It's not so much these people specifically, but the system that put them in their positions. What are the lessons that the university administrations and trustees will be learning from this affair? Just need people with better political instincts? Need to take visible actions to point away from anti-Semitism? Or need to reorient policies and practices towards freer speech? My hope is the last one, but that's not where I'd put my money.
I think all three of those are compatible with each other. Yes, Stefanik and the GOP did their best to paint this in the worst possible light, and yes, optics matter (see the Covington Catholic students and how the "smirk" affected people's reactions). And yes, what the presidents actually said at the hearing is broadly speaking what enlightened people should champion -- oriented toward maximizing free speech and setting a high bar for interference with that. But what they said at the hearing is quite opposite to the trend of the last decade on private college campuses.
The question for those of us who truly value free speech is, what's the best reaction to these presidents -- cheer them because they're saying the right thing now, or boo them because it's a blatantly political change of heart? Ideally I think we would want an admission that the more restrictive policies of the last several years were a mistake and that there will be a correction towards freer speech for all; but unfortunately the way it's going seems to be trending more to say that this is just about anti-Semitism and that the solution is to make sure Jewish people are crammed in under the same umbrella of protection as other "oppressed" groups (and hope that the people under the umbrella stop fighting with each other).
"To move beyond the demographic of people willing to fly to Prospera and pay $20,000, Lantern will need FDA permission. The FDA has already set unreachable standards for any drug approval study, so Aaron wants to try a different route.
The FDA has lower standards for probiotics than for drugs. And technically, a bacterium which you take in order to change your natural microbiome is a probiotic."
Not saying it's gonna work, but they're not unaware of the hurdle.
Yeah that's a good one too. I think we'd run out of pixels before we catalogued all the different ways Hollywood makes movies bad, at least for people who have a bit of taste.
FWIW I'm not judgmental about having taste or not (or anyway I try to remind myself not to be). I'm well aware there are other domains where I'm not a discerning customer, e.g. food. Like, I don't actually have any problem going to an Applebee's, and at a gut level I don't really get the hate for it - just intellectually I understand by comparing to domains where I do have standards.
They were completely irrelevant to the plot of the movie. They're droids so there's definitionally no character development - their only purpose was to generate the reaction I described.
And this is part of my larger point -- a lot of people don't understand why I reacted that way, but it's basically the same reaction I have when a movie brings in "identity" stuff when the story is not fundamentally about identity-related stuff. Thelma and Louise was a great movie; Ghostbusters 2016 was not. Disliking Ghostbusters 2016 because of its "Ghostbusters for Her" approach does not in any way mean that I'm anti-woman or anti-feminist, it just means that the movies I prefer are ones that are good, and that are focused on the story itself and that don't bring in extraneous content just to get a particular reaction or check a box, or rely on the fact that they're checking a box and so don't even try to be good.
Great link -- I love it when an expert explains why i have the reactions I do.
"Representation" stuff in movies is usually kind of the same as popular fan service -- stuff that doesn't belong holistically but that will generate positive feelings among a non-discerning crowd that is more interested in having those feelings than in seeing a quality product.
I remember watching one of the Star Wars sequels with my family and some friends, and when (inevitably) R2D2 and C3PO appeared, they all smiled or even cheered, while I rolled my eyes. Some in my family saw my reaction and were irritated and a little insulted by it -- how come I couldn't just be happy to see some familiar well-loved characters?
In the case of "representation" service, the people who get the good feelings have the added bonus of telling themselves that reactions like mine are not about their lack of taste but about people like me being bigoted bad people -- a nice little rub and tug for their self-righteousness organ.
Yes this looks basically like hindsight bias. It’s like when you watch a murder mystery and they reveal whodunnit, you react with “I knew it!!” because of all the clues pointing to that person - but there were also clues pointing to other people, so you didnt know which information was salient and which wasn’t until after the fact.
Still, it doesn’t mean there won’t be fallout - the criticism may in fact be unfair but the voters may not see it that way.
See my responses to InMD -- ultimately I suspect we're just too far apart to have a good discussion.
If you want to try, the question I would ask you is, can you point to specific content in the text itself that qualifies as anti-semitic, leaving aside allusions, references, overtones, etc.?
