Category Archives: culture

Blocking out the truth

Posted on by

One of the points made in the Stanovich piece I referred to yesterday is

Identity politics advocates have succeeded in making certain research conclusions within the university verboten. They have made it very hard for any university professor (particularly the junior and untenured ones) to publish and publicly promote any conclusions that these advocates dislike.

As an example, consider another article on Quillette, by Zachary Robert Caverly.

Back in March 2020, a University of Pittsburgh physician by the name of Norman C. Wang published an article in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) about the use of race and ethnicity considerations when recruiting for the US cardiology workforce. Wang argued that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity offices are ultimately unhelpful in promoting minorities in cardiology practice. He also pointed out that these offices may be unconstitutional and that they often make claims that may be unsupported by the relevant empirical evidence. Towards the end, he advocated race-neutral admissions and hiring practices as an alternative to the current model. . . .

After other professionals joined the outcry on social media, the American Heart Association (AHA) announced on its Twitter feed that Wang’s paper did not represent the organization’s values and assured its followers that, “We’ll investigate. We’ll do better. We’re invested in helping to build a diverse healthcare and research community.” A subsequent statement released on August 6th stated that the article would be retracted, and claimed that it “contains many misconceptions and misquotes and that together those inaccuracies, misstatements, and selective misreading of source materials strip the paper of its scientific validity.” Wang did not agree to the retraction and the AHA announced that it would be publishing a rebuttal.

Myside Bias

Posted on by

Keith E. Stanovich writes,

one particular bias—myside bias—sets a trap for the cognitively sophisticated. Regarding most biases, they are used to thinking—rightly—that they are less biased. However, myside thinking about your political beliefs represents an outlier bias where this is not true. This may lead to a particularly intense bias blind spot among certain cognitive elites. If you are a person of high intelligence, if you are highly educated, and if you are strongly committed to an ideological viewpoint, you will be highly likely to think you have thought your way to your viewpoint. And you will be even less likely than the average person to realize that you have derived your beliefs from the social groups you belong to and because they fit with your temperament and your innate psychological propensities.

Interesting essay throughout. It was difficult to excerpt.

The movie Stay Woke

Posted on by

Our synagogue had a virtual showing of the movie Stay Woke, a documentary made in 2016 about the Black Lives Matter movement. Many in our congregation are much more fervent in their leftism than in their Judaism, and everyone else had only positive things to say afterward about the film and about Black Lives Matter.

The documentary depicted BLM in a very positive light Those who spoke for BLM were very energized by the movement. Critics were depicted as unfair and embedded in Fox News.

In the discussion that we had afterward, I pointed out that the movie did not include even one specific proposal or policy change. I did not mention Martin Gurri, but I was thinking about him.

Other congregants pointed out how sad they were that nothing seemed to have changed between 2016 and 2020. One person typed into the Zoom chat that things had gotten worse.

No one else saw a connection between the absence of policy ideas in the movie and the absence of any change. But it strikes me that is you aren’t behind a program, that makes it unlikely that you will effect change.

Continuing to channel Gurri, I would say that social media is not a tool suited to creating a movement. Instead, it is suited to instigating a mob. A movement requires thought and long-term planning. A mob just requires stimulating rage and the narcissistic satisfaction that comes these days from appearing in viral videos and having one’s tweets widely circulated.

Mobs tend to seek scapegoats, such as Fox News personalities. But another scapegoat in the movie was Reverend Al Sharpton. He was canceled by the younger activists, not for his past anti-Semitism, but because he spoke against rioting.

I can see why so many organizations want to support BLM. People who are sad about the deaths of young black men inspire sympathy. But there is also the more cynical reason that when a mob is coming for scapegoats, it’s natural to try and seek shelter.

Mike Gonzalez sees BLM as organized Marxists. But I think that protests that emerge from social media are more child-like than that. The “leaders” are more like Andy Warhol leaders, enjoying their 15 minutes of fame on Twitter or CNN, but not providing what leaders provide. They do not “speak to the troops,” articulate clear goals, formulate a strategy for achieving those goals, assign tasks, etc.

Recently, I was asked what I thought were the most successful movements of the 21st century. I came up with the gay marriage movement, which preceded the emergence of social media. That movement achieved something tangible. As far as I can tell, BLM has only exacerbated the bad relationships between police and young black men, with adverse consequences. There are potential solutions out there, but BLM is instead part of the problem.

Miscellaneous: political posturing; WEIRD families; Turchin on turbulence

Posted on by

I wanted to note these links for future reference.

1. A classic election-year post of mine from 2008 that a Twitter user chose to highlight recently. An excerpt:

no politician will figure out a way to bring the bottom half of America’s children up to the level where they can benefit from a college education.

