It was only with Reaganism... that the shift towards equating rampant capitalism somehow became associated with being "right-wing"
I think you're missing some pretty big things here. For instance, there was notable (though not universal) Republican opposition to the New Deal. In 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater generally opposed the New Deal - a pretty big split from Eisenhower. Nixon (the nominee in 1960 and 1968) supported "New Federalism", which was essentially replacing federal New Deal programs with grants to states. All of this was against a backdrop of Cold War anti-communism.
Even before the New Deal, Hoover was against government welfare (remember Scott's review?). Before him, Coolidge cut taxes and spending.
So, I'm not really comfortable saying that capitalism was associated with being right-wing only with Reagan. It seems to be an association that, if it even has a single origin, came decades earlier - possibly with the New Deal, but likely before even that, with Eisenhower being an exception to the rule.
KnotGodel
1yr ago
I think one point you’re downplaying is how much longer people are unmarried compared to the past and or poorer countries. For instance, the median age of first marriage has increased from about 20.5 in 1950 to about 32 today.
During the dating years, romantic inequality is more salient, and many people get burned in various ways, which makes them angry at members of the opposite sex.
The amount of time people spend obsessing over this scales linearly with the number of years spent dating. So, for instance, if we start counting from 16, that’s grown 3.6x.
Also, anger => clicks => ads, which has probably driven a lot of polarization more generally.
Finally, now it’s the media people themselves who are experiencing singleness (due to the marriage age increasing well past college). This gives even more voice to sex-based frustrations.
KnotGodel
1yr ago
Caroline Ellison
As far as I can tell, you're just complaining that Ellison isn't as conventionally pretty as a supermodel? She is impressive in other ways:
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daughter of two MIT economics professors
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earned a national merit scholarship
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BA in math from Stanford
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In the top 500 of Putnam competitors in three years
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Went to Jane Street straight out of undergrad, probably earning ~$600k / year
That is an incredible list of accomplishments for a 23-year old. If you're into smart/successful women, she's a clear outlier.
KnotGodel
3mo ago
Statistical Structure of the Supreme Court
Inspired by earlier discussion on The Motte, I decided to statistically investigate the voting patterns of the Supreme Court.
The obvious place to start is by looking at how frequently each justice's opinions aligned with each other's. We can interpret the percent-of-times-disagreed as a measure of how "far apart" justices are. We can then use a variety of approaches to plot this onto a 2d graph (e.g. using sklearn.manifold.MDS)
I found data from back when Breyer was on the Court rather than Jackson. My preferred model results is this graph and fairly consistent with @Walterodim's characterization:
- Sotomayor as a left outlier
- Kegan (and Breyer) on the left
- Kavenaugh, Roberts, and Barrett towards the center
- Thomas and Alito on the right
Finally, he characterizes Gorsuch as a "Maverick", which is admittedly a little hard to formalize in a 2d projection of a high-dimensional space, and the model just spits him out between Barrett and Thomas.
KnotGodel
1yr ago
it's been de-facto IRS policy for years now to preferentially target rural/low-income individuals because they are viewed as being "easier marks"
This is, at the very least, a very misleading summary. The IRS is an order of magnitude more likely to audit people making $10m+ than those making under $1m.
why are the children of our elites so consistently idiots and drug addicts
Do have evidence that they're disproportionately idiots and drug addicts? I strongly expect the opposite.
If the HBD-Tards' and Woke-Cels' theories about race were accurate, this ought to have translated into quick and easy victory
The Allies had more than double the GDP of the Axis powers every year of the war. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that racial differences (if they exist) can trump a 2x advantage in production. It was even more lopsided regarding raw population counts. Even beyond that you're attempting to infer causation (or lack thereof) based on a correlation of n=2. That's absurd.
Wait, how could I have conveyed that idea in a way with less antagonism than I did? [Edit: I didn't want to assume he believed this (which is putting words in his mouth and against the rules) - so the only option if I wanted to engage was to ask for clarification]
KnotGodel
5mo ago
To address the concrete point, real median pay is basically flat from its pre-pandemic value. The number you cited in your post was nominal.
Unemployment is also basically flat from pre-Covid (ditto for employment).
So, if people are subconsciously replacing the survey questions with "am I economically better off compared to pre-Covid?", then we should see about as many people answer "yes" as "no".
Your thesis:
The last several years are best modelled as a massive, distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble.
As with all such narratives, this says more about you than the world. You simply focus on all the ways Blues hurt Reds and ignore the millions of boring policy changes where nothing of the sort happens.
This lets your “model” be “correct” since you simply ignore all disagreeing events. For instance, I really don’t see how Biden turning immigrants away at the border is him hurting the Reds or how him sending arms to Ukraine is hurting the Reds or how a boring HOA meeting about lawn care is hurting the Reds.
Then you interpret your own bias as an objective fact of the world, which lets you make fun of people who don’t share that bias by effectively calling them stupid (which is the framing for your entire comment)
Not exactly a paradigm of clear and charitable thinking.
