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Ben___Garrison

Voltaire's Viceroy

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Ben___Garrison


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Voltaire's Viceroy

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 02:32:36 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


wherein NATO forces commanded by Nato leadership are directly involved in a major offensive for the first time




There's 0 evidence of this, for the record.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Market forces will kill any initiative like this. There is no demand for role models that don't teach young men what they want to learn (at least from the young men themselves).






The same thing happened with injecting progressive politics hamfistedly into tv, movies and video games. The market will just flow around and find what it demands elsewhere.




Market forces are not all-powerful. For example, video games are an utterly male-dominated hobby, and most men would prefer to look at beautiful women ceteris paribus, yet large western studios have done everything in their power to eradicate attractive women in AAA releases to appease their loud contingents of leftist female employees. It's not a total ban, indies and Japanese games still have attractive women albeit with large pushback from woke forums like Resetera, but the difference overall is still quite notable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you're talking about social bullying, e.g. kids calling each other names, excluding each other, talking behind each others' backs, etc. then that's never gone away and never will.


If you're talking about physical bullying, e.g. kids punching each other, that certainly has gone away mostly but I'd say that's a good thing. A small amount can be neutral or maybe plausibly beneficial in some circumstances, but it's usually overwhelmingly a bad idea to try to teach kids through uncontrolled physical harm. There's a reason most parenting guides say "don't beat your kids". It really screws them up.


That said, I presume this is in regards to things like "safe spaces", cancel culture, "crybullies", etc. Those aren't the result of a lack of bullying, but rather they come from women gaining political power. Hanania has a good overview of this. Women prioritize maintaining social harmony (not hurting people's feelings) over factual accuracy more than men do, evidenced by women consistently scoring much higher in agreeableness than men. Additionally, some women resort to crying (or claiming "abuse", or whatever else) when their points are disproven in an attempt to win the argument anyways. This is the female equivalent of a man losing the argument and resorting to physical violence, but whereas society has had millennia to come up with ways to deal with renegade males' outbursts, it is wholly unprepared to deal with the female equivalent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
McConell had a scary moment which looks like it could be the onset of dementia or Alzheimers. He froze up for a solid 30 seconds just staring aimlessly when a question was asked of him as to whether he would run for re-election in 2026. People have been saying similar things about Biden, although Biden has had the same verbal tics for his entire career so it'd be harder to know for certain. Dianne Feinstein only just recently announced her retirement despite being over 90 years old. Trump is hardly a spring chicken himself at 77 years old.


Some have advocated for age limits on politicians, as older people can have cognitive decline and are presumably out-of-touch compared to younger counterparts. How much of a real issue is this? How long can aides keep cognitive decline out of the spotlight for before it becomes too obvious to ignore?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As someone who likes watching US presidential elections as if they were a sport, this has been by far the most boring election season we've had since I started watching in 2008. Primary season plus the ensuing general election used to guarantee at least a year and a half of interesting coverage, with the primaries in particular being full of drama, ups-and-downs, and upsets.


    

  • 

    In 2008 we had Obama vs Hillary, a classic for the ages. The R side wasn't that bad either, with McCain's come-from-behind victory.
    

    • 

  • 

    In 2012 was the most volatile primary we've had, with the polling frontrunner changing no less than 11 times as Romney's weak lead was tested by Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and Santorum before they all imploded one after another.
    

    • 

  • 

    In 2016 was the rise of Trump, another classic for the ages. The frontrunner didn't actually change that much, but the sheer ridiculousness of Trump's unprecedented run made it hard to turn your eyes away. Hillary vs Sanders was also somewhat interesting, albeit far less so than Hillary vs Obama 8 years earlier.
    

    • 

  • 

    In 2020 things were somewhat less interesting with Biden's lead enduring for most of primary. But at least that lead felt tense, like the floor could drop out with a few missteps, which is indeed what happened when Biden lost Iowa and New Hampshire, although it became obvious that he would win after Super Tuesday. This election also featured the worst (best) presidential debate in US history when Biden faced off against Trump for the first time.
    

