhetoric, I think.
Last Open Thread I posted a survey based on ToT’s The World Is Mad. I now have some results (xpost overcomingbiasnyc).
I got 18 responders from New York and 134 from SlateStarCodex.
Answers to the questions:
You develop rheumatoid arthritis. I tell you I’ve just figured out a cure for that. It’s p0.1).
Part of this could indicate that the questions turned on things other than the intended dilemma. Several freeform comments gave examples of this: the arthritis question offers a potential cure *now* versus a more reliable one *later*; the forensic lab question trades a small risk to *yourself* against a large one to *someone else*; at least one person wanted to understand *what the crackpot believed* despite not taking it seriously at all.
Another factor could be how well the responders know the various fields. A few people commented on that. I tried to phrase things to indicate confidences after considering that, but in hindsight I failed. It’s probably impossible: a person who really doesn’t know one of these fields and knows they don’t will never reach the high-inside-view-confidence I was trying to describe.
The “stupid theory” question generated a massive range of theories, and may have suffered from too much variation in how stupid they are. Stupid theories ranged from “VAK Learning Styles” (sounds plausible to me) to “Pi = (14 – sqrt(2))/4”. Amusingly, they included both “global warming” and “global warming is not caused by humans”.
Also of interest, if not directly relevant, one responder refused to accept my hypothetical that “your personal honor is as nothing compared to the stakes”.
Maybe not the most enlightening study ever, but a few interesting results. I hope you all found it worthwhile.
Daniel Speyer, it looks as if something has gone wrong in your comment, probably a block of missing text. Unfortunately I think it’s quite important missing text.
(First paragraph after “Answers to the questions:”. I guess what’s gone missing here is, er, pretty much all the answers to the questions?)
How do the good people of the slatestarcodex comment section feel about arguments for god presented in (1)The Silver Chair by CS Lewis and (2) Life of Pi by Yann Martel?
My thoughts: The idea of “other minds” (that are similar to our own) would be superfluous if our only desire were to explain and predict the (social) events of external reality. We only entertain this as a concept in order to create an intellectually and emotionally appealing moral framework. (On the other hand, directly felt empathy, emotional projection, probably exists as a basic property of the normal human mind/brain.)
This means that almost everyone who thinks about this (except the sad, sad, solipsists – or maybe them too?) already operates in the puddleglumian mode and therefore has no grounds to object to the method. Disagreements over the ultimate nature of reality or morality are fundamentally a matter of taste.
(If Christianity were the ‘greatest story ever told’, that would be an excellent and compelling reason to become a Christian.)
Do our feelings determine how we view reality? (Only on an intellectual level? Not at all?)
[(1) “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one…That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia… we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say”]
[(2) *Spoiler* Where there is no way to test which theory is correct, choose (on pragmatic grounds) the one which appeals to you most. The reason why Russell’s Teapot doesn’t exist is that is isn’t very interesting.]
I have often thought that choosing whether to believe in external reality at all is in some ways an analogous question to choosing whether to believe in God.
The nature of beliefs always gives us a way to test which theory is correct.
1. Thoughts are ontologically subjective – what you think they are defines their existence. (I like to fudge a bit and say if you think you’re thinking of a blue cube, that’s what causes it to be true that you’re thinking of a blue cube, but really it is the identity relation.)
2. We are in direct control of some thoughts but not others, commonly called sensations.
3. The purpose of beliefs, the reason to hold them at all, is to control sensations by knowing the true relationships between our thought-actions, which we can control, and their sensation-consequences, which we cannot.
Therefore, the ‘correct’ beliefs are the ones which lead you to take actions that lead to your preferred consequences. If a belief is irrelevant to such outcomes, then it is pointless – it doesn’t matter if it is ‘correct’ in some sense, there’s no reason to find out. (I’m fairly but not 100%-philosopher-approved sure that effect-less putative facts are actually falsehoods, or not-even-wrongs.)
Puddleglum perceives he returns to the sunny upper world. The underworld queen would say this is a dream, but Puddleglum has successfully achieved the sensation-consequences that were his goal. The point is not to ‘really’ be in his important world per se, but to stably(1) perceive himself to be.
(1) The reason we call dreams unreal is because actions in the dreamworld don’t have long-term consequences. Actions upon illusions have the same quality – you can make your daughter pretend to be happy, or alternatively you can make her actually happy. The problem isn’t really that one is ‘real’ and one isn’t, but the fact the former isn’t stable. Yes, we would prefer her to be actually happy and think her unhappy than to think she’s happy and be actually unhappy, but this is an evolved instinct to deal with illusions.
If an illusion was completely permanent, it would be impossible to tell the difference between it and reality. A difference of no difference is the identity relation – an illusion that’s fake in every way except it can’t be pierced is not an illusion. Fundamentally, perception is reality. That is, ultimately I became convinced that the subjective is primary, not the objective. If your daughter pretends to be happy so well there’s no way, even in principle, for you to find out, she’s not pretending, she’s really happy.
The queen shouldn’t be able to convince you the upper, sunny world is unreal. But, if through extreme cleverness, she can, the correct conclusion isn’t, ‘stay in the lower world’ but instead to ignore the real/illusion bit, since it’s an irrelevant piece of information.
How are other minds superfluous? We see that we are people, that other people exist and look and act like people, and that they report and observe having minds. We also perceive ourselves, and self-report having a mind. The simplest explanation, assuming we trust that we exist and have minds, is that other people are similar; we’d need to multiply entities to include Us and P-Zombies otherwise.
Of course, the real simplest explanation is it’s all random; not only does no one in the external world have minds, neither do we; we’re just random noise in the quantum froth and the fact that, at a given instant, we think that we are a coherent being with a past and a mental state is simply an artifact of randomness, and each instant is completely disconnected from each instant before it.
This doesn’t really give you a lot in terms of predictive power, of course.
That’s a good point… a very good point… but would it be possible to say that if we had a conscious observer who was interested in the actions of people but completely unconcerned about their internal lives, *both* concepts (p-zombies and other minds) would be superfluous? The entire discussion would be superfluous.
As has been pointed out upthread, you’re wired to detect minds where there are none. Don’t worry, in time you can learn to overcome that bias.
We’re also wired to detect minds where there are minds.
Well, an over-active agent-detector would think that now, wouldn’t it?
I don’t think too much of these arguments. The notion that materialist descriptions of the world are dull and unappealing are wrong! Virgin births and magic lions aren’t obviously better than tunneling electrons and cooperative evolution.
Basically: come to the dark side; we have cool science.
I haven’t read the C.S. Lewis book, but I did read Life of Pi. I really didn’t like it. The main character was really unappealing, and I thought the depictions of how the various faith leaders who try to convert Pi were terribly written. The twist at the end was at least entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying – I could imagine the author grinning and jabbing me, saying “That was pretty clever, right? See, you can’t resolve it one way or the other from what’s in the story! Pretty clever!”
The “dull and unappealing” part comes in with reductionism:
“That’s a beautiful sunset!”
“What do you mean by ‘beautiful’? There’s no such thing as ‘beauty’. All you are reacting to is stimuli on your visual system from refraction of light rays. It has no actual value apart from evoking a learned aesthetic response, and that only occurs because what you think of as ‘beauty’ is the result of millennia of evolutionary changes due to sexual selection pressures where symmetry is seen as evidence of youth and fecundity and these are desirable traits indicating successful reproductive strategies, and that’s because our genes are blindly maximising their chances of continuance.”
“So I only like sunsets because they make me horny? I’ll let you in on a little secret: sunsets don’t make me horny”.
“That’s only what the top-level of the constructed illusion called ‘consciousness’ is telling you. Science knows the real truth: we are only organisms and all organisms react to stimuli with feed, fight, fuck or flee.”
Yes, that’s boring, because there’s no point in having a brain, I might as well be a dungbeetle or an earthworm. And it’s not “But the wonders of discovery and knowledge are why humans have such big brains!” The universe doesn’t care about discovery and knowledge, we’re not created or intended to discover and know things about how it works, it’s all natural, unconscious, unaware physical forces. We have big brains because they’re weapons in species survival and victory over other competing species for resources. Indeed, you could say we’re over-weaponed and have been too successful.
“Cool science” does not matter. Nothing matters. Even if we all attain the Singularity and learn how to reboot the Universe and create new ones so that we exist forever eternally, it doesn’t matter; we’re still only following the blind dictates of life, which is “exist, reproduce, continue”.
I think in your version “reductionism” is “being a jerk.” We can make supernatural explanations dull and unappealing the same way.
“It’s really amazing to think that computers work because electrons can tunnel through barriers.”
“What do you mean? There’s no such thing as a wave function. Aslan decides where the electrons go.”
“…OK. I guess it’s cool that we can make a model about what Aslan will decide that works every time though.”
“Don’t be stupid. Aslan will do whatever he wants; he is controlling your ‘prediction’.”
When you say, “look, an elephant,” reductionists don’t say, “there’s no such thing as elephants, only certain collections of organs enclosed in sacks of gray skin.” Similarly when you say “look, a beautiful sunset,” reductionists don’t say “there’s no such thing as beauty.”
When you get down to “science explains all”, it does.
I would gladly welcome a complete absence of any more “Men have affairs because bonobos!” articles in the mass media, I really would. But that’s the kind of thing we get for “why are humans like this?”
@Deiseach
I normally find your comments lucid, informative, interesting and thought-provoking even though I don’t often agree. This bit about reductionism, however is so alien to me that I can’t even parse what you are trying to say, so if you would take the time to elaborate, possibly with examples, I’d be grateful.
For the way I view reductionism, I’ll quote my favourite poem in full:
-Feynman
Reductivism and eliminativism are distinct positions.
Science explains elephants, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t elephants. Can you do even the most basic application of your claim to the example given, rather than just posting a bare contradiction?
There is a tension though. I think it is the fact that unconscious processes are necessarily alien to us – utterly alien.
What am I trying to say here?
It’s not so much that we can’t empathize with evolution… though that is true… it’s that when something happens, it is always the sense data that is the important part. If X is related to Y in some way… how can I know this and why is this important? Because x is some kind of perception and so is y. Even logic/mathematics requires language, requires some kind of mental object.
But, if we claim that an unconscious process is at the heart of everything, what are we really saying? We are saying that everything occurs even without that sense data, without the mental objects – which is literally unthinkable.
And if the unthinkable can’t exist for us, is nothing to us, it is not too surprising that people equate this with everything being nothing.
@ Richard
Much thanks for posting Feynman’s poem. That’s the first description of ‘reductionism’ that my literary mind doesn’t bounce off of. ….Because opposite of Hostile Witness. Feynman is defending ‘reductionism’, so I know his description not a straw man. Sure he’s putting a spin on it (Rumplestilstkin, stay out of this!) for poetic/emotional effect. But when Feynman says something like “mountains of molecules each stupidly minding its own business trillions apart yet forming white surf in unison” … it registers as an honest description, worth taking at face value.
As for “tortured”, I’d raise him Blake’s thing about dancing devils whom the preachers think are being tortured, if I could find it, and if Feynman wasn’t probably already riffing off it. (Note to self: read more Feynman.)
Haven’t read “Life of Pi” and am not enticed to do so. Enjoy “The Silver Chair” but not for apologia purposes, even though I’m Catholic; Puddleglum is a treasure 🙂
“I suppose this means we’ll all die horribly. Oh well, I wasn’t expecting anything better” is pretty much how he operates.
A bold claim. How do you support it?
Non sequitor. There would still be a massive amount of moral problems with being Christian, amongst them Deuteronomy 22:28-29.
(Also, why must “greatest story ever told” = true?)
“A bold claim. How do you support it?”
Well, I don’t know. I think that you can tell very little about how a person will behave simply because they are a person. You have to look at their behavior and then take a step backwards and imagine the mental process, or emotion that might give rise to those actions.
But if it were only the actions you were concerned with, wouldn’t this backwards step be… nothing but a backwards step? Is there anything that we can know people will do if we have a conception of them as conscious beings, that we couldn’t know if we didn’t?
“why must “greatest story ever told” = true?”
True stories are better? (CS Lewis stated that puddleglum’s speech was a restatement of the ontological argument)
If there are massive moral problems associated with being a Christian, then surely it wouldn’t be the greatest story ever told (and by greatest story ever told, I mean most appealing theory of reality/morality.)
You’re equivocating between two meanings of a backwards step. A backwards step to get a better view (your first meaning) is very different conceptually to a backwards step in the sense of a step that takes you further from your goal (your second meaning.) That’s the equivocation fallacy.
On your second claim re the greatest story, are you really seriously claiming that you find the ideas about rape presented in Deuteronomy appealing? Or the idea that millions of people are being tortured for all eternity, including three of my grandparents, for not worshipping God?
I feel some sympathy with Puddleglum’s argument, just in a different direction: the moment I fully considered the moral ideas of Christianity was the moment I decided that even if what the evil queen said was true, I would prefer to live outside in the howling darkness.
Also, your claim that true stories are better is unsupported, and it strikes me that lists of the most popular books do not tend to be dominated by true stories: we know who wrote the Lord of The Rings, and Harry Potter, and the Discworld.
“That’s the equivocation fallacy.”
No… I wasn’t drawing any conclusions based upon the similarity of the words – I was saying… this is backwards step [1]… is it not also backwards step [2]? (Also known as “a joke”(obviously not a funny one, but still… not quite a fallacy.))
So, you’ve criticized the joke, but you haven’t answered the substantive question which followed it:
“Is there anything that we can know people will do if we have a conception of them as conscious beings, that we couldn’t know if we didn’t?”
On the second point… the word “if” is doing a lot of work in the sentence “If Christianity were the ‘greatest story ever told’…”
(I consider myself to be some kind of modern secular quasi-Christian/heretic – I take a puddleglumian approach to the bible and am, to my shame, not especially interested in its contents.)
So, no. I certainly *wasn’t* suggesting that the ideas about rape in Deuteronomy were good (because I know nothing about them.) I was saying that *if* Christianity *were* a really, really great “story”(not so much a narrative like Lord of the Rings (though I don’t think that is such a great narrative) but rather a theory about life, the world, and morality) then that *would* be a good reason to believe in it.
Personally, I feel that *aspects* of the bible/Christianity get there. They are in some respects as good as anything else that anyone has come up with. You know, all the old favorites. “Turn the other cheek”, “left hand shouldn’t know what the right hand is doing”, “blessed are the peacemakers”, “don’t have abortions”… etc etc
Sorry but I think our senses of humour and the meanings we attribute to words are too far apart for our conversation to be interesting to me. Eg I had no idea you were joking, and I now have no idea what else in your responses are jokes. And apparently by “story” you mean “theory about life, the world and morality”. I think we’re talking too different languages.
I take it from your answer that you have no actual evidence to support your bold claim, unless that is another of your jokes.
Thank you for your time, I hope it has been more enlightening for you than it was for me.
Just for future reference (for when you next engage with humans) the above comment strikes me as vaguely passive aggressive – “I’m really sorry… but you are boring” “Thank you for talking with me … it was pointless” – I’m not sure what you were trying to achieve with it?
Do you want me to attempt to explain what I mean, or not? If not, why bother to respond at all? Why not just leave it at the apology?
Meh…
There is a big difference between a person being boring and a conversation with a person being boring because we do not share enough language to properly communicate.
If you want to do something different in the fixture, as tone is notoriously difficult in written form perhaps tag your jokes with a smiley face.
OK… let me rephrase.
We have consciousness.
We see people doing things.
We predict what people will do by watching them and looking for patterns.
We don’t predict what people will do by assuming they have the same minds as us.
Example: This conversation.
The end.
I’ve read the Life of Pi but don’t remember there being any arguments for god in it. Was I supposed to be reading something in between the lines?
(note” for what it’s worth, my own religious views are somewhere between atheist-leaning-agnostic and agnostic-leaning-atheist).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi#Part_three
OK, so now I know then, and can answer the question atop the subthread. We have a choice between a story that is true but problematic to contemplate, versus a story that is more comforting but a complete pile of horse manure, “and so it goes with God”. As an “argument for God”, I find this to have a persuasiveness level that is significantly below zero, and I would have trouble respecting anyone who does not consider this to be the case.
Hmmm… so how do you feel about other minds? Would you say it is an entirely different question?
1 seems like a perfectly reasonable approach. The fact that something is intangible, or exists only in your mind, does not mean that your belief in it doesn’t have power. Narnia might just exist in your head, but love also just exists in your head. So does honor, and justice, and every other abstract concept humanity relies on. “Living as a Narnian with no Narnia” is no more absurd than “living honorably when honor isn’t real.”
It’s not an argument that will convert people – the atheist can freely say “Well, I could live life as a Narnian, or I could just live life as a good person and then I don’t have to worry whether or not Narnia is real.” But it’s a perfectly reasonable defense of your faith.
2 is the “God of the gaps” argument, and I’ve never liked that one. Sure, at the moment there is no way to test which theory is correct. But what happens when someone finds a way? Do you abandon your old beliefs and go to the second-best story? Do you go back and retcon your story to try and fit it? I don’t like doing that. I think your faith should have value to you even if a scientist manages to study every physical bit of your story out of existence.
I think Puddleglum’s argument in The Silver Chair seems persuasive (in so far as it does) only because CSL has contrived by other means to have us sympathize with Puddleglum and not with the Witch, and has already told us that the choice he’s making is a correct one in-story, and has made the welfare of others depend on Puddleglum’s making the correct choice.
Consider another example in popular culture where someone makes an almost identical decision on almost identical grounds: the scene in The Matrix where Cypher says “I choose the Matrix” and resolves to betray his companions in exchange for getting his old life of illusion back. Like Puddleglum, Cypher is comparing a dull drab world with an exciting lively colourful one. Like Puddleglum, Cypher decides that really it doesn’t matter which is real — he just wants to be in the nice one. But in this case, unlike the Narnian one, (1) we’ve already seen that Cypher is a bit of a dick, (2) we know that (in-story) the choice he’s making is the factually wrong one, and (3) by making that choice he’s making other people’s lives worse rather than better.
Everyone’s inclined to cheer for Puddleglum. No one is inclined to cheer for Cypher. But it’s the same argument both ways.
There is a dominant society-wide status system. It is supposed to reward anyone who upholds X and punishes anyone who opposes it.
What is X? Specifically, what is the highest-status thing to signal you believe X is? If we had the highest-status person in front of us, we would have the person with the most X. What are we supposed to say we have found the best specimen of?
What makes you so certain of the premise in the first paragraph? If you have strong evidence for it, the framework behind that evidence should give at least an indirect definition for X and probably an approach to figure it out more precisely. If you don’t, why do you think your question has a sensible answer?
(Unless you’re really asking a naming problem: You know what X is, but you don’t know what to call it.)
Sounds like you assert there is no such dominant system. Do you have an alternative model?
I would propose “people award people who do things they like with status”, with “support me” being a common “thing they like”, and there being a lot of optimistic grants of status to people who could be useful to court them for support.
An economy of status rather than status being assigned to innate traits directly, but innate traits that grant usefulness generally get the status economy to reward you as incentive to do what other capital-holders want, much like the regular economy.
I’d also suggest that you can exchange status and money back and forth enough that things are much closer to a single economy of social and economic capital than they are to two independent economies.
Relativity of status to groups as noted elsewhere complicates things but I think the model remains basically valid, just the awarded status has differing value to different people. I am reminded of Stellar as described amusingly in http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/08/05/harry-potter-and-the-cryptocurrency-of-stars/, in which this relativity applies to economic capital too.
There’s a lot of things this doesn’t capture and I’m very unsure about (is status actually expended when e.g. you use it to get money via a Patreon?) but it’s my best guess at a starting point.
I support your proposal as a starting point.
I would say, with Patreon, like regular patrons, the patron gets status by associating with the patronized. Rather than trading status directly, the patronized trades time, which they could be using to increase their own status, instead spending it associating themselves with the patron.
That link has made it into my permanent bookmarks.
People assign different status depending on their closely-identified groups. These don’t necessarily have to be the same for a particular person at all times and places.
People aren’t math; they’re not required to obey some transitive principle.
They nevertheless do obey a transitive principle.
I admit that part of the reason I responded is as an acquired distrust of people using the Hansonian framework of status/signalling. However, I’d put the existence of status on a global scale as one of the better-supported points. Simply from a pattern-matching point of view, I think there’s a relatively sensible clustering that puts presidents and CEOs on one cluster and illegal immigrants on the opposite cluster. Even people unfamiliar with the Hansonian framework use the word “status” to refer to this pattern.
However, you also made an additional claim: that the status system is supposed to reward anyone who upholds X and punish anyone who opposes it, for some X. In contrast, the null hypothesis is that the status system doesn’t have a purpose. Recall that I accepted status existing as a pattern, and patterns typically have a reason but not a purpose. Perhaps you mean something more specific when you say “supposed to” and you could clarify that.
Finally, my point is not just about dislike of “status”, it is also based on a philosophy of constructivism. You could reply and justify your premise, and I may or may not find it convincing. However, it would be remarkable if your reply really grapples with the problem of showing that there is a single specific X such that the premise holds, without also giving a hint on what X is. Even if I disagree I could get a better impression of what you’re asking. The point is also to demonstrate a cognitive strategy you may not be familiar with.
By ‘supposed’ I mean, ‘what winners in the system are supposed to say about it.’ As opposed to what it actually rewards, and as opposed to what winners think it rewards.
Are you asking us to answer the question “What thing gives high status?” with the answer that would give us the highest status?
I don’t think you can answer the meta-question without some knowledge of the audience – but whatever the best response is, it should be delivered with confidence.
I defined the audience – society as a whole. So, I’m looking for the most popular single answer.
I think that confidence is a thing that is widely rewarded by status rewarding mechanisms, but I don’t think I will gain much status for saying that.
Um… so… having sex with me. That is the highest status activity anyone can engage in.
I see. So you were just kidding around the entire time?
No, I’m serious.
X is confidence, so a high-status answer has to demonstrate confidence.
As a Kiwi, this is easy. X is beating the Aussies.
😀 nice
So the highest-status NZ-er is the one who beats the Aussies most comprehensively? Presumably, across the normal status defaults – economically, sexually, socially, intellectually, physically?
You’re not thinking like a Kiwi.
“In cricket and rugby”.
I think this says something important about status: status is defined by comparing favorably to your nearest reasonable competitor or aspirant peer. If you’re the richest guy in your small town, it doesn’t matter much that you’d be only upper-middle class in NYC.
Tracy – I wanted to post a link to a case of Kiwis beating the Aussies but since I’m worried about setting off filters with it… if you google “research has proven that New Zealanders” it should take you right to the story I’m thinking of.
NZ, where the men are men and the sheep are scared.
I definitely disagree with the idea of a society-wide status system. If you’re an academic, status is measured by intelligence and impact. If you’re in Washington, status comes from political power. If you’re on Wall Street, status is money. In other areas it might be fame, virtue, coolness, or something else entirely.
Academia per se is higher status than Wall Street.
Using these pairwise comparisons, we can find the highest-status arena, which will have a status system everyone cares about.
Wall Street (and many others) would disagree with that.
I see Wall Street agreeing with it all the time.
Wall Street is big and literally “contains multitudes” I suppose, but I don’t see it that way at all.
What happens when the pairwise comparisons give you inconsistent answers depending on who you ask?
What happens when you ask someone “which of these two is higher status, furries or Star Trek cosplayers?” and they say “What’s a furry?”
I call shenanigans on this whole project. Social status is not a well-ordering.
If we had the highest-status person in front of us, we would have the person with the most X. What are we supposed to say we have found the best specimen of?
Granting arguendo the existence of X, is there any other candidate for the United States’ “highest-status person” besides the president?
Status is status in some particular group. I expect that, in the group of serious chess players, the world’s top players have more status than the President. There must have been quite a lot of people for whom Feynman had more status than whoever was president. I expect one could think of many other examples.
Yes that point has been made before, hence ‘arguendo.’
Anyway, I do think it makes sense to talk about average status assigned to a person, where the average is taken over the population. And for the president, that status is quite high – even those who dislike him intensely will assign him high status.
I was thinking of starting the successive approximation with POTUS.
Or perhaps one of those “most respected” lists.
Well if SSC and rationalist culture is anything to go by, obviously X = being meta 🙂
As other people have said, subcultures often have their own status rules. In a way, you can actually see the status rules as being so central as to effectively defining that subculture. Some sociology likes to portray subcultures as essentially collective efforts to reject the dominant status system and construct an alternative status system, where X is rubbish and all the cool people know Y, which is coincidentally what the group members have in spades, is what you really want to be like.
I think there is usually still a society-wide status system too, but in heterogenous cultures its not especially strong. Even in a single culture or subculture there is sometimes multiple effective status signals (eg. money, job, possessions, morality etc etc), so I think it should be viewed as multipolar, organic and constantly shifting. (I wrote more thoughts on social status on my blog here, though I think I probably need to update it)
Lurker here, couple of questions about the SSC blogosphere:
1) Does anyone know what happened to The Last Psychiatrist? He suddenly stopped posting last year, and was about to put out a book (I’m guessing it wasn’t a literal porn book).
2) Does Sister Y now blog anywhere other than Ribbonfarm?
3) Which (if any) of the writers at The Future Primeval is Konkvistador? I enjoyed his LW posts when he was there and TFP, but havn’t been able to pattern-match him to any particular author.
Thanks!
1. In 3/2014, he was doxxed. In 5/2014, he moved to blogging in an unknown location. With the value of his reputation up for grabs, a smokescreen of imitation blogs popped up in the same month.
2. Probably not, but you know about carcinisation, right?
3. There are three ways to figure out the answer. Most FP posts (those labeled “archive,” I guess) are copied from More Right, so compare the archives. Ethnicity uniquely identifies a number of people from the list of author names. His twitter account contains a big clue.
Though I can’t find more info on the author, I’m assuming it’s not that Bill Murray, but he would make a good point either way:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/12/05/first_roosevelt_then_reagan_and_now_trump__128939.html
The thesis is, essentially, that FDR was as successful as he was because he was the first president to harness the power of radio–at a time when old-style orators were walking away from the microphone at the podium, he was immobile and had a powerful voice and expert delivery–that Reagan was as successful as he was because he was the first really telegenic president (movie star experience), and that now Trump is successful because he’s the first reality tv star presidential candidate.
People had always joked that the Donald was only successful as he was because he started out as a reality tv star; what’s scarier to think is that maybe being a reality tv star is actually a huge advantage in our current political culture, above and beyond the initial name recognition it confers. Even scarier, as future politicians had to try to imitate the success of FDR and Reagan, maybe reality tv-esque qualities will become more and more de rigeur for politicians… though almost anything strikes me as better than the status quo… and that’s part of Trump’s appeal, of course.
It’s certainly possible, and if it were true it would pose an interesting question. Is it more useful to win with the majority through clownishness or the elites through pseudointellectualism?
Populists typically crash and burn in the face of elite opposition so a reversal in the form of a Trump victory would have a lot of implications. Obama followed by Trump would be a pretty strong indicator that the torch has passed from pseudointellectuals to clowns, at leat temporarily.
Sure, but why should this predict trends? Maybe Reagan had some kind of movie star charisma that helped him win office, but he wasn’t followed by many other actors, so why should Trump be a sign of things to come? I’ve heard it suggested that celebrities could take over politics if they started at the bottom and worked up, but those who want to enter politics generally try to jump in at too high a level and fail. And there isn’t much selection pressure for broadcast charisma on the normal career path because it isn’t as valuable at the lower levels, so normal politicians at the top don’t have much.
I think the fact that we haven’t had a movie star president since Reagan is actually kind of the point: a movie star proved the power of being telegenic and witty on camera and non-movie star politicians did their best to learn from him. Obama, Clinton, and even Bush Jr strike me as much more “movie star-like” than LBJ, Nixon, or Carter, for example (though arguably JFK was the first real “tv president” as evidenced by the anecdote that he won a debate with Nixon as determined by those viewing it, but not as determined by those listening to it).
I don’t predict future candidates will all be reality tv stars, but they may act more like them. This may actually be a good thing: social media savvy doesn’t strike me as bad, and allows people to get closer to the actual opinions of candidates without so many canned responses and carefully orchestrated appearances.
“In this way, Trump supporters and the Black Lives Matter and identity-politics campus protesters have more in common than one might think. All these constituencies are unhappy with the status quo to the point of near violence, and no longer care what their supposed betters think about them. ”
Near violence?
Haven’t read this, only saw it by chance due to a link on a news feed, curious to know what people here think of it. I don’t know if it’s a book club recommendation or a present recommendation, but here goes, blurb from the Amazon page:
Naturally, the first thing that leapt to mind was “Is this guy religious or what is his background?” He’s a sociologist, currently doing a post-doc at the University of Uppsala, and according to this promo piece, he’s an atheist himself.
