TracingWoodgrains
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User ID: 103
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
I realized I never replied to this—I meant to, but I mean to do a lot of things these days. I appreciate your expression of regrets and your work to keep things dialed down; though I continue to feel misapprehended, I won't attempt to further bridge a gap in understanding that, as you say, appears unbridgeable. I see no reason for you to stay out of my way; that we have fundamental disagreements does not mean I see no value in our chats.
All the best.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
note: this post, reluctantly, collapses liberals and leftists under the label 'liberal' to follow the conventions of the paper I'm whining about. I'll try not to twitch too much.
Heaven save me from misleading social science papers. I tweeted about this, but hopefully I can whine a bit more coherently in longform. Bear with me; this might get heavy on diving through numbers.
As part of a larger effort to explore DeSantis's claimed New College coup, in which he picked conservatives for the board of a progressive school, I returned to the evergreen question of political background of university professors, which led me to this study. The study is the most recent overall view cited by the Wikipedia page examining the question. Its conclusions are summed up as such:
In 2007, Gross and Simmons concluded in The Social and Political Views of American Professors that the professors were 44% liberal, 46% moderates, and 9% conservative.
If you're the sort to do "pause and play along" exercises in the middle of reading, take a shot at guessing what the underlying data leading to that conclusion looks like.
Here's the underlying spread. 9.4% self-identify as "Extremely liberal", 34.7% as "liberal", 18.1% as "slightly liberal", 18% as "middle of the road", 10.5% as "slightly conservative", 8% as "conservative", and 1.2% as "very conservative. Or, in other words, 62% identify as some form of liberal, 20% as some form of conservative.
So how do they get to the three reported buckets? Not with a direct survey. Prior analyses, notably including Rothman et al 2005, referenced repeatedly throughout this paper, lump "leaners" who express weak preferences in a direction in with others who identify with that direction. This paper elects to lump all "leaners" together as moderates, while noting that "we would not be justified in doing so if it turned out that the “slightlys” were, in terms of their substantive attitudes, no different than their more liberal or conservative counterparts." They use answers to twelve Pew survey questions, where 1 is "most liberal", 5 is "most conservative", and 3 is "moderate" to examine whether substantive attitudes are different enough to justify lumping the groups together.
Here's what their results look like, in full MSPaint glory. Again, if you're playing along at home, consider the most natural groupings, based on these results. The answers of "extremely/liberal" respondents average out to 1.4 on the 5-point scale, close to the furthest left possible. "Slightly liberal" respondents are not far behind, at 1.7 on the scale. Both "middle of the road" and "slightly conservative" respondents remain to the left of center, as measured by the Pew scale, averaging 2.2 and 2.8, respectively. It's only when you look at the "very/conservative" group that you see anyone at all to the right side of the Pew survey, with average scores of 3.7, far from the maximum possible.
From this data, the authors decide the most logical grouping is to lump "slightly liberal" respondents in with middle and slight conservatives as "moderates". That is to say: even though their scores are closest to the other liberals, almost a point closer to other liberals than to the slight conservatives, and more than a full point towards the "liberal" side of Pew's scale—significantly further left by that metric than even the most conservative grouping lands to the right—the authors label them "moderates".
Their justification? "[T]hat there are differences at all provides further reason to think that the slightlys should not be treated as belonging to the extremes." That is: any difference at all between their answers and the answers of those who identify as further left is sufficient justification to categorize them alongside people who they disagree with much more visibly. There is no sense in which this is the most natural or coherent grouping.
If the study went by pure self-identification, it could reasonably label 62% as liberals and 20% as conservatives, then move on. It would lead to a much broader spread for apparent conservatives than for others, but it would work. If it went by placement on their survey answers, it could reasonably label 62% as emphatically liberal, 28% as moderate or center-left, and 10% as conservative, with simple, natural-looking groups. Instead, it took the worst of both worlds, creating a strained and incoherent group of "moderates" who range from emphatically liberal to mildly liberal, in order to reach a tidy headline conclusion that "moderates" in academia outnumber "liberals".
Perhaps I shouldn't be so upset about this. But the study is everywhere, and nobody reads or cares about the underlying data. Wikipedia, as I've mentioned, tosses the headline conclusion in and moves on. Inside Higher Ed reports professors are more likely to categorize themselves as moderate than liberal, based on the study. Headlines like "Study: Moderate professors dominate campuses" abound. The study authors write articles in the New York Times, mentioning that about half of professors identify as liberal. Even conservative sources like AEI take the headline at face value, saying it "yielded interesting data" but "was fielded right before the extreme liberal lurch took off in the mid-2000s".
Look, I'm not breaking new ground here. People know the biases inherent in social science at this point. Expectations have mostly been set accordingly. There's not even a real dispute that professors are overwhelmingly liberal. All that as it may, it drives me mad every time I find a paper like this, dive into the data, and realize the summary everyone takes from it is either negligently or deliberately wholly different from the conclusions a plain reading of the data would provide.
It's not lying! The paper presents the underlying data in full, explains its rationale in full. The headline conclusion is technically supportable from the data they collected. The authors are respectable academics at respectable institutions, performing serious, careful, peer-reviewed work. So far as I have knowledge to ascertain, it contains no overt errors and no overt untruths.