    • 



By comparison, what does this election season have? Biden is running as an incumbent with no credible challengers. That only leaves the Republican side, which isn't much better. Trump's lead is commanding, and that doesn't show any signs of changing. The most credible threat is DeSantis, but he's been far too timid at attacking Trump. The pitch he should be making is something like "Trump's ideas and energy were great, but he lacked the follow-through to enact lasting change and was easily distracting by people like Kushner". Alternatively, he could have done something like Hanania suggested and challenge Trump to a boxing match. Instead, he's barely attacked Trump at all, creating the bizarre situation where a man is running to be president but refuses to directly tell us why we should prefer him over the frontrunner. In the end, it might not have mattered in any case. Negative partisanship is the driving force in American politics more than anything else, and Trump's ability to make liberals seethe apparently earned him so much goodwill that Republicans will vote for him no matter how many elections he loses.


It seems like Trump isn't going to appear at the Republican debate, which will likely turn the thing into an irrelevant snooze fest. Christie will probably attack Trump and the other candidates will likely rush to his defense, which will only further solidify the current dynamics. At this point the most interesting thing that's happened is Ramaswamy's mini-surge to third place which really shows how boring this whole affair is. Him, Scott, and and maybe Haley are essentially just running to be vice president, while other candidates like Pence, Christie, and the rest are doing the old presidential-campaign-as-glorified-press-conference thing, or have too much of an ego to see they have no shot.


The only thing that could make the current race entertaining is if Biden or Trump randomly drop dead, or if Trump is convicted of sufficiently serious crimes. Those would certainly be shockers, but the ramifications are hard to forecast before they actually happen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Presidential aspirants are highly incentivized to run whenever they see an opening. Losing a primary is not a political death sentence by any means. Romney lost 2008 before winning the R nom in 2012. Biden flamed out twice before winning the D nom in 2020. On the other hand, staying out could mean they miss their shot forever. Plenty of people said Obama should have sat out in 2008 with the logic that it was basically "Hillary's turn". There's a good chance Obama would have never been president if he didn't run in 2008. Chris Christie lost his best shot when he didn't run in 2012


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Media Very Rarely Lies[Scott Alexander]
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A pretty good post from Scott. The title is a bit clickbaity and there are some minor quibbles with using the modern print Infowars of today compared to the Alex Jones podcast version of a few years ago, which is what most people imagine when you say "Infowars".


A lot of people are getting distracted by the title and either 1) thinking Scott is disputing the definition of "lie" and asserting that lies by omission are acceptable, or 2) thinking Scott is claiming we should always trust the media. Neither of these are the case. It's clear his goal is to attack the notion that "misinformation" is easily classified as such, when in reality it's closer to "different spin on the same basic facts". This is the same issue "fact checkers" ran into when they were in vogue a few years ago, with how many of their "fact checks" were actually "wokists have different opinions checks".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Relationships are built on propinquity, which is just a fancy term for "general nearness". The closer you are to someone in terms of likes, interests, physical location, etc. the more likely you are to have a strong relationship with that person. Of course no two people are identical, so you can't abandon relationships just because of a few disagreements. However, the wider and more important the disagreement, the more likely it is to cause issues long-term.


I could date a person who had different political opinions than me, but the wider the disagreement, the less important politics would need to be for that person for me to consider it. If I had the prospect of dating an authoritarian wokist (which is basically the polar opposite of my views), politics would have to almost be a non-factor for them for the relationship to have good long-term chances of success. If their political views were exactly the same as mine, I'd be fine with them being obsessed with politics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The decline of monogamous norms simply means both sexes returning to their baseline sexual imperatives. Men would prefer to have sex with lots of women, whereas women would prefer to lock down a man who is higher value than themselves. Women aren't really interested in having sex with tons of guys the way guys are interested in having sex with lots of women. The most polyamorous I'd expect an average woman to be is if they can't lock down a high value man, in which case they could bifurcate their sexual imperative by having one primary man as the provisioner and then occasionally having sex with high value men she doesn't have the market value to lock down.


This all has a toxic effect on society. Every successful society has brokered a compromise deal between the sexes where women give up their hypergamy in exchange for men giving up trying to have sex with lots of women. Neither side is entirely happy with monogamy since they both have to give something up, but it's a stable Schelling Point that limits frustration of the lower value members of each sex. Without it, you end up with hypergamous women all competing over the top 20% of men, with the other 80% of men fighting over scraps. This lowers the national birthrate, creates an epidemic of single mothers, and means men don't value the society they live in nearly as much if they don't have kids of their own. Bad times all around.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Reddit is generally OK, I just wish it was more transparent about banning things. Then again, the opaque banning policy is probably by design to avoid accountability.