As I said, I haven’t read it, but I find it interesting to see a critique/examination of the “New Atheist” movement looking at it the way they’ve looked at religion; that is, not admiring reviews of works by fellow members or supporters or well-wishers, but treating them as a movement that has flaws and agendas.
I’d be really interested to see atheists/non-believers’ take on this; yeah, I admit a certain degree of “how do you like it when the shoe is on the other foot?” in anticipating “But that’s not right, that’s not what we think, that’s only some not all, he’s completely misinterpreting that!” reactions about your own side of the fence.
It’s very easy to compare something you don’t like to religion. But just because there are a few things in common doesn’t mean the accusation has any substance. And New Atheism has far less in common with religion than the Marxist ideas our sociologist author probably believes in.
See, this is precisely the kind of comment I luxuriate in.
How do you know he’s a Marxist? A bit defensively circling the wagons there, eh? Can’t take rational criticism?
You religious types are all the same! 😉
I don’t really care one way or another about New Atheism. I’m still not even sure what the difference between it and regular atheism is. It’s just that nothing from that blurb was an actual criticism.
Every time I see someone use the phrase ‘circle the wagons’ I want to find a good, thick book on the Hussite wars that isn’t either $80+, written in a different language, or both.
…the search continues, I suppose.
“Thinks evolution is a linear progression to a better state of being” is something I hear a lot more as an insult / declaration of the other person’s stupidity than as something people actually endorse.
That guy still believes in the Great Chain of Being. What a rube!
“I’d be really interested to see atheists/non-believers’ take on this; yeah, I admit a certain degree of “how do you like it when the shoe is on the other foot?” in anticipating “But that’s not right, that’s not what we think, that’s only some not all, he’s completely misinterpreting that!” reactions about your own side of the fence.”
He appears to be identifying ‘politics’. Seriously-
–The New Atheism, LeDrew shows, is part of a tradition of atheist thought and activism that promotes –individualism and scientific authority, which puts it at odds with atheist groups that are motivated by –humanistic ethics and social justice.
Got that? New Atheists (people who focus on antitheism as a primary objective) don’t get along with people who focus on different objectives.
He argues that evolving understandings of what atheism means, and how it should be put into action, are threatening to irrevocably fragment the movement.
I disagree with this. There is no unified atheist movement to be fragmented (unless he’s referring specifically to “New Atheism” here, but my reading of the excerpt makes me think he isn’t).
This is just the accommodationist/fuck-religion split. Nothing new.
Conflating a naive view of evolution as having a direction and Whig history is not terribly honest.
Does he provide any citations for the claim that the New Atheists “embraced [evolution] as a metaphor for the gradual replacement of religious faith with secular reason”? I can’t recall them doing that off the top of my head. If they did, bad on them. Terrible metaphor.
That said, religious faith pretty clearly is being gradually replaced by secular reason, although the beginnings of that shift predate New Atheism and possibly even Old Atheism. For instance, most Western countries no longer have ecclesiastical criminal courts, religious texts are no longer seen as legal documents, theology has shriveled while philosophy has expanded, etc.
I’d say that what Dawkins did was close to whatever the opposite of that would be, with the Viruses of the Mind thing. Religion as the result of memetic natural selection.
Has anyone looked at this Kelly McGonigal research that claims to show stress is only harmful to your health if you believe it’s harmful? Very curious about whether this is accurate/whether the studies are good.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/vanessaloder/2015/06/03/can-stress-kill-you-research-says-only-if-you-believe-it-can/
“Eight years later, the researchers found that high levels of stress increased the risk of dying by 43%…but only for those people who also believed that stress was harming their health.
Even more fascinating, people who reported high levels of stress but who did not believe their stress was harmful were not more likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of death of anyone in the study, even lower than those with little stress.
This means that stress itself is not actually bad. It is the belief that stress is bad that is bad.”
My concern here, of course, is that perhaps the causal arrow goes the other way: some people are harmed by stress and some are not. Those who are harmed by it form a belief that stress is harmful, those who can get away with being stressed and still have good health don’t form this belief. But perhaps the researchers have done something to rule out this possibility.
Here is the actual study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3374921/
My personal interpretation of it would be that there’s some kind of meta-stress they are failing to distinguish: for example, exercise is a kind of stress on one’s system, but the consensus seems to be that exercise is good for you, within reason. Stressing about stress, on the other hand, might be biologically distinct from stressing your system by running an extra mile, or even by staying up late to finish a report, etc. Stressing about stress is basically worry/anxiety, which seems like it would be bad for you. It would make little sense, for example, to say that “worrying is not bad for you, but worrying about worrying is bad for you.” It does seem to make perfect sense, however, to say “exposing your body/mind to taxing situations is not bad for you, but being anxious/worried about those taxing situations is.”
There’s the kind of stress from “My work hours have been reduced, I’m afraid I’ll lose my job, it’s getting tough to pay the bills, this is putting strain on my relationship and I’m fighting more with my partner, I have to get up early in the dark for the long commute and I’m crammed in with people on the train/bus/Tube” and the kind of stress that is “I work long work-weeks as head of my own company, mine is the desk where the buck stops, I do a lot of international travelling to conferences where I give presentations” stress.
“Stress plus lack of control” is probably a lot more harmful than “stress and I can afford to walk away from this any time I like”.
Yes, this comes up quite a bit in Sapolsky’s “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers”. Control makes a big difference. So does social status.
Yes, I quite concur that Zebras don’t get Ulcers is an excellent book on the subject.
I’m pretty sure that my attention revs up slowly when it comes to hearing speech– I spend a fair amount of saying “”excuse me, would you repeat that?” even though my hearing is average or close to it. Any thoughts about making it easier to focus on outside words. It’s possible that I get too focused on my inner monologue.
***
I believe that when some people disagree with “Torture doesn’t work” it’s a geek mistrust of generalizations rather than a desire to have torture done (only on enemies, of course). Would it be better to go with “torture isn’t worth it”?
I’ve listened to an interview about Why Torture Doesn’t Work and am currently reading the book. It’s a neurological take on why high stress interferes with access to memory.
I have the same experience, with speech. I’m not sure it’s an inner monologue thing (although it certainly happens when I’m inner-monologuing); it’s also when I’m reading, etc. I have no advice for fixing it, though, mostly because I’m usually not terribly interested in what people have to say to me, and am only forced to respond for social reasons. When I’m talking to someone interesting, I find I have little trouble (though not quite no trouble) maintaining focus on their words.
I haven’t read it, but if the argument against torture in Why Torture Doesn’t Work is that stress (of the kind experienced during torture) interferes with memory, then doesn’t that only support the claim that “it’s harder to remember things while you’re being tortured”? It doesn’t, for example, refute the claim that knowing they could be tortured is a deterrent to our enemies, or that torture breaks down a captured enemy’s will to withhold information. I have no idea, but I’d guess most information gotten using torture is gotten not right after a torture session but right BEFORE the next one.
“Torture never works” is dumb — there are plenty of historical examples in which torture has worked. “Torture doesn’t work nearly as often as one would naively expect, and is not worth the associated costs to national credibility and the greater liberal project” is a much easier argument.
You forget one of the most important costs. Torture may, rarely, “work” if you have the right person and you ask the right questions. If you’re reliably getting the right person and reliably know the right questions to ask, you have good enough intelligence sources that you almost certainly didn’t need the torture anyway. If you’re frequently getting the wrong person and/or asking the wrong questions, people under torture try to please the torturer by making up information if they don’t have what the torturer is looking for, so you’re setting yourself up for a lot of wild goose chases.
At least, that’s if you want information. Torture does reliably make torturers think their victims are guilty, so if you’re Stalin, and you want your NKVD goons to become more convinced that the dissidents truly are a dangerous enemy so that they’ll be more loyal and ruthless, sure it makes sense to have the NKVD torture dissidents.
“If you’re reliably getting the right person and reliably know the right questions to ask, you have good enough intelligence sources that you almost certainly didn’t need the torture anyway. ”
‘Where did you hide x’ is one where torture is routinely used.
“If you’re frequently getting the wrong person and/or asking the wrong questions, people under torture try to please the torturer by making up information if they don’t have what the torturer is looking for, so you’re setting yourself up for a lot of wild goose chases.”
Alternatively if you just use it to make people start talking, it has less of a wild goose chase effect.
A couple of historical points on torture:
1. The argument that it’s unreliable because the subject will say whatever satisfies the torturer is an old one. In Athenian law, slaves could only testify under torture, presumably because their testimony was wanted against their owners, who could punish them.
Athenian litigants had to speak for themselves, but could hire an orator to write an oration that they then memorized and delivered. Such orations are one of our main sources for information on the law. They include one that argues that slave testimony under torture is entirely reliable, never having proved false, and one arguing that it is worthless, since the slave will say whatever the torturer wants.
They were composed by the same orator. For different customers.
2. Visigothic law used essentially the same approach Samuel mentions. The accuser had to include in his accusation facts about the crime that were not public information. The testimony of the defendant under torture was only accepted if it matched that information. If the accuser had made the facts public, the defendant could not be tortured.
Theory: Women Spend 1/4 of Time Questioning Sanity, gain Power Thereby
I enjoy reading your blog regularly. Particularly liked the (very important!) mention you made of the study stating that men have more overall variance in traits (due to the X-Y, it was conjectured).
Here’s another angle on psychology of gender studies to consider. I keep reading the post that mentions Ozy’s statement in this context:
This is a big part of cognitive therapy – building the understanding that just because your brain makes assessments like “I will definitely fail at this” or “I’m the worst person in the world” doesn’t mean that you have to believe them. As Ozy points out, this one can be easier for people with serious psychiatric problems who have a lot of experience with their brain’s snap assessments being really off, as opposed to everyone else who has to piece the insight together from a bunch of subtle failures.
Consider that since puberty a modern woman may spend almost 1/4 of her life under the threat of subtle disorder to their thinking processes due to hormones. It seems clear that for a self-aware woman, the rest of the time they may have an advantage in noting when they are biased.
Just a thought. Also, domain specific knowledge transference issues with recognizing you’re being influenced, obviously. Regardless, that’s a ton of practice if they give even the slightest thought to ‘is this because I’m on my period, or because i really feel that way?’.
What? This is ridiculous. Women are mostly the same when menstruating, it’s not a goddamn werewolf transformation. Where do people get these ideas?
IIRC (I may not), the commentariat here skews heavily male.
Okay, understandable, but don’t these people have women around? Or do they get their ideas about PMS from pop culture, where 25% prevalence turns into 100%, moodiness becomes cognitive impairment, and everybody seems to forget what the “P” in “PMS” stands for?
Okay, understandable, but don’t these people have women around?
I, for one, am going to take this as an opportunity for kindness and restraint.
*walks away whistling*
@ Anonymous
lol
Where do you think we are?
I know that I once started crying from frustration at something that would normally have been annoying but tolerable. There’s definitely some change mentally, but I still act almost the same.
Honestly the biggest issue is being expected to work as usual when it feels like your insides are turning themselves inside out and you can’t do anything about it. That can feel like a werewolf transformation.
sounds like something a werewolf would say
I am not the same, there’s major shifts that are directly related to where I am in my cycle. This is normal, PMS and all that is based on real changes many women experience at certain points during their cycle.
Similarly there are real mood shifts during pregnancy and while nursing. Not for all women, but many and perhaps most women do literally feel quite different during those times than when they are not.
Disagree. Behavior changes noticeably depending on where a woman is in her cycle. I will note that the effect does seem toned down for women on the pill. No doubt the wisdom that comes with age also helps.
@ Dahlen
Women are mostly the same when menstruating, it’s not a goddamn werewolf transformation.
Sensible women (like me!) have learned to moderate their opinions and behavior by noting the differences that menstruation, nutrition, children pushing their buttons, etc etc, can make. Thus we build a set of consistent habits of better quality than the reactions and behaviors of men (and less sensible women) who take their own every unexamined reaction at face value.
Yes, and people with depression or neurological difficulties are also ‘mostly the same.’ My point is that it’s the questioning process that might lead to a generally more self-aware outlook, not that there’s some sort of ‘transformation.’
I mean, I did say ‘subtle’ disorder. It’s just an opportunity for more chances to specifically note changes in thought processes due to hormonal inputs.
it’s not a goddamn werewolf transformation
Considering my most reliable indicator, after a burst of irrational anger, was to go “….Wait. Is tonight the full moon?” because I generally went with the moon – don’t be so quick to dismiss that 🙂
This varies a lot by person. Can be very bad indeed.
If I had a nickel for every time I had to say to myself, “Well, I should probably call X back and say “Sorry I yelled at you yesterday, you screwed up but you weren’t actually the worst human in the history of the planet,”…
…well, I wouldn’t be rich. But I could buy me and the latest idiot a cuppa joe.
From convos with gal friends, it’s not the same gradient from person to person, nor even from month to month, but there is definitely a span of 12 to 72 hours days pre-menses when one is hyper-touchy, sufferers fewer fools, and is more than normally ready to take offense.
I’d rather be like that a couple days a month than be randy 24/7, but heck, how do I know? And a steady level of hormones would probably be easier for coworkers and subordinates.
@ Peter
Consider that since puberty a modern woman may spend almost 1/4 of her life under the threat of subtle disorder to their thinking processes due to hormones. It seems clear that for a self-aware woman, the rest of the time they may have an advantage in noting when they are biased.
Just a thought. Also, domain specific knowledge transference issues with recognizing you’re being influenced, obviously. Regardless, that’s a ton of practice if they give even the slightest thought to ‘is this because I’m on my period, or because i really feel that way?’.
Yes. I noticed that about myself … during puberty. I found checking any odd reaction with “Wait, what week is this?” is good training, and soon extends to “Wait, have I had breakfast yet?”, “Wait, does that guy have an accent I don’t like?”, etc etc.
Taking recreational drugs gives similar training. So does noting my reaction to the same issue, depending on what I’ve been reading that week. All this also gives training in keeping quiet till I’ve considered the issue in several different states; only vote after debating once drunk and once sober.
Menstruation is great training wheels for this. There’s the calendar to check with, and soon physical evidence too.
Meh, I don’t get PMS or period pains but pregnancy and the post-partum period I knew I was batty for tearing up at TV ads anyway.
For me the big change was having a summer job at a secure unit for people with behavioural problems and thus slowly learning to think through the adrenalin rush. Something reasonably achievable by most men.
If you think this refugee/migrant crisis is bad, wait until the Indo-Pak one.
Are you saying that there is going to be an India Pakistan war?
This might be breaking the “don’t politicize a tragedy within 72 hours rule” (though I think it’s been at least 48 now?), and if so, feel free to delete, but really I mean this as more of a meta-commentary on reactions to tragedy than on the tragedy itself.
It seems to me the gun control-as-reaction-to-mass-shootings thing is one of the most brain dead discussions in American politics today. Every time a shooting happens there is an instant reaction from those in favor of gun control to say “when will this madness end??” “how many more deaths before we enact sensible gun control???” etc., but they never make an argument about why gun control would have prevented the specific tragedy that just happened.
They would respond, perhaps: “d’uh, making guns harder to get and less common will reduce the incidence of gun violence,” but beyond the whole “criminals don’t care about laws” argument, I also wouldn’t consider it an improvement if school shootings were replaced by school bombings.
There is usually some feeble attempt to say something about mental health, but that always gets overshadowed by the gun thing.
To the supporters of gun control (which I am not, if it’s not obvious), I’d say that if you don’t want to keep shouting inside an echo chamber where none of the pro-gun people can hear you, then you need to start making arguments about why gun control is going to help or why the specific measures you want to institute would have helped prevent this particular tragedy you are trying to politicize. It always seems to take the form of “this person shot up a school with a handgun he bought at Wal Mart, therefore let’s ban assault rifles and gun shows.” It always strikes me as a non sequitur.
Also, can we at least be open to any other possible solutions?
I’ve been curious about the effects of gun control for ages and according to my standard method, I’ve been reading studies. The thing is that studies on this subject are either so horribad that they are completely useless or inconclusive.
My current prior is that guns have ~zero impact on the frequency of violence. It may have some impact on the effects. The problem is that this too swings both ways; The harm a gun man can do is somewhat larger than the capacity of one with a knife, but a madman who is stopped by an armed civilian does less damage than one who is able to keep at it until stopped by police.
Unless someone can come up with a high quality study, it may be more productive to try and find out why americans seems to be significantly more violent than just about everyone else rather than harping on guns.
What always strikes me as a particularly bad and disingenuous (as in, I have a hard time believing that even those who offer it really believe it, deep down) arguments is the idea that civilians with guns are going to make live shooter situations worse by just wildly shooting all over the place.
First of all, the sort of person who is likely to do concealed carry is certain to have a higher-than-average level of gun handling skills–an off-duty police officer, ex-military, a hunting enthusiast, range shooter… they’re not going to be perfect under pressure, but they’re going to be better than just handing a gun to some random person on the street.
Second, if I had to be in a theater when a gunman came in on a rampage, I’d *strongly* prefer if it turned out there were armed civilians among the other patrons, as I would *strongly* prefer to learn that some of the faculty had guns if I heard that there was an active shooter at my school. I’m not going to be running around between the shooter and the armed civilian; I’m going to be hiding under my seat praying someone else shoots the guy before he gets to me.
The probability that the shooter will himself get shot or scared off by the armed resistance seems much higher to me than me or my child getting accidentally hit by a movie patron or faculty member with bad aim.
The probability that the shooter will himself get shot or scared off by the armed resistance seems much higher to me than me or my child getting accidentally hit by a movie patron or faculty member with bad aim.
I know there are many folks who would say, “I don’t care, I’m still dead.” But for me, if I’m going to be shot, I’d far rather it be by someone working to protect his fellow men than by an evil person specifically trying to kill me for no damn reason.
I’m pretty sure I remember reading that there were friendly fire casualties in Koreatown during the 1992 LA riots (and I’m guessing that most of the Korean storeowners who were packing heat had prior military training).
Deterrence is obviously the most desirable effect of gun ownership, and I’d guess that gun ownership does prevent things like home robberies (I think the UK has roughly the same rate of home robberies as the US, many of which seem to be committed by some chump wielding only a knife or something like that). In a public setting, though, it’s much harder to say that the deterrent/prophylactic effect outweighs the risk of fubar.
I recall reading somewhere that the UK had a much higher incidence of robberies which occur while the victims are at home, owing to the fact that American robbers know there is a decent chance they will get shot if they attempt this much more brazen act. I like robbers thinking there is a decent chance I own a shotgun.
The UK doesn’t make stats on robbery (much less home-invasion robbery) available as far as I can tell, but its rate of burglary appears to be about 10 in 1000, compared to 7 in 1000 for the US (ONS vs. FBI stats). It’s always tricky business comparing crime stats between countries, though; differences in reporting procedure and the definition of the crime can matter much more than its likelihood. And that’s when the numbers aren’t being fudged, which we can safely assume they are.
Gun control can work well in places like the UK (or perhaps Japan and Australia), and less well in places like France or the US.
The dude in the London tube had to resort to stabbing people, so the gun control narrative is correct in this case — if you can get gun control to work, it’s harder to do a ton of damage. The implication is what’s tricky. EU open borders + France being on the continent made the same not reproducible in Paris.
Guns are like a lot of other things: if they’re reasonably well-controlled to start with, a competent government can do a good job of controlling them the rest of the way. If they aren’t, all bets are off.
I suspect that gun control probably does prevent some types of crime – those dependent on guns specifically – when enacted in places where illegal importing is costly, such as islands.
However, the anti gun control narrative, as far as I understand it, is not that gun control can never prevent any crime. Rather, it’s:
– most gun crimes are not spur-of-the-moment lapses in reason by normally law-abiding citizens, but intentional acts committed by people with criminal backgrounds
– most gun crimes do not actually require a gun, only some weapon that puts the perpetrator in a position of power over the victim
– attempts to prevent this imbalance via bans of increasingly less powerful weapons quickly become unfeasible due to the nigh-impossibility of preventing criminals from getting hold of blades and blunt weapons
– if citizens could defend themselves against blades and blunt weapons, criminals’ demand for guns would rise, and illegal imports would increase (so the situation of low supply of guns in island countries is possible only because demand is low)
– citizens armed with guns can win this arms race; nothing beats a gun, and in a situation where both sides are armed, but one has the law on their side and the other doesn’t, the former side is the powerful one
– therefore, allowing citizens to own and carry guns will increase the cost of committing violent crime and lower criminals’ propensity to do so
One interesting claim in this that could be investigated is the extent of illegal imports, into island nations, of other goods for which there aren’t good substitutes that can be produced within the nation.
If you want to know about whether gun restrictions affect availability of guns to criminals, you can just look at the effect of gun bans on gun crime. Looking at gun crime as opposed to, e.g. homicides in general is incorrect if you want to ask “does a gun ban reduce crime”, but it *is* a good way to ask “does a gun ban make guns less available to criminals”.
The answer is “very strongly yes”- gun bans make there be less gun crime, fewer guns per capita, etc. The part that’s unclear is whether this reduces crime in general, and the messy efforts to to analyse that so far haven’t shown any effect.
This is kind of a counter-intuitive state of affairs which in total isn’t hugely helpful to either side, which is probably why it isn’t well reported. Scott’s old blog talks about it at http://squid314.livejournal.com/347454.html
My personal interpretation is that this admits three interpretations:
1) Gun restrictions strong enough to affect gun crime, do not impose significant barriers to committing crime. The substitutability of alternative means of committing crimes relative to determination to commit crime is really high, “coke vs pepsi” high.
2) Gun restrictions strong enough to affect gun crime, do impose significant barriers to committing crime, do reduce crime, but other things they correlate with in practice are masking the effect in the imperfect examinations we can do without being able to run RCTs; the number of potential confounders is probably higher than the number of data points.
3) Gun restrictions strong enough to affect gun crime, impose significant barriers to committing crime, but gun possession has a deterrent effect against crime, and in practice the two roughly cancel out on average on the global scale.
I find 1 kind of absurd- it requires a near perfect substitution effect, between a ranged, easy to use point and click killing device, and chasing people down with a knife and physically fighting with them to kill them. Criminals would have be almost exclusively highly dedicated determinators who set their eyes on a specific murder and then accomplish it, rather than low-IQ people with bad impulse control.
Additionally, the gunshot mortality rate is 22%, and the stabbing morality rate is ~4%, so you’d need the removal of gun availability to result in quintuple the number of stabbings somehow.
It’s a popular idea but its popularity seems to come from people thinking in terms of possibilities as opposed to probabilities. On the other hand, 2 and 3 both don’t seem to imply anything obviously incongruous with reality.
In practice, I’m in favour of maintaining strict gun control in the UK where I live just for the quite well evidenced effect on suicide rate, and (speculative) the more polite relationship one can enjoy with the police when the police don’t need to worry about people having a “point and click make cops die” interface available to them.
But that’s because gun ownership isn’t a big part of culture and so the restrictions don’t make people sad like they would in the US. The US has different tradeoffs to consider.
@JBeshir
I have no doubt that gun bans make guns less available, but your suggestion of looking at falls in rates of gun crime do not show by how much. This is because you are ignoring the other factor that’s relevant – how good substitutes there are for guns. If gun homicides fall sharply but homicides stay the same, that suggests that there are good substitutes for guns for the purpose of committing homicides, which means that a small increase in how difficult it is to get a gun will cause a large drop in demand for guns.
If there were some legal change made that meant that the substitutes for guns became less good – for example, if citizens could carry baseball bats for personal protection – then, depending on how easy it was to smuggle guns into the nation, gun availability, hence gun crime, might rise by a lot or by a little. That’s what I’m interested in here.
@Anonymous: I think your summary is generally correct, but that the emphasis on “island nations” as having an advantage w/re gun control may be off. The United States has a fair degree of experience with trying to prevent illicit goods from being sold on domestic black markets, and we have found that cross-country foot or vehicle traffic is only a minor contributor. Much of what is available is locally produced, and yes, quite deadly firearms can be locally produced just about anywhere and do not require factories. What is smuggled, comes mostly through ordinary commercial channels, and it hardly matters whether the point of entry is a seaport, airport, rail line or cross-border highway. The minority that is smuggled across a desolate stretch of the border can come by sea, land, or air.
Island nations have, at best, a small advantage in this regard. Or, now that I think about it, they may have a large advantage in that the barrier to casual cross-border traffic allows them to maintain unique cultures that would otherwise diffuse into the global or regional norm. So it may not be entirely coincidental that two of the nations most often cited as gun-control success stories are islands. But the cultures of the UK and Japan would be nearly impossible to recreate elsewhere, I think, and it is the cultures more than the borders that matter.
@Anonymous
While you were posting, I was editing, and edited in more detail about what we currently know, but the short answer is that it isn’t clear what if any effect gun restrictions have on homicides overall- it doesn’t look like it’s clearly very much.
In terms of substitutability I think I would probably be more inclined to go off the percentage of stabbings which are lethal compared to the percentage of gunshot wounds which are lethal as a starting point than off effect on homicide rates, because there’s things other than high substitutability (like gun deterrence effect) which would cause the effect to be small or zero or even negative, and sky high substitutability seems… absurd given all we know about lethality differences, the average criminal’s notable lack of intelligence or conscientiousness, the entirely different required… format of the attack, different time taken to successfully kill someone etc.
@JBeshir
I expect the substitutability is at least somewhat high because for many uses, what matters is relative not absolute power, and gun bans are typically paired with restrictions on other weapons too. So in order to mug an unarmed civilian, a gun and a knife ought to work similarly well. Both pose a significant enough risk that doing what the mugger asks is the best option.
EDIT:
You mean “you’d need the removal of gun availability to result in quintuple the number of stabbings as there were gunshots previously“, right?
@Anonymous
Yes on the five times the number of previous gunshot wounds part. Each substituted gunshot wound needs to be replaced by five stabbings to compensate for different mortality to get the same death rate.
You might be right that expecting there to be a low substitutability might not be called for when it comes to muggings, where even a small risk you can threaten with is probably enough to make it better to just give you the money. I expect it’d be less likely to end in death, though, even if just due to the lower mortality of being stabbed, and this to not generalise to attempts to murder.
You all seem to be assuming that shootings and stabbings involve one wound each, or at least that the number of wounds will be identical. For murderous attackers, the number of gunshot or stab wounds is quite likely to be “Until the sonofabitch is dead, duh!”, and if that means stabbing someone twenty-five times so be it. Though multiple wounds are synergistic, so it usually won’t take twenty-five stabbings to kill someone if that’s the intent.
For non-murderous attackers, guns will be more likely to inflict an unintentionally-lethal injury than knives. Indeed, one of the reasons for criminals to prefer knives when targeting unarmed prey is the greater control over the level of violence. But even if circumstances lead non-murderous criminals to use guns, relatively few of their victims will die, and the killings will likely be dominated by the murderous criminals.
I don’t *think* mortality rate for stab wounds vs gunshot wounds counts multiple stabs separate times, but just as one instance per person.
I did some digging into this and the best I could find was http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/news_releases/2014/01/band/ which talks about people who get to their hospital with either gunshot wounds or stab wounds. Their goal is to compare different people bringing them in, but they find that of those brought in, 33% of people with gunshot wounds die and 7.7% of people with stab wounds die, which is different absolute totals because different place, selection effects, different data, but a fairly close ratio in something that’s explicitly counting in people rather than wounds.
@JBeshir
One other point that occurred to me is that it might well be the case that you are safer, murder rate wise, in a place where citizens and criminals both have guns, than you are in a place where criminals have knives and citizens have nothing – but that you are even less safe in a place where criminals have guns and citizens have nothing. Note that the US, and presumably other countries where citizens can carry guns, is made up of some of the first and some of the third kind of environment. So the enactment of gun control, in turning both of these into the second kind of environment, might make some places more safe and some less safe (again, from a murder rate perspective), and so have fairly little effect on the murder rate of the country as a whole.
I’m under the impression that most of the places in the US with particularly high murder rates do in fact have fairly stringent restrictions on guns compared to the rest of the country.
@Anonymous
Yeah, “guns have deterrent effect” is way more plausible to me than “knives are near-perfectly substitutable for guns” and that’d be a sensible read of things.
There’s causal lines from both “urban area” to gun control, “urban area” to high crime, and “high crime” to gun control, which I think covers why the gun controlled areas are those with higher murder rates, in the US. This doesn’t rule out what you describe, but it means it’s quite hard to detect.
Edit: I should note that the reason I kept saying “gun restrictions strong enough to reduce gun crime” is because a lot of the US gun control seem to me dubious in meeting that criteria, and for that gun control there is no mystery to its lack of effectiveness on crime in general.