2. Alex Mackiel’s unsatisfyingly brief review of the WEIRD Henrich book. And an essay by Robert Henderson that is interesting to read in light of Henrich’s view of the importance of Christian family values in seeding the emergence of liberal society. Henderson writes,

American society has fewer people in poverty and less bigotry compared with decades past; and police use of force is far less pervasive than it was during higher-crime periods. What has been getting far worse, however, is family life. Stable families have been in free fall over the last few decades. In 1960, the out-of-wedlock birthrate in the U.S. was 3 percent. In 2000, it was about 30 percent. Today, it is 40 percent. (This figure obscures class divisions: for college graduates, only one out of ten children is born out of wedlock. For those with only a high school diploma, six out of ten are born to unmarried parents.)

3. Jack A. Goldstone and Peter Turchin claim to have predicted the current political turbulence.

The other point of view

Posted on by

Molly Martin writes,

Black Americans have no evidence that they can trust the people who benefit from historically and predominantly white institutions. Banks. Schools. Courts. Bureaucracies. Housing providers. Nonprofits and charities. All were built within a racist system and, intentionally or unintentionally, have in their DNA measures and barriers—from redlining to school segregation—meant to keep Black and Brown people out.

This is from the New America Foundation. This is the point of view that I do not share.

My objection to critical race theory

Posted on by

Here is a concise explanation of why object to Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, and so on. Following Lindsay and Pluckrose, I will use the shorthand “Theory” to describe these ideas or mindsets.

1. Humans have two bases for hierarchies: prestige and dominance. In a prestige hierarchy, such as the international rankings of chess players or tennis players, people lower down appreciate and admire people higher up. In a dominance hierarchy, such as a violent gang, people lower down fear and resent people higher up.

2. Prestige is positive and dominance is negative. Participating in a prestige hierarchy tends to involve skill development, greater prosperity, and peaceful cooperation. Participating in a dominance hierarchy tends to involve violence, coercion, and repression.

3. When we examine a cultural institution, we may see elements of both prestige and dominance. For example, we may wear a mask during the current pandemic because we appreciate and admire those who recommend doing so. Or we may wear a mask mainly because we fear law enforcement or social pressure. Another ambiguous example is a corporate hierarchy. You may think of the CEO as a leader who enjoys the trust and respect of employees, investors, and consumers. Or you may think of the CEO as an autocrat exercising power over those constituents. In truth, there is some of both.

Government is an interesting example of an ambiguous case. If the way to become head of state is to use force, and the head of state rules by decree, then intuitively this is a dominance hierarchy. If the way to become head of state is to inspire followers, and the way to inspire followers is to have good ideas for policy, then intuitively this is a prestige hierarchy.

4. The idea of Theory is to expose the dominance that lies behind existing institutions that supposedly operate as prestige hierarchies. For example, STEM fields appear to be a prestige hierarchy, but Theory looks at the disparities in STEM positions by race and gender and sees a dominance hierarchy.

5. Today, Theory has taken this idea to extremes. It does not see our existing institutions as having any basis in prestige. Instead, it interprets all cultural institutions as serving a dominance hierarchy. In this view, the sole purpose of the SAT score is to perpetuate the oppression of blacks, so SAT scores should be eliminated. The sole purpose of police is to oppress blacks, so the police should be de-funded. The sole purpose of the use of the scientific method is to oppress indigenous people, so that the status of the scientific method should be lowered and instead other ways of knowing should be accorded more respect.

[UPDATE: This comment documents these examples.]

6. In going to these extremes, Theory is wrong. Many cultural institutions really do promote prestige and minimize dominance. They are good institutions. Where they fail to live up to our highest ideals, they can and should be reformed, not eliminated. We can improve the policies to recruit and train police, but not if we de-fund the police.

7. Even worse, Theory is dangerous. Because it thinks only in terms of dominance, its adherents seek to dominate. When the “Woke” encounter people who do not share their outlook, they use coercion, including mob intimidation, “canceling,” and brainwashing “training.” The movement has none of the tolerance for dissent that is the essence of a liberal society.

Martin Gurri watch

Posted on by

Concerning the latest wave of demonstrations, Martin Gurri writes,

In a real sense, the digital environment represents the triumph of the image over the printed word. Because it provides the illusion of immediacy, the visual is viscerally persuasive: not surprisingly, the web-savvy public has learned to deploy images to powerful political effect. A photo of Mohamed Bouazizi burning alive sparked the protests in Tunisia that inaugurated the Arab Spring in 2011. As I write, we are flooded with images from dozens of U.S. cities in turmoil, a visual argument about the fragility of government control.

Read the whole essay.

