The most fundamental problem is that scientific facts can merely inform your decision, by letting you have a better understanding of what the consequences of your actions might be. Whether those consequences are good, bad or indifferent is not a question that science can answer.
I sort of glossed over that comment at the time, but if anything, it seems kind of backwards. I'd feel a lot more comfortable arguing that racism was actually a product of the Enlightenment and the early Industrial Era than anything else. I'm not arguing that prior to that, societies were more egalitarian. Instead, I'd say that racism was a solution to a set of political problems that were particularly pressing in that era. It provided justification for slavery and westward expansion in the US, not to mention imperialism for all the countries that were in a position to be imperial powers.
It's no particular wonder that it got entangled with the scientism that was popular towards the end of the 19th century. However, it's unclear what message we're supposed to be drawing from that entanglement. There's nothing wrong with wanting to set the record straight because being correct is an important goal in and of itself. However, every time I've seen the subject come up, people have usually argued that it's some sort of cautionary tale, without necessarily being very clear on what we need to be on guard against.
@notme: Bah humbug.Liberals have had a pro abortion litmus test for their SCt candidates for years, they just don’t publically say it. Sanders is honest enough to tell you what his test is upfront.
Exactly. It's a major violation of the norms around appointing Supreme Court Justices[1], even if you personally think it's a silly bit of Washington kabuki.
[1] It's not like there isn't an anti-abortion litmus test for conservatives.
Yeah, maybe there's something wrong with my perspective, but I'm a good deal more concerned with people starting by breaking rules in obviously harmless ways and pretty quickly winding up breaking rules in "obviously harmless" ways. I really don't think we need more ways of rationalizing breaking rules. I haven't read Two Cheers for Anarchism yet, but I'm skeptical that figuring out ways for the rules not to apply to you is less dangerous[1] than being a stickler for them.
[1] In terms of paving the way to tyranny, genocide, and the like.
Let me rephrase my objection somewhat: in addition to advocating plenty of stuff that's ridiculous bullshit in its own right, he also tends to zero in on the stuff that's most appealing to folks who are wealthy to very wealthy, live in urban or, in some cases, suburban environments, and tends to be really unpopular to everybody else. There's plenty of reason to be suspicious of Trump's and even Sanders' populism, but just inverting terrible ideas is usually just a way to get more terrible ideas.
Eh, for all that the plaintiffs (and the majority) have a valid point in Citizens United, I still think it was wrongly decided, and for roughly the reasons that Sanders' objection is based on. While money is speech, and corporations have free speech rights, money is also money, and can be used to purchase goods and services, like, say, the services of a politician. I think the state's interest in making sure that politicians are not doing donors' bidding and cracking down on soft corruption is compelling.
The problem is that Sanders appears to have no idea how the Supreme Court works and what the limits of its powers are, nor does he betray any sense of the difficulty of getting a SCOTUS Justice confirmed, especially one who's an obvious hack from the get-go.
Saul Degraw: I don’t care about uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness especially if it is connected to hate and prejudice.
Yes. I really think that the fact that overt racism, sexism, anti-semitism and homophobia, and support for de jure enforcement of same, have been pushed outside the mainstream is one of the biggest cultural and political success stories of the last two or three generations. Pushing in the opposite direction doesn't seem worth the trouble just to publicize a few essays that are, at best, debatably interesting if you filter out the dross.
I don't feel Sanders has demonstrated that he has a clear plan for how to use the Office of the President to advance his agenda. He focuses on this idea that if he's elected that will be enough to bring the Republicans to the table, despite the fact that after Obama's 2008 landslide and the accompanying Democratic wave, he couldn't even consistently keep his own party onside, and the GOP decided that categorical resistance was the best response.[1] Clinton has a more modest agenda, to be sure, but I also know she's really well acquainted with the Executive Branch, and the way it differs from the Senate.
For one recent and particularly egregious example, Sanders recently Tweeted that he would only appoint Supreme Court Justices who will make it their first priority to overturn Citizens' United. Now, I'm not a big fan of that decision, but c'mon.
[1] This has been enough to win them Congress and a ton of state governments, so it's not like they have strong incentives to be more conciliatory in the future.
Well, I think it's entirely fair game to try to persuade Sanders supporters that supporting Sanders is not the best way to advance liberal policy goals, and I certainly am not going to begrudge them the opportunity to try to persuade me that it is. Indeed, I'm finding this campaign season rather frustrating because I feel like neither the Clinton nor the Sanders campaigns are doing a particularly good job arguing their respective cases.
E.g., I'm skeptical on pretty much every level of Sanders' single payer healthcare plan (I don't think has a snowball's chance, and even if it does, I think it will have serious problems). Nonetheless Clinton and her surrogates have done very little to make a solid case against it, nor have they done much to explore the policy space outside of a cloud candy fantasy single-payer approach.