There is no such thing as “drive by stabbing”, although I suppose the substitute might be “drive by molotov” but that seems like it is hardly a reasonable substitute.
Call this an anecdote, but I think it maps well to a class of crimes that results in some significant chunk of murders. I have a friend who is a public defense lawyer. He was involved with a murder trial wherein members of two different families had some argument over what was essentially an “honor” violation. The actual murder involved someone driving by and shooting at the house of one of the families.
One person was struck and killed, but all parties agreed that this was not one of the people who had been party to the actual conflict (in fact this person had been a peacemaker). The most likely target was in the yard at the time.
(pro-gun person here (or, at least, strongly anti-control as currently advocated in the USA))
For my part, while there is deep distrust towards those who claim to only want common sense laws, because the same folks keep coming back and wanting to seize weapons, there is also a sense of frustration re: the more rational restrictions.
As an example: mandatory training to be demonstrated prior to permitting purchase, and a renewable license, same-same as for drivers licenses. On the surface, I don’t actually disagree with this, as firearms can be dangerous and I don’t have a problem with supervised firearms training for all high schoolers the way we used to for drivers ed. Make it mostly universal, we’ll reduce accidents, make it not a huge burden for people to get firearms licenses, it’s all good.
Except…the same Blue Tribers who want licenses and mandatory training for firearms are saying that enforcement of licenses, registration, and insurance for *cars* is an unreasonable burden on the impoverished and minorities. That making people actually demonstrate where they live and forcing them to keep their addresses up-to-date is too hard, and that our current system – as demonstrated in Ferguson – only makes criminals out of ordinary citizens.
Likewise, I think the same people who advocated “mandatory” universal health insurance are generally good intentioned people who would never consider letting their drivers insurance lapse, nor to fail to update their drivers license when needed, or otherwise not comply with the bureaucratic burden of state and local rules. They just haven’t dealt with people who can and do make idiot choices and/or decide to not comply with the decision of the council, on the grounds that in their opinion it’s a stupid-ass decision.
In many cases, people comply with laws when there is a higher cost to not complying than there is to comply. When the cost to not comply seems minor or marginal, people are at the least strongly tempted to disregard the law.
If we’re not going to strongly enforce drivers licenses and failure to have insurance for the car, or health insurance…why should we expect that firearms licenses/insurance are going to be better enforced?
On reasonable gun control. A lot of the problem is that gun control activists have chosen post Heller v. D.C to take the same tactic that pro-life groups took post Roe v. Wade. The gun control activists want to disrupt gun owners and gun dealers by generating as much pointless restrictions as possible. Just as pro-life activists want to disrupt abortion clinics through a large number of pointless restrictions. The presence of this tactic destroyed the room for compromise, and turns otherwise inoffensive regulations into troublesome ones. Take the universal background checks bill going through Congress right now. It uses dealers as intermediates for the background checks. The problem occurs in places San Fransisco which have managed to force all gun dealers out of business. There it becomes a defacto ban on gun sales.
“I want to eradicate X from the United States. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has ruled that I cannot ban X. Therefore, the most productive approach is to continually advocate for incremental, seemingly innocuous restrictions on X, so that people eventually have a theoretical access to X, but in reality have no access to X, thus achieving my goal of eradication.”
It consistently amazes me that when X=abortion, the blue tribe has no problem seeing through this process as a sham, and reliably understands the true goal behind “common sense” restrictions. But when X=guns, they seem to be collectively blind to the exact same tactic they decry as used by the other side.
It also works with X=”death penalty”.
It doesn’t amaze me. Just flip the issues around and you get a description of red tribe behavior. In the abortion case its the GOP using the tactic and the Dems defending against it. In the gun case its the Dems using it and the GOP defending.
One interesting thing is that both (non-politician, at least) activists on both issues don’t realize/don’t want to admit what they are doing. Gun control activists believe they are being reasonable. Pro life activists believe they are being reasonable.The best explanation I can come up with is that for both movements the preferences of the other side have close to zero value. The other side is just crazy from that perspective. “Why would I care what some gun nut thinks about filling out paperwork??” “The women will regret their decision eventually” For gun control activists there is almost no reason any regular person would legitimately want a gun. For pro-life activists there is pretty much no legitimate reason anyone would want an abortion. So, the bar for “reasonable” is set very low.
I’m not sure both sides don’t realize what they’re doing. It has been my experience (YMMV) that when X=abortion, at least certain segments of the red tribe do explicitly say, “Hey, we can’t ban it, so we’re using every tactic available to institute a de facto ban.”
Whereas, when X=guns, I’ve yet to hear a blue triber be so straightforward about it. It’s always about “common sense” that rarely proves to be so.
The current front page New York Times editorial is about as honest as they get short of “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in” (Feinstein):
“yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.”
Personally I see it as either odd or desperate, tactically, to do a big push for gun control following an attack by people (reportedly) associated with a foreign terror group.
I’m guessing desperate. Gun control has been a dead letter, politically,1 for some years now, and proponents are hoping that something, anything, will break up that stasis. If it has to be a tragedy that, while involving firearms, likely would not have been prevented by the measures being promoted, well, you dance with the one who brung ya.
1 For the primary reason why, think of all your blue friends and all the political issues they care about. Gun control might well be among them, but is unlikely the number one issue, and almost certainly is not the issue they’d single-issue vote on. There are literally millions of red-tribe voters for whom a candidate’s stance on gun control will make or break their vote for that candidate.
I made a response to Nybbler’s comment. I’m not sure if the comment system ate it, or if a spam filter got it (both attempts were eaten, and there was a link — so I’m thinking filter). If someone with the proper powers could check the spam trap, that would be appreciated.
@Anonymouse
I don’t think its desperation. Its salience. People way over estimate the threat posed to them by this type of event. I had a FB “friend” post a meme that read “I lived through the Cold War, and I am more scared of guns than I was ever scared of nukes”. When you consider the very large casualties that a nuclear war would cause, thats an absurd position, even under low probabilities of war.
“If it has to be a tragedy that, while involving firearms, likely would not have been prevented by the measures being promoted, well, you dance with the one who brung ya.”
And this is precisely the problem. Their motivations are transparent, at least to me, and so they lose credibility on other questions.
Whereas, when X=guns, I’ve yet to hear a blue triber be so straightforward about it.
I'm loosely in favor of gun control, and I have never, nor have I ever had anyone in the "blue tribe" tell me, that they favor the complete elimination of legally owned guns. The fact that you haven't heard the sentiment expressed may well be due to the fact that it just isn't widely held.
See, I actually give most of them the benefit of the doubt when they say they don’t really want to ban all guns; they just want modest, sensible reforms. The problem is, if those sensible reforms get implemented and the shootings don’t stop, I also fully expect them to start pushing for ever more “sensible” reforms until we get to the point where firearm ownership for self-defense may, in fact, be de facto illegal.
This is based on my overwhelming experience with humanity in general, which says that, if you start out with a very strong sense that x is the solution to y and you implement x but y persists, by far the most common reaction is not to rethink x, but to start pushing for 2x, and 3x, and…
Further, the overton window tends to hover over whatever the legal status quo is at the moment. In the US, where firearm ownership is still relatively free, saying “ban all private firearm ownership” sounds like an extreme position in a way that it wouldn’t in Japan or the UK. In some cases this may mean that some radicals are forced to keep their true end goals to themselves, but in many cases, I think it genuinely affects what people think of as “reasonable.”
Though the type of person to be a lobbyist for gun control may secretly wish to ban all guns, I think their average supporter genuinely thinks he/she just wants “common sense,” “reasonable,” reforms. The problem is, when the law changes, so too does “common sense.”
The people who favor gun control seem to have a large contingent who start with “why would anyone want to own a gun, anyway?”. I see this as indicating a desire to ban guns.
They both see through it just fine. It’s just that the blue and red tribes see nothing wrong with using stupid bureaucracy tricks to achieve their goals, if that’s what works, and then turning around and scolding the opposition for doing the same thing, because that also works.
The analogy to abortion arguments is definitely legit – it’s been brought up in (polite, restrained) debates with friends.
I have yet to find a way to support “regular” medical clinic standards for abortion clinics that doesn’t come across as disingenuous to the pro-choice side. I myself want to blame this on the illogic of the pro-choice side, but then I would, wouldn’t I? And these are (generally) rational people I’m arguing with.
But here’s the thing. Stricter standards for abortion clinics (to the level of the average Western European country, incidentally) is extremely likely to result in fewer abortions because the people who perform abortions disproportionately lack proper medical credentials and also disproportionately don’t do basic things like sanitize the operating theater between patients.
Pro-abortion people (as distinguished from pro-choice people) will sometimes directly say that these laxer standards of sanitation and credential acquisition and maintenance are fine, because the goal for them is maximum abortion access for the entire duration of a pregnancy. And given that this is an extreme goal, disproportionately extremists who really want it sit on the regulatory boards for abortion provision in each state. So that’s what pro-life people are confronting even if they are in the camp of wanting better standards (again, at merely the level most of the prosperous social welfare countries in Europe enjoy) for non-extremist reasons.
@ The Practical Conservative
these laxer standards of sanitation and credential acquisition and maintenance are fine, because the goal for them is maximum abortion access for the entire duration of a pregnancy
Hm? I bet what this refers to, is that handing someone a package of abortifacient to take at home, doesn’t require a surgeon with hospital admitting privileges scrubbing the entire office first.
@ houseboatonstyx
I bet what this refers to, is that handing someone a package of abortifacient to take at home, doesn’t require a surgeon with hospital admitting privileges scrubbing the entire office first.
…oh, that we were in person, and I could shake your hand to seal that bet. Because that’s not what it’s about. And that’s not how even the medical (ie, non-surgical) abortifactants work.
@ keranih
So how about a link to what it is about?
Have a look at this Washington Post coverage of the Kermit Gosnell story. Now, I’m not American, I don’t know if the Washington Post is seen as pro-Republican or pro-Democrat or what, somebody enlighten me.
But the facts are pretty much this: Bob Casey Jr. was Governor of Pennsylvania 1987-95. Like his father before him, he was one of the pro-life Democrats. When he was succeeded as governor by Tom Ridge (a Republican, by the way), the Pennsylvania Department of Health happily gave up on inspecting abortion clinics, because they didn’t want to be perceived as being a deterrent to abortion access. This allowed Gosnell (and I believe a couple others) to run crappier and crappier “clinics” and get away with overcharging and dangerous practices, because hey, don’t interfere with the right to abortion by closing these guys down!
I really recommend reading the Post series of articles. Even abortion providers organisations wouldn’t touch Gosnell with a ten-foot barge pole, but he was allowed to operate his clinics largely, it seems, because his clientele were poor, young, and women of colour. So what if they kept ending up dumped on hospital steps or even dying (Karnamaya Mongar)? He was doing community service, providing choice!
Ironically, it was a raid for illegal drug prescriptions that finally brought the whole house of cards down.
But believe me, demands for hygiene standards are a lot more serious than “make sure you scrub your entire office before handing over a dose of mifepristone”.
@ houseboatonstyx –
D already beat me to the Gosnell issue. Here is an editorial from a pro-standards side. 538 also did a brief piece here, which would seem to indicate that abortion centers are less in need of oversight than dental surgery clinics, *but* if you read to the bottom, they talk about re-examining the data after adjusting for age – meaning that they didn’t adjust for data before. (The study itself is paywalled, I might be able to get to it this week. There is no indication from the abstract that the mortality/morbidity rates were adjusted for age (or anything else) and they should have been (and the abstract should have said that.)) So the support for the idea that there is no need – in regular clinics, not abattoirs like Gosnell ran – for surgical-level standards is suspect.
(If the full study show something else I will revisit.)
Now, as to more object level concerns (because, frankly, if the regulations are not needed then yeah, why have the regulations?) I agree that if all the clinic will do is non-surgical, consult/physical exam only, no sedation work, then I agree that there is not a need to have surgical suite requirements. I’m iffier on a medical center of any sort that has doors and hallways that you can’t get a gurney through.
However, any sort of sedation? No, they need to act like an actual medical center – hallways for gurneys, parking lot access for ambulances, and real docs who have the qualifications to get admission privileges at the local hospital.
What really strikes me is the way these centers supposedly have to shut down entirely if they can’t do abortions – despite all that has been said about how abortions are only part of the many vital services they provide.
@ Keranih
I agree that if all the clinic will do is non-surgical, consult/physical exam only, no sedation work, then I agree that there is not a need to have surgical suite requirements.
No need for you to look deeper, thanks. What I’m concerned about is anti-choice politicians using vague language to shut down clinics whose services have no reasonable need for expensive facilities and personnel.
In some areas of the US, the same voter base oppose all contraception, saying ordinary ‘birth control pills’ and IUDs cause abortions — much less RU-486, which actually does. So there is plenty of room for equivocation in the fine print in the laws they get written, and how they are interpreted.
Where otc and mail order purchase of RU-486 is limited, getting it may require a visit to an ‘abortion clinic’. Swallowing the first dose there and taking the rest home, would not seem to require special facilities.
See http://www.abortionadvantage.com/abortion-pill-ru-486.html
@ Keranih
I just read the 538 link you gave. I think you should take another look at the implication of its end paragraphs.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/new-clinic-standards-in-texas-wont-make-abortions-safer/
lawyers from the Texas attorney general’s office argued that the law is designed to improve women’s health by holding the clinics to the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs).
….
Dan Grossman, a doctor and the vice president of Ibis Reproductive Health, a nonprofit reproductive health research organization, analyzed data on the number of major complications — hospitalization, abdominal surgery, intravenous antibiotics or blood transfusion caused by an abortion — from a chain of Texas clinics that included one ASC and three non-ASC facilities. [He found that] not only were the major complication rates low at all four of the clinics, women who went to the ASC were slightly more likely to experience a major complication than women who went to one of the non-ASCs.
This doesn’t mean, according to Grossman, that the ASC was less safe. “Higher-risk women were being sent to the ASC, so I think if we could control for risk factors like age and obesity, we’d see that the ASC and the non-ASCs were equally safe,” he said. “What it really shows, though, is that there’s no indication that abortion is associated with a higher risk of complications outside of an ASC.”
The conclusion is that safety of the clinics is the same, though the ASC clinics _appear_ worse because the patients sent there were in worse condition (older, etc) to begin with. Closer adjustment for the age factor would just put the ASC and non-ASC clinics at the same score. It would not make the non-ASC clinics score worse.
“Higher-risk women were being sent to the ASC, so I think if we could control for risk factors like age and obesity, we’d see that the ASC and the non-ASCs were equally safe,”
I don’t see how he can know that–it looks like a declaration of faith. He has offered a reason why his statistics make the ASC’s look less safe, relatively speaking, than they are. He has offered no way of knowing how big that effect is, hence no way of knowing whether allowing for it would leave the ASC’s less safe, as safe, or safer than the non-ASC’s. Am I missing something, or is this just hand waving?
@ David Friedman
He has offered no way of knowing how big that effect is, hence no way of knowing whether allowing for it would leave the ASC’s less safe, as safe, or safer than the non-ASC’s.
I don’t see how it could move the ASCs to a notably safer level; the best it could do would be to produce a tie, by moving the ASCs up to the level of safety the non-ASCs show now.
“I don’t see how it could move the ASCs to a notably safer level; the best it could do would be to produce a tie, by moving the ASCs up to the level of safety the non-ASCs show now.”
Why?
Consider the limiting case. Imagine all people who want an abortion are in two categories, safe and at risk. The safe develop no medical problems, the at risk sometimes develop medical problems.
Any at risk person who went to a non-ASC and developed a problem would die–but the at risk people, knowing they are at risk, always go to the ASC’s. The non-ASC’s are more dangerous, but they have a perfect safety record and the ASC’s don’t. How do you know that something like that—obviously a less extreme version—isn’t the case?
Perhaps I’m missing something. What’s the argument behind your claim?
@ houseboatonstyx –
I’d rather not shift the goalposts to contraception/”what the voter base approves of” – imo it’s of as little use as bringing up legal access to nukes and anti-aircraft firearms for the current gun debate.
Per the Wikipedia article on mifepristone, five to ten percent of women who abort their babies via this drug need surgical intervention there after. In Europe, where the drug is used heavily, there is a required observation period. While I agree that the patient need not be in a surgical facility in order to have this drug administered, I think that the requirement for the provider to be able to get the patient to a hospital when needed is absolutely sensible.
Regarding the differing degrees of risk at different clinics – yes, if one doesn’t allow for confounders correctly, one can reach entirely the wrong conclusion from a study. For instance: a study finds that 3.25% of patients at clinic A have complications, while only 2.3% of patients at clinic B do. Obviously, clinic B is doing a better job – clinic A’s rate is almost half again as much.
But if we look deeper – 25% of clinic A’s patients are high risk. Only 2% of clinic B’s are. When we divide out the complications by risk group, the rate for complications for high risk patients at clinic A is 0.1, and the rate for low risk is 0.01. At clinic B, the rate for high risk patients is 0.2, and the rate for low risk is 0.02 – twice the risk for all groups as at clinic A. The difference in total rate is due to the different patient make up.
Failing to adjust for age, gender, complications, etc is a fairly simple way to completely trash an otherwise fine analysis. You really can not say what the difference really is until you do the math.
@ Keranih
I have yet to find a way to support “regular” medical clinic standards for abortion clinics that doesn’t come across as disingenuous to the pro-choice side.
It’s possible to find an advocate less credible on a particular topic without suspecting them of disingenuity. But … what is their expertise, and why are they spending their time on particular issue X? If an expert in home safety vs construction cost spends much time on a set of issues including water leaks/mold, asbestos, width of stair steps, etc, etc, including a small section on spacing of electrical outlets, then we may assume they know their subject and are probably not speaking from bias. But if someone who already opposes all government housing projects supports closing one project for not having enough outlets, without having expertise on outlets in general and having shown interest in outlets in other buildings … then we wonder just how much expertise and fair-mindedness they really have here.
@ Keranih
Here is an editorial from a pro-standards side*. 538** also did a brief piece here, which would seem to indicate that abortion centers are less in need of oversight than dental surgery clinics
Keranih, dental surgery clinics (or dentistry in general) seems a good comparison. Something can go very seriously wrong in the dentist’s chair, but that’s not reason to deny dental care to patients who can’t afford a facility with “nurses on duty, a safe blood supply, and a hospital within 30 miles. Having a doctor with hospital admitting privileges, so there won’t be an hourslong wait in the emergency room, seems like a good idea too”*
*http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/07/18/medical-standards-for-abortion-clinics-are-no-war-on-women
Much dishonest (and swarmy) presentation in this USNews op-ed (written by a G. W. Bush speechwriter).
**
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/new-clinic-standards-in-texas-wont-make-abortions-safer/
Good article, quotes below from Friedman and me.
Another useful analogy is to gay rights, in that people who are frustrated in directly attacking the legality of the underlying thing attempt to suppress the cultural expression of the thing. W/re gay rights, sure, you can do whatever you want in the privacy of your own bedroom, but you can’t have the cultural institution of marriage, and the gay bathhouses are a menace to public health and need to be torn down, the gay pride parades are obscene, and nothing about your lifestyle can be taught in schools or shown on television.
On the gun control side, shutting down gun shows, obviously, and enacting gun-free zones everywhere people can get away with it (because obviously the mass murderer is going to see a no-guns-allowed sign and go home sighing “curses, foiled again”). Restricting the transfer of firearms within families. Banning or at least stigmatizing open carry, shutting down school rifle clubs, and making sure every self-respecting parent knows they have to verify that every other parent on the block runs a certified gun-free house before they can host a play date (even if the star attraction of the play date is a backyard swimming pool).
“Except…the same Blue Tribers who want licenses and mandatory training for firearms are saying that enforcement of licenses, registration, and insurance for *cars* is an unreasonable burden on the impoverished and minorities.”
I’ve never heard anyone say that.
Agreed. That argument seems like a straw-man. (or at least a weak-man that someone somewhere said but that isn’t really a mainstream idea)
@Mark Atwood, Is this the program you’re talking about?
That’s…odd. The impact of traffic fees and fines was all over the news a year back. I’m really surprised you hadn’t come across it. Check out the links below for the general findings and emphasis of the press.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/how-st-louis-county-missouri-profits-from-poverty/
http://www.lccr.com/not-just-ferguson-problem-how-traffic-courts-drive-inequality-in-california/
Thats a different but related issue. The links you provided are objections to cops using tickets as a way to raise funds — a stealth tax. Thats not quite about licenses, registration, and insurance. And as anyone who has dealt with speed-traps can attest, that type of fundraising does happen.
No, it’s not about raising funds, although that’s how the cities are using the process. It’s about how the legal requirements – and the punative process for dealing with infractions of the requirements – are impacting poor people.
Related: the objections to more stringent id requirements for voting, due to the disparate impact the process of collecting necessary documents has on impoverished, disorganized, and transient people.
I endorse Theo Jones’ interpretation; it’s seen as a problem regarding particular corrupt/abusive local governments.
Certainly no one (to my knowledge) has ever suggested that the solution is to get rid of drivers’ licenses and the like. It’s to fire particular officials, reform particular administrative processes, etc.
Hope this doesn’t break the politisation rule.
I think the whole gun control debate is probably the mainstream political debate most polluted by bad faith arguments and actions (perhaps other than the abortion debate) from both sides. I’m against most gun control for what its worth. But the quality of the debate is bad. As exhibit A: you know that “355 mass shootings” number thats been going around. Its on very weak ground http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/opinion/how-many-mass-shootings-are-there-really.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
I would hypothesize that mass shootings are the type of shooting that are the least likely to be affected by gun control. You have a premeditated shooter who does not intend to get out of the situation intact (and therefore is willing to take extreme risks to get armed). The type of shooting that I would propose that is the most likely to be affected by gun control are unplanned shootings (ie. two people get into a brawl at a bar) because that type of shooting is dependent on opportunity. But over all I would guess the effect of gun control is relatively small, and that the difference between the U.S and other countries in terms of gun violence is mostly due to social/economic factors (ie. poverty).
The choice of mass shootings as the focus of the debate seems weird. As I said above I don’t think that they are really that susceptible to gun control. And they are a relatively small part of over-all homsides. The best I can chalk it up to is salience bias. A large, noticeable, but rare event is likely to get a lot more attention than a bunch of smaller events that add up to something more destructive.
And the focus on “assault weapons” also seems odd to me. Yes, big and scary. But it is a largely political and cosmetic classification. If you want to target a type of gun, go for hand-guns. They are more likely to be used in crime than long-guns, and because of their size are better suited for unplanned/opportunistic crime.
“I would hypothesize that mass shootings are the type of shooting that are the least likely to be affected by gun control. ”
They are much more common is some places than others, so they are affected by something.
It turns out there are a lot of things that aren’t gun control, both in absolute terms and relative to the number of things that are gun control (which pretty much comprises just gun control).
There are an infinite number of things which aren’t smoking, but why would any of them cause lung cancer?
Because the little fibers flake off and you breathe them in. Because the air in the mines is full of coal dust. Because it’s radioactive. There are so many things that cause lung cancer and aren’t smoking.
And the thing that is causing american shootings actually IS…?
You say that in a sarcastic tone as if the answer is obvious but the important thing here is that it’s NOT and acting like it is just security theater. We fundamentally don’t KNOW why America has x number of mass shootings. Policy changes based on this ignorance are extremely unlikely to help.
People living in places where they aren’t naturally supposed to. We moved a lot of low density orientation, high territoriality populations into close quarters and they shoot each other a lot. We send pretty much anyone to Wyoming or Alaska and they shoot themselves a lot.
Or if you meant spree killings specifically? The most plausible theory there is that nothing is moving spree killings one way or the other. They are unresponsive to incentives, and the natural number of them just looks increasingly horrifying as violence in general grows rarer.
Most spree killers smoke cannabis, or take other mind-bending drugs.
If we ban cannabis, maybe we’ll make some headway.
@Drthelin
I don’t think there is an obvious answer to what is causing American shootings other than american guns. I am expressing frustration with people who insist that guns are not the cause, without saying what is the cause.
@Alraune
It’s clearly more complex than that, since you don;’t have huge rates of spree shootings in Tokyo.
@Mark
It’s clearly more complex than that , since you don’t have ots of spree shootings in Amsterdam.
I am expressing frustration with people who insist that guns are not the cause, without saying what is the cause.
Per Mencken, for every complex problem there is an answer that is simple, obvious, and wrong. Frustration, is being unable to find the right answer because the problem is really complex. Folly, is believing the wrong answer anyway because it’s the only one you can think of.
I am expressing frustration with people who insist that guns are not the cause, without saying what is the cause.
I understand that you’re frustrated, but one does not need to prove an alternate hypothesis to disprove yours. If someone said, “Unless you prove to me exactly what causes autism, you must accept that it’s vaccines,” you would reject it out of hand, and rightfully so.
Fact is, guns cause spree shootings in the same way that hammers cause houses, desks cause paperwork, and spoons cause obesity; that is, not at all. Guns are instrumental in the process of spree shootings (tautologically so: hence, “shootings”), but being objects, cannot cause anything. Human behavior causes spree shootings, and specifically sussing out how to remedy that is exactly what we’re discussing.
@The Anonymouse
I think what people are saying when they say that guns cause shootings are that the availability of guns leads to more shootings than if they were less available. In that sense, it’s perfectly reasonable to hypothesize that guns cause shootings. Of course, that’s an empirical question that is very difficult to test, and not obviously true, but I don’t think responding with “guns are tools; they can’t cause anything” is helpful.
Yes, human behavior is ultimately responsible for everything, but that doesn’t mean you must only solve a problem by changing human nature. By your logic, we shouldn’t put seat belts and airbags in cars – we should just work on changing human behavior so people don’t get into accidents.
People should approach gun deaths in the US like Scott approached the water crisis in California: using the amazing technology called the “pie chart.”
@Aegeus
Funnily enough, I have heard an argument that the effect of seatbelts is to cause people to drive less carefully, resulting in roughly the same number of accidents as there were before.
I think that the way people will change their behavior in response to changing circumstances varies greatly with the behavior in question.
You mean it’s precisely as complex as that. The Japanese as a whole likely have the highest density-orientation of any human group, and Tokyo in particular has had Chicago-like population densities since it was Edo. There’s no mismatch with the environment there.
In America, however, we had the Great Migration from the South to the North within living memory, which put millions of people into environments literally hundreds of times more population dense than previously. This tends to get glossed as “black problem”, but I’d bet my bank account that if you looked at the violence rate among the descendants of pre-Migration blacks in e.g. Chicago, it’s significantly lower than among the children and grandchildren of the new arrivals.
I think it’s clear that if you could make guns very, very hard to get at, spree shootings would become less common. But doing that requires something pretty close to banning private ownership of guns. Many of the people in favor of gun control are probably in favor of that, but they cannot say so, both because that would be to concede the argument of the other side and because banning guns would be unconstitutional.
If the Democrats win the presidential election and get to put a couple of their people on the Supreme Court, the interpretation of the Second Amendment might change, in which case it will be interesting to see how many of the people who have been saying that of course they are not in favor of a gun ban decide that, after all, they are.
“It’s clearly more complex than that , since you don’t have ots of spree shootings in Amsterdam.”
Americans smoke more cannabis than Dutch people.
I don’t know… is there more to it? Has there ever been a spree killer who wasn’t on drugs?
“Per Mencken, for every complex problem there is an answer that is simple, obvious, and wrong. Frustration, is being unable to find the right answer because the problem is really complex. Folly, is believing the wrong answer anyway because it’s the only one you can think of.”
If the only argument to the effect that GC is the wrong answer is that there is another, better, answer, the the other, better answer needs to be supplied.
@Urstoff
Yes, thankyou. The argument that “when you say causation, you mean agency” argument is horribly awfully terrible, and it is disappointing to see it in a forum of this caliber (sorry).
@Mark
“Americans smoke more cannabis than Dutch people.”
i wrote Amsterdam rather than the Netherlands for a reason.
“I don’t know… is there more to it? Has there ever been a spree killer who wasn’t on drugs?”
High as you may be, your chances of shooting people are slim if you don’t have a gun, So it’s more complex than that.
@Ilya
Like this?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/12/14/chart-the-u-s-has-far-more-gun-related-killings-than-any-other-developed-country/
@Alraune
If your point is that it takes two or three generations to adapt to a high density environment, as per your second comment, then it was not well served by using the word “natural” as per your first comment. Anything that happens that fast is cultural.
“Or if you meant spree killings specifically? The most plausible theory there is that nothing is moving spree killings one way or the other. They are unresponsive to incentives, and the natural number of them just looks increasingly horrifying as violence in general grows rarer.”