Speaking of the power of the visual, the fact that Congresspersons consider themselves above the law has been an open secret for as long as I can remember. So if Nancy Pelosi’s visit to a hair salon had merely been reported in print, I suspect that it would not gotten much traction. But with the video. . .

Thoughts on cancel culture

Posted on by

1. Tyler Cowen writes,

So the policing of speech may be vastly more common than it was, say, 15 years ago. But the discourse itself is vastly greater in scope. Political correctness has in fact run amok, but so then has everything else.

In fact, the increase in bias at the NYT and WAPO may be more than offset by increased attention paid to podcasters like Bret Weinstein or Ben Shapiro. The intent to introduce “anti-racism” curriculum into schools may be more than offset by the way that the virus is creating a situation that lowers the status of school teachers among parents.

2. John McWhorter writes,

people left-of-center [are] wondering why, suddenly, to be anything but radical is to be treated as a retrograde heretic. Thus the issue is not the age-old one of left against right, but what one letter writer calls the “circular firing squad” of the left: It is now no longer “Why aren’t you on the left?” but “How dare you not be as left as we are.”

Here is where I think Pluckrose and Lindsay have the explanation, in Cynical Theories. The liberal philosophy that these older left-of-center academics share is incommensurate with what I would call the “folk” postmodernism of the younger leftists.

3. I think that there is at least a 30 percent chance that cancel culture has already peaked. The mobs, whether on Twitter, on campus, or in the streets, are engaged in bullying and making dominance moves, which create fear but also resentment. Academic administrators and progressive mayors are Neville Chamberlains, and I sense that an increasing number of people want to see a more Churchillian approach.

A few more thoughts on Cynical Theories

Posted on by

Following up on this post.

1. Various academics are rushing to judge PL harshly because they “get ____ wrong,” where ____ is some set of philosophers. Yet I would say that as a model to explain and predict the rhetoric and behavior of the social justice movement, PL works well. Consider these out-of-sample events:

–the attacks on statues. PL had written,

The drives to decolonize everything from hair to English literature curricula, to tear down paintings and smash statues. . .

–the Smithsonian whiteness chart.

–the new book In Defense of Looting.

How do we reconcile the explanatory power of the model with the view that they get ____ wrong?

a) Perhaps PL did not get ____ so wrong after all.

b) Perhaps although PL get ____ wrong, subsequent academic developments in what PL call “applied post-Modernism” and “reified post-Modernism” followed that same path.

c) Perhaps PL also get the subsequent academic history wrong, but the ideas that filtered down to college administrators, public school curriculum writers, and others in high-leverage positions (including the people responsible for the three events noted above) followed the path that PL describe.

2. Another line of criticism is to suggest other factors that might account for the rise of Social Justice ideology among these bureaucrats. There is Jonathan Haidt’s psychoanalysis. Haidt’s view of social media’s psychological effects might suggest that the bureaucrats are responding to what young constituents want. The role of the demand side is also stressed by commenter John Alcorn. But I don’t think that the explanation for the appearance of Social Justice curricula in public schools is that the children and parents are clamoring for it. And I suspect that even at colleges there is much more energy on the supply side than on the demand side.

I am also receptive to the view that the Social Justice movement helps satisfy a human need for religious belonging.
But attempts at psychoanalysis do not provide us with cognitive empathy. That is, we need to take people’s ideas as ideas, and to try to explore how those ideas might make sense to the people who hold them.

I think that PL succeed in offering a perspective on Social Justice that helps us achieve cognitive empathy. If PL’s critics can come up with a perspective that provides even better cognitive empathy, more power to them.

3. I am talking about cognitive empathy with the movers and shakers in the movement, not with the most esteemed academics. I think that any time you want to connect a popular movement to a philosophical idea, you have to deal with the fact that hardly anyone reads philosophers. How many of Washington’s soldiers at Valley Forge had read John Locke? How many of Lenin’s Bolsheviks had read Karl Marx? In a sense, the ideas that matter are the ones in the heads of ordinary people that never get written down.

In the case of Social Justice, the ideas in the heads of college administrators, public school curriculum writers, corporate HR departments and so on probably do get expressed in written form. Perhaps sometimes they cite academic works. It might be fruitful to collect some of this material and analyze it. Not having done so, my guess is that such material would tend to conform to PL’s characterization (or caricature) of post-Modernism as it has evolved.

I doubt that the Social Justice adherents in influential positions could describe the twists and turns in post-Modernism of the last several decades. They themselves could not tell you the links, if any, between the policies that they promulgate and the philosophy of Derrida or Foucault. But that does not negate the PL project.

You might say that the Social Justice adherents are to academic philosophy what Milton Friedman’s billiard player is to physics. They are acting “as if” they had followed the intellectual path described by PL, and that is why the model in their book is so useful.