And yet.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
I don't think this will convince you, but when Brigham Young started that policy he explicitly stated that at some point it would end.
He did. Specifically, he stated this:
You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind. The first man that committed the odious crime of killing one of his brethren will be cursed the longest of anyone of the children of Adam. Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin. Trace mankind down to after the flood, and then another curse is pronounced upon the same race—that they should be the “servant of servants;” and they will be, until that curse is removed; and the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree. How long is that race to endure the dreadful curse that is upon them? That curse will remain upon them, and they never can hold the Priesthood or share in it until all the other descendants of Adam have received the promises and enjoyed the blessings of the Priesthood and the keys thereof. Until the last ones of the residue of Adam's children are brought up to that favorable position, the children of Cain cannot receive the first ordinances of the Priesthood. They were the first that were cursed, and they will be the last from whom the curse will be removed. When the residue of the family of Adam come up and receive their blessings, then the curse will be removed from the seed of Cain, and they will receive blessings in like proportion.
Young and subsequent prophets treated it as if the doctrine had been established by Joseph Smith. From George Q. Cannon:
I had a conversation very early in life with President John Taylor, who told me what the Prophet Joseph had said upon this subject.
I related it to-day to the Council. He told him that the seed of Cain could not hold the priesthood, and that they would be debarred from the priesthood until Abel should have seed who could come forward and receive the priesthood. Cain had killed Abel, and he had died childless.
And from Joseph Fielding Smith:
Ham, through Egyptus, continued the curse which was placed upon the seed of Cain. Because of that curse this dark race was separated and isolated from all the rest of Adam's posterity before the flood, and since that time the same condition has continued, and they have been 'despised among all people.' This doctrine did not originate with President Brigham Young but was taught by the Prophet Joseph Smith .... we all know it is due to his teachings that the negro today is barred from the Priesthood. -The Way to Perfection, pages 110-111
This is not to claim that Smith was the actual originator of the doctrine—he made a few statements that could be interpreted that way, but the best-supported historical view indicates a shift from neutrality on slavery to an anti-abolitionist stance around 1836, followed by a firm commitment against slavery from 1842 to his death in 1844, with a few ordinations of black people to the Priesthood during that time. Rather, the point is that the question was treated by 19th and 20th century LDS leaders as settled doctrine, established by Joseph Smith and not to be undone until perhaps the Millennium.
Church leaders after Young treated it as settled and unambiguous doctrine well into the 20th century, most memorably during this 1947 exchange with Dr. Lowry Nelson, signed by the entire First Presidency of the church:
From the days of the Prophet Joseph even until now, it has been the doctrine of the Church, never questioned by any of the Church leaders, that the Negroes are not entitled to the full blessings of the Gospel. Furthermore, your ideas, as we understand them, appear to contemplate the intermarriage of the Negro and White races, a concept which has heretofore been most repugnant to most normal-minded people from the ancient patriarchs till now. God's rule for Israel, His Chosen People, has been endogenous. Modern Israel has been similarly directed. We are not unmindful of the fact that there is a growing tendency, particularly among some educators, as it manifests itself in this area, toward the breaking down of race barriers in the matter of intermarriage between whites and blacks, but it does not have the sanction of the Church and is contrary to Church doctrine .
While I don't disagree that an about-face on homosexuality would be a more difficult change to fit within LDS theology, my impression is that active members tend to understate the apparent permanence and seriousness of the doctrine banning black people from temple ordinances and the Priesthood and the significance of the 1978 reversal. It was much more than a simple, expected policy shift.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Not only is this fourthhand (Joseph => John Taylor => George Q Cannon => us and the council), but it directly contradicts some of Smith's other actions and contemporary church doctrine.
Like I said, my point in mentioning it was not to present it as evidence for Smith's actual actions and beliefs, but to indicate how church leaders thought about the doctrine at the time.
It's easy in retrospect to conclude that the doctrines weren't actually as serious as they appeared, but the argument proves too much. While the ordinance/priesthood ban was in place, everyone understood the scriptural basis—including McKay:
“I know of no scriptural basis for denying the Priesthood to Negroes other than one verse in the Book of Abraham (1:26); however, I believe, as you suggest, that the real reason dates back to our pre-existent life” (The Church and the Negro, 91)
It was referenced regularly by LDS apostles and seventies in that context. From the 1948 Pearl of Great Price commentary:
“But the greatest curse of all that came upon Cain and his descendants was that they were “cursed as pertaining to the Priesthood,” that is, the entire lineage “could not have the right of Priesthood” (verses 26-27). From the foregoing scripture we learn that Ham, the son of Noah, preserved the curses of Cain in the land. Since Ham was a son of Noah, it is quite definite that he did not have a black skin and was not a descendant of Cain. But the scripture seems to indicate that the wife of Ham was a descendant of Cain and through her the curses were preserved (verses 21-25).