Why aren’t they declining with other forms of violence? Why re they so much more common in the US?
@DavidFriedman
I consider the question of whether gun control would work in principle to be orthogonal to the question of whether it is politcally feasible given the 2nd amendment.
@TheAncientGeek
What makes you think they are?
The easy answer to your question is that the US is very big. By land area, it’s 2.5 times bigger than all of the EU – France is smaller than Texas. And spree killings aren’t all that rare in the EU taken as a whole. They are rare events in most individual EU countries but they are also rare in most individual US states.
(Or to turn it around: “Why are spree killings so deadly in France and Norway – what’s wrong with those countries?”)
“I consider the question of whether gun control would work in principle to be orthogonal to the question of whether it is politcally feasible given the 2nd amendment.”
I agree. But people who are pushing gun control have an obvious incentive to argue that there are forms that would work that are consistent with the current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
That may change if the membership of the Court changes enough to change the interpretation.
@TheAncientGeek:
“Americans smoke more cannabis than Dutch people.”
i wrote Amsterdam rather than the Netherlands for a reason.
OK, then. According to the FBI definition (one shooter, 4+ fatalities, any motive), the United States suffered 111 mass shootings between 2009-2013, with an average of 5.0 fatalities per incident. The US population averaged 311.69 million over that period, so 0.07 mass shootings per million people per year.
The total population of the Amsterdam metropolitan area is 1.6 million. If the people of Amsterdam, pot-smoking hippies and otherwise, take up the mass-shooting hobby at American levels, we would expect 0.57 incidents with 2.85 fatalities between 2009-2013.
A quick google shows one mass shooting with six fatalities.
Possibly you should not have chosen Amsterdam as your example. Based on the (very) limited data available, one might conclude that the makers of “Reefer Madness” were onto something and that excessive cannabis use results in a vastly enhanced mass murder rate even in the presence of strict gun control.
The more general lesson is, if you are dealing with something for which “one in a million” is a gross overstatement of the probabilities, you need to A: restrict yourself to sample sizes of a hundred million or more. And B: ask yourself whether or not delving into this subject is really the most productive use of your time.
They are much more common is some places than others, so they are affected by something.
They are still an astonishingly rare event – even in the USA, more rare (on average) than hurricane landfalls, if on the same order of magnitude.
An old game warden of my acquaintance used to say of both hurricanes and bears, that “you can say where they’re likely to be, but you can’t tell ’em where to go.”
In any case, the evidence points strongly away from “what affects them = firearms access”, so I suggest that we put a little more effort into figuring that out, ahead of deciding on a course of action.
True mass shootings (not the 355 number being bandied about) seem to be much more frequent than US hurricane landfall here in the last few years.
I mean, it’s two in the last week, and that isn’t even really surprising.
Four mass shootings according to FBI figures, zero hurricanes I think. Only three died in the Planned Parenthood attack, so it fails to make the grade.
US hurricane landfalls after 2005 have been unusually rare; it’s enough to make one start believing in the gambler’s fallacy.
That is probably true. Mass shooters are probably going to be the least affected. Of those that still can’t get a hold of their favored tool, the dumb ones will switch to knives or cars and the smart ones will switch to bombs.
The assault weapon focus is relatively easy to explain. It is simply an issue of going after the most extreme example first as it is the easiest target. It isn’t about what is most beneficial, but what target is easy and prominent in the minds of the public. Just like if you want more censorship, you don’t go after someone committing minor apostasy, you go after some shock jock or someone with widely unpopular opinions.
Probably the easiest thing we could do to lower the amount of violence (gun violence included) is to end the war on drugs. Go full legalization and switch to a care/rehab model rather than a deny/punish model. The next best thing would be to revamp how we handle people that have been convicted during the punishment and post-punishment phases. A lot of how we treat them now create a self-reinforcing cycle. Of course, both of these options are unpopular with the populace at large.
I’d argue that one of the reasons for my side’s constant success has been not giving in to bad faith argument. The Supreme Court laughs off their briefs, but treats ours seriously because we actually reference case law and legislative history.
Similarly, every “True Statistic” pushed by the other side eventually turns out to be an easily pointed-out lie that hurts their credibility, from “27 times More Likely!” to the latest incident of the entire media copy-pasting propaganda from a kooky trolling subreddit.
I self-converted after immigrating from the UK, just from seeing the available evidence. I suspect much of the american population has done the same.
Meta-meta-commentary: I’m confused by people saying they cannot understand how pro-gun-control people can genuinely think gun control would help curb mass shootings. The pro-control argument here seems obvious. I don’t know if it’s true, and in any case I oppose trying politicization of mass shootings by either faction because they’re statistically insignificant. But it seems weird to me that, as you seem to be saying, you don’t know how to roleplay a gun control advocate who honestly thinks mass shootings strengthen their case.
The argument goes something like this. Mass shooters are rarely career criminals; they’re often law-abiding citizens up until the shooting. The act itself is a psychotic break from normal behavior. Although it is often premeditated and prepared, the preparation can be internalized as violent fantasy and does not by itself cross over easily into criminal behavior. To put it in simpler words, if I’m a bullied person who fantasizes about killing my classmates or coworkers, it’s one thing if I have trivially easy ways to stockpile legal guns at home, and it’s a very different situation if I need to obtain them illegally. It’s naive to pretend that if I “decided” to do a mass shooting, a small thing like getting an illegal gun won’t stop me. Humans don’t work like this. You don’t “decide” until you do it, and even when you do become very sure, that process of becoming sure is very much helped by easy availability of legal guns.
Career criminals often find it easy to get illegal guns (although that ease can also be exaggerated). But mass shooters aren’t career criminals. If they couldn’t buy guns easily, they wouldn’t know how to get them, and if they tried, they’d make mistakes. Suppose I really wanted to get heroin right now, I wouldn’t know how to do it. I don’t have friends that I suspect are dealers. Maybe I try some of my sketchier friends, and one of them is sketchy enough to call the police on me, or whatever. Same thing with getting an illegal gun, only worse.
So much for the “criminals don’t care about laws” argument; now if there’re no legal guns, does it mean there’d be the same amount of mass bombings instead? Seems very doubtful, now you need an actual knowledge of how to make a bomb plus a criminal mindset and an iron precommitment to the plan (you’re BUILDING A BOMB, not just keeping a gun at home, a completely normal thing to do, and engaging in fantasies). Seems reasonable that most mass shooters, especially the frustrated-and-bullied-student types, would just, well, suck it up if they didn’t have guns, rather than graduate to bombs. Maybe you’d have mass stabbings? Probably some (and indeed in places like the UK and Australia they happen), but stabbing is harder to fantasize about, harder to carry out efficiently, seems to require a much higher level of precommitment.
If you’re responding to me specifically, I didn’t mean to imply that I couldn’t understand the opposing view: as I said, it would probably be something like “d’uh, making guns harder to get reduces the probability of shootings.” Maybe an oversimplification, but I think that is the basic argument. I tend to disagree that people desperate enough to open fire on their school are going to just give up if they find one means of slaughter foreclosed to them, but I can certainly understand the argument.
What I, personally, was expressing confusion or annoyance about was the clearcut disconnect between actual tragedies and the proposals we are supposed to adopt in reaction to them: assault weapon bans in response to crimes not committed with assault weapons; gun show bans in response to crimes not committed with guns purchased at gun shows, etc. That is, there is a transparently opportunistic, disingenuous quality to much of the reaction to these tragedies which rubs me the wrong way and makes me less receptive to the gun control message than I would be if it weren’t always trying to ride on the coattails of tragedy.
This doesn’t only happen with gun control; actually, it is how a lot of legislating gets done: interest groups working on an issue for a long time craft proposals and wish lists and policies and bide their time. When a tragedy comes and politicians are scrambling to respond to all their constituents demanding they “do something,” these groups are waiting in the wings to provide their neatly packaged wish lists, all of which were crafted, of course, long before the tragedy actually happened.
I may have misread the degree to which you implied you couldn’t understand the opposing view, sorry (and yes, I was responding to you). But it’s also a situation I encounter frequently enough that I felt compelled to write up what seems to me like a pretty straightforward non-naive pro-control argument. I’m still uncertain from your comment whether you acknowledge this argument as part of the “opposing view”. Consider two exchanges:
A1. D’uh, no legal guns -> no shootings
B1. That’s so naive, someone who wants to shoot up their school will just get an illegal gun or make a bomb.
A2. No legal guns -> way fewer shootings, because here are [reasons] why a typical potential mass-shooter might not get an illegal gun or make a bomb.
B2. Hmm, I acknowledge you have some [reasons], but I disagree that they’re compelling, because [arguments].
So what I find frustrating is when anti-control people say things like: “All I ever hear from pro-control people is A1, but it’s so stupid because B1!”. First, if all you ever hear is A1 and never A2, maybe *you* are in an echo-chamber. Second, why can’t you steelman A1 into A2 yourself, it’s pretty straightforward, if only for the purpose of countering with B2.
(the “you” in the last paragraph is generic and not directed at yourself)
> What I, personally, was expressing confusion or annoyance about was the clearcut disconnect between actual tragedies and the proposals we are supposed to adopt in reaction to them
That’s a good point, it also rubs me the wrong way. I guess the devil’s advocate position here is: we want to get rid of guns eventually, let’s start where we can. But the pro-control faction could certainly be more open and self-aware about this disconnect. “Opportunistic and disingenuous” seems fair.
So what is the targetted, relevant, effective measure you would take to avoid further tragedies?
(Edit: realized you weren’t asking me, slightly edited my answer but left it standing)
Mass shootings are a tiny insignificant blip in homicide statistics, an even smaller one in violent deaths, and indistinguishable from noise in deaths overall. The less time we spent obsessing over them, including trying to create broad policy decisions to address them, the better the outcome is for everyone involved.
But if I still had to answer – how to reduce mass shootings without banning guns? The only thing that comes to mind is some sort of very narrowly targeted ban on publishing in mass media the names of the shooters and the circumstances of the cases. You can’t make it targeted enough to conform to the 1st amendment, but if it’s truly laser-focused and perceived as effective, maybe – maybe – it can survive because no one will want to spent the resources and incur the negative publicity of pursuing a challenge up to SC.
@Anatoly
You may not be able to pass a law prohibiting the publication of the names of shooters, but why news outlets don’t voluntarily stop doing so is a mystery. After all, they routinely refuse to publish the names of rape victims as a matter of policy.
I also tend to agree that the mass shooting thing is primarily a mental health/meme problem, more than an access-to-guns problem. If you have a bunch of super disgruntled, alienated young men with access to the internet, gasoline, and matches, you’re going to have a problem even if they find it more difficult to get their hands on guns.
The fact that the mental health questions always gets massively overshadowed by the gun question is particularly annoying.
Unfortunately, I think the real problem is much, much harder to treat in a “biology is easy, society is hard,” kind of way. Personally, I think our whole system of compulsory k-12 education is alienating, indoctrinating, and unnatural, but no one’s going to talk about changing that, or even about how our society might produce fewer alienated young men (the one time that sort of came up was when that guy who was supposedly interested in MRA killed some women; the idea that the problem could be with anyone other than such young men themselves, however, was never considered).
I think it’s probably some kind of feedback loop.
Media is run by people who are not part of gun culture. Some of them are scared of and repulsed by guns; some of them are sober policy wonks who see the costs of widespread gun ownership but don’t see the benefits, or don’t see it as an integral part of life as a free citizen. Journalism is an anti-gun profession.
So imagine that we start out with mass murders by randomly distributed means. I speculate that the media’s pre-existing anti-gun tendencies mean that they’ll publicize mass shootings more than bombings or arson. I can think of two reasons why this might be. First, mass shootings can be spun as arguments for gun control, which most of the people who control news content would want to argue for anyway. Second, there may be enough people in the media who are sufficiently squicked out on a gut level by guns that a good deal of the people who control news content think mass shootings merit additional reporting as uniquely heinous events compared to stabbing rampages or arson. Evil high-capacity assault clips, etc., but you can’t very well say that about a can of gasoline and some matches. This is how we get to the point where I’ve known about Columbine (as a school shooting–not an attempted school bombing) since we talked about it in 7th grade (public school, too) but I had never heard of the Happy Land fire until someone mentioned it in a gun control debate on SSC. And this publicity, of course, leads to more mass shootings in the usual way.
This has both benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand, as someone pointed out in a previous SSC thread, we’re probably better off in a world where mass murderers use guns than we are in a world where they use explosives or accelerants. On the other hand, this is still a case in which publicity encourages murders that otherwise might not have occurred–and mobilizes gun control advocates to boot. So it’s a real mess.
> You may not be able to pass a law prohibiting the publication of the names of shooters, but why news outlets don’t voluntarily stop doing so is a mystery. After all, they routinely refuse to publish the names of rape victims as a matter of policy.
Because there’s not really a huge amount of demand for information about rape victims. People are fascinated by mass murderers in a way they simply aren’t by victims (of shootings or otherwise).
News outlets don’t really lose anything by protecting the identity of rape victims, and it’s pretty apparent how that can be potentially harmful. On the other hand, if you don’t post a article delving into Elliot Rodger’s history and psychological state, you are going to lose readers to the other news outlets that do. And the connection between news coverage of shooting sprees and shooting sprees themselves is more tenuous and harder to demonstrate clearly.
@Anatoly
“Mass shootings are a tiny insignificant blip in homicide statistics, an even smaller one in violent deaths, and indistinguishable from noise in deaths overall. The less time we spent obsessing over them, including trying to create broad policy decisions to address them, the better the outcome is for everyone involved.”
Why is the outcome better? Because broad policy decisions are never the answer? Because it’s completely lacking benefit, so there is only the cost of the policy? Because the costs of the benefits is too great? Because the benefits are too small?
What I am trying to get at is whether you are coming from a standard or nonstandard position (and if the latter, whether you are applying it consistently).
It’s actually very counterinutitive, very nonstandard, to dismiss statistically minor crimes as statistically minor: the newspapers are full of rare but horrible crimes. It’s also difficult to apply consistently.: for instance,terrorist crimes are generally dwarfed by other sources of fatality, but hardly anyone sees that as a reason for complacency.
“But if I still had to answer – how to reduce mass shootings without banning guns? The only thing that comes to mind is some sort of very narrowly targeted ban on publishing in mass media the names of the shooters and the circumstances of the cases.”
That would have been my guess. But why not combine it with GC?
@TheAncientGeek: Broad policy decisions are never the answer to narrow problems, because the broad unintended consequences will dwarf the narrow positive effect you are trying to achieve.
And that’s assuming that you understand what you are trying to achieve. As you note, it is counterintuitive to dismiss statistically rare crimes as statistically rare; we have been trained by the news media (and the news media trained by us) to greatly exaggerate the perceived importance of such crimes. That is the problem. Not the fact that fourteen people died in San Bernardino last week or maybe a hundred last year if we define “mass shooting” broadly enough. Children drowning in backyard swimming pools is a bigger problem than that by far, and I haven’t seen any broad policy decisions for e.g. filling in all the pools.
The problem, is that about a hundred million people are terrified. That’s a real problem. But there’s almost certainly no magic about the word “gun”, or the underlying physics, that causes this terror. There’s lots of stuff scarier than guns, and lots more that can be made scary by an expert propagandist. We have trained the media to deliver us a regular dose of Very Scary Stories about something, doesn’t matter what, and the media has trained us to be Very Scared, and aside from the advertisers who pay for all this, nobody benefits.
That’s the problem. Anatoly is on the right track for a solution, if you want one.
If, along the way, you invent a magic Continental Gun Evaporator that makes every firearm in North America vanish, that’s a broad policy decision that doesn’t even address the thing you are trying to achieve. We will instead get Very Scary Stories about Amazon delivery drones crashing into crowds, and drug-resistant infections in hospitals, and imminent economic collapse, and about mass murderers burning hundreds of innocent people alive. The statistically insignificant “mass shooting” blip in mortality statistics vanishes, other deaths increase a bit, and a hundred million people are still terrified.
@John Schilling
I’m not sure about that. I think there is something inherently frightening about the idea of a device whose entire purpose is killing people. In my country, where gun control is fairly stringent and there is effectively no gun culture, it is taken completely for granted by people all across the political spectrum that guns are awful and terrible and that the US is totally bonkers for allowing people to have them. I suspect that in a modern country without a preexisting gun culture, it is very hard to get people to accept guns as something that a regular, law-abiding citizen might ever be permitted to own – let alone want to own.
Perhaps, but that isn’t quite the core issue here. Lots of things are perceived as “awful”, “bonkers”, “never permitted”, and “nobody would even want to…”, not just guns. But what we’re interested in here isn’t “awful”, or “bonkers”, or any of that. What we’re interested in here, is what’s Terrifying. And that’s not the same thing. People may think that recreational drug use, or sex with thirteen-year-old children, or any number of other controversial things, are perfectly awful, etc, without being terrified of them. And people can think that guns are awful without being terrified of them, in most any other context. In a week where a couple of hundred people are shot dead by ordinary common criminals, the latest celebrity sex scandal is headline news and everyone is titillated. Fourteen people are killed by a couple of terrorist with guns, that’s headline news and everyone is terrified.
So it’s more than just the guns. And it’s not necessarily the guns. Terrorists are, by and large, experts in the art of terrifying people. And sometimes they use guns, and sometimes they use military high explosives, and sometimes they use fertilizer bombs, and sometimes they use swords, and sometimes they use airliners, and people are terrified. Regardless of the awfulness, bonkerosity, permitted status, or desirability of the weapon du jour. Sometimes terrorists don’t even kill people; kidnapping and hostage-taking are old staples of the trade. There is no magic to guns.
Terrifying = Guns, doesn’t even begin to cover what’s going on. And when you finish expending all of your political capital trying to arrange strict gun control in the United States, even if you miraculously succeed and all the guns go away, you’ll still have the terror. You just won’t be able to do anything about it because nobody will trust you any more. And that’s going to make it even more terrifying.
@JohnSchilling
“Broad policy decisions are never the answer to narrow problems, because the broad unintended consequences will dwarf the narrow positive effect you are trying to achieve.”
Never? Even if there is no targeted alternative? “Don’t use broad policy” and “Don’t use broad policy when a more targeted approach is available” mean different things.
Broad policy decisions often are the answer used, in practice. Speed limits, ages of consent and so on. Perhaps because targeted alternatives are often lacking.
And unintended consequences are often quite bearable. Speed limits affect a lot of people, but not very drastically…what’s the inconvenience of driving 5mph slower compared to lives saved? The wrong way to do a cost benefit analysis is to just count the number of people inconvenienced: the right way is to consider the number of people inconvenienced, and the AMOUNT of inconvenience, and what is gained.
“And that’s assuming that you understand what you are trying to achieve.”
A life saved is a life saved, surely.
” As you note, it is counterintuitive to dismiss statistically rare crimes as statistically rare; we have been trained by the news media (and the news media trained by us) to greatly exaggerate the perceived importance of such crimes. ”
The second sentence isn’t what I said, and doesn’t follow from the first.
We don’t know what the objective importance of anything is: all we have is competing ethical theories.
You are complaining that the media is causing people to value things in some incorrect way..incorrect according to your favoured theory of value.
I was pointing out that even absent mass media, people never valued things according to your theory. Your theory basically assumes that body counts matter, and that’s it. But everyone’s intuitions include other factors, notably how difficult inevitable or easy-to-fix something is, how intentional it is, and how it is likely o grow if left unchecked.. Your theory borrows the intuition that death is bad — remember, we don’t have value-ometers that can measure these things directly — and neglects the other two intuitions.
And spree shootings are intentional, and they seem fixable, because the rate seems to be systematically varying something. So it’s business-as-normal that people focus on them.
“That is the problem. Not the fact that fourteen people died in San Bernardino last week or maybe a hundred last year if we define “mass shooting” broadly enough. Children drowning in backyard swimming pools is a bigger problem than that by far, and I haven’t seen any broad policy decisions for e.g. filling in all the pools.”
I haven’t seen advocating complacency about terrorism on the grounds that terrorism has a negligible effect compared to smoking.
Does anyone really believe the swimming pool argument?
“The problem, is that about a hundred million people are terrified. That’s a real problem. But there’s almost certainly no magic about the word “gun”, or the underlying physics, that causes this terror. There’s lots of stuff scarier than guns, and lots more that can be made scary by an expert propagandist. We have trained the media to deliver us a regular dose of Very Scary Stories about something, doesn’t matter what, and the media has trained us to be Very Scared, and aside from the advertisers who pay for all this, nobody benefits.”
You haven’t demonstrated that people have been whipped into an irrational panic, because you haven’t disproved the theory, outlined above, that their concerns are rational given their actual values and intuitions. You need to refute your opponents’ strongest argument.
“That’s the problem. Anatoly is on the right track for a solution, if you want one.”
Uh-huh. You have evidence that will work? You have evidence that that will work for the wider problem , such as they US’s high levels of gun violence, absent spree shootings? Your real preference for this is based on its efficiency on reducing body counts, and not on its allowing you to keep your guns?
Do you support Brady/NICS as a targeted check?
“If, along the way, you invent a magic Continental Gun Evaporator that makes every firearm in North America vanish, that’s a broad policy decision that doesn’t even address the thing you are trying to achieve.”
It absolutely would, since I am trying to archive fewer dead bodies, and 100% substitution is very unlikely to occur.
A life saved us a life saved.
“The statistically insignificant “mass shooting” blip in mortality statistics vanishes, other deaths increase a bit”
Why? Since that is an extraordinary claim, and you have based your whole argument on it, I think it behoves you to to provide a nonzero amount of support for it. You are aware are you not, that there are countries where the spree shooting rate is much lower AND the non-spree shooting rate is much lower AND the general murder rate is much lower. Whatever your mysterious Law of the Constancy of Carnage is supposed
to be, it doesn’t operate across national borders. Or time.
Consider medicine. We now have longer lives and less disease. We did that by addressing both the big killers, and the smaller less significant diseases. No law of constant death rate came into force. If we had neglected the smaller diseases and only gone for the big killers, we would still have longer lives and less diseases … but not so much. The thing about statistically insignificant things it that they can aggregate into statistically significant things. A life saved is a life saved. The other thing about statistically insignificant things is that they are significant enough when they affect you.
But we didn’t follow your advice about ignoring statistically minor things, because no one thinks that way, and no-one should.
“. I suspect that in a modern country without a preexisting gun culture, it is very hard to get people to accept guns as something that a regular, law-abiding citizen might ever be permitted to own – let alone want to own.”
Consider introducing the idea that the ordinary citizen could own nukes.
“Terrifying = Guns, doesn’t even begin to cover what’s going on. And when you finish expending all of your political capital trying to arrange strict gun control in the United States, even if you miraculously succeed and all the guns go away, you’ll still have the terror. You just won’t be able to do anything about it because nobody will trust you any more. And that’s going to make it even more terrifying.”
You care about terror. I care about dead bodies with holes in them.
And what happens when, as predicted by the pro-gun side, bodies with holes in them fail to stop appearing?
Let me answer that: you double down and try restricting blades, and katanas (not a joke, the UK has specifically banned “samurai swords”) and anything else you can think of to “do something” in the blind hope that you can legislate criminals into non-violence.
Meanwhile you lose the deterrent effects of an armed populace – like having fewer housebreakings as opposed to burglaries, fewer armed hijackings, fewer confrontational crimes in general as opposed to property crimes. You lose the economic benefits of the gun industry, in an economy where jobs disappearing is already an issue.
Most of all, you lose credibility. Gun control is a non-starter because people have more information available to them, and coming out of a period of restriction, it’s not hard to tell that “common sense gun control” didn’t achieve squat.
In the end, you’ve squandered your political capital for a slim hope based on “it has to be something, and I don’t like guns so it’s that”.
@Leit
“And what happens when, as predicted by the pro-gun side, bodies with holes in them fail to stop appearing?
You can give up, or you can do more. The US’s gun laws are pretty quarter-hearted compared to some countries.
The UK actually has much more restrictive laws, and lower rates of gun violence and murde in general, so that’s the argument in favour of doing more.
“Let me answer that: you double down and try restricting blades, and katanas (not a joke, the UK has specifically banned “samurai swords”) and anything else you can think of to “do something” in the blind hope that you can legislate criminals into non-violence.”
Restricting bladed weapons makes rational sense. They can be used to kill people (a british MP was killed by one afew years ago), and banning them inconveniences very few people. (That’s a characterisitc of weapons ingernal. Weapons are mostly used to defend against other weapons, so once you are into the virtuous, downward spiral, there is less and less need for them, asnd so less and less incovenience in restricting them).
Of course you can’t legislate criminals into 100% nonviolence, but it is blatant fallacy of grey to assume that only a flat zero level of violence is acceptable. Rates of violence and kinds of violence are important. Replacing gun violence with knife violence leads to fewer fatalities because knives are a less effective weapon. Ditto replacing knife violence with fist violence.
“Meanwhile you lose the deterrent effects of an armed populace – like having fewer housebreakings as opposed to burglaries, fewer armed hijackings, fewer confrontational crimes in general as opposed to property crimes. ”
You do lose the deterrent affect, and that is a nett plus. It makes rational sense to trade burglaries for murders. Anybody would rather be burgled than shot if given a straight choice. You get burgled, you claim on the insurance, life carries on. You get shot, it doens’t.
A well ordered civilian militia is not a bad idea. Trying to achieve a well ordered milita by letting everyone buy weapons, and then hoping that the good eggs will be able to outgun the bad, is not an efficient route to obtaining one, to put it mildly.
“You lose the economic benefits of the gun industry, in an economy where jobs disappearing is already an issue.”
Really? You went there?
“Most of all, you lose credibility. Gun control is a non-starter because people have more information available to them, and coming out of a period of restriction, it’s not hard to tell that “common sense gun control” didn’t achieve squat.”
The US has never had common sense control. Common sense would a preseumption against the right to purchase.
That might constitute an argument in favor of doing more if the lower rates of gun violence and murder in general in the UK didn’t substantially pre-date the more restrictive laws, and if the gap in those metrics between the US and the UK hadn’t somewhat narrowed since those stricter laws were put in place.
Looking at US states individually, Vermont is one of the very least restrictive in terms of gun laws and its homicide rate is slightly below the rate for the UK. Does that mean the UK should change its laws to be more like Vermont?
Just to clarify, if I’m one of the people you are responding to. I didn’t say no effect. I said there would be a relatively weak effect. Namely, to be effective against mass shooters the gun control needed would have to be close to a total ban. You are dealing with people who foreplan (meaning that waiting times are out), and have no criminal history or other risk factors (meaning that background checks are useless). Any thing that excludes them from the legal gun market would have to strike broadly.
@ Theo Jones
You are dealing with people who foreplan (meaning that waiting times are out), and have no criminal history or other risk factors (meaning that background checks are useless).
Risk factor of being a young male loser already under observation as a scary nutjob: Tucson, Virginia Tech, EliotRodger (or having one of them in the same house: Newtown). Young male loser ordering suspicious amounts of armament and explosives: Aurora. (I’d have to look up Columbine and Roseburg to see how scary those young male losers were known to be.)
Edit: See wikipedia on
Umpqua_Community_College_shooting#Perpetrator
and
Eric_Harris_and_Dylan_Klebold#Journals_and_investigation
Same profile as the ones who would wear exploding shoes on airplanes, or bomb a marathon, or try to bomb a Christmas tree.
Wikipedia on Aurora, Tucson, Virginia Tech perpetrators:
(Re Aurora/Batman)
James_Holmes_(mass_murderer)#Personal_life
2011_Tucson_shooting#Perpetrator
Virginia_Tech_shooting#Perpetrator
But it seems weird to me that, as you seem to be saying, you don’t know how to roleplay a gun control advocate who honestly thinks mass shootings strengthen their case.
I strongly applaud the commitment to exercising mental stretching (or just, y’know, talking to someone else) to steelman the arguments of opponents.
(I have more object-level quibbles with the argument that the current anti-gun proposals will have any measurable impact on terror attacks, mass killings, or the over all US homicide rate…but the first two rest on rare incident measurement and the second on other factors.)
I mostly just wanted to post that I support people trying to figure out why other people disagree with them. On an intellectual level, it’s just a wee bit sexy.
It’s easy to understand why pro-gun-control people would think gun control would curb mass shootings. It’s somewhat harder to see how they can believe _particular proposed measures_ would do so. For instance, suppose it’s true that mass shooters tend not to be career criminals. If that’s so, it also means they’ll pass background checks. So, any laws based on “stricter background checks” simply won’t work unless it also prevents people who will never become mass shooters from buying guns.