If Moldbug's insights are somehow valuable, why do they never lead to policy prescriptions that are, at the very least, not really obviously worthless?
Well, I'm arguing against judging. I think a lot of people, myself included, have seen a lot of judgmental crap hurled at poorer folks "living outside their means", with the bulk of that judgement being based on things that either aren't really very expensive (a decent TV) or aren't just luxuries (a smartphone or Internet access).
I suppose, looking back upthread, that @saul-degraw may have been casting the same sort of shade in the opposite direction. I don't really think really great, either.
The whole thing is politicized because it involves a profound failure of the political system (or, indeed, several political systems), and any attempt to improve on the situation now will require political action.
Also, the idea that Democrats using this for political advantage against the Republicans is an "even larger tragedy" is ridiculous on its face.
The only fun things? Nyah. Lots of things that are actually fun? Well, yeah.
Other things that are fun may not cost a lot of money, but they cost time and require a certain degree of security and relaxation to enjoy.
And quite a few things that are really valuable to well-being are tremendously expensive. My understanding is that short commutes to work pay huge dividends in terms of making people happier, and that certainly matches my anecdotal experience, but such things are rarely cheap. Certainly they're way less cheap than getting, say, a nice flatscreen TV.
Indeed, I think that has a lot to do with why the "thrift" stuff gets up my nose: it so often seems to focus on the cheap fun things that relatively poor people can afford, while glossing over the much more expensive things that rich people can afford which provide a lot more room to have fun.
Eh, it's not like conspiracy theories never involve excessive and weird skepticism about actual conspiracies. A conspiracy really was behind 9/11, after all--a conspiracy involving a bunch of jihadists who flew airplanes into the WTC, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
Two things notably absent from the linked article:
Any concrete suggestion of what we actually should be doing in order to actually help the people of Flint.
Any explanation of how the ongoing blame, politicization and/or outrage preclude doing what we should be doing to help the people of Flint.
The problem is that not only is the rhetoric real, it's been playing a role in justifying and promoting Republican policies for thirty or forty years. For one example, Republican politicians and thought leaders[1] have injected a lot of racism into their anti-welfare state arguments since at least Reagan. You don't, obviously, have to be a racist to oppose any given welfare state policy, but if you decide to make intentional appeals to racists because you think fighting that policy is just that important, is it any wonder that the targets of your racist arguments conclude that are not only indifferent to their interests but actively hostile to them?
Hell, there's a good chance they'll conclude that even if they actually agreed with you on the original policy question!
As for this being a sign of the GOP being out of ideas, I don't think that's plausible. The GOP started using this approach around the time it really started scoring major policy and political victories in the '80s.
[1] In the case of guys like Rush Limbaugh, perhaps "anti-thought leader" is a more apt term.
This is just another way of saying that the black experience is only valid to the degree that it conforms to explicitly progressive outlooks.
Thomas' viewpoint is valid, but it's far from representative. If you're trying to understand why 90-95% of African Americans consistently vote Democratic, it's not immediately clear that the perspective of one of the most prominent 5-10% of African Americans who don't vote Democratic is going to be tremendously informative.
Also, regardless of whether Thomas likes affirmative action, if it did ultimately make it possible for him to serve on the Supreme Court, I think that's a data point in favor of it working as advertised, since I think he's clearly qualified to be there. Just because a policy works as advertised, though, doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that its purported beneficiaries are going to agree that it's been helpful to them.
My experience of corporate diversity programs--which I suppose may not be representative, but I would be a bit surprised--is they don't even touch on things like structural racism and sexism. Instead it's really basic stuff like, "Don't tell jokes about gay people," and, "Don't make passes at your subordinates."
So I'm not surprised it's useless. I am surprised it makes white men defensive. I mean, I'm a white man, and, "Be minimally professional and use a bit of common sense, and you will avoid being a boorish jackass," just doesn't seem like something to get bent out of shape over.
Maybe I'm unrepresentative because I also don't find it threatening when people talk about structural sexism and racism. :shrug:
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Dark History of Liberal Reform | New Republic”
The most fundamental problem is that scientific facts can merely inform your decision, by letting you have a better understanding of what the consequences of your actions might be. Whether those consequences are good, bad or indifferent is not a question that science can answer.
"
I sort of glossed over that comment at the time, but if anything, it seems kind of backwards. I'd feel a lot more comfortable arguing that racism was actually a product of the Enlightenment and the early Industrial Era than anything else. I'm not arguing that prior to that, societies were more egalitarian. Instead, I'd say that racism was a solution to a set of political problems that were particularly pressing in that era. It provided justification for slavery and westward expansion in the US, not to mention imperialism for all the countries that were in a position to be imperial powers.
