Category Archives: books and book reviews

Liberalism vs. Theory

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I am reading Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories. I would describe it as a solid critique of the social justice movement and a stalwart defense of liberalism.

An excerpt:

Liberalism accepts criticism, even of itself, and is therefore self-correcting; Theory cannot be criticized. Liberalism believes in progress; Theory is radically cynical about the possibility of progress. Liberalism is inherently constructive because of the evolutionary processes it engenders; Theory is inherently corrosive because of its cynicism and attachments to methods it calls “critical.”

If I could recommend one book to a student about to enter the indoctrination center known as a contemporary university, this would be it. In fact, I will be recommending it to a wide range of people, including readers of this blog.

My main takeaway is that the threat to conservatism on college campuses may not be as significant as the threat to liberalism. Liberalism’s natural reaction to dissent is to co-opt it. Liberalism accepts what it can of a dissenting point of view without losing liberalism itself. But the new ideology is so antithetical to liberalism that it cannot be co-opted.

Ranked-choice voting

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Mark Begich and Sean Parnell write,

Jason McDaniel, a political scientist at San Francisco State University, found that ranked-choice voting decreased turnout by 3 to 5 percentage points on average in cities that implemented it. Mr. McDaniel was blunt in his conclusion, telling the New York Times : “My research shows that when you make things more complicated, which this does, there’s going be lower turnout.”

I had just finished reading Gehl and Porter’s The Politics Industry, in which they argue that ranked-choice voting would reverse the trend toward polarization and dysfunctional politics. Begich and Parnell never confront the argument that ranked-choice voting would improve the fortunes of centrist candidates. The current system rewards tribalism. The best way to stay in office in a safe Democratic district is to go far left and the best way to say in office in a safe Republican district is to go far right.

If you are going to write a competent op-ed against ranked-choice voting, then you should argue one or more of the following:

1. Polarization is not a major problem.
2. Ranked-choice voting would not help solve the problem.
3. Ranked-choice voting would lead to other problems that are even worse than polarization.

Begich and Parnell are so demagogic and uncharitable that their piece actually moved me in the direction of supporting ranked-choice voting.

So you don’t have to

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I read Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth and wrote a review.

It is indeed correct to say that when the government is bidding for resources, the risk of inflation is low if those resources are idle. It is also correct that unemployment is an indication of idle resources. But just because some resources are idle does not mean that the government can spend wherever it would like without affecting prices. The government would have to be an especially perspicacious and adroit entrepreneur to advance its priorities while only using idle resources.

By the way, as I read the market for U.S. Treasuries, investors are betting that Kelton is right.

Human learning

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I might read How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene. Some notes from the sample:

Four essential mechanisms, or “pillars,” massively modulate our ability to learn. The first is attention: a set of neural circuits that select, amplify, and propagate the signals we view as relevant–multiplying their impact a hundred fold. My second pillar is active engagement. . .learning requires active generation of hypotheses, with motivation and curiosity. The third pillar, the flip side to active engagement, is error feedback. . . eliminate inappropriate hypotheses, and stabilize the most accurate ones. Finally, the fourth pillar is consolidation: over time, our brain compiles what it has acquired and transfers it into long-term memory. . .Repetition plays an essential role in this consolidation process.

Think about how I learn a new dance. I have to pay attention to the teacher. I am either consciously or unconsciously forming hypotheses about what the next steps will be. When I find myself on the wrong foot, I have to go back and figure out what I got wrong. Finally, the more I do the dance the less my conscious brain has to work to do it.

“adversarial learning,” consists of training tow opponent systems. . .The first system gets a bonus whenever it successfully identifies a genuine Van Gogh painting, while the second is rewarded whenever it manages to fool the other’s expert eye. . .