The NYT suggestion about banning certain calibers is even more unreasonable when it comes to mass shootings; a .223 Remington hunting round fired from a 7615 Ranch Carbine will kill you just as dead as a 5.56mm NATO military round fired from an AR-15. I see no reason a mass shooter would care that they couldn’t use a particular round, or a particular gun.
Basically, if you want to prevent shootings from people whose first crime is that shooting, nothing short of a gun ban will work… and that should be obvious if not immediately, at least after being pointed out.
I’d argue that it could cause a trivial inconvenience which might be enough to reduce them having them (maybe indirectly; inconvenience might prevent someone from getting a gun they weren’t planning to use, and then not having it would prevent them from using it). This isn’t as absurd as it sounds – Scott’s commented on how chinese people can easily bypass the firewall if they bother but few do, for example, and pro-abortion people claim that similar measures that make abortion inconvenient (e.g. you have to drive an extra hour/drive twice) reduce the number of abortions.
The other claim is that banning certain kind of bullets might make things harder for mass shooters but not for “legitimate shooters”, based on the assumption that military-grade weapons are made to be more effective at killing large numbers of people, while “legitimate shooters” would only have to deal with one gunman. This doesn’t make sense if your principles are to allow guns unless there’s strong evidence that you shouldn’t, but if you don’t have any preference towards allowing guns, you can say that it would, on average, do slightly more good than harm (how people think this tiny potential benefit’s worth the effort of pushing politically is beyond me, though).
One thing I wish people would understand is that even trivial restrictions of something are going to reduce its consumption and banning it will significantly reduce it. My political pet peeve is people saying “people are just going to do it whether the government bans it or not so we should just have it be legal” as if that was a slam dunk argument.
Trivial restrictions reduce use, but not necessarily misuse. The number of mass shootings is small compared to the number of guns, and it’s not clear at all that a small or large reduction in the number of guns would affect the number of mass shootings.
Economically, restrictions raise the supply curve and thus increase the market price and reduce the number of consumers. But there’s good reason to believe that misusers are relatively insensitive to price.
“based on the assumption that military-grade weapons are made to be more effective at killing large numbers of people, while “legitimate shooters” would only have to deal with one gunman”
This assumption is simply wrong, at least when considering semi-automatic “assault weapons” usually being demonized. The two calibers I mentioned — .223 Remington and 5.56 NATO — are interchangeable. They’re based on an older hunting round. The 7615 is a pump action rifle slower than a (semi-automatic) AR-15, but not much slower, and less likely to jam. It’ll kill you just as dead. If you want an even closer comparison, the Remington R-15 “varmint hunting” rifle is basically an AR-15 that’s not black. It’s hard to see how to distinguish this hunting rifle from a “military grade” weapon.
Basically any rifle good for killing things somewhat smaller than a human is also going to be pretty good at killing humans. A rifle good at killing game roughly the same size as a human (e.g. whitetail deer) is going to be really good at killing humans.
Trivial inconveniences “reduce consumption” at the margin, by dissuading ambivalent consumers. Mass murderers are not ambivalent about having powerful weapons; we have seen them go to extraordinary lengths to acquire powerful weapons.
The person who is in the right place at the right time to stop a mass shooter, was probably a marginal and ambivalent gun owner up to that point. Inconvenience her, and she’ll probably not have a gun when we’d really prefer she did.
You need more that an argument against trivial restrictions to make an anti-anti-gun argument.
No, all I need is to point out that you haven’t made an overwhelmingly compelling case for the anti-gun argument, which is what it takes to actually win in the real world. I thought it might be helpful to explain some of the relatively trivial stuff as well, and maybe other people will find it helpful even if you don’t.
> No, all I need is to point out that you haven’t made an overwhelmingly compelling case for the anti-gun argument, which is what it takes to actually win in the real world.
No, not in the least. Nobody made an overwhelming apriori argument that the speed limit should be 55, or 60, or 70. There’s a convincing argument that there should be a speed limit plus empirical tweaking to get a broadly acceptable level.
There’s no Constitutional Right to Drive Cars Fast in the United States, and at the time the national speed limit was enacted there was no organized constituency to oppose it, no general distrust of speed limits. Those things make a big difference in what, practically, you need to have to win a legislative battle.
And to reenact a national speed limit, or to dial any state’s speed limit down to 55 mph, or to rigorously enforce any speed limit, here and now in the face of organized opposition from the AAA and others, you would need to make an overwhelmingly compelling case.
@TheAncientGeek
I think you might be somewhat cheating by characterizing the anti gun control argument as ‘no restrictions whatsoever’. Actually, ‘no restrictions whatsoever’ would include the right to own any weapon whatsoever, up to and including nuclear bombs. So the argument for allowing guns implicitly involves drawing a line somewhere after guns but before nukes. Nobody is saying there shouldn’t be a limit; what they are talking about is exactly the tweaking to get an acceptable level that you refer to.
@Anonymous
has there ever been a piece of GC legislation that the NRA didn’t oppose?
@JohnShcilling
“There’s no Constitutional Right to Drive Cars Fast in the United States, ”
Is falling back on the second amendment an admission that there is no other argument for gun rights?
Would you consider someone invoking the first amendment to be an admission that they see no compelling reason to value free expression?
A number arguments and a fair bit of evidence has been offered to show that Gun Control is, at best, unlikely to bring about the results that it’s advocates say. As such what reason is there to support gun control beyond screwing with the out-group because they are the out-group?
@TheAncientGeek
The NRA favored and even helped WRITE much of the existing US GC legislation prior to about the 1980s.
Here’s Salon on that. (Warning: it’s Salon, so the only explanation they can think of for why the NRA switched tactics is a “Paranoid Libertarians’ Hostile Takeover”. 🙂 )
Has there ever been a piece of GC legislation the NRA didn’t water down?
> or instance, suppose it’s true that mass shooters tend not to be career criminals. If that’s so, it also means they’ll pass background checks. So, any laws based on “stricter background checks” simply won’t work unless it also prevents people who will never become mass shooters from buying guns.
You slid from “most” (tend not to) to “all” (simply won’t work) in that paragraph. There is evidence that a background check would have prevented at least one shooter, had it actually been applied:-
http://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-director-background-check-system-failed-allowing-charleston/story?id=32358311
I think in this thread it’s accepted (if only for the sake of argument) that mass shooters who are career criminals can obtain guns (illegally) despite background checks, so I was only addressing the other case, of mass shooters who are not career criminals.
As for Roof, I’m unconvinced by the FBIs post facto claim that he shouldn’t have passed a background check. The regs state
“A person may be an unlawful current user of a controlled substance even though the substance is not being used at the precise time the person seeks to acquire a firearm or receives or possesses a firearm. An inference of current use may be drawn from evidence of a recent use or possession of a controlled substance or a pattern of use or possession that reasonably covers the present time, e.g., a conviction for use or possession of a controlled substance within the past year; multiple arrests for such offenses within the past 5 years if the most recent arrest occurred within the past year; or persons found through a drug test to use a controlled substance unlawfully, provided that the test was administered within the past year.”
Roof was not convicted of the drug use, there was only the single arrest as far as I know. Some news reports say Roof admitted to use of the drug, but the police report only says he admitted to knowing possession.
Volokh goes into it in some detail here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/07/11/dylann-roof-apparently-had-not-been-arrested-for-a-felony-a-month-before-he-went-through-a-gun-purchase-background-check/
“As for Roof, I’m unconvinced by the FBIs post facto claim that he shouldn’t have passed a background check. [ewtc etc tc]”
And that generalises into a point that background checks could never possibly work?
One possibility that you don’t seem to be taking into account is arson. Gasoline and matches are extremely easy to obtain, and under the right circumstances fires can kill a lot of people. A study of mass murders in the US during the 20th century found that the average mass murder with guns killed about 5 people, the average mass murder with fire killed about 7 people, and the average mass murder with explosives killed about 22 people. There is one case where a man wanted to carry out a mass shooting, wasn’t able to obtain a gun, set the target building on fire instead, and killed 87 people – which is likely more people than he would have killed in a mass shooting.
Mass shooters are rarely career criminals; they’re often law-abiding citizens up until the shooting. The act itself is a psychotic break from normal behavior.
While I have no trouble understanding that this belief is often sincerely held and may inform a belief in the utility of gun control, it is worth noting that it isn’t actually true. Well, maybe pedantically true depending on your definition of “often” and “law-abiding” – if you live in a free state where everything that doesn’t involve actually killing your neighbors is OK with the law, then you’re a law-abiding citizen right up until the shooting.
But, empirically, most mass shootings are preceded by an extensive period of preparation and planning. For psychological reasons as well as material, but it simply isn’t the case that the typical mass shooter is a normal, mentally healthy, not-planning-to-murder-anyone citizen right up until some sudden psychotic break causes them to grab whatever weapon is closest to hand and go out killing. If it takes months of effort to figure out how to buy or make an illegal gun, or that homemade bombs and flamethrowers are more effective than guns, that’s what’s going to happen.
Because almost always, once we get past the neighbors talking to the TV cameraman and saying “Gosh, he seemed like a perfectly normal, quiet guy to me” and the police start looking seriously at the case, that’s what we find actually did happen.
Is there a strict definition of “mass shooting”? If any shooting with multiple victims qualifies, then the situation where someone with no criminal record shoots somewhere up with an AR-15 or whatever is probably a minority of mass shootings. It’s not that unusual that people involved in some other sort of crime shoot more than one person at a time.
Around half of the “300-400 mass shootings” the media went on about had 0 fatalities. There’s no strict definition other than the FBI’s.
There are a variety of different definitions. The one popular with people who want to claim large numbers is something like “a shooting incident in which at least four people, counting the perpetrator, are killed or injured.”
Not surprisingly, different definitions support different claims. If your measure is deaths per capita, Norway comes out considerably higher than the U.S.
@ David Friedman
If your measure is deaths per capita, Norway comes out considerably higher than the U.S.
Norway, uh-huh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik
Yeah, I’ll bet that’s Friedman’s point–using the average like media outlets pushing an agenda have been doing is disingenuous.
My point was that there isn’t a natural definition, and that one can select definitions to support more or less whatever one’s political position is.
The problem with the Norway case is that Norway is a small country. If you did the corresponding calculation for U.S. states, the high per capita figure would be a lot higher than when you do it for the whole country. Alternatively, the Brevik numbers look less striking if you assign them to Europe rather than to Norway.
The claim that this is a uniquely U.S. problem is obviously nonsense. Whether it is a much bigger problem in the U.S. than elsewhere depends, so far as I can tell, on how you define what you are measuring.
> but they never make an argument about why gun control would have prevented the specific tragedy that just happened.
Not even this one?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-director-background-check-system-failed-allowing-charleston/story?id=32358311
> but they never make an argument about why gun control would have prevented the specific tragedy that just happened.
Or the Argument from Other Countries?
> but they never make an argument about why gun control would have prevented the specific tragedy that just happened.
And the pro-gun side never explain why complacency is an acceptable answer to attacks on US citizens by US citizens, but not to attacks on US citizens by foreigners.
That shows (assuming you take the FBI guy’s word for it) that the background check failed. Presumably if it had worked properly and caught the guy he wouldn’t have been able to buy a gun.
That doesn’t count as “gun control would have prevented it” because in that context “gun control” means new laws, not enforcing existing laws properly. If anything, showing that this could have been prevented by enforcing an existing law shows that we *don’t* need new laws to limit guns.
“Through a database known as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System — or “NICS” — the FBI performs background checks for those looking to buy weapons from dealers in 30 states, including South Carolina”
And the other 20?
It clearly doesn’t count as “gun control would have prevented the case for which gun control is being invoked”.
Not sure where/when your information comes from, but background checks are run by all FFLs (gun dealers) on all firearms sales.
Some states run their own NICS program, in which case the FFL contacts the state, who is the point of contact to NICS. Perhaps that’s the “20” you’re seeing? But NICS checks are a federal mandate on all FFL sales, regardless of state.
The only gun sales not subject to background check are private sales between individuals, e.g. at a gun show. Even those only apply to in-person transfers in the same state. All interstate sales or sales involving shipment of a gun must pass through at least one FFL, with the associated background check.
It’s still a felony to sell or otherwise provide a firearm to a prohibited person all 50 states. Even in the gun-show case you’d be hard pressed to find an “above the board” seller who isn’t going to do a background check or want you to sign bunch of paperwork simply for CYA purposes.
How about defining “gun control” as “default to sale-not-permitted” if the background check doesn’t come through in time?
Yes, that’s a sensible tweak. A few other tweaks: a buyer does not pass a background check unless all persons in the household also pass (Newtown). Slightly more complicated: ‘gun control laws’ include some teeth so information is followed up on (Tucson, EliotRodger). Amazon etc should report sales of excessive amount of armament and explosives to an individual (Aurora).
If we go that route the anti-gun side will simply defund or otherwise sabotage the background check system to ensure that no sails are ever made, thus achieving a de-facto ban.
The pro-gun side would have to be rather dense to leave themselves open to such an obvious line of attack.
That’s poisoning the well. Any piece of legilsation, however reasonable or moderate, could be seen as the prelude to an almighty conspiracy, if you are paranoid enough. However, since it is not a reasonable objection, it seems there are no reasonable objections.
“And the pro-gun side never explain why complacency is an acceptable answer to attacks on US citizens by US citizens, but not to attacks on US citizens by foreigners.”
Because in general we don’t believe that, but we don’t all agree on what the appropriate measures are; there’s no single pro-gun answer. We also don’t always know the answer, but it’s possible to not know a good answer and still oppose a proposed bad one; to reject that is to accept the politician’s fallacy (we must do something / this is something / therefore we must do it).
The only case I’ve seen complacency considered a good answer is gang violence; there are a fair number of people who don’t consider criminals killing criminals to be a problem worth dealing with.
“Because in general we don’t believe that,”
Yeah, I actually figured out that the not-saying was the result of the not-believing. The issues are whether the the pro gun people are running off a set of consistent principles, and, if so, whether those are their stated principles.
“. We also don’t always know the answer, but it’s possible to not know a good answer and still oppose a proposed bad one; to reject that is to accept the politician’s fallacy (we must do something / this is something / therefore we must do it).”
I’m aware that pro-gun people vary. I’m only concerned with the subset who propose the Swimming Pool arguments, because as far as I can see, the subset of Swimming Poolers who adopt it as a consistent principle that informs all their decision making has zero members.
“The only case I’ve seen complacency considered a good answer is gang violence; there are a fair number of people who don’t consider criminals killing criminals to be a problem worth dealing with.”
The point is that complacency about a very wide range of issues would follow from the Swimming Pool principle, if anyone believed in it sincerely and consistently, which they clearly don’t.
Have you ever seen a truly honest and convincing Argument from Other Countries? The attempts I’ve seen generally boil down to the fact that for any plausible policy X and positive outcome Y you care to name, somewhere in the world you can find a country which has both X and Y. If you then find an excuse to exclude from your training set all the cases of X and not-Y and all the cases in which switching to X was followed by Y getting worse and all the cases where the positive outcome Y pre-dates the institution of policy X, you can pretend that X reliably causes Y and therefore we should do X.
I’ll bite that bullet: I think we’d be a lot better off applying more complacency in both circumstances. Ill-considered overreaction often does far more harm than the original event. That applies when over-reacting to “mass shootings”; it also applies when overreacting to attacks on US citizens by foreigners, up to and including 9/11. And it applies for the exact same reason: when something extremely unusual and extremely terrible happens, we collectively lose our shit and demand that the people in charge do something about it. They don’t actually know anything useful to do but they have to appear to be doing something so they look at whatever dumb legislative ideas they had lying around that were previously thought too stupid to enact, and decide to enact them anyway. Which is how we got saddled with the Patriot Act, the Gun-Free Schools Act, and a never-ending War On {various things}.
I disagree with your core assumption. When Dylan Roof shot up a black church, the instant reaction was not to talk about gun control, but to take White America to task, and censor Confederate historical monuments just to be on the safe side. When Gabriel Giffords was shot, we zeroed in on the clear inspiration behind that act: Sarah Palin, who recklessly spoke of politics using military words like “campaign.” A week or two ago when there was a shooting near a Planned Parenthood, the reaction was to blame pro-lifers, since obviously that ideology caused it.
The problem with the latest shooting is that the motives behind it are a complete mystery. There’s clearly no ideology to blame, so we must reach for the only lever left to us: gun control.
The motives behind it aren’t a complete mystery. “Radical Islam” is a well known motive that lots of people would understand if the media bothered to mention it somewhere in a paragraph that isn’t at the bottom of the article. It’s even an ideology, so there is an ideology to blame.
Of course, although there is an ideology to blame, there isn’t an ideology to blame that fits the narrative.
He was clearly being sarcastic.
I think you’ve been mildly trolled… all the examples are wrong, not just the last one which efficiently outlines an elephant-shaped* blind spot in the room.
*Or perhaps another shape that you risk your life drawing.
I’m just a man passing out blank pamphlets. Why bother filling them out? It’s so obvious!
Very witty, but maybe it’s worth mentioning the following things.
1. Shortly before shooting up a black church, Dylann Roof wrote up a white-supremacist manifesto expressing his intention to “go into the ghetto and fight”, explaining that he was motivated by high rates of black-on-white crime, listing his grievances against a succession of non-white racial groups, etc., etc., etc. I doubt that removing Confederate flags from state buildings will do much to stop such incidents (nor, so far as I can tell, was that ever the point of doing so), but if you’re suggesting there was any real doubt about this being a race-motivated incident then you’re out of your tree.
2. The complaint about Sarah Palin was not, oddly enough, that she had used the word “campaign”. It was that she had put out a map showing what were obviously intended as rifle crosshairs over various legislators’ locations (including Giffords’) and promoted it with the words “Don’t retreat, instead — RELOAD!”. My impression, though, is that scarcely anyone claimed that Palin was actually to blame; just that promoting a view of politics as armed battle makes that kind of thing more likely.
3. The shooting was not merely “near a Planned Parenthood”. The killer didn’t stay in one place, but a substantial part of the attack took place in a Planned Parenthood clinic. When police talked to the killer immediately after, he is known to have complained about “baby parts”, an obvious reference to the anti-PP videos that were circulated earlier this year. He has attacked a PP clinic before (but in a much lower-key way — he glued up its door locks) and is on record as calling violent anti-abortion activists heroes. He may have had other motives too, he may just be nuts, but if you think there’s any doubt whether he was motivated by “pro-life” views then again I think you’re out of your tree.
So. By all means be as sarcastic as you like if you see people making out that the San Bernardino killings were random unmotivated actions for which there’s no explanation to be found. But enough already with the pretence that it was unreasonable to portray those other guys as motivated by race, anti-Democrat politics, and religious anti-abortionism. They very plainly were.
Are people assuming that “caused by ideology” and “caused by ready availability of guns” are mutually exclusive?
TheAncientGreek is opposed to the arming of private citizens. Just noticed the irony 😉
The iony.
True enough – but given the quality of American political discourse, it has a lot of competition.
Is there usually cuddling at these rationalist parties?
Cuddling is a prohibited topic.
***You have been banned for 1 month***
There is cuddling at some house parties, but I would be very surprised if there was any at the Reasonable New York party (which is not actually rationalist, just some other people taking advantage of the Solstice). California I still have no idea what the party/meetup schedule looks like.
I want to know whether same-sex couples who are married (or long-term cohabiting) try to start families using adoption, IVF, or surrogacy as often as opposite-sex-but-infertile couples who are married (or long-term cohabiting) try to start families using adoption, surrogacy, or fertility treatments. Actually I want to know the exact rates of each. So far the numbers don’t seem to be anywhere in one place.
Can anyone point me to reliable sources for all the relevant stats I’ll need to get an answer?
I think you can find it in the American Community Survey microdata files for the USA anyhow. That’s where the granularity by variable that you would need would be located.
But I can tell you right now that the answer is, no, SS couples do not try to start families as often as infertile OS couples. I can’t give exact rates, but I can tell you that just doing a per capita comparison (all SS couples who do this against all SS couples vs all infertile OS couples who do this against all OS couples), the OS couples do it way more often. There’s only about 100k SS couples with children total, most of them lesbian.
Here is a good starting point for American data, in any case.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/samesex/data/acs.html
That’s my hunch too, and I actually did a preliminary calculation using gov’t numbers for the relevant infertility and overall adoption stats while using numbers from gay websites for the stats on gay couples and gay adoption rates (to ensure I wasn’t being unfair), plus Pew data for number of gay married couples. I got about 18% adoption for married/infertile OS couples and about 16% adoption for married SS couples. I expected the first number to be higher and the second number to be lower, and then thinking more about it I realized I probably left out some data that I needed, and might have not done the formula right anyway.
Some other problems with the comparison:
– couples might think marriage is necessary for adoption (even though this was only true in 2 states over the last 15 years) and thus gay couples in states without legal gay marriage might not have adopted even though they wanted to, but of course if we include ALL gay couples then the figure will be incredibly low since this would include just couples who date and report themselves as “in a relationship” when a survey gets taken.
– including stats about fertility treatment was problematic because a) it’s very complicated, what with all the different types of fertility treatment available to either men or women, and b) it’s often not broken down very well.
– a significant number of gay households have kids from previous marriages (go figure), complicating those stats.
If it helps, many IVF statistics are probably screwed up by the fact that folks are going out of the country to evade regulations, at least in Europe-I’m not sure about the US.
December 12 is the feast of our lady of Guadalupe so if you’re going to the meet up bring Mexican food!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe
Two things people here might enjoy: Economics paper analyzing the effects of the destruction of the death stars and the fall of the empire (which raises the theory that Palpatine built the death stars to assure that, should he be defeated, the galaxy would go into economic collapse, in order to intimidate the rebellion), here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.09054v1.pdf
Also, this analysis of how maximizing her daughters’ average marriage utility actually meant cinderella’s stepmother neglecting her in favour of her sisters actually was the optimal strategy: http://econpapers.repec.org/article/ucpjpolec/v_3a100_3ay_3a1992_3ai_3a2_3ap_3a430-32.htm
In a cashless economy, where current account bank deposits are money, it would be impossible for a bank to default on its payments to depositors. (Because the fact that the numbers are written down means that they are there.)
But if it’s impossible not to default on a debt, doesn’t that make money effectively meaningless (since you could always reliably go into arbitrarily large debt to pay for stuff, so you lose the concept of not being able to afford things)?
Well… it’s not as if there is some *thing*… like a piece of gold… that they can’t get hold of, so if you have the bank default on deposits, that must simply be some kind of administrative mechanism.
Is that the best way to prevent the creation of too much money? I think regulation/legal restrictions would probably be better – alternatively just allow inflation – it’ll sort itself out.
Wait a minute:
If bank A records that depositor D1 has $X in their account,
(but it recently arbitrarily doubled D1’s balance from $X/2 to $X)
what says that if depositor D1 writes a check to depositor D2 in bank B,
say for $3X/4, that bank B is going to honor that check?
http://gendal.me/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/
Bank B will honour the check (create a deposit) because they will gain a corresponding deposit at bank A. So, the act of transferring money becomes an act of money creation.
Alternatively, regulate through some kind of central bank system.
Sounds like an argument against average utility. Maximizing average utility with lots of inequality can be bad.
I thought he built the Death Stars to zap the Yuuzhan Vong and their planet sized space ships when they tried to invade the Galaxy
It seems a lot of transhumanists and transhumanist-adjacent rationalists believe that Drexlerian nanomachines are going to happen, when the current scientific consensus seems to be that it’s physically impossible. Am I misunderstanding the typical transhumanist position, the scientific consensus, or maybe both?
Where do you find a scientific consensus about Drexlerian nanomachines being physically impossible? The general argument is that nanomachines are not ascribed any properties not already demonstrated by bacteria, and bacteria exist, so nanomachines physically can exist.
That we don’t have a clue how to design a bateria that spends its time doing microscopic bits of some arbitrary macroscopic project of interest to us, is another matter. Drexler and company are clearly a tad optimistic on the engineering side.
No, not really.
Most of the big disconnects between lowercase-r rationality and uppercase-R Rationality come from their founder, who founded the group with the explicit goal of training people to be rational enough to agree with his extremely fringe views on things like AI and cryonics.
Since most of his apocalypic AI scenarios rely heavily on it quickly devising and releasing something like Molecular Assemblers it makes sense that the idea was hardcoded into the Rationalist system despite not making much rational sense.
You sure? Bioweapons as well as the long game fit fin in a doomsday AI fear.
While I agree completely that Yudkowsky founded LW to spread his fringe views (mainly the fringe view that people should give him their money) I think you’re underestimating the damage a superintelligent machine could do even with just today’s technology. There’s plenty it could do just over the internet, and it would be trivial for something several orders of magnitude smarter than human beings to cajole, bribe or blackmail real people into doing everything else.
Dr. Dealgood: I disagree with the factual implications of your comment, and I take issue with you insulting my meme-group, which I perceive you as describing as Yudkowky’s fringe. He is not the origin of my ideas, he is just a popular spokesperson. Furthermore, I have rather a lot of experiential evidence to support my views on these “fringe” ideas. For example, cryogenics works, for the definition of work meaning “can successfully preserve the information contained with the brain of the subject as represented by the structure of neurons and glia, arrangement of synapses, and types and approximate quantities of proteins present in specific parts of each cell”. Furthermore, the digitizing of this information is already possible with current technology. As a neuroscientist I have carefully cryosectioned, labelled, and imaged with laser microscopy many mammalian brain samples. I don’t know when it will be possible to digitally emulate a mind based on this brain data, but my understanding of computational neuroscience suggests that it is quite possible. However, asserting that I support cryogenics would be incorrect. I don’t support cryogenics because it is outdated. There is a better, safer (less likely to lose brain information), cheaper, easier method that does not require an expensive cryogenics company: hydrogel embedding (CLARITY). (If researching this, do not confuse with brain plasticization which risks losing information.) I have informed Yudkowsky that he is factually incorrect in this regard, but I don’t know if he has yet researched the topic himself and correspondingly updated his views.
Furthermore, my understanding of the current research in computational neuroscience speaks to the near-term plausibility of biomimetic AI. I am not qualified to speak on the subject of non-biomimetic AI. I am unsure whether biomimetic AI presents any existential risk, but I do believe it will be commonplace within a couple of decades.
I do doubt that non-biological nanomachines will ever work well, although some crude ones have been made in labs. Don’t underestimate the power of biological nanomachines/ engineered cells though! I’ve only dabbled in genetic engineering/virus manufacture/stem cell engineering, and yet my humble projects have done some pretty impressive things on occasion!
Again, on any topic outside his field, please consider Yudkowsky to be a well-intentioned popular science-and-philosophy writer (whom I happen to like a lot even if he’s not as correct as he seems to think he is about a lot of current science!). Don’t judge the capacities of science and the possibilities that the future holds by any perceived flaws or limitations in his writing.
I might have phrased my comment too impolitely, since this is a rationalist space. After all I don’t particularly like it when other people metaphorically come into my house and spit on my carpet. But it seems pretty clear that these positions have for the most part been adopted without or even against the available evidence.
Going back to cryonics for example: I’m not a neuroscience guy myself, though I am working with a glial cell transcription factor at the moment, but I would contest your characterization of it nonetheless. There’s a huge difference between freezing or perfusing a 10 micrometer slice of tissue that you never intend to thaw and cryonically preserving an entire human brain. Maybe at some future date we will be able to do that, but in the meantime paying even a single dime to companies like Alcor is utterly irrational.
For another example, take nanotechnology. Yudkowsky seems not to know the difference between wet protein or nucleic acid enzymes which actually exist and dry Drexlerian assemblers which probably can’t exist, and that leads him to some very bizarre statements. Like the idea that, once his hypothetical UFAI cracks protein folding (without actually having done any non-simulated experiments naturally) it can whip up the sequence that codes for build-anything nanobots, send it to some guy, and FOOM… world destroyed. It’s just more grey goo hysteria, except with a killer AI instead of a sloppy chemist.
There’s other examples that I’m not really qualified to speak on, like the QM stuff or the basic computer science behind his conception of AIs, but the responses I’ve heard from other people who know what they’re talking about sounds like my responses to the above. It’s not encouraging, particularly for a self-proclaimed expert in rationality, to pick irrational positions so consistently.
Dear Dr Dealgood:
Thank you for your apology, and in return I also apologize for being touchy about it. To give some context to my reaction, I labored intensely for many years in intellectual isolation researching what I felt to be my possible avenue of contribution to the meta-progress of the human race, radical biological intelligence enhancement via genetic modification of consenting adults. Then, relatively recently, overcoming bias spawned LessWrong, and suddenly an intellectual community willing to seriously discuss the issues I believe to be of utmost importance sprang up.