It's no particular wonder that it got entangled with the scientism that was popular towards the end of the 19th century. However, it's unclear what message we're supposed to be drawing from that entanglement. There's nothing wrong with wanting to set the record straight because being correct is an important goal in and of itself. However, every time I've seen the subject come up, people have usually argued that it's some sort of cautionary tale, without necessarily being very clear on what we need to be on guard against.
On “Dissecting Paul Krugman’s Bernie backlash: Being a Sanders skeptic doesn’t make you a hack – Salon.com”
@notme:
Bah humbug.Liberals have had a pro abortion litmus test for their SCt candidates for years, they just don’t publically say it. Sanders is honest enough to tell you what his test is upfront.
Exactly. It's a major violation of the norms around appointing Supreme Court Justices[1], even if you personally think it's a silly bit of Washington kabuki.
[1] It's not like there isn't an anti-abortion litmus test for conservatives.
On “Twitter: Roundtable on Authority & Rebellion”
Yeah, maybe there's something wrong with my perspective, but I'm a good deal more concerned with people starting by breaking rules in obviously harmless ways and pretty quickly winding up breaking rules in "obviously harmless" ways. I really don't think we need more ways of rationalizing breaking rules. I haven't read Two Cheers for Anarchism yet, but I'm skeptical that figuring out ways for the rules not to apply to you is less dangerous[1] than being a stickler for them.
[1] In terms of paving the way to tyranny, genocide, and the like.
On “Dissecting Paul Krugman’s Bernie backlash: Being a Sanders skeptic doesn’t make you a hack – Salon.com”
Touché.
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2016.01.25.M}”
Let me rephrase my objection somewhat: in addition to advocating plenty of stuff that's ridiculous bullshit in its own right, he also tends to zero in on the stuff that's most appealing to folks who are wealthy to very wealthy, live in urban or, in some cases, suburban environments, and tends to be really unpopular to everybody else. There's plenty of reason to be suspicious of Trump's and even Sanders' populism, but just inverting terrible ideas is usually just a way to get more terrible ideas.
On “Dissecting Paul Krugman’s Bernie backlash: Being a Sanders skeptic doesn’t make you a hack – Salon.com”
Eh, for all that the plaintiffs (and the majority) have a valid point in Citizens United, I still think it was wrongly decided, and for roughly the reasons that Sanders' objection is based on. While money is speech, and corporations have free speech rights, money is also money, and can be used to purchase goods and services, like, say, the services of a politician. I think the state's interest in making sure that politicians are not doing donors' bidding and cracking down on soft corruption is compelling.
The problem is that Sanders appears to have no idea how the Supreme Court works and what the limits of its powers are, nor does he betray any sense of the difficulty of getting a SCOTUS Justice confirmed, especially one who's an obvious hack from the get-go.
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2016.01.25.M}”
Saul Degraw:
I don’t care about uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness especially if it is connected to hate and prejudice.
Yes. I really think that the fact that overt racism, sexism, anti-semitism and homophobia, and support for de jure enforcement of same, have been pushed outside the mainstream is one of the biggest cultural and political success stories of the last two or three generations. Pushing in the opposite direction doesn't seem worth the trouble just to publicize a few essays that are, at best, debatably interesting if you filter out the dross.
"
I agree with this so hard. Bloomberg represents pretty much the worst of all worlds.
On “Dissecting Paul Krugman’s Bernie backlash: Being a Sanders skeptic doesn’t make you a hack – Salon.com”
I don't feel Sanders has demonstrated that he has a clear plan for how to use the Office of the President to advance his agenda. He focuses on this idea that if he's elected that will be enough to bring the Republicans to the table, despite the fact that after Obama's 2008 landslide and the accompanying Democratic wave, he couldn't even consistently keep his own party onside, and the GOP decided that categorical resistance was the best response.[1] Clinton has a more modest agenda, to be sure, but I also know she's really well acquainted with the Executive Branch, and the way it differs from the Senate.
For one recent and particularly egregious example, Sanders recently Tweeted that he would only appoint Supreme Court Justices who will make it their first priority to overturn Citizens' United. Now, I'm not a big fan of that decision, but c'mon.
[1] This has been enough to win them Congress and a ton of state governments, so it's not like they have strong incentives to be more conciliatory in the future.
"
Well, I think it's entirely fair game to try to persuade Sanders supporters that supporting Sanders is not the best way to advance liberal policy goals, and I certainly am not going to begrudge them the opportunity to try to persuade me that it is. Indeed, I'm finding this campaign season rather frustrating because I feel like neither the Clinton nor the Sanders campaigns are doing a particularly good job arguing their respective cases.
E.g., I'm skeptical on pretty much every level of Sanders' single payer healthcare plan (I don't think has a snowball's chance, and even if it does, I think it will have serious problems). Nonetheless Clinton and her surrogates have done very little to make a solid case against it, nor have they done much to explore the policy space outside of a cloud candy fantasy single-payer approach.