It was serious enough as doctrine that church leaders at the highest level were unified in reprimanding members like Nelson for considering interracial marriage or the notion of racial equality ("We should like to say this to you in all kindness and in all sincerity that you are too fine a man to permit yourself to be led off from the principles of the Gospel by worldly learning. You have too much of a potentiality for doing good and we therefore prayerfully hope that you can reorient your thinking and bring it in line with the revealed word of God.")
As social and political pressures mounted, as with polygamy, the leaders saw increasing reason to reexamine their views and shift doctrine. But it was a shift: it wasn't a sudden discovery that the view had no scriptural basis and that it was simple policy, but a gradual change of rhetoric and emphasis that culminated in the reversal of what had been seen as firm doctrine "never questioned by any of the Church leaders [...] from the days of the Prophet Joseph." The task was not to educate church leaders on their own doctrine but to build a new doctrinal framework that allowed something that had been overwhelmingly seen as repugnant, but which society's views were rapidly shifting on, to be overturned. The 1954 committee, 1965 shift in Brazil, and 1969 statement were all part of this gradual process of framework-building.
It's not my business anymore what the LDS church does with homosexuality. I recognized no personal interest in men at any point while I believed, and during that time I supported its stance on the matter and saw an unambiguous difference between the overturn of the temple/priesthood ban + intermarriage revulsion for black people and a theoretical reversal of doctrine on gay marriage. Now, from an outside view, I find the difference less persuasive. I wouldn't say it's probable, exactly, but it seems wholly plausible to me that as the views of members change and as social pressure mounts, a gradual work of framework-building will begin that culminates in a situation where something like... was it Tom Christofferson who tried to theorize that gay people might enter the second degree of glory in the Celestial kingdom? Where something like that becomes consensus.
This will only be intensified by the growth of new technologies like IVG, with potential to allow gay couples to have natal offspring. LDS theology as it stands is poorly equipped to handle the prospect of a child who genetically has two fathers or two mothers. In the past, as social views have shifted and new technology has entered the arena, the faith has gradually shifted. Changes in the rhetoric and understood etiology around homosexuality have shifted from the unambiguous and harsh language of Kimball and Packer in the 70s and 80s to more cautious and conciliatory words from modern leaders. I have no idea where it will end, and like I said, it's not my business. But the priesthood/temple/intermarriage change was a serious doctrinal shift that had cautious groundwork laid for it over the course of more than thirty years, and the church has taken that approach enough that I don't discount the possibility that it will happen again.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Thanks for the thoughtful response and for your willingness to engage! I know it can be tricky to speak across the divide of belief, and I appreciate your openness. I'm not aiming to be rhetorically deceptive in any sense, though I'll certainly cop to choosing my words with an eye towards persuasive effect.
Firstly, because I just argued that it took place over the course of decades, and here you imply that I claimed it was a sudden discovery.
To clarify, with the "suddenly" I was referring primarily to the 1954 committee. I broadly reject the notion that they re-examined the scriptures and concluded there was no scriptural basis after having defended it on a scriptural and doctrinal basis for years before that point. From my angle, it's more accurate to conceive of their conclusion not as "we learned there was no scriptural basis" but as "we would like to move away from our prior emphasis on the scriptural basis for this ban". I do think their opinions gradually changed; we agree on that point. I do not agree (and, to be clear, do not assert you believe) that any new doctrinal information emerged between 1947 and 1979 that would have given them doctrinal cause to reassess; rather, I think their social conditions changed such as to provide strong cultural motive to reassess, and they altered the doctrine as a result.
I also wouldn't present any of this as simple rhetorical strategy. I don't take a particularly cynical view of their beliefs; I think most or all who reach the core leadership of Mormonism are true believers. I think leadership most likely genuinely changed their minds over time, but the proximate cause for that change was not divine guidance that happened to coincide with major social upheavals, but the upheavals themselves, bringing with them increased salience of those issues and sociocultural pressure.
I do take your point in terms of addressing differences between Smith's and Young's practices of ordination. I won't quibble about that difference: while there is a degree of ambiguity in Smith's views and he made enough claims about racial inequality for Young and others to build on, his actions absolutely made the mid-20th-century doctrinal shift simpler. That's a clear difference between the doctrinal shift on interracial marriage and ordinances for black members and a theoretical shift for gay members. My claim is both that they adapted doctrine to stick with the times in response to social and cultural pressure, and that Smith's actions made that change easier to enact.
I think "Young made a mistake" is the most comfortable answer for modern LDS members, but would argue that it mostly falls apart once the record is clear that it was seen as unambiguous and lasting doctrine, not as temporary policy: claims like Woodruff's "the prophet will never lead the church astray" are compatible with many errors, but I do not believe they can comfortably be made compatible with virtually every leader in the church for more than a century being in apostasy on questions of racial equality, marriage, and salvation. When someone's framework contains the belief that virtually every leader in the church was in apostasy on those questions for more than a century, I don't find "...and they continue to be in apostasy on <pet issue here>" to be a serious stretch. The doctrine of continuing revelation and "he will yet reveal many great and important truths" provides serious leeway for ambitious/creative theologians. The language against interracial marriage during that time was every bit as clear as language against gay relationships is today.