It is the willingness of people like yourself to discuss these issues that I primarily value, but I do also very much appreciate Yudkowky’s popularization of the ideas. Why, despite his frequent factual errors? Because I cannot communicate these things nearly so compelling or clearly. My partner and my close friends did not understand when I tried to explain why I have been laboring on this personal project for so many years. After getting them to read LessWrong, they do get it. They get my quest, why I care, why it might really matter. That is no small thing, and for that, I am willing to overlook rather a lot of factual failings. Hopefully if the new book form (Rationality: AI to zombies, which I haven’t read yet, so maybe it’s already somewhat better) gets enough traction, a second issue with the factual failings ‘updated’ by scientists from each specific field referred to can be issued.
@Neurno: if you’re still around, I’d like to pick your brains re: intelligence enhancement in adults. My partner and I are involved in various things related to human intelligence, but on the enhancement side, the only significant possibilities look pre-natal. If this is wrong, we would be very excited to learn why. throwaway5283 at google mail dot com if you’re interested.
There’s a huge difference between freezing or perfusing a 10 micrometer slice of tissue that you never intend to thaw and cryonically preserving an entire human brain. Maybe at some future date we will be able to do that, but in the meantime paying even a single dime to companies like Alcor is utterly irrational.
Thank you for succinctly stating my lack of interest in (I can’t really call it opposition to) cryonics. I get that, for raising money for research purposes, companies need to do the whole “we can freeze you and thaw you out in the future” bit, but it does feel to me like taking advantage of the vulnerable, the desperate, and the grieving right now as any people or parts thereof frozen under current technology have, I submit, little to no chance of being successfully re-thawed (that’s not getting into “Oh, the future won’t thaw them out, they’ll read their brain engrams and copy them into a new body/upload to virtual space”).
I’m not saying it will never work, just that there is a lot of research and trial-and-error and experimenting on animals to see if it can be done right (and I’m sorry all the animal-rights people, but we’re talking about doing this to chimpanzees and other high-level primates to see if it can work for us).
Right now? Donate for research, certainly. Pay to have your dead body frozen and kept in storage for fifty-plus years? That’s hucksterism on the P.T. Barnum scale.
personally I don’t think it would work, (my opinion <1% chance) but I can hesitate to call it irrational.
It's a long-odds bet with massive potential payoff.
If I was a multi-millionaire or billionaire I could see myself taking that bet.
Even if it doesn't work and nobody can extract a whole personality from a frozen brain there's good odds that the future equivalent of archaeologists will find the very well preserved bodies of people from, say, a century in their past to be highly useful for understanding our current society,health,diseases etc.
@nope: email sent. Let me know here if you don’t receive it.
@Deiseich and Murphy:
Would you please please please stop discussing horse-and-carriage technology in the discussion about whether it is better to cross a continent on foot or with a cheap jet plane ticket? Seriously, no! That is not the issue at all! Eghads! What are you, Amish, Mennonite, Shaker? Why would you ever ever freeze a brain?! No. Bad. Wrong. Multiple vastly superior options exist.
The best option currently is, as I said, hydrogel embedding. This requires only a dead brain (or more conveniently a severed head) to be immersed in a bucket of ~10% paraformaldehyde solution, and the sealed bucket placed in a refrigerator. In a few days, or weeks, whichever is convenient, an expert can come along and convert the brain tissue to a hydrogel embedded sample.
This hydrogel embedded sample is optically clear and can be very effectively immunolabeled and confocal laser microscope scanned over and over with no loss of information. The sample is physically stable (strong and plastic-y)(unlike brain tissue preserved in paraformaldehyde and/or alcohol), and will be stable at room temperature for many decades (at least). Scientists can safely study your brain many times over without damaging the sample or its precious information, and many separate attempts to digitize the information can be made (and compared with each other to get the best total info). The hydrogel embedding and initial paraformaldehyde preservation are quite cheap (under $100) and so useful to scientists that they might well pay your descendants for the privilege of non-harmfully studying it.
Because there is pretty much no downside to asking your grandkids to keep your preserved brain in a bucket in their garage, you might as well in the slim case that you might be successfully uploaded and in the hugely probable case that your brain would be of great benefit to science at no loss to you. Having scientists non-destructively studying your brain for generations to come would only increase the odds that you might be successfully digitized and emulated someday!
@Neurno Hm… nothing on my end yet.
Can you practically use CLARITY on a whole human brain? When I looked it up the only protocols I found were for <=50 mL samples, which is excellent for studying mice but raises questions about how well the process would scale. I'm not an expert here by any means but given that it takes 5+ days to fix a mouse brain the rate of perfusion might be an obstacle in larger organs.
Also it's a bit of a moot point because, while this is a potentially workable idea for preserving brains nobody is actually doing it. Almost all of the advocacy and all of the money in the Rationalist sphere is focused on freezing.
@Neurno
I’m even more skeptical but hey, if it’s really cheap. Let us know if/when a company starts doing this commercially.
If I could get my brain preserved somewhere safe like that for, say, $1000 I’d possibly go for it. It’s be cheaper than many currently popular death-rituals.
@Murphy:
No company necessary if you’re able/willing to talk a friend/relative into the DIY option. Just ask that your brain be stuck in a bucket with some paraformaldehyde and ask a scientist to come study it with CLARITY.
That being said, I can see how a lot of people might not be so into the DIY option. I recognize that I may be somewhat unusual in enjoying studying/handling the brain tissue of the recently deceased. I do hope someone starts such a business soon!
@Dr Dealgood:
I use this forum for my DIY nitty-gritty on CLARITY.
forum.claritytechniques dot org
clarityresourcecenter dot org
Here is a link to a paper in which it was used on a whole human brain from a brain bank (processed in about 1 cm thick slices) which had been stored a long while previously in formalin.
It is possible to do this in much thicker sections, it just takes longer before the brain is optically clear and ready to observe. It’s actually better for information preservation to use the slower method, but it’s hard to be sufficiently patient! I hate having to leave a sample in the clearing solution for months just to be able to answer the question that I prepared it for!
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nan.12293/full
Actually, it can be done not just on brain tissue but on the whole body (but why bother for other than medical research? You are your brain). Note of caution while researching this: images of whole animal hydrogel preservation samples are not for the weak of stomach.
Thanks for the link. I had seen the bit on preserving other organs, I think it was mentioned in passing by a team optimizing the protocol for whole mouse brains.
I also think our definitions of whole are a bit different. To me, once you section a brain it is by definition no longer a whole brain. Asumming arguendo that you can scan and emulate brains you’d still presumably want it in as few pieces as possible.
But yeah, definitely going to check that place out.
Neurno, right now people are forking out good money to have themselves, or their heads, frozen and preserved, or paying for the upkeep of frozen deceased family members, via that horse-and-carriage technology.
That’s my main beef: people are being sold a bill of goods that cannot be fulfilled. Better preservation techniques, invention of however the fuck you are going to read engrams or whatever, animal testing of both that shows they work and you get out the other end something almost entirely approximating what you put in – fine, once those bugs are worked out, then sell people “step right up, sign up for our process, and wake up in the wonderful world of tomorrow”.
As it is? Right now? And the companies that started forty years or so ago and froze people in the 60s? I think you’d be as well off to be turned into an Egyptian mummy.
Also – so you slice up the brain into sections? Well, if you can put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, then I think okay. I’d really like to see some animal tests done first, though 🙂
It sounds rather too like Victor Frankenstein stitching separate body parts back together into a coherent whole and getting the resultant jigsaw to work.
I think most transhumanists believe that physically possible nanomachines are going to happen. The Drexler debate was about whether it’s physically possible to build dry nanotechnology where you move individual atoms around into a crystalline structure instead of just setting up a wet nanotechnology protein soup and hoping something useful comes out of it. We already know that wet nanotechnology is possible because we have living cells.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexler%E2%80%93Smalley_debate_on_molecular_nanotechnology
Yeah, Smalley’s objections are part of what I was thinking of. Nanotech as biomimicry with some limitations of application would still be on the table, but not nanotech as magic.
My perception (as a far-left transhumanist rationalist, and neuroscientist) is that I don’t have a very good understanding of the full potential of dry nanomachines. However, I suspect, and have read multiple papers that seem to more or less agree, that the likely near-term potential is of a machine less powerful than engineered bacteria (wet nanotechnology). Is that the full physical possible extent of the power of dry nanotechnology? I dunno, maybe.
So, I suspect the future will not have powerful dry nanotechnology (I.e. Drexlerian). But I don’t suspect this with more than about 75% confidence.
So, update on this as you will, keeping in mind that the simple plural of anecdote is not data as issues from a controlled experiment. 😉
Any specific reasons? A scanning tunneling microscope was used to position xenon atoms on a nickel crystal with atomic precision back in 1989.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_%28atoms%29
Now, whether anyone is actually ever going to pay for developing atomically precise
mass production technology is anyone’s guess, but I think there is a strong case that
it would work if it were built.
Yes, good point. I guess what I meant to say is that I think it only 25% probable that anyone will successfully build working Drexlerian-style powerful dry nanomachines in the next 100 years. Now that you point it out, I agree that I have no evidence that the existence and function of such machines (if built) would be physically impossible.
Many Thanks!
http://www.ozy.com/pov/honey-i-love-youbut-we-need-separate-beds/3464
Though I have had girlfriends with whom I slept in the same bed every night, that has never really been the case with my fiancee, with whom I’ve now been living for about 3 years. In the beginning it was her snoring. We managed to figure out ways to manage that, but the habit has stuck. We still sleep in the same bed when we have company and need the extra bedroom, or when traveling, or when we just feel like being especially cudly, but separate bedrooms is now the norm for us, maybe 6 days a week.
I think she worries sometimes that this indicates some sort of problem with our relationship–though probably more when say, showing our house to a friend who notices we have separate bedrooms and starts to wonder–but I really feel like it doesn’t. I just feel like I sleep better when I don’t have another person next to me making noises, shifting, getting up to go the bathroom, wanting to sleep and wake up at a different time, etc. etc. Also, I like my bedroom to be relatively uncluttered, as I find clutter to be un-relaxing, but when the bedroom has two full-time users I find this to be nearly impossible to achieve.
My wife and I have always slept in separate beds except under special circumstances. Sleep quality is very important!
My parents and both sets of grandparents slept in separate rooms. My girlfriend and I sleep in the same room but in separate beds, and when we move into a bigger apartment, we’ll have separate rooms as well. It’s surprisingly uncommon considering the advantages (snoring, separate bedtimes, etc).
Evidence in favour of this: I really hate sleeping alone, which suggests that sleeping alone or together is a personal preference rather than a universal quality-of-relationship measure.
As an avid cuddler, I love sleeping with my partner and with my friends. I shared a bunk-bed with my little brother as a kid, and he snored, and I snore sometimes. This experience, and seeing the nice set of grandparents who love each other after 60+ years have always needed separate bedrooms due to irreconcilable sleep schedules convinced me that separate bedrooms are just a practical necessity in some cases. I’ve always figured separate bedrooms would become a necessity for me and my partner once I’m a loud-snoring overweight late-middle-age human. Not my ideal, since I love to cuddle so much, but practical nonetheless.
http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/06/sharing-a-bed-makes-couples-healthier/
I suspect there is pheromone-sharing or something similar going on in co-sleeping which helps maintaining bonding. Maybe it is purely psychological – shared vulnerability/trust.
My advice would be to couples who don’t sleep together to at least eat together. That is another basic form of bonding.
Have you tried earplugs and an enormous bed? That tends to minimize the effects of the other person in the bed.
Via Robin Hanson:
“Research studies consistently find … that adults “sleep better when given their own bed.” One such study monitored couples over a span of several nights. Half of these nights they spent in one bed and the other half in separate rooms. When the subjects woke, they tended to say that they’d slept better when they’d been together. In fact, on average they’d spent thirty minutes more a night in the deeper stages of sleep when they were apart. (more)
In 2001, the National Sleep Foundation reported that 12% of American couples slept apart with that number rising to 23% in 2005. … Couples experience up to 50% more sleep disturbances when sleeping with their spouse. (more)
– See more at: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/03/sleep-signaling.html#sthash.DM510A53.dpuf”
(I can’t sleep worth a damn with someone else in the bed, for what it’s worth.).
My wife and I have slept in separate beds for years. (I snore terribly). We both sleep much better for it.
December 12th is the Bay Area solstice party. Do you plan to attend?
Does anyone think it’s likely that a lot of religious rituals/superstitions were invented by people with OCD or something like it?
(relevant: the latest post on slatestarscratchpad)
Quite so (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WwAQqWUkpI)
Does anyone else sometimes think that the “OMG Gun Control” flurry which occurs after every time the media decides to care about a multiple homicide might be a cynical ploy to sell guns? There’s always this huge surge of sales. It’s very profitable for the manufacturers and retailers of firearms. As such, it gives them a perverse incentive to promote fear-o-tyranny every time the media picks up a multiple homicide.
Lots of people sometimes think this. But as there’s no evidence that it is happening and no plausible mechanism by which it could happen, I’m not one of them.
“X happened, Y would benefit from X, therefore X is a conspiracy by Y, and the bit where I can’t find any evidence just goes to show how clever a bunch of conspirators Y is”, this way lies madness for all possible X and Y.
I certainly don’t think the gun sellers are at all behind the push for gun control, but I also would expect them to capitalize on any surge in public attention to gun control as a means to scare their own clientele into buying more, sooner.
This doesn’t strike me as particularly dishonest, though: as a seller, if there is any plausible probability (however remote) that something you are currently selling might be banned or unavailable in the future, it makes perfect sense to use that fact as a selling point: “buy now since you might not be able to buy later.”
I don’t think they’d want to ban their own product, certainly, but I’m wondering if they’re sufficiently convinced that the product won’t be banned to become temporarily very interested in finding, reproducing, parodying, and/or flaming anti-gun voices. All forms of attention serve as amplification. Amplifying that voice at that time is worth money.
First, how would they do that? Does the president of Smith and Wesson call the editor of the Los Angeles Times and say “Look, I know you were printing one special edition covering the San Bernardino Massacre before you get back to the serious policy issues of the Paris climate summit, but we’d like to see three special editions and a week of large-print headlines, how does a million dollars in extra advertising sound?”
What, specifically, do you think the gun industry is doing, or even could do, to make this happen?
Second, how do they not get caught doing this? The people they would have to deal with tend to hold a visceral hatred of the NRA, and you think none of them are going to blab? Firearms manufacturers have in the past faced boycotts by their own customers over their support for “modest” gun-control measures; a secretive campaign to fan the flames of prohibition and confiscation will indeed result in the sales of millions of firearms – from every company not part of that campaign.
And third, again, what is your evidence that any of this is happening?
I already said specifically what I think they’re doing. Finding, reproducing, parodying, and/or flaming anti-gun voices. This occurs simultaneously as a point where anti-gun voices know they’re more salient than usual.
I was suggesting this occurring in small-scale across numerous actors working independently. “Secretive campaign to fan the flames of prohibition” is your phrase, not mine. Some of the boost anti-gun voices get comes from people who hate them who wouldn’t normally spread those voices, but who will spread those voices at that time because they have a financial incentive to do so. Again, this is on an individual level. People sharing links. Forums detonating. Mailing lists filling with propaganda and call-outs. The first half of my suggestion here is, “there is social media around guns; gun manufacturers may be hiring people to alter the focus of concerns in that media in ways that make profits for them”.
In the modern day, if there’s anyone trying to manage how the internet responds to things, they actually have wonderful new tools with which they could be even more clever with than usual. You’re not limited to one reputation on the internet. If you actually want to stir the pot, you can now stir it from both sides with no risk of being caught. Maintain a few Twitter feeds with different political alignments; this is good for both tracking opposition *and* promoting controversies du jour. Open burner accounts on forums where detonations would constitute favorable attention. Label yourself on both sides of the issue and spread the ideas in politically unpalatable, crazy extreme versions. These things panic the activists on both sides and make them do marketing work FOR you. The second half of my suggestion is, “there is social media around guns; some individuals have a financial incentive to misrepresent their position.”
Again, “attention is amplification” is the process I was pointing to, and I was suggesting that it can be manipulated for profit.
Your demand for evidence is based on a failure to understand the point I was making. You caricatured my argument and swiftly won a war on straw. Congratulations!
I already said specifically what I think they’re doing. Finding, reproducing, parodying, and/or flaming anti-gun voices.
That’s not specific, that’s generic. And this part,
I was suggesting this occurring in small-scale across numerous actors working independently.
doesn’t fit with your claim that this is a “cynical ploy to sell guns”. For each of these supposedly independent small-scale actors, what’s the motive? A general climate of fear might sell more guns, but the owner of Bob’s Discount Guns and Ammo posting to an online forum (or whatever it is you specifically think he’s doing) isn’t going to singlehandedly generate a climate of fear, isn’t going to increase guns sales across the nation by even one percent, and isn’t going to increase the all-critical sales at Bob’s Discount Guns and Ammo by even one percent.
Being caught in a “cynical ploy to sell guns” by promoting gun control or anti-gun sentiment, is going to lead to an organized boycott of Bob’s Discount Guns and Ammo. Low reward, high risk.
Sorry, but your proposed cynical ploy is the sort of thing that Moloch eats for breakfast; the necessary action cannot be coordinated overtly or covertly, hierarchially or decentralized. And yes, I am going to keep asking for evidence if you keep suggesting that it is actually happening, and if you can’t come up with any you’re going to look plenty ridiculous.
No. If this was the case, why would gun manufacturers fund the NRA?
By and large, they don’t. Most of the NRA’s funding comes from membership dues, followed by donations by private individuals. Manufacturers fall pretty low on the funding totem pole – between 2.5 and 5% of their revenue.
This information is hilariously easy to find, given that the NRA declares its income by source and its tax information is readily available, along with information from their partner program. Evil manufacturers owning the NRA just makes a better bogeyman than 5+ million dues-paying, donating members.
Basically, every manufacturer could drop all support for the NRA and they’d keep happily ticking away.
I know that not much NRA funding comes from manufacturers, but I think most manufacturers’ charitable donations probably go to the NRA rather than the Brady Campaign.
If you didn’t mean to imply that the NRA is paid for by manufacturers’ money, you should really find a better way to put it than “manufacturers fund the NRA”. The accusation that the NRA represents companies, not people, is a common one. Your comment pattern matched pretty heavily to that.
To be clear, I agree with you that the idea of a conspiracy to drive sales by threatening anti-gun legislation is underpants-hat level silly. John Schilling has the right of it when he points out the costs of being found out supporting anti-gun causes; for an example see the reaction to Jim Zumbo’s ill-considered 2007 comments on black rifles, which were taken… poorly.
I think most manufacturers’ charitable donations probably go to the NRA rather than the Brady Campaign
Not the Brady campaign no, but most of, for example, Smith & Wesson’s charitable donations go toward supporting shooting sports and events. Pretty much all manufacturers predictably donate heavily to veterans’ care organizations and similar causes. There’s a mix across the board.
This isn’t to say that they don’t have their own lobbyists in the halls of Washington, nor that they don’t donate directly or indirectly to politicians and their PACs. American politics and the money involved therein are shady as fuck.
The fact that creating the flurry and promoting fear-o-tyranny draws lots of clicks and views and delicious, delicious ad money is enough to create a huge incentive to do so. We should expect it to exist and to be very difficult to avoid for that reason alone.
Only articles and stories which are bad at drawing clicks and views need other explanation, and I suspect most of those are at least attempts to do good.
I was wondering what were SSC’s opinions of age of consent laws? I am personally somewhat against them as I am a minor feel like the government is silencing me by taking away my right to consent. However, I realize that we should probably keep them around because of Chesterton’s Fence. What do you guys think?
Well, I find Chesterton’s fence unconvincing (which just means I’m not that kind of conservative). But current age of consent laws aren’t so old we don’t know the reason behind them anyway; they’ve been raised significantly in recent history in many states. And the reason (IMO) wasn’t anything to do with the protection of minors from predatory sex partners; it was to extend the control adults have over children.
I think the concept of age of consent laws makes sense, but the actual form in our society is badly out of scale. There are states where the age below which all sex is illegal is higher than the median age for loss of virginity.
I don’t think a two year old can reasonably consent to intercourse. I think there are lots of fourteen year olds, probably some twelve year olds, who are no less capable of doing so than many adults, perhaps than the median adult.
Mencken mentions losing his virginity at fourteen with a girl of the same age. Traditional rabbinic law set female adulthood at twelve and a half plus some evidence of puberty.
Age of consent is a restriction on the ability of an individual to act of their own free will. In an ideal free society, we should assume the maximum ability of an individual to pick the best choice for themself, and we should impose the minimal constraints on a person to do as they choose.
Obviously, in our society, we put lots of limits on this freedom – minimum wage, zoning laws, food inspection, FDA control of medications, etc, etc. (Really, the amount of regulation we put on ourselves is vast.)
IMO, age of consent is influenced by two principles: when is the person able to make a rational choice, and when is a person able to deal with the repercussions of a dumb-ass choice. It is accepted in our society that a minor may not enter into binding contracts except under the permission of their guardians, under the supposition that kids are idiots and can be easily taken advantage of. As agreeing to sexual intercourse can have life long consequences, it is generally agreed that idiot kids may not agree to this, because they don’t make reliably good choices.
As for the physical repercussions – here we are mainly talking about women, and their ability to become pregnant. An undersized female who has not attained most of her adult size can have life-threatening issues with childbirth. So it is not permissible for someone to impregnate her until she can reasonably be expected to live through childbirth.
In the bad old days, when nutrition was chancy and people didn’t grow as tall, the age of consent for women was generally set around 13 years old, as a 14 year old typically could deliver a child safely. (Do remember that in the bad old days, death in childbirth was a risk for every woman.) With better medicine and nutrition of today, the risks for even a pre-teen delivering a child are much much lower. This would argue for a lower age of consent.
However, when we go back to the first part – the ability to make rational choices – it is also increasingly agreed on in our society that children do not become mature functional adults until much later in life. While in decades past a 20 year old man might be married with two kids and a job, and even sent out to defend his country against hostile invaders, today we assume that a 25 year old still operates under the protection of their parents and can not function independently.
In my mind, we should probably shift legal age of consent up to match the social expectation that 20-year olds are children and need supervision and protection.
Or we could also start acting as though 17 and 18 year olds were actual independent adults. Either way is fine with me – it’s the middle lukewarm course that’s the issue.
@Karanih;
I think you are missing the largest reason for age of consent laws–the belief that below an age somewhere in the fourteen to eighteen range, having sex is almost certain to be a bad thing. It isn’t limited to concerns about the consequences of pregnancy–if anything, it focuses on supposed psychological consequences, and is applied to males as well as females. I’m dubious that it’s true, but I think it is clearly a widely shared view.
Consider, for example, the argument I have seen that Islam is obviously an evil religion, since the founder married one of his wives young and consummated the marriage when she was nine. All the available evidence suggests that Mohammed’s marriage with Aiesha was a happy one. But he still gets branded a pedophile by people who simply take it for granted that that shows he was a wicked person.
I find that whole story rather dubious. What would ‘consummate’ mean with a nine-year old, anatomy-wise?
I assume it means PIV intercourse.
With a quick google, I find one case of a five year old who gave birth, several of six year olds, lots at seven, eight, and nine. Mohammed and Aiesha could have waited until her menses started. Currently, that can run as early as eight.
There are a few people who argue that the conventional account is wrong and she was much older, but that requires them to reject pretty much all past accounts.
If age of consent laws didn’t exist, they would be the strawman I would make up to explain why it’s impossible to define the boundary between right and wrong with a law. “Is this romantic relationship exploitative?” is a question that can only be answered by people who know the parties directly.
On a practical rather than philosophical level, they’re a badly botched attempt at social engineering. They make the practices of groups with short life history illegal, but the result isn’t a conversion to a longer life history, it’s the destruction of their previous social tech. Marriage at 15 shocks my sensibilities and is not a recipe for what I’d consider a successful life, but the type of person who marries at 15 likely does better in a society that encourages marriage at 15 than one which mandates 5 years of relational instability practice first.
I think this is true as a much more general point: what is the best option to choose depends greatly on the situation you’re in. Often, a choice that you wouldn’t make when you’re in a good situation is the best one to make when you’re in a bad situation. Very often it seems to me that a choice is made illegal, with the justification that obviously it’s a bad choice to make, when in fact there are still some people whose situation is such that that choice really is better than the alternatives, and banning it serves to cut off their best option and force them to take the next-best option instead. Health and safety laws and building codes are, I think, two major examples of this phenomenon.
But if it cuts enough people off from making actual bad choices, it’s still welfare improving on net, even if it cuts some people off from making good choices.
Possibly – but you need some good reason to assume that people who are in a position where making some choice is bad will commonly make it anyway. Observing people making that choice isn’t enough because the assumption we’re working on is that that choice is good under some circumstances, bad under others. What you need to do is first of all separate out those making the choice into those for whom it’s a good choice and those for whom it’s a bad choice, and then calculate the gain by the former group minus the loss by the latter. Then, if the number comes out negative, you have grounds to ban the choice.
And of course there’s the problem that the people deciding on these kinds of regulations have no incentive to make sure their effect is actually positive rather than negative.
I don’t want to live in a city/town without building codes.
Now, I understand you aren’t saying that you do, you are saying (I think) that, on the margin, building codes increase homelessness and increase rents. I understand the argument.
The problem comes in, I think, when you start understand how much money is available to be made on a difference in (made up example) $10 a month per unit by the owner and how expensive it is for the renter to reliably determine how safe the units are (as well as all of the biases we have that cause us to ignore small everyday risks). At the bottom of the scale, the incentives seem to skew heavily towards “death trap”.
@HeelBearCub
If the rental contract stipulates that the landlord is responsible for the costs of X or Y bad outcome then it seems this would not be a problem.
I suspect that you will point out that there will be people who are so desperate for housing, or for cheap housing, that they will rent places without these stipulations and choose to bear these costs themselves. My argument is that these are exactly the people who really would be better off in slightly unsafe housing than no housing, or housing so expensive they don’t have money left for anything else – and that you being unable to imagine that being the better choice for you doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be the better choice for anyone.
The obvious counter is to take a step further and look at how expensive it is for the renter to reliably determine the quality of the contract he is signing with the landlord. You want to have to hire a lawyer every time you rent?
And the problem is worse with minor items. I don’t have the bandwidth to do due diligence whenever I buy a toaster.
@Chalid
Sounds like a problem that standardization can solve. The manufacturer of a toaster stamps a symbol on the side of the box; the landlord stamps a symbol on the corner of the contract; this indicates they are following the terms that that symbol refers to. Compare with meat sold as halal: a single word is used to refer to a specific, somewhat complex concept. If state regulations required that all meat be halal, producers would not bother to specify that their meat is. But they don’t, so they do. It’s an optional regulatory extension. Seems entirely possible for the concept to be applied more broadly.
EDIT: I’m also not really sure that this would be necessary for rental contracts after all. Presently, an awful lot can be stipulated in a rental contract, in a relatively small number of words. It’s entirely possible for there to be some legal meaning of different concepts, so you don’t have to define every single word at the start of the contract, without it having to be mandatory that contracts contain any particular combination of words or concepts.
For toasters, where you don’t want to have to read through several pages of contract before buying it, the symbol thing is my preferred solution, but I suspect you’d be fine without it in the context of housing.
Compare with meat sold as halal: a single word is used to refer to a specific, somewhat complex concept.
This is maybe an object level objection, but halal products have to be certified by an independent body. At least in certain areas, Sunni and Shia have slightly different standards, so that what brands you bought – or what brands your store stocked – could have significant implications.
Another example – UL labeling is held to indicate a certain level of safety wrt electronic devices (like toasters). This labeling is only useful when and where the owners of that mark are able and willing to enforce infringement on their right to control who gets to put the mark on their devices.
If there is a demand for UL labels but no enforcement of the use of the label, counterfeiting will be rampant.
In an area with customer-demanded guarantees of value (like investment ratings, or credit scores) there are generally multiple competing certifying agencies. These agencies will use somewhat different standards for assessing that quality – both in content and rigor. The cheapest assessments will be the most lackluster and the ones mostly likely to be modified by bribes.
When the demand for quality assurance comes from the government, however, the dependability of that assessment is linked to the good faith in the government (to apply the standards fairly and to not accept bribes.) The government may or may not be trustworthy in either the content or the rigor of their assessments, and it is very likely for those who can afford to pay more for more strict assessments to do so. Meanwhile, those with less demanding preferences than the gubment do not have the option of choosing their more desired selection.
(Edited to correct “GL” to “UL” – dunno where that typo came from…)
That problem was pretty definitively solved by the free market about a hundred years ago via the Underwriters Laboratories.