. . . Some of the areas in our brain learn to simulate what others are doing; they allow us to foresee and imagine the results of our actions. . . Some areas learn to criticize others: they constantly assess our abilities and predict the rewards or punishments we might get. . .We will also see that metacognition–the ability to know oneself, to self-evaluate, to mentally simulate what would happen if we acted this way or that way–plays a fundamental role in human learning. The opinions we form of ourselves help us progress or, in some cases, lock us into a vicious circle of failure. Thus it is not inappropriate to think of the brain as a collection of experts that collaborate and compete.

What I’m reading

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Joel Kotkin, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism. On p. 8, he writes,

The modern clerisy often claim science as the basis of their doctrines and tout academic credentials as the key to status and authority. They seek to replace the bourgeois values of self-determination, family, community, and nation with “progressive” ideas about globalism, environmental sustainability, redefined gender roles, and the authority of experts. These values are inculcated through the clerisy’s dominance over the institutions of higher learning and media, aided by the oligarchy’s control of information technology and the channels of culture.

Scientists against science

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Ten days ago, the head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued this:

AAAS acknowledges and supports #ShutDownSTEM, a grassroots movement that aims to “transition to a lifelong commitment of actions to eradicate anti-Black racism in academia and STEM.” We are committed to education, action, and healing at AAAS, and we hope to encourage other institutions and individuals to get involved. This is not a moment that our community can let pass. It is time to stop what we’re doing, take time to listen to our friends and colleagues, and commit ourselves to taking the actions needed to bring about real and lasting change.

I have been re-reading The Secret of Our Success, by Joseph Henrich. Here is one passage:

Sometime in the 1820s an epidemic hit this population of hunters and selectively killed off many of its oldest and most knowledgeable members. With the sudden disappearance of the know-how carried by these individuals, the group collectively lost its ability to make some its most crucial and complex tools. . .these technological losses had a dramatic impact, leaving the group unable to hunt caribou (no bows) or harvest the plentiful Arctic char from local streams (no leisters).

The point of this passage is that it is possible for a culture to lose valuable knowledge and revert to a more primitive state. It strikes me that our academic leaders are attempting to do exactly that.

Variation in polling response

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Andrew Gelman and others wrote,

apparent swings in vote intention represent mostly changes in sample composition, not actual swings. These are phantom swings arising from sample selection bias in survey participation. Previous studies have tended to assume that campaign events cause changes in vote intentions, while ignoring the possibility that they may cause changes in survey participation. We will show that in 2012, campaign events more strongly correlated with changes in survey participation than vote intentions.

Cited in Hugo Mercier’s book.

The hypothesis is that when your candidate is perceived as doing poorly, you are less likely to respond to a poll. If pollsters had a consistent panel of responders, they would see that people are not changing their minds. So, if you see Mr. Biden moving up or down in the polls as the campaign goes on, it is likely that the swing is over-estimated. But I wonder if being discouraged about answering a poll is also a predictor of being discouraged about voting on election day.

Robin Hanson on epistemology

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Robin Hanson writes,

Just as our distant ancestors were too gullible about their sources of knowledge on the physical world around them, we today are too gullible on how much we can trust the many experts on which we rely. Oh we are quite capable of skepticism about our rivals, such as rival governments and their laws and officials. Or rival professions and their experts. Or rival suppliers within our profession. But without such rivalry, we revert to gullibility, at least regarding “our” prestigious experts who follow proper procedures.

On a recommendation from the redoubtable John Alcorn, I am reading Hugo Mercier’s Not Born Yesterday. Mercier claims that we have evolved not to be gullible. Otherwise, we would be taken advantage of and not survive.

Incidentally, if I tell you that you are not gullible, how gullible do you have to be to believe me? To not believe me?

I think Mercier relies quite a bit on a distinction between cheap talk and actionable beliefs (he terms these “reflective beliefs” and “intuitive beliefs,” respectively, which I find unhelpful). He says that the implausible beliefs that we hold, which make us seem gullible, are in the cheap talk category–we don’t act as if we deeply believe them. When we need to act, we make the effort to sort out truth. Libertarian economics would predict that political choices are based on cheap talk and consumer choices are based on actionable beliefs.