It's unfortunate that Reddit and Discord have swallowed up so much of the old-school forums that used to abound.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is giving me some gamer boycott  energy. There's no other real Reddit alternative with nearly the same amount of content thanks to network effects, so while a handful of users might drift away, the majority will eat the changes no matter how much they might dislike it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Agreed. Wokist panics about stuff like microagressions, trigger warnings, the euphemism treadmill, etc. have always pretty consistently been ridiculed by most people even on leftists websites for at least a decade, yet the wokist machine has kept ratcheting upwards in other areas all the same.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This post is silly for several reasons.


At the broadest level, there's a question as to whether the government should target 0 inflation or not. Most mainstream economists agree that a small amount of inflation is good for a variety of reasons (incentive to invest, implicit cheaper cost of borrowing, relief valve for employers in lean times, etc.). I feel that reasonable people could disagree on these points, however, and there are some interesting points to be made for the overall net-benefits calculus of targeting a lower inflation rate. Certainly the recent inflation has been much higher than what anyone wants, which is why the Fed has been jacking up interest rates.


But instead of having that discussion, this post goes off in another direction. Firstly, the target of this article is simply wrong. Main street banks aren't stealing your money because they're not the ones causing inflation. The same loss of purchasing power would occur if you took your money and stuffed it under your mattress. It's the federal government's decision to target a positive nonzero inflation rate that's causing the issue, and that decision is no more of a "theft" of your money than simple taxation is. Some people might think the implicit tax of inflation is sneaky and therefore illegitimate, but there's nothing really secret about it.


The second, larger issue is that this post compares bank savings to gold, real estate, or the S&P 500 index. The problem is that these investments entail a significant amount of risk, so what's really being done here is an analysis of opportunity cost that the post tries to smuggle in as an argument towards the magnitude of supposed "theft". If you specifically want to save with inflation-protection as your main goal, there are investments specifically designed for that purpose. If you don't want to bother with something specialized for long-term savings like that, you can just put your money in a target date fund geared towards your retirement horizon and inflation shouldn't be an issue.


Finally, comparing inflation to the fraud (at least that's how I currently understand what happened) that happened with FTX is just goofy. The effects of inflation are known, and it's not hard to prevent erosion of purchasing power with minimal risk if that's your main goal. On the other hand, taking clients' money under pretenses that they couldn't discover without insider information like what FTX did is quite a different issue, and is something that regulation could indeed help with.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				USA Election Day 2022 Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As an opening salvo of the presidential primaries of 2024, the midterms were a great night for Desantis and a pretty bad night for Trump. Dems had high hopes for Florida a few months ago, as it's ostensibly a purple state. Desantis made headlines for his Martha's Vineyard + Disney stuff and it was plausible that swing voters may have punished Republicans for this. In the end, though, Florida was a bloodbath for Democrats. Rubio and Desantis both won by double digits, and many democratic congressional districts were wiped out with recent redistricting changes.


Trump, on the other hand, has egg on his face. He helped clear the lane for weak senate candidates like Oz and Walker, and they underperformed similar races (e.g. governors) through split ticket voting. It's impossible to redo the election to see what it would have been like if Trump didn't back candidates, but it's not implausible that Trump's meddling cost Republicans control of the Senate chamber. It also probably shrunk McCarthy's house majority a bit, making it more unwieldy and difficult to restrain Biden.


As of the time of writing, Desantis currently has a 26.5% chance to be the next president on Election Betting Odds, while Trump has a 19.3% chance. It was even more stark early today when it was 30%+ vs 15%, and while I think this is very unrealistically lopsided in Desantis' favor, the recent movements have captured the sense that Trump fatigue is setting in not only for moderate swing voters, but for a broader swathe of Republicans as well. I personally think Trump still has a 66%+ chance of winning the Republican nomination if he seeks it in 2024, but it's looking increasingly likely that it won't be a simple coronation: he'll have to work for it through a potentially crowded field. If Desantis proves to be an actual threat, things could get really ugly really quickly. All major presidential candidates have a hardcore following of blindly loyal fanboys that will stick with them through basically anything, but through browsing places like 4chan and interacting with some Republicans in my circle of family and friends, it seems that Trump's version of this is quite large. Desantis won't just be seen as an enemy, but as a traitor, and many Trump loyalists will not look kindly on a man who hurt their king.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In earlier discussions on art AI, I expressed significant skepticism in AI generated art for two reasons:


    

  1. 