Will the church ever come out and say that homosexual behavior is not a sin? I think not, and I'd be willing to bet on it, but I don't imagine you'd be willing to bet on a statement like that resolving within our lifetimes.
If reasonable terms could be arranged, I would take a bet at around 25% odds that the institutional LDS church will come out and say that homosexual behavior within the bounds of committed monogamous partnerships is not a sin within our lifetimes, whether via an overt institutional shift or via a schism. I think it's more likely than not that the shift does not occur, but that 1% is much too low.
I respect your preference for scripture/doctrine over beliefs over time, but I believe both are important to understanding religious evolution and the bounds of what is possible. As far as scriptural/doctrinal support goes, I think the wide range of beliefs among Christian denominations serves as a good sanity check for just what people can be convinced has serious scriptural support. Joseph Smith, so far as I am aware, never said a word about homosexuality in the works of scripture he dictated, his sermons, or otherwise. That is: setting aside the words of recent prophets (which can be done! As the Lowry Nelson letter indicates, unanimous written consent of the first presidency at any given time is not sufficient to determine doctrine), the LDS church relies strictly on the Bible for its doctrine on homosexuality.
While Paul's statements on the matter are unambiguous, the church has been shifting temple ordinances and other words/actions away from similarly unambiguous statements of his (eg women covering their heads) in accordance with modern social instincts. To go further back... well, let me quote a Catholic writer (from what is probably the most honest, perceptive Catholic argument for a shift on doctrine around homosexuality I know of):
During the 1850s, arguments raged over the morality of slave-holding, and the exegesis of Scripture played a key role in those debates. The exegetical battles were one-sided: all abolitionists could point to was Galatians 3:28 and the Letter of Philemon, while slave owners had the rest of the Old and New Testaments, which gave every indication that slaveholding was a legitimate, indeed God-ordained social arrangement, one to which neither Moses nor Jesus nor Paul raised a fundamental objection. So how is it that now, in the early twenty-first century, the authority of the scriptural texts on slavery and the arguments made on their basis appear to all of us, without exception, as completely beside the point and deeply wrong?
The answer is that over time the human experience of slavery and its horror came home to the popular conscience. [...] once that experience of their full humanity and the evil of their bondage reached a stage of critical consciousness, this nation could neither turn back to the practice of slavery nor ever read the Bible in the same way again.
None of this is to say that such a shift around homosexuality is likely. But I hope that helps explain why I don't wholly discount it as a possibility, despite its obvious tension with the LDS framework. Stranger things have happened.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Sounds like a reasonable bet; I'm happy to take it. To reduce mental cost, I'd be happy to run it on a sort of "honor system"—if one of us happens to still remember it in 2050, they can prod the other and claim their due? The current value of a VTI share looks to be $200; at the time of resolution; I'm happy to go with your preference between an inflation-adjusted equivalent amount of cash or stocks so you don't have to think about it. I'll note that I do think 2050 is a bit on the early side of where I'd predict anything happening—my "25% chance" was positing sometime probably around 2060-70 (treating now as the equivalent to 1940 or so)—but it's a good compromise in terms of keeping it even theoretically resolvable, so I'm happy to stick with it.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Well, I'm probably about as likely to remember in 2060 as in 2050, so 2060 it is! See you in 40 years, haha.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
This sounds like a direct description of Thomas Chatterton Williams (albeit taking a rough tone to his more genteel one), more or less. He describes himself as an "ex-black man", criticizes aspects of "ghetto" black culture, and encourages people to move towards a world beyond self-identification with racial categories.
Kmele Foster isn't from a mixed-race marriage, but he approaches things similarly.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
New from me: In Defense of the New College Takeover, also published with my bosses' permission over at Blocked & Reported. In light of the recent news that Ron DeSantis appointed Chris Rufo and a number of other conservatives to the board of hyper-progressive New College of Florida, I felt compelled to write a response to criticisms of the move from a number of people in the "heterodox" sphere, including my own bosses. The full piece is quite long, so I'll quote the third section below (with some edits for brevity), in which I make the case for serious diversity of thought not only within institutions, but between them:
Many people I respect worry about the idea of one institutional bias being replaced by another sort of institutional bias in universities, and embrace the idea that every university should be a joyous hodgepodge of intellectual curiosity with no loyalty, implicit or explicit, to any one creed. This stance, more or less, is held by all those I cite in my intro as critics of this move: my employers, Young, Pinker, Haidt, and other principled and careful thinkers whose stances I take seriously.
I like and respect their position. Is it too impertinent, though, to say they might be wrong?
Before you crucify me, allow me to introduce another set of thinkers I respect: [Bryan Caplan, Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok, and Robin Hanson].
Those of you who have heard of these men before already likely know what they have in common: they are all professors of economics at George Mason University. This is not a coincidence. Rather, it is the direct result of a conscious choice by George Mason, more than 50 years ago, to zig where other universities zagged, snapping up brilliant free-market economists while their ideas were unpopular in the broader academic market. Fittingly for an economics department, they found and exploited an niche that was undervalued by academia writ large, and were rewarded with a string of brilliant economists, including Nobel Prize winners, and a culture of contrarianism and intellectual curiosity that persists to the present.