On “@CathyYoung63: “Re Alt-Right…” ”
How many links do you want to self-identified libertarians defending, say, waterboarding?
"
I actually don't see at all. The "other side" from these Alt-Right dingbats? That seems to be pretty much everyone who isn't an Alt-Right dingbat.
"
If I want a pony, I can find one without grovelling through a pile of horseshit.
"
@Jaybird:
If Moldbug's insights are somehow valuable, why do they never lead to policy prescriptions that are, at the very least, not really obviously worthless?
"
What "other side" are you even talking about?
On “Linky Friday #150: Burning Fuel”
Well, I'm arguing against judging. I think a lot of people, myself included, have seen a lot of judgmental crap hurled at poorer folks "living outside their means", with the bulk of that judgement being based on things that either aren't really very expensive (a decent TV) or aren't just luxuries (a smartphone or Internet access).
I suppose, looking back upthread, that @saul-degraw may have been casting the same sort of shade in the opposite direction. I don't really think really great, either.
On “Flint Water Crisis: The Not-So-Usual Suspects”
The whole thing is politicized because it involves a profound failure of the political system (or, indeed, several political systems), and any attempt to improve on the situation now will require political action.
Also, the idea that Democrats using this for political advantage against the Republicans is an "even larger tragedy" is ridiculous on its face.
On “Linky Friday #150: Burning Fuel”
The only fun things? Nyah. Lots of things that are actually fun? Well, yeah.
Other things that are fun may not cost a lot of money, but they cost time and require a certain degree of security and relaxation to enjoy.
And quite a few things that are really valuable to well-being are tremendously expensive. My understanding is that short commutes to work pay huge dividends in terms of making people happier, and that certainly matches my anecdotal experience, but such things are rarely cheap. Certainly they're way less cheap than getting, say, a nice flatscreen TV.
Indeed, I think that has a lot to do with why the "thrift" stuff gets up my nose: it so often seems to focus on the cheap fun things that relatively poor people can afford, while glossing over the much more expensive things that rich people can afford which provide a lot more room to have fun.
"
Eh, it's not like conspiracy theories never involve excessive and weird skepticism about actual conspiracies. A conspiracy really was behind 9/11, after all--a conspiracy involving a bunch of jihadists who flew airplanes into the WTC, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
"
Eventually the market will self-correct, but until then we’re going to have to live with an overabundance of cheap assholes.
This is good news for all those people shopping for deboned pig rectums.
On “Flint Water Crisis: The Not-So-Usual Suspects”
Two things notably absent from the linked article:
Any concrete suggestion of what we actually should be doing in order to actually help the people of Flint.
Any explanation of how the ongoing blame, politicization and/or outrage preclude doing what we should be doing to help the people of Flint.
On “Morning Ed: Immigration {2016.01.21.Th}”
@j r:
The problem is that not only is the rhetoric real, it's been playing a role in justifying and promoting Republican policies for thirty or forty years. For one example, Republican politicians and thought leaders[1] have injected a lot of racism into their anti-welfare state arguments since at least Reagan. You don't, obviously, have to be a racist to oppose any given welfare state policy, but if you decide to make intentional appeals to racists because you think fighting that policy is just that important, is it any wonder that the targets of your racist arguments conclude that are not only indifferent to their interests but actively hostile to them?
Hell, there's a good chance they'll conclude that even if they actually agreed with you on the original policy question!
As for this being a sign of the GOP being out of ideas, I don't think that's plausible. The GOP started using this approach around the time it really started scoring major policy and political victories in the '80s.
[1] In the case of guys like Rush Limbaugh, perhaps "anti-thought leader" is a more apt term.
"
Thomas' viewpoint is valid, but it's far from representative. If you're trying to understand why 90-95% of African Americans consistently vote Democratic, it's not immediately clear that the perspective of one of the most prominent 5-10% of African Americans who don't vote Democratic is going to be tremendously informative.
Also, regardless of whether Thomas likes affirmative action, if it did ultimately make it possible for him to serve on the Supreme Court, I think that's a data point in favor of it working as advertised, since I think he's clearly qualified to be there. Just because a policy works as advertised, though, doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that its purported beneficiaries are going to agree that it's been helpful to them.
On “Morning Ed: Society {2016.01.20.W}”
My experience of corporate diversity programs--which I suppose may not be representative, but I would be a bit surprised--is they don't even touch on things like structural racism and sexism. Instead it's really basic stuff like, "Don't tell jokes about gay people," and, "Don't make passes at your subordinates."
So I'm not surprised it's useless. I am surprised it makes white men defensive. I mean, I'm a white man, and, "Be minimally professional and use a bit of common sense, and you will avoid being a boorish jackass," just doesn't seem like something to get bent out of shape over.
Maybe I'm unrepresentative because I also don't find it threatening when people talk about structural sexism and racism. :shrug:
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.