    There was little proof that NSFW images could be done well, which was where a large part of online art commissions come from, and which indicated that there were likely some issues related to being able to get images of things you actually wanted instead of just taking whatever the AI would generate for you. Copying a human face in a portrait-style setup is one thing, but capturing bodies in various sexual positions without ending up with a cthuloid mess of dicks or at least falling hard into the uncanny valley is quite another.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    The lack of stability, i.e. that it was hard to create a character or theme, and then change little bits of it at a time, e.g. create an image of a person eating an apple, and then also being able to create an image of that same person sitting and reading a book.
    

    3. 



The things I've seen on /hdg/ have pretty convincingly proven to me that issue #1 has been solved, or never existed in the first place. I've seen some pessimistic takes that it requires tons of time and 98% of it is garbage, but the fact that random anons on 4chan can generate the level of quality I've seen means AI art has advanced quite a bit more than I thought it had.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What a goofy post that seems like it's straight out of 4chan. But given that this account just started posting 12 days ago, I presume it's a ban-evader who will just make a new account.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Israel hasn't been able to impose its will because the conflict is ultimately a fight over PR. Western democracies "hold themselves to a higher standard" (or "hamstring themselves", depending on your POV) by refusing to do population transfers that autocracies do routinely. Pakistan recently announced it was deporting 2 million Afghans and nobody cared. Azerbaijan just ethnically cleansed Nagorno Karabakh and there was barely a peep. But if Israel threatens to do something similar to the West Bank, the entire world freaks out. Palestinians have long recognized this double-standard and have maximally abused it by being very plugged-in to places like the NYT and other outlets.


Not that Jews as a whole are entirely blameless in this regard, as many of the Diaspora have been key players in the social justice crusades. The double game that organizations like the ADL play is mind-boggling.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Participants in every category—men and women of all races, ages, and social classes—were quicker to associate positive attributes with women and negative attributes with men.




This seems like the Women Are Wonderful effect in action.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's kind of weird for Brazilian leftists to criticize Bolsonaro so harshly for being authoritarian, then have their guy Lula turn around and start feting the leaders of the most autocratic countries like Russia, Venezuela, and China.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Do 2. Most people are apathetic about most political issues, which means your concern about possibly being cancelled for not caring is almost certain to never come to fruition. Extreme ideologies like modern SJWism cannot force everyone to believe in them; the only way they keep power is by tolerating people who don't care one way or the other.


Doing 3 (i.e. silence to most people, then revealing your anti-SJW nature to people you trust) feels better because you can be honest about your real opinions to some people, but is very risky. Some people you trust might backstab you (sounds crass, but it does happen sometimes) or might simply get careless and let slip details about you with no ill intentions that still end up screwing you in some ways. Alternatively, those people you trust could get outed as anti-SJW themselves in which case you'll be tarred by association and might be forced to denounce them in tandem with everyone else, which feels awful. You can use sites like this one to let off steam instead (it's what I do).


1 and 4 (which are basically the same) are basically doomed to fail unless you relentlessly keep up with changing SJW jargon and shibboleths. If you don't then you'll get sniffed out pretty quickly by those who do, and fakers are generally viewed pretty negatively. You probably won't be cancelled outright by doing this, but people might avoid you and think you're weird which could hurt you in some ways. It also sucks to live a blatant lie.


Absolutely never, EVER do number 5. Maybe you have some degree of protection at a university, but plenty of people will dislike you nonetheless. It's not just being cancelled that you have to worry about, it's what people do behind your back as well. People could spread rumors that screw with your reputation, deprioritize you for promotions or other perks, refuse collaboration, or some people who you've barely interacted with could actively try to sabotage you. Initially you might think 5 is fine when nothing overtly bad happens, but sooner or later (maybe months, maybe years) you'll hear that somebody succeeded in hurting you without you even having realized it.