Or alternatively, can you imagine this or something very similar being said by a Jewish conservative who's frustrated with his mostly liberal co-religionists? If not, why not?
OK sure, i'm not actually defending the tweet, just objecting to the intensity of the reaction and the justification used for it. Like, the universe of things I could do that would make my wife made at me includes both not cleaning up my dirty dishes and having an affair, but if I do the former and she reacts as if I had done the latter, then there's a bigger problem than just my not having taken care of my mess.
OK i guess we may as well stop here -- we're on completely different pages about what is "clear" and what is "gymnastics" and there's no obvious way to bridge the gap.
Well ok… but that’s not what the tweet is saying. I think y’all just started with the idea that it’s antisemitic and are now reaching to find reasons to justify that reaction.
I think this is just a third-rail issue that causes people to over-react. First, you and Pillsy are objecting to the fact that the tweeter didn't explain a well-known fact that you weren't aware of:
"U.S. Jews are still a largely Democratic and politically liberal group today, as they have been for decades. Overall, about seven-in-ten identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, including 68% of Jews by religion and 77% of Jews of no religion. Just 26% of U.S. Jews overall identify with the Republican Party or lean toward the GOP."
The fact that s/he didn't lay it out for you doesn't make it antisemitic -- you're just missing some of the background knowledge that the tweeter assumes their audience knows.
And I do find overgeneralization annoying, but people do it all the time about all sorts of different groups without anywhere near this level of intense response. Let's see all the angry denunciations about associating Christians with fundamentalists, or Blacks with the Democratic party, or any number of other patterns people see.
Second, if you're going to call something "antisemitic", shouldn't the feature being ascribed to Jews be something, you know, insulting? "Oh my god, he said Jews are liberals!!!!" I mean, there are people who are fully supportive of modern American progressivism who are calling this anti-semitic -- how can they call this insulting to Jews??? The tweeter's true target here is not actually "Jews" here, but "liberals".
So this is what all the fuss is about? I really don't understand how anyone gets to "antisemitism" from this.
Granted that the tweeter generalizes progressivism to "Jews" as a category -- but people on all sides generalize majority-held political beliefs to categories of people all the time. There's nothing actually insulting to Jews about this comment -- the statement is basically "you got in bed with the lefties, now you're seeing the consequences". I would think liberals would focus on how it's insulting to *minorities*.
It seems to be basically the phenomenon described in section VIII of this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
Oh, the mobile version is free with a Netflix subscription -- i'm not a big TD fan in general, but if the only cost is time, maybe i'll check it out...
Well if it actually *is* Neutral Evil, then it would be overall preferable to us for it to reveal that. But then a Neutral Evil *human* probably wouldn't just announce that they're Neutral Evil either, so I guess it's hitting the mark there.
Thanks for the writeup -- I'd only seen the headlines didn't quite understand what was going on, but this clarifies it well. Given that you have some subject matter expertise here, do you think this was just an example of the system working, or are there changes that could be made for better protection whose drawbacks wouldn't outweigh the benefits?
I think it's better to be careful about terminology, to improve the chances of actually changing a few minds. There are many on the Left who have an anti-Israel bias and who may overall lump Jews in the "white" bucket as privileged people not deserving any consideration, but this is a different phenomenon than the "Jews control the world" people. If you call the anti-Israel lefties "antisemitic", they'll confidently reject it because they know they're not in the latter group.
Oh it wasn’t a theory, just a joke - I was facetiously implying that the woke motivation was just a pretext for deciding not to give money away anymore.
"Hey -- instead of giving all this money away, how about we keep it for ourselves?"
"Sounds great, but we would get in all kinds of trouble for that."
"Oh right, bummer. Wait -- what if we say..."
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “After Congress Comments, Penn President Liz Magill Resigns”
It's not so much these people specifically, but the system that put them in their positions. What are the lessons that the university administrations and trustees will be learning from this affair? Just need people with better political instincts? Need to take visible actions to point away from anti-Semitism? Or need to reorient policies and practices towards freer speech? My hope is the last one, but that's not where I'd put my money.