The existence of the GMU economics department is a boon to academic and intellectual culture, and has provided serious benefits to me personally, even though I have never attended and most likely will never attend George Mason University, even though I stubbornly and resolutely reject many tenets of the libertarianism of so many of its finest thinkers. It did not spring up by chance. It sprang up out of a conscious, ideologically influenced decision to provide an alternative to the culture embraced by the great majority of universities around it.
In short, universities do not exist in isolation. Jonathan Haidt is absolutely correct about the value of viewpoint diversity in academia. Nobody, sincere or not, well-meaning or not, is free of bias. Nor should people be free of bias—or, in other words, they ought to have clear values. Much more important is to be aware of and explicit about their biases, and to open their work to examination by those with contrary biases. I’ve written before about the value of wrong opinions. If you more-or-less agree with something, it’s easy to brush over shared assumptions and nod along without close examination. Only those motivated to disagree are likely to put in the time and effort to give any intellectual work the serious critique it deserves.
What applies to individuals applies to institutions. Every institution has values: some implicit, some explicit. Every university department, and every university, evolves an overarching culture. When I dream of diversity in academia, I do not dream of a diversity that sees every university aiming to achieve a perfect 50/50 balance of people who fall on the left or the right of the American political spectrum. I do not dream of a diversity in which every economics department offers the same mix of Keynsian, Chicago, and Austrian economics. I dream of diversity between institutions: one in which George Mason economists argue with Harvard critical race theorists, where Chicago Law and Berkeley Law hash out serious disagreements, where to attend one university means to be immersed in its particular culture, with a range of cultures on offer between different universities that is as wide as productively possible.
This feels obvious and pressing in education, the domain I feel strongest about. It’s not as simple as progressive versus conservative in that domain—it rarely is. But schools of education are subject to a range of fads, struggling to adopt the lessons of cognitive science. The most well-publicized example recently has been the question of “The Reading Wars,” a fierce dispute between phonics and whole-language approaches. Other debates and forgotten episodes include “discovery learning” versus direct instruction, the spread of “learning styles” even as its evidence base crumbled, and the school district that threw unimaginable money at education problems with minimal effect. To dive into all of these properly would deserve an article of its own, but each question interacts with ideology in sometimes subtle ways, and our best instincts can lead us astray in a domain where what works is often, maddeningly, what feels worst. The field has been dominated like few others by progressives with progressive instincts, and many of its missteps are in precisely the places where those instincts lead intuition astray.
Right now, the most serious shortage I see in the broader culture of academia is that of serious traditionalist conservative intellectuals and universities. Liberals are well-represented. Libertarians make their showing, and not a half-bad one at that. Heaven knows there are plenty of Marxists. But conservatives have fled the Academy and the Academy has fled conservatives. In the social sciences and humanities—the domains I find most compelling—serious conservative thought is almost wholly absent, and with that absence comes real loss, especially for those who disagree with conservatism. Hiring conservative professors in overwhelmingly liberal humanities departments is part of the solution, but another serious part—and a responsibility that can only fall on conservatives themselves—is the cultivation of more intellectually serious humanities and social sciences departments, alongside liberal arts colleges, with sincere commitments to presenting conservative thought. [...]
Bluntly, I cannot picture a world where New College shifts to being dominated by conservatives. What I can picture, and what I hope for, is a world where it shifts to being open to conservatives, where young people eager to study the great works of history and to embrace a liberal arts education can do so in an environment that does not demand rigid adherence to progressive tenets. Perhaps that 12 to one ratio among faculty can shrink to, say, four to one. Stranger things have happened.
The answer to bias isn’t only a different kind of bias. But in an ecosystem where virtually every liberal arts college is overwhelmingly biased in much the same way, having a few to sing the counter-melody can help.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
This move from DeSantis/Rufo is an example of conflict theory in action, one that my article explicitly defends.
I do not mean only classical liberals, and what I am talking about is orthogonal to the free and robust exchange of ideas. A group can support their exchange all they want, but if nobody within it is willing to devote their study and their careers to the ideas themselves, that support only goes so far. To better explain what I mean, I'll use the example of police: if progressives want an institution that aligns with their values, at some point some of them actually have to bite the bullet and become police officers. If conservatives want a serious foothold in the humanities and social sciences, some have to bite the bullet, study, and make arguments within those disciplines.
Obviously, this cannot happen in environments where progressives take over and shut them out. But assume an academic institution that genuinely holds, as one of its values, the free and robust exchange of ideas, is hiring. What will be the proportion of progressives to conservatives among highly qualified people who apply for a humanities post? Conservative intellectuals talk a great deal about preserving and valuing intellectual heritage, but for all of that, it is (broadly speaking) liberals and progressives who take serious interest in these topics day to day.
I strictly oppose the freezing-out of conservatives in these institutions. Whether that happens or not, though, conservatives themselves have a great deal of building to do if they value the humanities, social sciences, and liberal arts more broadly. The most open-minded opponent is still not going to push your ideas for you. You need to bend down, get your hands dirty, and do some gardening for yourself.