That’s what happens to half the issues. The other half get resolved so thoroughly that everyone in the past looks completely evil - slavery, Nazism, etc
KnotGodel
5mo ago
From Wikipedia:
Men can potentially have many children with little effort; women only a few with great effort. One argued consequence of this is that males are more aggressive, and more violently aggressive, than females, since they face higher reproductive competition from their own sex than females. In particular, low-status males may be more likely to remain completely childless. Under such circumstances, it may have been evolutionarily useful to take very high risks and use violent aggression in order to try to increase status and reproductive success rather than become genetically extinct. This may explain why males have higher crime rates than females and why low status and being unmarried is associated with criminality. It may also explain why the degree of income inequality of a society is a better predictor than the absolute income level of the society for male-male homicides; income inequality creates social disparity, while differing average income levels may not do so. Furthermore, competition over females is argued to have been particularly intensive in late adolescence and young adulthood, which is theorized to explain why crime rates are particularly high during this period.
KnotGodel
5mo ago
[Warning: Bible nerding]
Giving Wealth
you are supposed to give it to the Jews instead
Well, or the government or the poor. [ Unrelated, but afaict, no one in the New Testament ever encourages donating to a church. ]
Celibacy
celibacy is strongly encouraged
This is debatable.
You point to Luke 20:34-36, but, lets look at the surrounding context. Here is Luke 20:28-36:
“Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.
So, Jesus is given an obscure thought experiment and his response can be interpreted to mean either
- that those why marry essentially won't be saved
- that marriage is not really an institution in heaven
It's not obvious, and (for example) Martin Luther denounced the policy of celibacy and, afaict, it is not really encouraged in most Protestant denominations. While Paul is a big fan, Jesus only directly spoke on the matter once that I know of (beyond your Luke citation): in Matthew 19:8-12:
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
This does certainly sound like celibacy being encouraged, but note that this encouragement is not what I would call "strong". First, Jesus says only those who can accept this should. This is literally odd, since everyone literally has the ability to not have sex, so the reasonable interpretation is that this is qualified encouragement. Also contrast this to some other passages, where Jesus is actually strongly encouraging his followers:
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Heck even Matthew 5:21-22
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
To my eyes, this is what Jesus looks like when saying something is crucially important. His denunciation of sex seems extremely tame by comparison.
Progress
There is simply no way you can square this with the idea of progress, unless progress simply means converting people to Christianity
Well, one might define moral progress as moral circle expansion, which is pretty inline with Christian morality of loving thy neighbor and even thy enemy.
which is supposed to be the only thing that matters
I don't think most Christians up to and including Pope Francis himself would agree that converting people to Christianity is the only thing that matters.
Accordingly, the traditional Christian view of history is that of decline, perhaps interspersed with divine interventions here and there
I'm genuinely curious: why do you think this? Is there some reading I can do on the topic?
That paragraph completes a collection of 3 paragraphs all follow the form "Republicans do <scummy thing>, but Democrats aren't any better". That is to say, I'm pretty close to certain OP is saying "Roe v Wade, anyone" as a dig at Democrats
KnotGodel
1yr ago
It would only be "a very similar set of criteria" if the Holocaust denier
-
was not anonymous
-
named specific victims and claimed they were lying
-
had enough reach that those victims received threats from other people
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had enough reach that these victims knew about those particular instances of Holocaust denial
Has that ever happened? idk
Harvard mostly boils down your smartness into their Academics rating as described here:
Summa potential. Genuine scholar; near-perfect scores and grades (in most cases) combined with unusual creativity and possible evidence of original scholarship.
Magna potential: Excellent student with superb grades and mid-to high-700 scores (33+ ACT).
Cum laude potential: Very good student with excellent grades and mid-600 to low-700 scores (29 to 32 ACT).
Near-perfect test scores and grades will only ever get you the second-highest rating. I remember when I was looking at colleges 10 years ago that I noted that Brown only admitted ~25% of people with perfect ACT scores.
When you combine this with now-public data on Harvard's admissions, it becomes pretty clear that, with no change to the ACT/SAT, Harvard could pretty straightforwardly choose the next incoming class to have an average IQ of at least half a standard deviation higher than previous classes.
I think that's the rub: even if the ACT/SAT were redesigned to better discriminate among the top of the distribution, Harvard et al's current behavior makes me pretty skeptical that this would result in smarter people being admitted.
That being said, if you have amazing test scores and grades, you should probably really consider Caltech - they're have no legacy or affirmative action, and they place a huge emphasis on those exact factors.
This is neither here-nor-there, but there is good evidence that top schools under-weigh test scores if their goal is to predict who will be most successful. Who knows to what extent this is because (a) intelligence is super important at accomplishing things or (b) nearly all selective institutions [edit: including med school, law school, FAANG companies, consulting firms, etc] use intelligence filters since they're easy to evaluate - for instance, grit is hard to figure out in a test or interview.
KnotGodel
1yr ago
Alas, smart ≠ reliably makes good decisions.
[ Edit: I wouldn't hire her to manage my company's PR or financial records, but I'd definitely hire her to do engineering/research work. ]
KnotGodel
1yr ago
You can both be right.
It can be unhealthy to care if people look like you, and (assuming most people do care and this is unlikely to change) still a good thing to provide representation to a demographic.