"
I think all three of those are compatible with each other. Yes, Stefanik and the GOP did their best to paint this in the worst possible light, and yes, optics matter (see the Covington Catholic students and how the "smirk" affected people's reactions). And yes, what the presidents actually said at the hearing is broadly speaking what enlightened people should champion -- oriented toward maximizing free speech and setting a high bar for interference with that. But what they said at the hearing is quite opposite to the trend of the last decade on private college campuses.
The question for those of us who truly value free speech is, what's the best reaction to these presidents -- cheer them because they're saying the right thing now, or boo them because it's a blatantly political change of heart? Ideally I think we would want an admission that the more restrictive policies of the last several years were a mistake and that there will be a correction towards freer speech for all; but unfortunately the way it's going seems to be trending more to say that this is just about anti-Semitism and that the solution is to make sure Jewish people are crammed in under the same umbrella of protection as other "oppressed" groups (and hope that the people under the umbrella stop fighting with each other).
On “From Astral Codex Ten: Defying Cavity: Lantern Bioworks FAQ”
"To move beyond the demographic of people willing to fly to Prospera and pay $20,000, Lantern will need FDA permission. The FDA has already set unreachable standards for any drug approval study, so Aaron wants to try a different route.
The FDA has lower standards for probiotics than for drugs. And technically, a bacterium which you take in order to change your natural microbiome is a probiotic."
Not saying it's gonna work, but they're not unaware of the hurdle.
On “Rule of Tod Video Roundup”
Yeah that's a good one too. I think we'd run out of pixels before we catalogued all the different ways Hollywood makes movies bad, at least for people who have a bit of taste.
FWIW I'm not judgmental about having taste or not (or anyway I try to remind myself not to be). I'm well aware there are other domains where I'm not a discerning customer, e.g. food. Like, I don't actually have any problem going to an Applebee's, and at a gut level I don't really get the hate for it - just intellectually I understand by comparing to domains where I do have standards.
"
They were completely irrelevant to the plot of the movie. They're droids so there's definitionally no character development - their only purpose was to generate the reaction I described.
And this is part of my larger point -- a lot of people don't understand why I reacted that way, but it's basically the same reaction I have when a movie brings in "identity" stuff when the story is not fundamentally about identity-related stuff. Thelma and Louise was a great movie; Ghostbusters 2016 was not. Disliking Ghostbusters 2016 because of its "Ghostbusters for Her" approach does not in any way mean that I'm anti-woman or anti-feminist, it just means that the movies I prefer are ones that are good, and that are focused on the story itself and that don't bring in extraneous content just to get a particular reaction or check a box, or rely on the fact that they're checking a box and so don't even try to be good.
"
Great link -- I love it when an expert explains why i have the reactions I do.
"Representation" stuff in movies is usually kind of the same as popular fan service -- stuff that doesn't belong holistically but that will generate positive feelings among a non-discerning crowd that is more interested in having those feelings than in seeing a quality product.
I remember watching one of the Star Wars sequels with my family and some friends, and when (inevitably) R2D2 and C3PO appeared, they all smiled or even cheered, while I rolled my eyes. Some in my family saw my reaction and were irritated and a little insulted by it -- how come I couldn't just be happy to see some familiar well-loved characters?
In the case of "representation" service, the people who get the good feelings have the added bonus of telling themselves that reactions like mine are not about their lack of taste but about people like me being bigoted bad people -- a nice little rub and tug for their self-righteousness organ.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/27/2023”
Yes this looks basically like hindsight bias. It’s like when you watch a murder mystery and they reveal whodunnit, you react with “I knew it!!” because of all the clues pointing to that person - but there were also clues pointing to other people, so you didnt know which information was salient and which wasn’t until after the fact.
Still, it doesn’t mean there won’t be fallout - the criticism may in fact be unfair but the voters may not see it that way.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/20/2023”
I think you went to the Dave Barry school of debate.
On “Support for Israel is Strong, But….”
See my responses to InMD -- ultimately I suspect we're just too far apart to have a good discussion.
If you want to try, the question I would ask you is, can you point to specific content in the text itself that qualifies as anti-semitic, leaving aside allusions, references, overtones, etc.?
Or alternatively, can you imagine this or something very similar being said by a Jewish conservative who's frustrated with his mostly liberal co-religionists? If not, why not?