That, more or less, is what I'm getting at. It applies to me no less than to conservatives; many of the ideas I would like to see flourish are currently struggling, and that's not going to change unless people like me make it change. So it goes.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
I don't disagree with your overall point, but I do take issue with that article being labeled as sneering. I presented an ongoing story while taking pains to avoid unnecessary potshots at the guy at the center of it. His behavior was bad in a way enabled by current culture, but by no means a pathology unique to progressive culture.
I emphasize this because I think it's worth distinguishing between sneering (overt mockery of opponents) and other sorts of criticism or negative coverage.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
there isn't really a culture war around them.
It's actually teetering on the verge of being a serious frontier on the culture war. After one or two furries made some noise about joining a trans counterprotest to Scotland radfems, culture war sites started going after uninvolved but gross furries in the vicinity. Graham Linehan is in on the fun, as are other commentators in a similar milieu. Fox News has taken note of a Boston College professor who teaches a furry-focused course.
Will it erupt into something more? Eh, I'm not counting on it, but we'll see. It definitely shows signs of real potential as a culture war front, though.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Does he have any interest in building, or only in ruling what others have built?
I'm pretty far from a Moldbug apologist, but this particular criticism uniquely does not land for him. We're talking about a man who built a full-fledged alternative to the internet from the ground up, hand-crafting every stage of its unique and bizarre infrastructure. Now that he's stepped away to let it grow on its own, from what I understand of his current projects, he's become rather enamored with New York's Dimes Square art scene. It seems like a bit of a dead end at best to me, but it's certainly an attempt to build something.
There are many people at whom you can credibly level the "no interest in building" accusation. Whatever else Yarvin's flaws are, this is emphatically not one of them.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Okay, Hlynka, please tell us explicitly in what sense Steve Sailer believes in Hegelian oppressor/oppressed dynamics.
He cannot and he will not; this is less charitable than I typically am, but from his treatises on this topic I get the sense that he hopes by force of repetition alone to cement a tendentious and sweeping thesis of why everyone who disagrees with him is aligned, no matter the level and incontrovertibility of evidence provided to the contrary. You are not wrong to correct him, but you will get nowhere in doing so.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
I suspect it's more like the latter. I've never particularly liked the community, and I'm far from alone in that among people who are fond of anthro animals, but etiology-wise I suspect it's much more like being gay/trans than most of any of those groups want to credit. Culture wars heating up only encourages identity--nothing like a bit of Persecution to build a determined culture (for better or worse).
People often defend surrogacy with the idea that people have the right to do what they want with their bodies. I appreciate and respect those willing to stand in a libertarian defense of something I value, but for my part, I strongly prefer a more affirmative case.
For context, my husband and I are currently talking with a potential surrogate and working out some of the many, many logistical challenges on the road to parenthood. We're in early stages, and there is a great deal to be worked out, but we fully intend on becoming parents as soon as realistically possible. Given that, none of this debate is abstract for me, and I am as far from a neutral party as one can get.
While there are cases in which I respect the value of libertarian frameworks legally and I lean far towards "live and let live" from a metacultural standpoint, there is nothing libertarian about my moral approach to life. I do not believe all choices are equally valid or that there is nothing wrong with hedonism. I do not see things like parenthood as neutral choices that people can take or leave. Rather, what is perhaps my most fundamental philosophical conviction is this: life is Good, human life especially so. The most natural things in the universe are death, decay, and emptiness. Growth, life, and creation are fragile anomalies. We belong to an eons-long heritage of those who have committed to building and maintaining life in the face of inevitable decay. Our duty is to do the same.
Becoming a parent and raising children well is, put simply, the most good almost anyone in the world can do. It is a force multiplier: the good an individual can do is necessarily constrained compared to what their descendants can accomplish. People try to dodge around this, and even longtermists like Will MacAskill who intellectually understand the value of parenthood make excuses for it in their own lives. But it seems incontrovertibly true to me. People, particularly if they are in a position to provide well for children, should become parents. It is not a neutral action among many neutral actions. It is a moral ideal that people should pursue.
All of this takes us to adoption and surrogacy. I accept as a given that the ideal situation for a child is to be raised by their biological parents in a stable home. Inasmuch as social science is worthwhile to note, it has mostly backed this idea up. But for the most part, when people pursue other outcomes, the choice is not between "have biological parents raise a given child in a stable home" and "pursue other family structures for that child". For adoption, the value is obvious and non-controversial given the choice: "bring a child into a loving, stable home without its biological parents" or "send the child to an orphanage, toss it to the wolves, or pursue one of many other tragic outcomes for unwanted children". For most cases of surrogacy, the choice is a bit different: "create a child that will be raised by one or both biological parents in a stable home, but whose birth mother is not their genetic mother or caretaker" or "create no child".
Some people's moral intuitions are that nonexistence is preferable to, or not obviously worse than, existence in a less-than-ideal setting. I wholly reject this intuition, and looking at the record of the persistence of life in the face of adversity, belong to a heritage of those who have, time and time again, rejected it. Life is Good.