KnotGodel
4mo ago
I think the answer is that "tolerable" is just a poor framing for such conversations.
There are specific policies/actions with specific benefits/costs and they should largely be evaluated separately.
Asking whether trigger warnings are good/bad is silly. Asking whether the MPA should include a "sexist humor" label on relevant films (e.g. like the "graphic violence" label) is a specific change that can be discussed. Asking whether college professors should be fired for not warning a class that a book contains a rape scene is a specific change that can be discussed. etc
People love arguing broad ideas, but insight usually comes from getting down to brass tacks.
KnotGodel
5mo ago
A central question is who counts as an expert and in what context.
To most people, I think the answer is implicitly something like "any professor, reporter, or politician on twitter".
My lived definition is closer to "meta-analyses, literature reviews, textbooks, and institutionally backed datasets".
If your lived experience is mostly on buzz-based social media, I can see why you'd distrust experts. If it's based on peer-reviewed literature reviews, not so much.
For example, re HBD, surveys show that intelligence researchers largely agree genes are a likely cause of intelligence differences. Sure, "twitter experts" might express extreme confidence that it is not and that you are racist if you think so, but... who counts as an expert to you? Why do you define expert in that way?
I think many people on this forum weigh expertness by power - i.e Fauci is The Expert on Covid. I don't. Neither perspective is wrong. The people weighing with power care about political consequences. I care about understanding the truth of matters. Different goals/values.
KnotGodel
1yr ago
Who does have skin in the game and disagrees with his claim?
[ I agree he’s mostly wrong, but afaik, your heuristic for why isn’t very useful ]
KnotGodel
1yr ago
Traditional religions are fighting off the back foot, they aren't allowed to advocate in the public square because traditionally that was a method to avoid religious conflicts and persecutions.
I assume you mean that religions aren't allowed to advocate using government funds whereas "wokeism" is allowed to do so? That is true afaict, but quite distinct from saying religions aren't allowed to "advocate in the public square". Religions are 100% allowed to do that.
KnotGodel
1yr ago
It seems to me the difference in your definitions are
-
The academics include women in the "minority" group.
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The electorate includes non-oppressed minorities in the "minority" group.
Fine, but then you claim that the electorate is in favor of helping minorities "because it is the right thing to do". But, by your own definition, the only differences are the above.
So, your complaint is... activists want to help women and don't care about helping non-oppressed minorities. This does not strike me as a significant disagreement with the electorate.
Peter Singer considers himself a hedonistic utilitarian. My understanding is that (broadly speaking) lying is nearly intrinsically bad to the preference utilitarians (most people have a preference against being lied to) but not the hedonistic utilitarians (if the lied-to-party never finds out, their hedonism is not impaired).
Which is to say... if we're going to use his affair as evidence of anything, it should be to discredit hedonistic utilitarians.
More specifically, I think classical utilitarianism as a whole suffers from a lack of respect for duty to the near in ways that this sort of misconduct highlights
No comment on whether utilitarianism "suffers from a lack of respect for duty to the near", but I really don't see how Peter cheating on his wife is related to this. Like, if he was sleeping with people to get them to donate to malaria charities, you'd have a point - but, per your summary, he was enjoying sex for purely selfish reasons.
KnotGodel
3mo ago
I went digging for numbers and found:
- In 1833, Britain abolished slavery (mostly); about about 1% of the population were slaves
- In 1837, Mexico abolished slavery; about about 0.1% of the population were slaves
- In 1860, the South fought a ware to keep slavery; about 32% of the population were slaves
- In 1867, Spain largely freed its slaves; I can't find specific numbers :(
- In 1888, Brazil abolished slavery; about about 5% of the population were slaves
Slavery was a much bigger deal in the South than other places that freed slaves. The only other place I'm familiar with that had a similar proportion of slaves was Cuba, where slavery was abolished in 1886. However, as with the South, this wasn't chosen by Cuba - it was imposed by an outside power (Spain).
Given the trend in when slavery was abolished across the world, I think it's quite reasonable to suppose, if given the choice, the South would've continued with slavery into the 20th century. None of this requires assuming Southerners were "uniquely horrible or monstrous" - all it requires is assuming the more reason you give someone to avoid uncomfortable moral reasoning, the more they will avoid said reasoning.
Here's are the two questions one really needs to answer to argue whether we should have postponed ending slavery to avoid a Civil War:
- How many additional generations would you be willing to consign to chattel slavery in order to avoid the Civil War?
- How many additional generations would it have taken for the South to change its mind?
The Civil War resulted in ~700k deaths and free 4m slaves. If I assume a year lived as a slave is half as valuable as a year lived as a free man, the naive utilitarian answer to (1) is something like 18 years. I personally rather doubt the South would've gone along with ending slavery before 1879, so I think the utilitarian answer is to prefer the Civil War.
The non-utilitarian answer is, imo, "wtf you monster - slavery is wrong".
That is the libertarian dichotomy.
An Effective Altruist would say
The Christian wold say
The Scientist would say
The SJW would say
etc. etc.
The Culture War is not simply the dichotomy of the free versus the controlling. That is simply the dichotomy people on this forum tend to favor.
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