I've tried all of these strategies myself and I'm certain that 2 is by far the best.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, Trump seems like exactly the type of person to pull a Teddy Roosevelt if he loses the R nomination. The two most obvious outcomes at this point for Republicans are either 1) they nominate him and probably lose again in 2024, or 2) they don't nominate him and Trump does everything in his power to lash out at those who he thinks "betrayed" him, which could also plausibly cause a loss in 2024. A better outcome for Republicans would be if Trump just drops dead due to old age so the next generation could take over without Trump trying to burn the house down.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From the study, about half of the negative effect of porn is just gay men watching more porn and being more depressed in general (model 3 on page 50). Also, the study suspiciously says porn usage imparts a massive uptick in violence, which leads me to believe there's just other factors not being controlled for. One of the authoritarian right's attacks on porn is that masturbation leads to men essentially "leaking their manna" and becoming passive and less likely to pursue their goals, which is the opposite of what this study finds.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nothing about Kissinger was particularly impressive apart from his longevity and his post-tenure PR team. He's galactically overestimated by both his proponents and his critics. He just didn't do that much that any other normal StateSec wouldn't have done.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is the best image I've seen to understand the symmetry of the woke left and Trump-right when it comes to foreign affairs. Partisans are willing to jam round pegs into square holes, and so leftists squint and see the Israel vs Palestine conflict as white colonizers vs oppressed brown natives. This worldview is incoherent when you do deeper analysis, but it has sufficient surface level appeal to rip left coalitions apart in circular firing squads around the world. The right (ala Trump) is steadfast in its support of Israel apart from the unironically antisemitic fringe who'll end up throwing in their lot with Trump anyways as part of the coalition process.


Hlynka's analysis is basically just that the woke left and Trump right both want change and are willing to flirt with authoritarianism to get it. There's some stuff about Locke vs Hobbes in there but that's just intellectual salad dressing for the previous sentence. If status quo bias and democracy vs authoritarianism are the only thing you care about, then yeah the two sides probably look pretty similar. But go beyond those and the differences are massive.




So is Hlynka right? Are we going to see the far right attempt to form an alliance with the left in the hopes that their shared antisemitism will be sufficient to gain political power?




No lol. If anything, expect Israel vs Palestine to simply become more partisan. As leftists become more flippantly pro-Palestine, expect the right to use this as ammo to justify tacking towards Israel to an even greater degree. Public polling backs this up.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
On the use of anecdotes and “lived experiences” to contradict statistical data.


Say for the sake of argument that you’re arguing with a left-leaning individual (let’s call him “Ezra”) on the issue of police bias. You both agree the police has a least a little bit of bias when it deals with blacks, but you disagree on the root cause.  Ezra contends this is due to structural racism, i.e. that laws are created in such a way such that blacks will always bear the brunt of their enforcement. He further contends that local police departments are often willing to hire white men with questionable backgrounds in terms of making racist remarks. This inherent racism exacerbates issues of uneven enforcement, and in the worst cases can lead to racist white police officers killing unarmed black men. While you agree that black men are arrested at disproportionate rates, you claim the reason for this is more simple. Black men get arrested for more crimes because… black men commit more crimes. You cite FBI crime statistics to back this up. In response, Ezra says that the FBI data you cited is nonsense that doesn’t match up with reality, but rather is cooked up by racist data officials putting their thumbs on the scales to justify the terrible actions of the criminal justice system on a nationwide basis. After all, Ezra knows quite a few black people himself, and none of them have committed any crimes! And while none of them have been arrested, a few of them have told him stories of run-ins with the police where they were practically treated as “guilty before proven innocent”. In short, Ezra’s lived experiences (along with those of people he knows) contradicts your data while buttressing his own arguments.


Do you think Ezra’s lived experiences are a valid rebuttal here?




