GMU or IDW?

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Bryan Caplan lists ten cultural characteristics of his intellectual subculture. For example,

Appealing to your identity is a reason to discount what you say, not a reason to pay extra attention.

A few remarks;

1. If you took the ten characteristics out of context, they might describe the Intellectual Dark Web. But he says he is referring to GMU econ bloggers.

2. Although it refers to a “culture” of GMU econ bloggers in general, the links in his list pretty much all go to previous Bryan Caplan posts. Most bloggers are self-referential, but for Bryan it’s an art form.

3. His last item is “strategically appease mainstream thinkers,” which seems out of synch with the rest. The link goes to a post where he justifies paying taxes, and for me that post fails to provide clarification. Mainstream thought for the most part does not come with a threat of imprisonment behind it. For now, at least.

4. Just as a reminder, I am not on the faculty of GMU. I am nominally affiliated (no office, no salary) with Mercatus, which is at GMU. Once every couple of years or so I try to have lunch with some of the GMU econ bloggers.

Note: after I wrote this post but before it appeared, Tyler Cowen wrote a post in favor of taking identity into account. But I think Tyler missed the important difference between taking identity into account and having someone appeal to their identity. I agree with Bryan that the latter is a negative signal. Opening with “Speaking as a ____” is a bullying tactic.

8 thoughts on “GMU or IDW?”

  1. Appeals to identity are universal. Some of the signals are non-verbal – wearing a police uniform, for example. Appeals to shared identity are a shorthand, often costly signal, for: ‘what I am about to say, it will fit with things you know and believe.’

    So it establishes a Bayesian sort of basis for belief. Do you want to be a good Bayesian and accept that your existing knowledge is a basis on which to build, or are you aiming for a suboptimal sort of self-doubt which may open you up to radical innovation?

  2. I’d like to see if Caplan can pass his own Intellectual Turing Test and craft a rebuttal to that post from the perspective of a progressive commentator (say, one from Vox, but who isn’t pariah-baiting or playing other dirty tricks).

    For example:

    You say you are ‘inclusive’, but your callousness to ordinary and genuine feelings of offense, outrage, and humiliation when members of less privileged groups are subjected to noxious, hurtful ideas denigrating to their identity – no matter how ‘politely’ expressed – belies that notion and is frankly inhumane. Hate speech can be perfectly polite, and what you are actually saying is that you would be comfortable in an environment where hateful ideas are politely expressed and debated, even if it had the predictable effect of chasing away the targets of that bigotry, and in which cases the please of such individuals to you that such speech should not be tolerated because hurtful and distressing would fall on deaf ears. That’s a recipe for exclusion – a homogeneous “bubble” you might say – and surrounding yourself with almost nothing but privileged white males with elite educations who really have no clue “how the other half lives”. You can’t include people in your community if they don’t feel safe there, and they won’t feel safe and welcome if they know you don’t care about someone offending them, and indeed, will insist they be permitted to continue doing so with impunity.

    If you really cared about inclusion, you would be more understanding and compassionate and take these claims of hurtfulness seriously, and in practice you would less willing to even inadvertently entertain notions that people with identities very different from your own find deeply insulting.

    And this is really the key point, because we all tend to be ignorant of the experiences of people unlike ourselves, and so there is no way for you to know what is and is not truly offensive to those different people without listening to them tell you what it is like. And there is no way for them to educate you on this matter – without specifically appealing to their membership in an identity group and personal experience living as such. But you have already said you doubly discount this critical information, both because it derives from an identity claim, and because it relates to normal and reasonable emotional responses to pernicious and belittling claims.

    When someone says “speaking as a black woman”, that is a statement of personal expertise in something that is of relevance and indeed critical important to many subject matters which come under discussion. It is comparable in these instances to someone responding to a conversation about raising the minimum wage with, “speaking as an economist … ” or in a conversation about Ebola, “speaking as a virologist … ” Instead of responding by closing your ears, you should instead take those opportunities to open your mind, and to try to really understand a different perspective from your own.

    • “which cases the please of such individuals” << each plea, the pleas (spellcheck typo?)

      Because I am an unusual American in Slovakia, there is the identification issue of intro: As an American, I think …

      There's a huge amount of anti-American writing and belief in many educated folk throughout Europe. Lots of folk repeat lots of leftist critiques and conspiracy theories.

      So Sad.

    • If you say, “speaking as a black woman, this has been my experience,” that is useful information, worth listening to. Listening shows respect.

      If you say, “speaking as a black woman, this is how physics works,” that may well be useless and stupid. No more worth listening to than an astrologer.

      If you say, “speaking as a black woman, this is how American society works,” I think you’re closer to the second than the first.

    • Everyone has a version of “how it is” that makes them the hero and says they should have more of X (money, status, power, etc).

      Objectively, there is enough evidence to show that these are bullshit political postures. “Speaking as an X”, is a kind of high stakes adveserial negotiation opener and should be treated as such. The correct play is to call the bluff and not surrender frame. Ironically, in an entire price espousing the value of rather effeminate appeasement, this is the one area where even Caplan decided to ratchet up in a game of chicken.

  3. In my misanthropic decrepitude, I instinctively dismiss as bigotry all claims that one group has a virtue that other groups supposedly lack. Even though I disagree with the “coddling” or whatever you want to call it that is going on at campuses, I doubt that there is anyone anywhere in academia who would say “We value emotional comfort over intellectual progress.” And to claim that your flavor of non-partisan is genuine implies that there are others claiming the non-partisan label who are not genuine. Even assuming Caplan’s claim is true, I fail to see how that would distinguish the GMU blogging culture from any other academic blogging culture. Oh well, at least, he didn’t label the rest of the world fascist.

  4. Since I firmly believe that filing a US income tax form is a violation of 5th amendment rights, I fully understand the logic of not paying taxes, and going to jail for it, vs appeasement and paying the taxes and living a fine life (in the US, or in Slovakia, where they don’t quite have the same culture, nor Constitution). I actually DID have my wages garnished for failure to pay, and did change into an appeaser as the reality of being a tax protester became evident and very real in my own life.

    His appeasement examples are very true. In a small, personal, “mercy instead of justice” way. Actually, while he doesn’t discuss it, there’s an implicit Christian value of mercy in most people being polite and nice, even to those who are occasionally jerks; and the wise folk stop inviting the jerks to parties, except when the jerk is the boss / pays the bills.

    Mercy at the individual level is great. Justice at the social level is required for civilization.

    Yet Arnold is correct, the local appeasement / mercy, including paying taxes under penalties of perjury, doesn’t show the appeasement of mainstream thinkers.

    In the past, “Community action group” meant folks locally got together to solve a local problem, without gov’t help. Today, thanks to the Dems, “Community action group” usually means a group of locals wanting more “free” gov’t money.

    Today, “Speaking as an X:…” is mostly a bullying tactic, but previously it was a good shorthand intro plus a bit of appeal to authority, and authority on the identity group thinking by a member of that group. I claim this is true, speaking as a male, white, Christian, small gov’t, pro-life Republican American (in Slovakia). Hmm, married, father of 4 should maybe be listed, too.

  5. Shrieking as a woman, I want Senator Flake to “feel my rage” (Ana Maria Achilla).

    Blocking the elevator door as a woman, I want the Senate Judiciary Committee to end the presumption of innocence, throw out due process, do away with evidence and corroboration.

    Also to “burn the college to the ground. Set fire to the old hypocrisies. Let the light of the burning building scare the nightingales and incarnadine the willows. And let the daughters of educated men dance round the fire and heap armful upon armful of dead leaves upon the flames” (Virginia Woolf).

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