As for surrogate mothers? There is nobility, dignity, and grace in parenthood. Bringing a child into the world is an act of hope. To do so on behalf of another, even when provided financial compensation, is not a neutral or profit-focused choice. It's certainly not something that could or should ever be demanded of someone. It's a selfless choice both on behalf of the child who would otherwise not be born and the prospective parents who would otherwise have no children. The woman I've been talking a bit about it with is a young mother who feels she is not in a spot to responsibly raise more children of her own, but strongly wants to keep having children on behalf of others. That's a standard profile for a surrogate, and it's one I see as deeply admirable.
On my own behalf, I claim no fundamental right to have children, because I claim no rights that require others to act. But I absolutely claim that a society in which those who are equipped to raise children, and want to do so, can work alongside those who want to give birth to others' children is in a better spot than one that keeps children with potential to lead meaningful lives from being born. For my own part, while I won't claim to any extraordinary personal ability in terms of parenting, I have no doubt whatsoever that my husband is someone who should be a father, and I am grateful to live in a world where that's a possibility.
There are margins at which some of these arguments shift. There are absolutely exploitative and tragic environments that should be understood and called out. There are settings into which it's not appropriate to bring a child, and edge cases to analyze and discuss. My aim here is not to address all edge cases, but to examine the central case, and in particular, the case for an educated, well-off prospective parent in a society with lower-than-replacement fertility and increasing dismissiveness towards the value of parenthood. Life is worth pursuing and preserving to such a degree that you can get very far from the true ideal case before nonexistence is better than existence, or choosing not to become a parent is better than choosing to become one.
Is this all a foot in the door for transhumanism? I won't speak for others, but on my own behalf I eagerly answer: yes. In a universe where the most natural things are death, decay, and emptiness and all of life is in rebellion against that natural state, it is not just acceptable to prioritize what is Good over what is natural, it is correct. While we all must come to peace with limitations we cannot change, the high points of human history have been our collective work to push back against that creeping entropy and the arbitrary, often cruel limits it imposes. We have already become much more than we once were, and we can and should become much more than we are now.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Aye, that's the trouble with culture war spats, isn't it? None of them are abstract for everyone, and the culture war has real stakes. I want to live in a culture where my family and I can live according to our values and build alongside people who share those values. Emphasizing where surrogacy fits within that frame, and carving out space where people won't look at my family with the sort of suspicion and hissing condemnation @Catsnakes_ below illustrates is a real, important part of that.
To opponents of surrogacy, "literally purchasing another human being" and "providing compensation for the complex and demanding circumstances needed to create a human being" are a distinction without a difference; all I can say is that I see a crucial distinction, and see surrogacy as no more purchasing a human being than IVF or, more disputably, paying a hospital for childbirth. We live in a world where money is inextricably tied up in even intimate human interactions, but that doesn't strip them of their humanity or their worth.
As for changing my mind—look, obviously people stake a lot on major life decisions, and I can't pretend I expect my mind to change on this one. If it were to change, though, it would happen the same way it always does: either by convincing me that some of my values are poorly conceived, or working within the frame of my own values to convince me that my plans don't live up to them. That's why I don't really expect a change, of course—I've spent a long while considering my values and finding the right landing spot, and I suspect I'm mostly past the stage of serious, rather than marginal, adjustments. But the pathway to change is straightforward.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Well, of course everybody wants that.
I feel like you're reading my comment as saying "I, uniquely, want a values-driven society, and cruel people like you prevent that."
I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the rubber meets the road with values differences at some points, and that's where the culture war becomes most complex and most serious. It goes without saying that I believe my values are correct. They are, after all, my values. Others disagree with them, and the truce of liberalism is the most stable way I've seen to deal with those clashes up to this point, but the culture war stops being an abstract chat when your decisions cross someone else's line in the sand or vice versa. I condemn or criticize some choices. Some condemn or criticize my own. I have strong feelings about who is right and who is wrong in most culture war conflicts, but the stakes are high for everybody. At some point, conflicts or no, people decide what sort of life they want to live and find allies where they can. The value I have chosen to make my own stand on here is that bringing people into the world, becoming a parent, and working to raise children well is a good that should be pursued even as circumstances fall short of the most ideal.
The resentment you describe is understandable but a bit peculiar. There was no slippery slope from gay marriage to surrogacy. Gestational surrogacy has been legal in (most of) the United States since long before gay marriage was allowed. There was no carve-out in the push for legal marriage saying "we want to have all the legal rights straight married couples do, except for the option to pursue already legal surrogacy options". Marriage and surrogacy aren't even directly connected, except for questions like who the parents listed on birth certificates are: single men can pursue surrogacy, just like single women can find sperm donors.
Not to lean too much into the villain role in your story, but... what did you think was going to happen? Did you think all gay men who wanted to get married simply saw marriage in the shallower modern "if two people love each other very much..." light and not as the best option for stable, happy family formation and child-rearing? Did you see the collection of legal rights attached to marriage, routes to adoption and surrogacy that straight couples were already using, and assume gay people were simply uninterested; were you treating the idea as primarily symbolic rather than a specific legal change that would open up specific doors for people?