Yesterday I made a post on the partisan differences in economic outlook. The three main points were that 1) the US economy is doing fairly well, 2) Republicans think the economy is doing absolutely terribly, much worse than Democrats think, and 3) that most of this perception difference is because Biden, a Democrat, currently occupies the White House.
I initially thought I was going to get highly technical arguments quibbling over the exact measurement of data. Economic data is highly complex, and as such, reasonable people will always be able to disagree about precisely how to measure things like unemployment, GDP, inflation, etc. It’s not particularly hard to cherrypick a few reasonable-sound alternatives that would tilt measurements one way or the other. For instance, how much of housing costs should be calculated in the inflation of consumption prices? Rent can be seen as pretty much pure consumption, but homes that are purchased also have an investment aspect to them.  As such, the current inflation calculations use “owners’ equivalent rent” to account for this. Most economists think this is overall the better way to calculate inflation on this particular measure, but again, reasonable people could disagree, and getting a few of them on record saying “the current measurements are faulty” is an easy way to throw doubt on data.
While I did get a few of these types of comments (example 1 , example 2), they weren’t the majority of the responses by a long shot.


Instead I got plenty of arguments about “lived experiences” which people claimed as disproving the data I cited. These weren’t quite to the level of “Chicken costs $5 more at my local supermarket, therefore all economists are liars with fraudulent data”… but it wasn’t that far off.


Don’t believe me? Here’s 9 examples:



To be clear, a few of these above examples don’t say that their anecdotes prove economists are lying, and are instead using their personal experiences to say how economic conditions feel worse, although they were typically at least ambiguous on whether they trusted their own experiences over economic data at the national level. On the other hand, there were some who were quite unequivocal that economic data is fabricated in whole or in part since the things economists say don’t match with how the economy seems in their personal lives.




Going back to the example of bias in policing that I mentioned earlier, I’d say that the vast majority of people on this forum would say that you can’t really use “lived experiences” to contradict data. Anecdotes aren’t worthless, as they can give you insight into peoples’ perceptions, or how the consequences of data can be uneven and apply more to some locations than others. But at the end of the day, you can’t just handwave things like FBI crime statistics just because you know some people that contradict the data. As such, it feels like a rather blatant double standard to reject “lived experiences” when it comes to things like racism, only to turn around and accept them when it comes to the economy.


The cop-out argument from here is to point at the people preparing the data and say that they’re the ones at fault. The argument would go something like this: “My outgroup (the “elites”, the “leftists”, the “professional managerial class”, the “cathedral”, or whatever) are preparing most of the data. Data that disagrees with my worldview (like the current economic outlook) is wrong and cooked up by my outgroup to fraudulently lie to my face about reality. On the other hand, data that does agree with my worldview (like FBI crime statistics) is extra legitimate because my outgroup is probably still cooking the data, so the fact that it says what it does at all is crazy. If anything, the “real” data would probably be even more stark!”


This type of argument sounds a lot like the controversy around “unskewing” poll results. Back in 2012, Dean Chambers gathered a fairly substantial following on the Right by claiming polls showing Obama ahead were wrong due to liberal media bias. He posted “corrected” polls that almost monotonically showed Romney ahead. He would eventually get  his comeuppance on election day when Obama won handily. A similar scenario played out in 2016 when many of the more left-leaning media establishment accused Nate Silver of “unskewing” poll results in favor of Trump. Reporters don’t typically have the statistical training to understand the intricacies of concepts like “correlated errors”, so all they saw was an election nerd trying to make headlines by scaring Democrats into thinking the election was closer than it really was. They too were eventually forced to eat their words when Trump won.


While issues of polling bias can be resolved by elections, the same can’t be said of bias in our examples of racism and the economy, at least not as cleanly. If someone wants to believe their anecdotes that disproportionate black arrests are entirely due to structural racism, they can just go on believing that for as long as they want. There’s no equivalent to an election-loss shock to force them to come to terms. The same is true of economic outlooks. Obviously this is shoddy thinking.


The better alternative is to use other economic data to make a point. If you think unemployment numbers don’t show the true extent of the problem, for instance, you can cite things like the prime age working ratio if you think people are discouraged from looking for work. Having tedious debates on the precise definitions of economic indicators is infinitely better than retreating to philosophical solipsism by claiming economic data is broadly illegitimate. Economic rates of change tend to be exponential year over year, so if large scale fraud is really happening then it’s hard to hide for very long. There would almost always be other data you can point to in order to make a case, even if it’s something as simple as using night light data to estimate economic output. Refusing to do even something like this is akin to sealing yourself in an unfalsifiable echo chamber where you have carte blanche to disregard anything that disagrees with your worldview.