"
OK sure, i'm not actually defending the tweet, just objecting to the intensity of the reaction and the justification used for it. Like, the universe of things I could do that would make my wife made at me includes both not cleaning up my dirty dishes and having an affair, but if I do the former and she reacts as if I had done the latter, then there's a bigger problem than just my not having taken care of my mess.
"
OK i guess we may as well stop here -- we're on completely different pages about what is "clear" and what is "gymnastics" and there's no obvious way to bridge the gap.
"
Well ok… but that’s not what the tweet is saying. I think y’all just started with the idea that it’s antisemitic and are now reaching to find reasons to justify that reaction.
"
I think this is just a third-rail issue that causes people to over-react. First, you and Pillsy are objecting to the fact that the tweeter didn't explain a well-known fact that you weren't aware of:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/u-s-jews-political-views/
"U.S. Jews are still a largely Democratic and politically liberal group today, as they have been for decades. Overall, about seven-in-ten identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, including 68% of Jews by religion and 77% of Jews of no religion. Just 26% of U.S. Jews overall identify with the Republican Party or lean toward the GOP."
The fact that s/he didn't lay it out for you doesn't make it antisemitic -- you're just missing some of the background knowledge that the tweeter assumes their audience knows.
And I do find overgeneralization annoying, but people do it all the time about all sorts of different groups without anywhere near this level of intense response. Let's see all the angry denunciations about associating Christians with fundamentalists, or Blacks with the Democratic party, or any number of other patterns people see.
Second, if you're going to call something "antisemitic", shouldn't the feature being ascribed to Jews be something, you know, insulting? "Oh my god, he said Jews are liberals!!!!" I mean, there are people who are fully supportive of modern American progressivism who are calling this anti-semitic -- how can they call this insulting to Jews??? The tweeter's true target here is not actually "Jews" here, but "liberals".
"
So this is what all the fuss is about? I really don't understand how anyone gets to "antisemitism" from this.
Granted that the tweeter generalizes progressivism to "Jews" as a category -- but people on all sides generalize majority-held political beliefs to categories of people all the time. There's nothing actually insulting to Jews about this comment -- the statement is basically "you got in bed with the lefties, now you're seeing the consequences". I would think liberals would focus on how it's insulting to *minorities*.
"
Out of curiosity, who or what are you consulting to determine what "normal people" think?
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/6/2023”
It seems to be basically the phenomenon described in section VIII of this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Bloons TD 6”
Oh, the mobile version is free with a Netflix subscription -- i'm not a big TD fan in general, but if the only cost is time, maybe i'll check it out...
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/23/2023”
The people who run the residency program? As opposed to the people who are in it.
Though from a look at the org's website, advocacy seems to be baked in, so maybe my objection doesn't have much merit after all.
"
The twitter bio says the account is “resident-run” - probably not too significant in terms of institutional engagement.
"
Well if it actually *is* Neutral Evil, then it would be overall preferable to us for it to reveal that. But then a Neutral Evil *human* probably wouldn't just announce that they're Neutral Evil either, so I guess it's hitting the mark there.
On “The Alaska Airlines Attack”
Thanks for the writeup -- I'd only seen the headlines didn't quite understand what was going on, but this clarifies it well. Given that you have some subject matter expertise here, do you think this was just an example of the system working, or are there changes that could be made for better protection whose drawbacks wouldn't outweigh the benefits?
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/16/2023”
“Conservative compared to Internet Progressives”
The term for that is “alt-Right”.
"
I think it's better to be careful about terminology, to improve the chances of actually changing a few minds. There are many on the Left who have an anti-Israel bias and who may overall lump Jews in the "white" bucket as privileged people not deserving any consideration, but this is a different phenomenon than the "Jews control the world" people. If you call the anti-Israel lefties "antisemitic", they'll confidently reject it because they know they're not in the latter group.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/9/2023”
Oh it wasn’t a theory, just a joke - I was facetiously implying that the woke motivation was just a pretext for deciding not to give money away anymore.
"
"Hey -- instead of giving all this money away, how about we keep it for ourselves?"
"Sounds great, but we would get in all kinds of trouble for that."
"Oh right, bummer. Wait -- what if we say..."
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.