Here’s what happened: In the early days of home electricity lots of houses were burning down due to faulty wiring or faulty appliances. Companies that sold fire insurance (aka “underwriters”) found themselves on the hook to pay a lot of money for damage from fires that could have been cheaply and easily prevented via better wiring standards. So these insurance firms got together and formed an organization to set such standards. If you want to buy a house, you need to borrow money from a bank; the bank wants to protect its investment, so it requires (and/or incorporates into the mortgage) a fire insurance policy. The fire insurance firm wants to protect itself too, so it mandates inspection/verification that the wiring is “up to code” as a precondition for issuing a policy.
The way the same process applied to toasters is that you buy toasters from Sears. If Sears sells toasters that catch fire they could be sued out of existence so Sears buys a liability insurance policy. Their insurance firm doesn’t want to pay needless claims, so…same dynamic. They end up only selling products that have a valid UL seal or for which Sears itself can be confident based on its own independent tests that the product is safe.
Because both firms that sell toasters that catch fire and firms that insure firms that sell toasters that catch fire can go out of business, over time the market has evolved defense mechanisms such that most toasters you are likely to find aren’t prone to easily catch fire, even if you personally know nothing about toasters. All we really needed to get there was the institution of civil liability combined with freedom of contract and a bit of cleverness.
“If the rental contract stipulates that the landlord is responsible for the costs of X or Y bad outcome then it seems this would not be a problem.”
Other than for the person, and everyone in the building, who died in the electrical fire caused by sub-standard wiring. And now the shell company is bankrupt and the person who reaped the real profit has externalized the loss.
But other than that, sure, no problem.
@Glen Raphael:
I don’t think UL certifies houses.
The problem here is that houses are not built over and over in a controlled environment, but one by one in a variable environment. You can’t certify the design and then walk away.
This is why inspection for wiring, plumbing, foundation, and other aspects of construction has to be done for every house. A small organization can’t do that for the entire world. You need inspectors on site for every building constructed.
@HeelBearCub
It depends on what compensation the landlord has to pay. One possible solution is to have this determined within the contract itself. Contracts which allow the landlord to get away consequence-free would not be very attractive.
EDIT:
Who said the same organization needs to do the entire world? It’s perfectly possible for multiple inspection organizations to be following the same set of rules regarding what they’re checking for.
UL itself certifies insulated wires, fuseboxes, switches, fuses, electric appliances, and sets standards for how they’re all supposed to connect together. The building inspector who verifies your new house or business is “up to code” before approving it for insurance purposes (thereby making a mortgage possible) might or might not work for UL itself but a lot of what they’re doing is simply checking that all the subcomponents are UL-certified and haven’t been modified post-manufacture or post-installation in ways that make them unsafe.
Well I did not expect mentioning toasters instead of, say, baby bottle chemicals to create so much discussion. Seems more difficult to apply when the harm is not immediate and obvious (again baby bottle chemicals).
Anyway the point being made by the anonymous poster was that people ought to be able to choose riskier, cheaper products. That doesn’t work if we then allow them to sue if they lose their gamble. Also doesn’t price externalities.
Finally, standards have costs, but litigation is costly too.
@Glen Raphael:
And? The local inspection still has to be done. You aren’t going to eliminate the need for it. It will still be “expensive”.
@Anonymous:
UL is brought as an example because it is a global standard, it’s very safe and it’s cheap. Whereas you are wanting a cheaper standard than building codes that trades of safety for cost. Well, where do you think the cost comes from? It comes from the inspection process itself. Lost productivity coordinating inspection and rework because of failed inspection. I don’t believe the materials themselves are substantially more expensive, unless you use something that is completely inadequate (ex: using trash instead of fill dirt, like you hear reports of from India or China after a building collapses and kills several hundred people).
@HeelBearCub
Are you claiming that building codes effectively impose a fixed cost – that what’s expensive is getting the inspection done, not the actual requirements of the code, and even if they were much less stringent then it wouldn’t bring down costs much at all?
If so, that seems unlikely.
One way private regulations win in terms of affordability is the rules can be more flexible – able to change quickly to adapt to changing background circumstance – and you have more of an option to opt out when the existing rules simply don’t apply to your circumstance (for instance, you really want to live in a yurt or a dome and are willing to self-insure or post a bond).
But the bigger win is in more flexible zoning. Right now in most neighborhoods of most cities it’s illegal to build cheap housing that poor people could afford due primarily to density restrictions. Huge areas are zoned for “single-family dwellings”; the equivalent of a student dormitory (small rooms with a collective bathroom down the hall) is often disallowed even where apartments are legal. Also, zoning means housing is separated from employment forcing everyone to own a car for commuting – without zoning, poor people would be less likely to need a car and more able to start a business.
(If we have to have zoning, I much prefer a Japanese-style system that errs on the side of allowing mixed use by default.)
Chalid said:
It blows my mind that people take out mortgages* without hiring a lawyer. “I’m only borrowing multiples of annual income from a highly sophisticated lender with an unsavory reputations. Who needs an expert to go over the paperwork, just show me where I sign!’
And that’s because mortgages are _standard_. Either by law or by the almost-law of what it takes to conform to GSE rules (so the loan can be sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac). There are a lot of different standards, granted, but there are no “gotchas” in nearly all cases. In particular, the TV villain staple callable mortgages/demand loans (where the lender can demand return of the principal balance even when payments are current… oh, no, the villain has bought the bank and is now going to take the house and the farm!) don’t seem to be countenanced by Fannie Mae.
A standard like this can be achieved with either government rules or with private standards like UL; if the US didn’t have government standards, we’d probably have private standards set up by banks to make it easier to securitize loans.
It’s true that you are unlikely to see unique mortgages with terrible terms, but within the universe of off the shelf mortgages there are big differences, differences that it is apparent many borrowers don’t, or at least didn’t circa 2007, understand.
A lawyer can and should explain the pros and cons of the various options to his clients. A two hour consult even at $400/hour seems like a good idea on a $300k loan so as to get advice from someone with a fiduciary duty instead of a salesman.
That’s a slightly different issue than I was thinking of. I think anyone reasonably financially savvy can figure out the various loan types today, especially given the calculator tools freely available. There are plenty of people who can’t… but most are probably in the situation of not knowing what they don’t know, so they won’t hire a lawyer either.
Putting my money, or rather my house, where my mouth is… I have on my desk right now the papers from a mortgage refinance loan I recently took out without the assistance of a lawyer. Plain vanilla fixed-rate fixed-term. If I find myself on the streets as a result I’ll try to find open wifi to admit my error.
@Glen Raphael I agree with you that zoning regulation is generally really bad, but it doesn’t usually have much to do with this sort of safety vs affordability tradeoff. No one thinks building a high-rise in a single-family neighborhood is *unsafe*, they complain about “neighborhood character” and traffic and construction noise and the like. Indeed you often see resistance to building new dwellings that are *nicer* than the ones that currently exist.
@Nybbler I was under the impression that the residential mortgage backed securities market is tiny outside the US (and thus away from the GSEs). On the other hand, there are a lot of non-agency loans that get securitized within the US; issuance was highest pre-2008 and crashed afterwards, but there’s plenty out there. (Remember pre-crisis there was huge demand for this stuff)
@The Nybbler
I agree this is a don’t know what they don’t know problem, but it seems like they should. There should be a general societal attitude: Twenty pages of impenetrable documents and a big check -> lawyer, just like most people understand shooting pain in chest -> doctor.
Instead just about the only widely held predicates for lawyer are arrested, car accident, and getting a divorce.
@This conversation in general:
You’d think a forum full of programmers would have some familiarity with the varied and myriad ways private standards can and will fail that public standards aren’t prone to. What does Embrace, Extend, Extinguish look like in the regulatory space? Rambus’ patent trolling? USB’s growing proliferation of connectors? The many and varied phone connectors? Standards that have to be interpreted with a grain of salt because enough people have Done It Wrong for so long that the network effects make it impossible to shift (like HTML)? C++’s ABI (that is, it’s lack of one)? All of the fields where there’s an excellent format and nobody uses it because of network effects (APNG, for ex.)?
I don’t know, but I for one am excited to find out.
@Chalid
One place where you do have a “safety vs affordability tradeoff” in building codes is the same issue as for most regulation in general: public regulators can over-regulate because they don’t pay any costs in doing so and can inflict their externalities on consumers whereas private regulators are somewhat less prone to doing that.
For instance, consider electrical outlet spacing rules:
Having so many outlets in so many places that you’re never more than 6 feet from one reduces fire risk because it reduces the need for the occupants to add their own extension cords and outlet splitters to the mix. But on the other hand, it makes the place more expensive to build.
Unionized electricians will lobby for standards that require more electrical work in houses; no similar group is lobbying with the same intensity for standards that require less. Regulators get criticized when there are fires due to the “electrical octopus” hazard; they do NOT get criticized when people can’t afford to buy/rent a place to live due to the price of installing extra outlets.
In balancing fire risk against cost, public regulators will tend to choose too little fire risk and too much cost. If all you care about is safety you might not perceive that as a problem, but if you care about affordability too, you might.
The part of this whole thread that’s astonishing to me is that neither side seems to realize that building codes are generally written by independant organizations. The code governing steel-framed construction is written by the American Institute of Steel Construction, as AISC 360 (Specification for Structural Steel Buildings), and the bolting code is written by the Research Council on Structural Connections, RSCS (Specification for Structural Joints using High-Strength Bolts. For concrete structures, the code is written by the American Concrete institute, as ACI 318. For light-framed steel construction, it’s done by the American Iron and Steel Institute, as AISI S100. All of these are independent industry groups. (AISC, for example, only accepts as “full members” companies that produce over a certain amount of steel per year.)
The loads on a structure are usually defined by the American Society of Civil Engineers, in ASCE 7.
The vast majority of building codes mostly just specify that these model codes will be used*. For example, the Oregon building code specifies: “The deflection of reinforced concrete structural members shall not exceed that permitted by ACI 318”.
And, if an engineer is working in an area without a “building code” he or she will pretty much just reach for the appropriate material code since that represents consensus state of the art.
*Local codes sometimes make minor changes to the model code for something that they think needs more attention. Mostly, this is geotechnical work and the ASCE 7 loads–though their loadings generally track ASCE 7 pretty closely.
Edited to add: The electrical code is written by the National Fire Prevention Association. There’s others as well.
Mu.
Questions about the age of consent presuppose that our current sexual paradigm, in which high school and college students engage in hook ups and practice serial monogamy in the from of Long Term Relationships, is essentially correct and unobjectionable, and that the only thing left to quibble about is the exact age at which college boys can start screwing high school girls.
I deny the frame.
How about we raise it to 150 years, in the hope of spurring more anti-senescence research?
All current formication would be underage, but, hey, so much is anyway, what’s the harm in expanding the range for a good cause?
Wouldn’t that just make the age of consent laws completely moot, because it wouldn’t be enforced? Kinda like how everyone drives over the speed limit on highways.
The obvious response is ‘do you really think there shouldn’t be any age of consent, or just that you should be above it?’
In practice, the only replacement for age of consent laws I can imagine would rely on courts deciding who was ‘mature/capable’ enough to consent which while in theory less arbitrary would end up being far more paternalistic and controlling…
The other theoretical replacement would be to not care about who is having sex with whom. But as some of that sex is going to be outright pedophiles engaging in blatantly exploitative relationships with prepubescent children who have been groomed and coached to say “Yes, I consent”, this isn’t going to happen. Any human society with laws, is going to have laws to put people in jail for having sex with someone too young for them. Any human society without laws, some of these people are just going to be lynched. Take your pick.
Problem is, I expect the lynchings would have better outcomes.
“Any human society with laws, is going to have laws to put people in jail for having sex with someone too young for them. ”
As far as I know that is not true. I don’t believe either the Islamic or traditional Jewish legal system had such laws. There was a limit in Jewish law on how young a woman could marry without parental consent, but marriage younger than that was possible with parental consent, and I’m not aware of any legal limit on age of consummation, although there might well have been limits in social norms. Similarly for Islamic law.
As best I can tell, the situation in Europe in pre-modern times was that there were age limits for non-marital sex, typically ten or above. But marriage sometimes occurred very young, and although I expect such marriages were not consummated until much later, I’m not aware of any legal restrictions on consummation.
Do you have evidence to support your claim, or does it merely reflect what you view as obviously right and assume all other cultures would agree with?
Here’s another possible replacement off the top of my head: sexual consent licences, much like driving licences. I imagine they would also be paternalistic and controlling, but not much more than driving licences.
Who would supervise the test drive?
Not a bad idea if it included contraceptive use.
Who would supervise the test drive?
Probably the licence would be issued after a final exam when finishing sex education classes. “X is certified to be of legal age and to have passed with satisfactory knowledge of how to avoid pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and not to be fuddy-duddy about orientation, gender, or kinks”.
Younger partner doesn’t have a licence or failed the test? You’re in trouble, buddy; this is a penalty point on your licence and collect enough, your licence is revoked for a period. Unlicensed sexual activity leads to a fine or jail time 🙂
Deiseach: Your own description shows why it’s a bad idea. It’s going to be used for social engineering. “And not to be fuddy-duddy about orientation, gender, or kinks”? Really? Why’s that anyone’s business? The only reason the test is required would be to verify that the person taking the test is able to handle having sex. If he’s “fuddy duddy” about something, presumably he wouldn’t be having sex in that manner, so there’s no reason to deny the license. Even if having those opinions makes him act badly towards people with the wrong orientation or whatever, you’re not going to create crimes of “being homophobic without a sex license” or “opposing polygamy without a sex license”.
I’m sure you could reduce the occurrence of homophobia by making it a crime to have sex with a homophobic person when it would not be a crime to have sex with an otherwise similar non-homophobioc person (who passes the fuddy-duddy test and gets his license when the former cannot). But I never thought I’d see anyone actually stating that.
Imagine if to get a business license you had to sign a pledge not to be fuddy-duddy about free trade, or to get a driver’s license you had to express support for carbon taxes.
Jiro, come on, haven’t you seen anything about modern sex education classes? You can’t say “this type of sex is bad” because that’s a moral judgement, and that interferes with sex education that is based purely on best practice science.
If Johnny or Mary fills in an exam question with “Bestiality is yucky and so it’s wrong!” then of course they fail because they are being judgemental about Tommy or Susie who may really love their dog. Really. Now, if Johnny or Mary write about lack of consent on the part of Rover or Spot, that’s different. Consent is good. But saying bestiality is yucky is saying Tommy and Susie are bad, and nobody gets to say anything about what anyone does in the privacy of their bedroom. After all, that’s the same bad old purity-disgust axis that is a sign of conservative right-wing notions and being opposed to marriage equality:
Sorry, Johnny and Mary, you’ve failed the exam and must re-sit it so that you can be a good citizen and useful member of society!
This kind of exam is going to be excellent practice for when they go into the world of work and have to fill out diversity questionnaires for the HR department in their place of employment. Or even answer questions at the job interview.
“So John, tell me how you would handle a situation where a work colleague was not accepting of others’ intimate preferences?”
As for homophobia being a crime, remember you can be sued for not selling wedding cakes to gay couples. Anti-gay rights today, anti-trans rights tomorrow, zoophilia after that!
EDIT: Jiro, if you think I support the notion of a sexual licence, I see I have been rather too subtle in my approach. Of course it is social engineering. It’s already taking place. It’s merely a parodic exaggeration to say you should have a sex licence, but the underlying attitude of “we must make sure not alone factual information but Right Thinking are inculcated” is already present.
Deiseach, my sex ed was pretty close to the modern day, and nothing even remotely like what you’re suggesting appeared in it. It was pretty much entirely based around “Here’s how a condom works”, “Here are the symptoms of and some other information about STDs”. All-boy’s school, heterosexuality was pretty close to assumed in said sex ed. It was a non-governmental school, religious, but not very religious (I forget the exact denomination. Uniting Church I think?)
(Combined with some of the rest of the stuff I’ve posted here, I’m probably very easy to locate in the real world…)
That’s anecdote, of course, but your claim is even less than that. Care to back it up in any way?
For another datum on sex education…
My older son went to a suburban public school in the Philadelphia suburbs. By his account, AIDS was presented as a normal venereal disease, with no suggestion that its transmission mechanism was different than that of others. That would probably have been about 1990.
My guess, with no evidence, was that this reflected pressures from both sides of the political spectrum. People on the left didn’t want it perceived as a gay disease, people on the right wanted to use it to scare teens out of ordinary heterosexual sex. Not mentioning that transmission risk was much higher via anal than via vaginal intercourse served both purposes.
Again, this is where you need to look into why we have age of consent laws in the first place. As always, it wasn’t “We are resolutely anti-fun and we are inventing for no reason a whole bunch of laws to prevent people enjoying themselves”, it was in response to abuse.
There was certainly a sensationalist and muck-raking, not to mention whipping up moral hysteria, element of prurience about the campaign to pass raised age of consent laws in England. The fact remains, rape cases could not be prosecuted because in the “he said, she said” system, men could buy girls as young as twelve for sex and their defence was “this was consensual sex” and, with the age of consent set at twelve (later raised to thirteen because of concerns about girls being sold into brothels), there was only the fall-back on whose testimony do you believe? Particularly if a poor family had pimped out their daughter and were backing up the accused in “No, she agreed to this”?
After Stead’s newspaper campaign created public uproar, eventually the age of consent was raised to sixteen. Maybe we’re ever so much more sophisticated and knowledgeable nowadays, but human nature doesn’t change, and there will always be abuse and misuse. Having a higher age of consent may err on the side of caution, but it’s better to have it set at sixteen, with fourteen year olds upset that their parents won’t let them have eighteen year old boyfriends, than at twelve or ten.
Anyway, if we’re all anticipating living well into our eighties or even nineties, and twenty-plus year olds are not any more expected to have their lives together, and “fifty is the new forty”, then why the rush to be maturely sexually active by such-and-such an age? If everything is being delayed and advanced by increasing life span, should not “age of first sexual encounter” likewise be delayed?
@Sinclair, I’m in favor of adjusting age of consent laws downward* but keeping the prohibition on a large age gap between a minor and an older partner (e.g., >4 years). There are cases in which 19-year-olds end up having to register on sex offender lists because they had an underage partner and (usually) a parent objected.
*or eliminating them in cases where both minors are about the same age. Not that I think underage people should be having sex, but I don’t see what criminalization will do to help that.
The trouble is, at very young ages, there is a much greater difference in maturity and plain experience of life than the chronological gap would indicate.
For example, taking the “top limit four years difference”, there’s a huge difference – I would submit – between a 14 year old and a 19 year old, whereas 22 and 26 is not so huge (and again, 17 and 19 is not so bad).
Were I a parent of a 14 year old child and a 19 year old was hanging around in a “romantic” relationship, you bet I’d put the run on them! Maybe not to the extent of calling the cops, but then again, if they were having sex, I might well do so.
And I know most 14 year olds would be very indignant and claim they were old enough to know their own mind (that was how I was at 14: I knew everything, right?) but sorry, I am going to be the oppressive adult here. We don’t let you drink, smoke, vote, drive, take out bank loans or kick you out to make your own way in the world at that age, so when it comes to a legal adult wanting you to be their intimate partner, same thing goes: until the age of legal majority, we’re responsible for you.
And of course, there’s always the suspicion that a 19 year old interested in 14 year olds is going to still be interested in 14 year olds when they themselves are 20, 30, 40, etc.
On the other hand, there was tolerance of huge age gaps when it came to marriage in previous times; men in their forties and fifties marrying women in their early twenties (usually a second marriage for a widower but not always). I certainly think that’s not ideal, but it seems to have been accepted that this was a “beauty for money” deal; older man gets pretty young bed-partner/potential mother of children/step-mother for his children by deceased first wife, younger woman gets security for herself and more importantly her family by making a financially good marriage. That’s not really any better, either.
Looking back on 15 year old me I wasn’t worldly wise but I was as sentient and as capable of making reasonable choices as I am now. Before 15 there were distinct flips of perspective that probably corresponded with various stages of brain development but the me I was at 15 is pretty much the me I am now only a little faster to learn and a little less experienced.
My 14 and 13 year old selfs far less so but they also knew themselves.
I’ll see if I can dig up a cite but there’s an interesting article by a specialist in neurological development where the author argues that most of our positions on what people are allowed to do at what age are totally backwards vs the reality of neural development.
That teens are generally just as capable of making “cold” choices where they have a few minutes, hours or more to think about things. That part of the brain develops pretty early:
things like voting on important issues, making major life or relationship choices etc
Meanwhile teens are far worse at making “hot” choices where you only have a few seconds to make the choice. Do I swerve left or right?
Yet in our society we fuck the whole thing up and get it backward.
We let teens drive at 16 or younger in many places yet insist that they’re incapable of making the slow choices that in reality they’re just as capable of making as the older people around them.
Re: 40 year olds and 20 year olds, in farming communities it’s simple and logical. Before significant mechanization young men are the staple of farm labor. Farms would tend to pass to the children physically capable of farming them.
A young 20 year old woman with goals like a family isn’t going to look twice at a 20 year old farmers son who owns nothing and has no notable income. If she’s sensible she’ll be looking at the 35-40 year olds who are soon to inherit the farm, who can actually support a family.
She could marry the other 20 year old and wait but by the time he’s independent and able to support a family she’ll be 40 as well and nearing the end of the ability to have children at all.
“beauty for money” implies she’s just treating it like a transaction rather than trying to plan her life. It’s in her interest to ignore the 20 year olds for the same reason it’s in her interest to ignore the unemployed alcoholic drifter slumped outside the local bar as a romantic partner.
Maybe two years would work better?
The UK’s age of consent is 16, but there’s special protections for <=12, some rules relating to 16 and 17 year olds (abuse of trust, pornography manufacture, etc, are all applicable until 18), and there's a policy of not prosecuting teenagers of "similar age" below age of consent, but there's no spelling out of what "similar" is anywhere I've seen. The question I guess is whether it'd be useful to add.
I recall getting a leaflet as a teenager in school about all of this (including the no prosecution policy).
All that starts to look like a bunch of workarounds on an ill-thought-out general rule. Which usually seems to be justified by the thought that consensual sex is somehow an incredibly damaging thing to teenagers, which is something far less true now (with easily available effective condoms and other forms of birth control) than it has been in the past.
Personally I suspect the real impetus is parents wanting a way to punish (or more charitably, deter) the 17-year-old Lothario-in-training who dares have interest in their 15-year-old daughter.
I lean strongly towards allowing discretion on the part of whichever judges, administrators, etc. are deciding a particular case. There are very mature 17-year olds and there are very immature 19-year olds. People who dislike discretion cite the potential for unfairness, bias, etc. and the need for uniformity, but I think laws forcing people to ignore their own conscience and evaluation of a particular situation are more likely to result in net injustice than erring on the side of allowing more local-level discretion.
This is why it makes me bonkers that the most common criticism leveled against libertarianism is that it’s anti-social: I’m PRO-social. I’m pro-humans making decisions about humans at a human-level of scale and social organization. I’m ANTI-one-size-fits-all, abstract rules applied to all of society. The latter strikes me as a distinctly anti-social way of avoiding having to deal with actual people–of looking in the eye of the person you’re firing or sending to jail.
One important consideration that you’re leaving out here is that discretion is expensive. It means more court time, it means more time spent traveling and gathering information by guardian ad litems/other investigators, and it means more time spent on arguments. In common law systems, especially in the civil context, that last one leads to a structural inequality–those who can afford lawyers get the right/freedom/benefit, while those who can’t may not.
If you’re a libertarian, you may not care, and that’s all well and good, but if you’re puzzled at why moderates/liberals often favor bright-line rules, this is a big part of it.
I’m not sure preference for bright-line rules align clearly with either social liberalism (liberals) or classical liberalism (libertarians).
The argument that any discretion will be unclear and so create chilling effects, creeping regulation over time, exploitation and abuse, and so we need a clear absolute position of No Whatever for maximum defensibility is a pretty common strain of thought in libertarianism, I’ve thought. I have seen it applied to speech most often, regulation slightly less often.
On the other hand you do run into such things in social liberalism, too, where inconsistency is felt to threaten things.
I suspect they are a kind of thing which one can favour regardless of object-level position if they seem useful for it.
Eh, I probably shouldn’t have used the term “liberal.” I use it in a very broad sense that includes everyone who supports a property-and-civil-rights based legal regime overseeing and providing some safeguards within a market-based economy–i.e., everyone to the right of (true, anticapitalist) socialists and everyone to the left of libertarians and fascists. I will gladly defend my definition as correct, but, given how bastardized the term is in US discourse, I probably shouldn’t be using it in places where that isn’t already understood. Instead, I should have just said “the legal establishment,” where the preference for bright lines starts in law school and continues forevermore.
And within the legal field, discretion is widely understood to open the door to both direct bias (see, e.g., federal civil rights legislation), and to increase procedural costs that also can introduce inequality in the way I mention. Obviously, that doesn’t mean it’s BAD, because there’s obvious costs to less flexible approaches–but it does mean you need to find a balance between discretion and inflexible rules.
@onyomi:
Hold on.
You really support the idea that a judge should be able to, based on their own internal set of metrics and rules, decide that some 17 year olds are mature enough to enter into (in this case sexual) contracts and others aren’t?
And carrying on the idea, are you willing to apply that to 40 year olds?
I agree that judicial discretion is a necessary part of a judicial system, but I’m failing to see how that maps onto libertarian ideas very well. Libertarian thought seems to favor a very bright line that says “let me make voluntary contracts, regardless of why” with the voluntary test being very limited.
I’m in favor of bright lines saying “coercion is bad” and “voluntary contracts are valid.” Those two lines don’t resolve all questions, however. You still need a judge or mediator or somebody somewhere to interpret whether or not coercion has taken place, whether the terms of a contract have been fulfilled, whether the people entering into a contract or interaction were capable of giving meaningful consent (contracts with people who were in a coma at the time their hand was made to sign a piece of paper seem obviously invalid), etc.
And when it comes to how such determinations get made, I’m in favor of local norms, precedents, and yes, individual discretion being deciding factors. This is arguably a key difference between minarchists (small government libertarians like Ayn Rand) and anarcho-capitalists (no-government libertarians like David Friedman and myself): the minarchist wants a set of clear, top-down rules to be applied to everyone, within a large society, or even in the world: what distinguishes them from other statists and central planners is just that they think the set of rules which works best is a very minimal one.
Anarcho-capitalists, on the other hand, consider it illegitimate and/or inadvisable to force any particular set of rules on anyone, preferring instead to allow market forces to select for whichever set of rules, judges, standards, etc. a given set of consumers prefer. That is, there is no objective standard for how one should decide a case, but judges who decide cases in ways which please all parties involved and/or society at large will tend to out-compete judges who render decisions participants deem biased, unfair, or ill-informed. In practice, this will tend toward laissez-faire, but it’s not inconceivable it would produce very anti-libertarian laws as well: in a community where everyone despises crystal meth usage and is willing to pay to keep crystal meth out of their community, for example, we might find a very un-libertarian ban on the use of that substance; but you could very well buy it over the counter in the next town over.
In theory, this is a bit like the “archipelago” idea or Nozick’s conception of everyone seceding until they reach the level of political organization where everyone wants to be there voluntarily. In practice, I expect it would result in a million little Singapores springing up everywhere, each with its own set of slightly different rules determined by the people in the market for justice and enforcement. In practice, I expect this to be a much more “local discretion” state of affairs, though, to the extent a consumer base prefers uniformity to discretion, they will also tend to get uniformity.
@onyomi:
“judges who decide cases in ways which please all parties involved”
I want to steel man that, but I am finding it hard. I’m laughing too hard (kidding, but I did do a double take).
Who gets to decide what judge decides the case? By mutual agreement? What happens if you can’t mutually agree (which is exactly what will happen in a huge chunk of cases)?
Do people who are not party to the conflict get to decide on the slate of acceptable judges? And when you say “willing to pay to keep crystal meth out of their community” this seems, again, antithetical to the whole libertarian ideal. You are going to have someone who has a thriving business and then the community can simply take that away from him by paying to do so? Doesn’t that devolve to oligarchy?
But back to the main point, who gets to decide the judge who says whether I am competent to make a decision? Presumably I will not agree to any judge who does not think I am competent.
http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
Skip to page 60.
Actually, we already do this in the case of mental retardation. From a theory of consent standpoint, youth and mentally retarded people are similar in that they likely fail the knowledge prong. Authors like Wertheimer treat them almost simultaneously, noting only a small difference: youth are expected to grow older and gain the ability to consent; mentally retarded people may never be able to do so (meaning such laws would be a larger infringement of their right to positive autonomy).
@Anonymous:
They do that within a framework of law that, I believe, onyomi rejects as insufficiently protective of the rights of individuals.
What is the nature of this insufficiency?
It seems there is no end to the din of complaint of the well-provided for.
Do I have to prove that coercion is defection in the Prisoner’s Dilemma sense, or is it sufficiently obvious?
You have to prove it! To me, it seems coercion is often used as a way to ensure cooperation in Prisoner’s Dilemmas.
Remove from consideration things like penalties for breaking contracts, since the signatory agreed to the coercion beforehand.
Are there any remaining kinds of coercion that aren’t obviously defection?
Sending a note to both prisoners saying “If you squeal, I’ll kill you when you get out.”
Whether they previously agreed to this doesn’t particularly change the effect of it on the game.
Edit: Thinking about it, the real issue I missed first time thinking this through is that not everything in life is a PD. PDs occur between sets of entities which can’t communicate or coordinate, generally. So probably the main argument against coercion in general being defection is that a lot of coercion occurs outside of anything fitting the PD model.
This applies to coercion for contract enforcement; the mob boss, the contract enforcer, whoever, is not one of the participants in the PD at all and so is neither defecting nor cooperating.
I think it’s hard to think of an example where one PD participant coerces the other which isn’t defection.
It’s easy to think of cases where PD participants coercing *other people* would be cooperation- law enforcement officials would be the big example. Letting a friend go could be defection whereas coercing them to stop doing bad things could be cooperation.
PD can be generalized. The traitor can of course communicate but chooses not to. As a result, there is no immediate epistemic difference between a cooperator and deviator: they communicate identically. Their communication is epistemically meaningless, meaning they can’t communicate.
The mob boss has a superior position, but they still choose to cooperate or not-cooperate. The superior position, the asymmetric payoff quadrants, explains how the mob boss profits from repeated defect/defect cycles, if indeed not-cooperate maps to defect.
Cooperating with a third party is two or three superimposed PDs. (That said, I hadn’t previously thought of this possibility.) With three parties there are three dilemmas, and each party gets to make two choices. Since the sheriff has previously agreed to defect on criminals, their dilemmas are not independent – to cooperate with their friend they have to defect on their agreement. (This is kosher since the criminal could have chosen not to defect, allowing the sheriff to cooperate with both, but didn’t.)
RE: “If anyone knows a big space in New York and wouldn’t mind 50 – 100 people descending upon it for a day or two, we could provide you with interesting conversation and maybe some money.”
I have had consistent luck gathering large groups (up to 40 people) at Die Koelner Bierhalle in Park Slope, on Sundays from about 4:30-8:30pm. It’s a huge space and very poorly attended in those hours unless there is a major sports game on, and you can call to reserve tables.
Anyone know what the following situation is called?
In a debate or argument, one side asks that a term be defined. The term could in some circumstances be hazy, but really it’s clear that the only reason the one side is asking for the definition is to derail the conversation–or, that by asking for it they’ll derail the conversation anyway.
I think this is probably the norm, not the exception, when one side demands a definition for a term, and so it seems important to have a name for this sort of thing, and it seems reasonable that the other side should be able to refuse to derail the conversation by going down the path of defining it.
I don’t know that the specific thing you’re describing has a term of its own; the general term might be a distraction tactic. (I tend to avoid “derail” as it has become SJ jargon).
“it seems important to have a name for this sort of thing, and it seems reasonable that the other side should be able to refuse to derail the conversation by going down the path of defining it.”
Down that path leads madness, or at least irrationality. “You know what I mean” is not part of rational discussion, though “we’ve already covered that” might be. Also I think usually the reason a person in a heated debate asks for a definition for a term is either to lay a trap, or to expose or forestall what they think is equivocation.
One issue is that categories do not generally work off definitions; humans, like most effective classifiers, use lots of differently weighted factors and archetypical examples to identify clusters, rather than rules they can describe compactly (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nn/neural_categories/ and some of the surrounding posts talk about this).
As a result, definitions are an approximation, rather than actually… defining, and so have cases where they don’t match how we actually categorise things. A lot of people work on the old “perfect reasoners applying logic to exactly defined concepts” 19th century idea of rationality, and will treat offered definitions as actually defining as opposed to “pointing at the cluster” or as “a first approximation”, and then find lots of ways to pick apart them as erroneous or the statements using them as wrong on the basis of unusual cases.
This gets into the distraction of talking (usually very poorly) about exactly how that category’s boundaries are drawn, which is a reasonable topic but your original conversation is now gone.
If you don’t remember or know to notice this and sort things out when it happens, even a well-intentioned request for definitions can end poorly. I think the best thing to do is to provide instead of “the definition”, something that’s explicitly an approximation, or to substitute for another phrasing which is less ambiguous. That kind of approach lets you resolve genuine issues recognising the cluster you’re pointing at, while avoiding needing to explain to people how categories work.
I think a lot of principle of charity in practice seems to boil down to having the listener look for plausible to them boundaries for categories mentioned that would make the statement correct; a little of that probably helps.
Yup, that summarizes my thoughts well.
“I think this is probably the norm, not the exception, when one side demands a definition for a term, and so it seems important to have a name for this sort of thing, and it seems reasonable that the other side should be able to refuse to derail the conversation by going down the path of defining it.”
The takeaway I get from that is one side gets to define things any way it wants and then doesn’t have to justify its actions. That’s not going to end well.
Yes, political or societal discussions can end up as an argument over definitions. But that’s just another way of saying it’s an argument over fundamental principles, and that’s going to happen.
In the case I’m thinking of, the term in question is generally understood by both sides. One side asks for a definition in order to bring up an exception to it that’s supposed to undermine the other side’s argument, as if showing an exception to the definition disproves its entire validity.
For example, I had a debate that involved stats broken out by race. The other guy complained that race was an arbitrary way of dividing groups (he actually used the phrase “I don’t accept the premise that whiteness is a separate thing from non-whiteness”!) and asked me to define “white people”. We both knew what “white people” are, and the outcome of getting into a semantic discussion of what is meant by “white people” wouldn’t change the facts, only the labels: maybe I’d have to substitute the phrase “European-descended” for “white”, etc. Even if we recovered from that pedantic side-discussion, it would have been annoying and pointless to have to do that.
Around here it goes by “rationalist taboo”.
I hate to respond by asking for a definition, but could you be more specific, or provide an example?
Because it seems like sometimes asking for a definition, or even “derailing” the main debate to argue about definitions for awhile, could sometimes be appropriate.
For example, perhaps one side is engaging in motte-and-bailey tactics – in that case I think it’s fair for the other side to ask that a term be nailed down so they aren’t forced or chase a moving target.
Or perhaps the definition is legitimately vague, or has multiple accepted meanings. In that case you could be requesting clarity.
I’m suspicious of anyone claiming another side is “obviously trying to derail” because that claim can be just as self serving as a constant request for definition.
“Tabooing” a disputed term seems to be better and less confrontational, but I don’t think it’s a well known approach.
EDIT: you seem to have responded with an example while I was typing, and yes, that particular case seems bad, though I’m not sure what to call it either. It’s basically a “gotcha” approach, probably related to the non-central fallacy.
Right. The idea is, you ask me for a definition. Begrudgingly, I come up with one. You find an exception to it and use this to claim that my argument is unsound or that I don’t know what I’m talking about or that we therefore may only use your definitions.
Let me offer a real example where asking for a definition is entirely appropriate—the statement “Humans are causing global warming.” It could mean “Humans are one of the causes of,” “Humans are the main cause of,” “Humans are the sole cause of.”
A widely cited article did its calculations on “humans are one of the causes of,” reported the result as “humans are causing.” The lead author then, in another article, claimed that the figure for the percentage of articles whose abstracts claimed that humans were a cause of represented the percentage claiming that humans were the main cause of.
For details see:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html
I didn’t mean to say there are never legitimate times to ask for a definition. I wanted to point out that there are many times where it is not legitimate.
This should be interesting. The Future Primaeval announces they’re done pretending to not be completely evil (and confirms my suspicions that that is totally a thing ~the group which shall not be named~ deliberately does.)
Nominative determinism: the author is Warg Franklin.
(Unless that’s a pseudonym, of course. I don’t know).
I wonder if the comment about inertia is supposed to mean that the other guys who write for the blog (I didn’t realize they were different people until now) aren’t on board with ditching “reasonablism” like he is
Warg is a pseudonym, but the author’s real name is equally lupine.
Verb sap
Interesting that anyone would want to make their blog more like Jim’s. If I wanted to read cuckposts and arguments about traps vs ladyboys, I’d just go to /a/. I understand that the strategy here is to deliberately say low status things that you believe to be true, but shitposting is shitposting
“Suspicions”? Really? That they’re salon-scene rightism was apparent from day 1. It’s their whole point.
qq
Have you even read the conclusion of Jim’s article?
>Weston’s error was that he proposed to kill them and take their stuff without first legitimately purchasing the land and tempting them into committing unspeakable crimes.
Ya, I was a bit puzzled since reading to the end it read as a critique of how such things were done. Not, “lets go actually commit genocide” but “this is how people dress genocide up to look socially acceptable”
On a left wing blog with a few keywords changed it would read as a solid critique of middle east policy and the current responses to terrorist attacks.
I… do not comprehend this reading.
As I read it, the very first paragraph is describing modern Christianity as “suicidal”. The third states a core tenet of the philosophy espoused by the blogger has “survival” as a major virtue. The fourth then goes on to say that “survival” means they should conquer other nations, and this is where they disagree with modern Christianity. The first sentence of the next paragraph is “The Old Testament is pretty cool with genocide.”, and they go on to hold this up as the good alternative to modern Christianity.
The rest goes on to argue a correct version of Christianity strikes a balance of the parts of the bible which permits Old Testament approaches to problems, with lots of little arguments for relevancy of them to the now, e.g. “The Starving Children of Africa are not good Samaritans. Given half a chance they will cut your throat for a nickel.”. It goes into detailed examination of when and how to switch between approaches. In general it makes statements directly, not statements that other people think these things.
I am confused that you think it is better interpreted as descriptive of an attitude that is not agreed with by the author. Could you expand on this?
Reasonablism sure worked for Marine Le Pen.
You were saying?
@technically not anonymous:
I have seen this tactic taken before by ‘dark enlightenment’ types. Only after seeing this comment thread did I finally realize how I might use this concept to my advantage. In my perception the ‘dark enlightenment’ types are often evil black-robed philosophers going about disguised under robes of grey. Upon garnering what they feel to be a sufficient audience, they dramatically cast aside their grey robes and reveal that they were black-robed all along. “Haha”, they say, ” I tricked you into taking my ideas seriously when normally you would have dismissed me out of hand! Now the seed of petty, small-minded, hateful philosophy has been planted in your brain and soon you shall grow to be like me!” Thus do they attempt to win converts.
Having finally grokked this, I have taken their strategy and reversed it, to great success! I came skulking into this comment thread in tattered robes of darkest black, posing as a highly controversial and somewhat frightening Mad Scientist. Once my controversy had gathered me an audience, I cast aside my robes of black and revealed myself to be clad in robes of shining grey! “Haha,” I declared, “I tricked you! I got you to think about my ideas seriously, when normally you would have dismissed them out of hand for being too science-y and uncontroversial! Now I have planted the seeds of science and rational thought about boring matters of potentially great importance in your brain, and soon you shall grow to be like me!”
I don’t know how necessary or efficacious this gambit actually was, because I lack an adequate control group, but it certainly was fun! For Fun Theory! For the bright shining destiny of Humankind! For the painstakingly slow and precise advancement of potentially-boring but also potentially-hugely-important plans/tools/concepts for the meta-advancement of human sapience! Huzzah!
So, can I ask – what are your actual views?
This sounds like fun, but as a black-robe, I think the difference is not rationality and science but in emotions, such as outgroup compassion.
To make things clear, the basic problem is status-laden language. “Small-minded” and “hateful” means nothing more “ideas that sounds low-status, shunned by elites”. And there is nothing particularly sciencey about making the emotional or value judgement of having universal ethics.
So if you want to play this game, I recommend to purge status-ridden thinking from your own mind. Try to think of the black-robe in a status-neutral way, like “heartless rationality” and your side as “lightworkers”, roughly. I mean, you are being even less fair than Lucas here, as in the Star Wars mythology it is clear enough the Jedi are not more rational but more idealistic, and the Sith are actually more effective if you factor in the disadvantage they have in numbers.
One thing to understand that the only reason we could don the black robe was that we managed to overcome status-related thinking. I mean, as your views become gradually more and more right-wing, you get called a hateful little pricky redneckbeard about a million times. You have to become desensitized to it in order to be able to continue the journey towards realizing the harshest truths. And thus in the Sith circle these brainfucks like “small-minded, hateful vs. reason and science” don’t have their usual effect. They are seen as mind tricks.
This is what makes it a form of enlightenment. To see the world unaffected by the status-laden language of what is the cool, hip, compassionate, ethical and officially-truthful opinion and what is the low-status redneckbeard literally-dickler evil psychopath OMG I don’t even must be parody view, and focus only on what is really true.
By all means play this game, but grow up to – be the kind of lightworker who is unaffected by and does not use status-laden language.
I hope they decide against it, since “those guys” sometimes say some interesting things and I’d miss having a blog where I can read some of those things without the gratuitous edginess.
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/finland-to-pay-every-citizen-1100-per-month-and-scrap-all-other-benefits-in-effort-to-reduce-unemployment-rate
I was wondering if anyone else that blogs or comments on edgy/political stuff has ever received any hate mail or threats? I got a non-specific-but-not-very-nice anonymous message recently (to be clear I don’t think its anyone on SSC), pretty standard for political blogging I guess, but I’m at a loss to understand what about me is particularly offensive. I’m kind of a centrist or centre-left, a bit contrarian, pro-environment, got a pretty darn small audience and go to a fair amount of trouble to see both sides of the coin in anything I comment on. For those that have seen my blog is there anything that jumps out as likely to particularly get people worked up? I did touch on national security a little in my most recent post, but I think my view is so centre of the road, benign and frankly obscure that I’d be fairly lost for words if it was the authorities giving me a hard time. No big deal I guess its just really weird and I don’t know what to make of it.
I was mainly wondering has anyone else here has ever received weird non-specific threatening stuff in response to blogging or commenting something, particularly political?
I’ve never gotten anything that looked to be related to anything political I’ve said (I try to keep my political commentary object-level if possible these days, but I haven’t always been like that).
But I’ve gotten a couple of death threats and more accusations of closet fascism than I can conveniently count from helping run an online game. Go figure, huh?
I have not. My wife has sometimes worried that someone I offended online would heave a brick through our window, but I’ve been offending people online for something over thirty years and it hasn’t happened yet.
I have very strong honor-based taboo against criticizing someone behind their back, so I’d like to mention here, Scott, that I mentioned you here: https://dividuals.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/traders-masters-servants-predators-victims/
How can you tell if you are a victim?
By being nicer than what is reciprocal. If someone hurts you, you should want punishment, not understanding the other. Traders are reciprocal, they pay for good with good and bad with bad. That is how they stay equal and free. Masters can forgive harm sometimes, due to their insane level of confidence. But you know if you are a Master. You also know if you are a Servant : someone strong is protecting you. Even if you are Darth Vader level top servant, you think if you cannot choke that one pesky Jedi the Emperor will help you, probably. So the only dilemma is whether you are a Trader or Victim.
For example, if you ever felt shame for being privileged, like rich or white, you are a Victim. Because it is a ridiculous thing to do: most Traders actively try to get richer i.e. more privileged. This is the game of life. Being ashamed of luck having handed you a good hand of cards, or your ancestors were fairy brutal with other people so that you can have a good hand of cards in the game is classic Victim move because you are almost begging for someone to take them away. And by giving up privilege and power, you become defenseless, and just what happens to defenseless people? Predators can smell that.
So even a Trader, the most egalitarian of these all, wants to have more privilege and power and will not be personally ashamed that his ancestors massacred some other folks just to give him his starting privilege. He will shrug, say it were tough times and promise not to do it again. But will never want to give up the fruits of it. Because that would mean becoming unsafe.
Are children usually servants of their parents, under this model?
This might be an example of what you are talking about:
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/10/26/thunderf00t-rebuts-charges-he-commands-a-hate-mob-by-unleashing-a-hate-mob-on-a-woman-who-made-this-charge/
(Particularly the comments: feminists try to get anti-feminist youtuber fired, when he responds in a similar (though more restrained) fashion, they are outraged.)
But I don’t think that the left can be characterized as willing to forgive slights against them/ being overly generous – far from it. They simply have a different idea about what is important/ damaging in society, and are, unfortunately, more concerned with theory than real lives – same problem as most people with strong ideological positions.
That’s why an alliance of monarchists et al. with libertarians etc. would be a disaster. These aren’t real people who are concerned with real life. They are ideological anoraks, who never let reality get in the way of a good theory.
Anyway… in my view, our institutions should be the “good master”, while we act as “traders” in our personal lives, within the bounds determined by those institutions. When I comment on political matters I do so as an adviser to the master – but that has no relation to how I act in my personal life.
Leftists “more concerned with theory than real lives”… which makes it particularly odd that they like to go on about “lived experiences” trumping everything else, and attack “geeks living in their mother’s basement” for treating things as abstract intellectual discussions when real lives are at stake.
How concerned the left is with theory depends on on how far left you go. The mainstream left isn’t the least concerned with theory out of the major political brands — that would be the mainstream right — but it adopts theory in order to justify care for those within its scope of concern, not the other way around. It objects strongly to anything that doesn’t work to reinforce that scope of concern, which is how you can get wholesale adoption of armchair sociology, but semi-hostile ambivalence towards economics with a much better empirical basis. Let’s not even talk about evopsych.
Marxians, anarchists, and the like do put theory first, but they’re pretty rare outside the academy and a few other enclaves. It’s similar to the relationship on the other side of the aisle, between the mainstream right and libertarians, religious fundamentalists, and (in the US) hardline constitutional originalists.
Yeah, that may well be true. I was thinking of the reaction to the death of that little Syrian boy by drowning – it didn’t seem to me to be the reality that they were concerned with… but I suppose they weren’t motivated by theory either. Perhaps best to say they are concerned with their own thoughts/feelings?
At that level of abstraction I can’t read that as anything more than “there are two kinds of people in the world, one of them’s bad, and you’re one of those.” Too vague to be offensive.
The comment section needs some kind of plus/minus system to separate the wheat from the chaff. I’m sure there’s a lot of good stuff here, but who has time to read 700+ comments?
ctrl-f “suntz”
Thanks to suntz Goodhart’s Law suntz now that we know this is a good system suntz it will stop working suntz.
Guess who is a year behind Scott and not quite as well written*?
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9790764/partisan-discrimination
Okay, that is not quite accurate, but I wanted to score points with the catchy headline. The actual accurate description is that Vox has an article on discrimination between parties, very similar to what Scott has in one of the sections in “I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup.” They seem to have some slightly different descriptions and explanations of the phenomenon, which were helpful. They also go more in depth into the resume study, which was extremely helpful.
That being said, I did find it extremely similar. I don’t know if someone at Vox read “I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup” and decided they wanted to write a similar piece, or if they wanted to write on partisian discrimination and referenced the same studies.
* Sorry if someone else brought this up first. I searched for “vox” and didn’t find any mentions, so I assume I am the first.
Take the implicit association test in there. Thats interesting. I’ve taken race/gender ones, and haven’t shown much bias, but the political one cleaned my clock. Very strong dem preference.
From the Vox article:
Together, the two experiments suggest that partisanship now extends beyond politics — it’s becoming a fundamental identity in American life, and may well lead to discrimination in completely apolitical contexts.
This part doesn’t amaze me much. Partizans on both side are actually straight up open about taking politics into account in apolitical situations (ie. see the Brendan Eich incident, and other such flareups)
I took the test, and I also got a very strong Democratic preference. -0.5, I think, but only because they stopped marking the axis after -0.4, and I seem to be about one unit to the left of -0.4.
The scale confuses me slightly. Weak Democrats are further left than strong Democrats! Shouldn’t strong Democrats have stronger Democratic preferences than weak Democrats? I don’t think I am misreading the graph, because strong Republicans are further right than weak Republicans. So color me confused about that.
Also, their error bars seem really small. I assume that the bars mean X% of those who identified as Y fell within this range, but the bars seem awful small unless X is very low. Maybe the bars are the mean plus some fraction of the standard deviation?
The test worries me slightly, or at least my results did. For the first three rounds (meaning both training rounds and the real pro-republican round), I was reading the entire NRA emblem, to make sure that it actually was the NRA and not some other group. By the fourth round, I had realized that there were only eight symbols in the test, and stopped reading it, which biased my score towards the Democrats.
…Upon further thought, this only causes a problem if someone makes this realization during rounds 3 or 4, and not during the training round. Vox’s data are probably accurate, even if my result is skewed further left than it should be.
EDIT: capitalization
Non-American, probably had much slower answer times because I had to stop and go “The elephant is which party again?” but came out “Independent” (that is, slightly on the left of the dividing line).
Since I consider I’m centrist-right by my own country’s standards, I’m not too put out by this 🙂
If you take it again, do you get the same result?
It scored me as extreme left the first time, strongly left the second time. Way off either way — I see myself as a libertarian-leaning centrist — but I grew up in a fairly Blue environment, so maybe that’s what it’s picking up.
Or maybe the test just sucks.
I see myself as a libertarian-leaning centrist, maybe further to the right than most folk here, and I also got -.5 the first time (ie, off the chart to the left), followed by strong left the second time (still biased to the left).
I can only assume that the left’s near total dominance of the social media and traditional media that I consume is to blame.
Well, I started taking it, but though I reluctantly accepted calling the NRA “Republicans,” I really couldn’t stomach calling Texas “Republicans.”
So I basically stopped right there.
Really people. The NRA is the NRA, and anyone who supports the second amendment can join; more importantly, a state is a state, not a political party, Jesus H. Christ!
Ezra Klein has mentioned that he reads SSC.
We had an interesting discussion recently about the IQ of Nigerian immigrants. Peter Frost suggests that it’s specifically the Igbo, “the Jews of Africa”: http://www.unz.com/pfrost/no-blacks-arent-all-alike-who-said-they-were/
Hi Scott, I’ve been getting a crapload of annoying popups browsing SSC on an android device this morning (one apparently from Zinq Media, closed the rest). In particular, they seem to come up when I tap on the comment box (sending this from my PC, doesn’t have the same issue). Maybe it’s a problem with my phone, but I’m not getting the same thing visiting any other websites I can think of.
Weird. Maybe Scott changed something, but I’m not seeing popup ads on any of my devices. Other than the sidebar ads (MealSquares, BeeMinder, etc) I don’t think the site has ads. If SSC hasn’t been pw3d or something, consider the possibility of malware on your device. A lot of malware injects ads into sites that don’t normally have them.
Yeah, I think that’s possible. Still, I haven’t been able to find another site that does it. I mean, I haven’t exactly gone looking for sites that spawn obnoxious pop-ups, but I’m not getting it from any of my usual sites or from comment boxes on any of these sites, so I thought it might be worth mentioning.
If it’s not replicating on anyone else’s device, though, it’s probably me. Firefox on Android 5.1.1 for what it’s worth.
I have been having similar effects on my blog, which also is supposed to have no ads.
I have no popups, no affiliation with any advertising network, and no idea why this would be happening. Maybe you have a virus which is only activating on specific sites to cover its tracks?
Reinstalled Firefox, seems to be better for now. Looks like it’s a problem at my end, sorry for the false alarm.
I think the ban-Muslim-immigrants thing is the issue that will finally sink Trump — if not now, then later, when most of the electorate starts paying attention, and the serious attack ads come out. When you’ve lost Dick Cheney, you’ve lost America.
I know, I know, The Onion is here to make fun of me, as usual. But I have a really hard time believing American voters will embrace a position that would’ve been considered extremist even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
So congratulations, Donald. You have the opportunity to stomp out my few remaining flickers of faith in the American voter. Bring it.
I expect The Donald to backpedal a bit on the “no muslims” position, perhaps after the trip to Jordan he’s currently denying.
Hmm. Will the uncompromising image he’s created make it easier or harder for him to change his position? I can see it going either way.
I don’t think this will be the cause of his downfall, but it might be a symptom of why he probably won’t win the nomination and is very unlikely to win the presidency if he does: namely, his limited appeal. There are probably at least 10% of Americans who really do think we shouldn’t allow any new Muslims into the country ever, and those are and have been the Donald’s constituency. 10% of Americans is enough to put you in an early lead of likely Republican voters when the field is so crowded, but probably not enough to win you the nomination once the field winnows, nor nearly enough to win the general.
The most interesting result will be if Trump gets a plurality of pledged delegates but not a majority (say 25-30%).
I have an unprovable suspicion that you misunderstand how broad Trump’s appeal really is, and how deep the resentment for the GOP establishment runs in the red tribe.
Well as a reddish-grey tribe member who deeply resents the GOP establishment, I think I have some sense of it, though maybe not enough.
I do agree with Scott that the media’s constant declarations that “this time he’s gone too far” only give him power.
American political parties are, and always have been, coalitions. No matter how angry all the other parts of the coalition are at the business republicans I can’t see them all banding together under Trump’s banner.
No matter how high a percentage of the blue collar not-very-religious voters he gets, he can’t be nominated without the evangelicals. And he can’t win the general without at least the grudging support of all major parts of the coalition, including business republicans.
The answer is in the question. They’re not banding together under Trump, they’re banding together away from GOP.biz.
Damn near everything written about Trump has been “can’t”. Yet he has. Past performance != future results etc., but as long as all of the right people keep shrieking at him, he keeps looking better.
I don’t see why this will hurt him at all. The reaction is key: the usual suspects on the left declaring how righteous they are to hate Trump for this. The trouble is, they spend the rest of the time signalling their righteous hate for all the people who they’d need to pull away from Trump (it’s not Sanders supporters that need to be convinced). Why would those people listen to you?
This is the same strategy that was tried for every other thing that was supposed to kill Trump. How is that working so far?
I’m sure most Americans would prefer a more moderate approach to Muslim terrorism. If anybody had bothered to offer that, it probably would have hurt Trump. But when the other side looks like they’ll keep declaring “Muslims are peaceful!” while watching a Muslim slitting throats, Trump’s solution of just avoiding the problem altogether looks more tempting.
This a thousand times. Trump has a crappy, racist plan. But he’s the only one with a plan. The Democratic frontrunner won’t even say the words “Radical Islam” and the president is proposing gun laws that even Slate and the LA Times think are dumb and unconstitutional and scolding people for being worried about a large, powerful group with a declared interest in murder.
Hell, Trump’s initial appeal was based on the same sort of reactions, but for immigration – when the Democrat position is basically “you’re for open borders or you’re a racist!” and the Republican leadership is openly floating large-scale amnesty, where is the moderate supposed to turn?
I don’t think Trump is the perfect candidate to many people. Most Republicans think he’s too extreme. But Trump is the only loud voice willing to allow the “average” Republican position on immigration and terrorism into the Overton window, and is thus attracting excitement.
I disagree that it’ll kill him. He pitched it early enough that it can’t tank him overnight, so that means it’s gotta be discussed. Once the signalling tirade burns out, and people are past that initial shock of conscience, and particularly if the biweekly terror attacks in the west continue, I don’t think the idea will look that bad in the light of day.
If I had my ideal Magic Unicorn Government, would we have a Middle Eastern Exclusion Act? Hell no.
But if I had my ideal Magic Unicorn Government, we wouldn’t militarily intervene in most of this stuff in the first place, and for that matter would probably be allies with Iran instead of Saudi Arabia. We’ve got to work from where we are though, and where we are is fucking dire.
It is imperative that we leave the Middle East alone. There is nothing improvable there. Every time we touch something it breaks. Every time we stop touching something it breaks worse, and every time the patch fix lasts a shorter period after. The region is unpreventably descending into general chaos, and if the global powers are involved when it happens that chaos will likely mean World War III. I’m convinced at this point that if the next government gets its foreign policy right, nothing else it could do would be bad enough to outweigh that, and if it gets its foreign policy wrong, nothing else it does will matter. As ClarkHat likes to say, “Gigadeaths are coming.”
But the necessary disengagement is impossible right now, not only because of decades of inertia and vested government interests, but because the cries to #DoSomething will be overwhelming for any government with a shred of democratic validity. The Syrian refugee crisis is bad enough, what’s coming will be far worse. An Exclusion Act is the only idea I’ve heard floated that could allow us the space to pursue longer term, less-than-purely reactive foreign policy in the ME. So I am tentatively in favor.