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
You posted somewhere else in the thread that the obvious core drive of a human is to escape death. I assure you, I find that statement as repugnant as you appear to find its opposite.
You're Christian, yes?
I find the Christian objection to transhumanist anti-death pushes fascinating, because "death" means such different things to Christians and atheists. To a Christian, there is no need to escape death on Earth, because Christ already overcame the bonds of death for us with the Resurrection, and we too will be resurrected and raised to a state of perfection if we hold firm. To seek to overcome death on Earth looks like pursuing a shallow, partial, impossible form of what is already granted free of cost to all of us. Christians have fulfilled this drive already in their minds. The rest of us, lacking such a perceptual safety net, do what we must.
This fundamental disconnect over what death is makes it complex to have a meaningful conversation about the nobility of pursuit of immortality between Christians and non-Christians, as the rest of us seek to build what you believe you already have.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
I'd have a hard time looking back on marriage equality advocacy and thinking that it was intended legitimately for family benefits. But I'm open to being corrected.
Family benefits were always part of the package. Andrew Sullivan's landmark 1989 argument, to my understanding the first major advocacy article on the topic in the US, is worth reviewing:
Marriage provides an anchor, if an arbitrary and weak one, in the chaos of sex and relationships to which we are all prone. It provides a mechanism for emotional stability, economic security, and the healthy rearing of the next generation. [...] Legalizing gay marriage would offer homosexuals the same deal society now offers heterosexuals: general social approval and specific legal advantages in exchange for a deeper and harder-to-extract-yourself from commitment to another human being. Like straight marriage, it would foster social cohesion, emotional security, and economic prudence. Since there’s no reason gays should not be allowed to adopt or be foster parents, it could also help nurture children.
Andrew Sullivan, one can point out, is for a gay man unusually conservative in his sensibilities and was making an unabashedly conservative argument in favor of gay marriage. But gay marriage has always been more the purview of the more conservative-minded in the subculture.
You're right that it's comparatively uncommon for gay couples to have kids, but it's more that their kids often don't enter the sphere of Public Discourse. I didn't know Neil Patrick Harris had kids. Looking it up, I see Anderson Cooper, Dan Savage, Jared Polis, and Perez Hilton have kids as well. Dave Rubin is a new father. It's not wildly common, but it's not an anomaly.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
there are certain subjects where I fear that if I deviate too much from the party line, I will be cast out into the outer depths before I even begin.
Richard Hanania is a good counterexample here. I don’t particularly like the guy (not least for his one-time soft plagiarism of me, but that’s a tangent) and I’m not a central member of his audience, but he spends a great deal of time and effort writing essays that castigate and rebuff people who do particularly like him and who want to be central members of his audience. He is a Problematic writer who constantly and openly decries the pathologies of the Problematic, spending more effort than plenty of leftists chronicling all the ways conservatives go wrong, and pulling no punches when doing so. Not just that. He doesn’t touch third rails, he bear-hugs them, and his audience only grows as a result.
And that makes him Interesting, and so I read what he has to say, and sometimes I learn things.
The primary thing a public-facing writer needs is to be Interesting. Forget tribes, forget cancelation, forget whatever: deviations make someone Interesting, and the Freddie deBoers of the world flourish while a thousand cut-and-paste Breadtubers with impeccable production value and assembly-line opinions drown in the kiddie pool before anyone cares who they are.
Oh, and the fiercest partisans? They won’t forget a single thing you say against them, and they’ll bring it up as part of the chattering Discourse around you if you get big enough, but that won’t stop them from loudly amplifying everything you say that expresses their worldview eloquently enough. Most people don’t pay attention to most things most of the time; they notice people when convenient and forget about them otherwise.
In particular, for all its faults the online right ecosystem is higher-variance than the online left, defined more by shared opposition than shared values. They’re used to envisioning themselves as a cloud of heretics, and while they can and will scream bloody murder at you for committing heresy against their particular orthodoxies, they cannot precisely kick you out and will not stop listening unless you are Dull.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Talking about getting and spending, we lay waste the world.
Rarely is the chasm between my own thought and mainstream thought so apparent as when conversation turns to advertisers. I loathe these faceless entities working to wrest my thought into the shape of their own designs, prodding and pulling for whichever levers they can pull to make me consume ever more of their products. I block all ads I can block, recoil when one prods through my defenses and demands my attention.
Yes, this latest campaign is miserable, but not because of what’s in it. It’s because I must watch people broadcast their allegiance to consumption, because they pull ads into my consciousness and reveal their passion for the norm of advertising by crying out against deviations from that norm. Yes, Bud Light ads are grotesque, as are Nike and all culture war ads of the day—but when were they not grotesque, these machines spending untold millions to entangle people’s identities and values with the mass-market products they consume?
I do not care about Dylan Mulvaney, do not care about Bud Light. This lack of caring is not apathy, but a deep-felt antipathy towards the machine that pulls them into my sphere of awareness. Every time someone tells me with heated emotion about the latest symbol of consumption for this or that, the Enemy has won. Every time culture warriors line up for and against Product, the centrality of Product to Culture is sacralized.
Yes, you might say: you may not care about these things, but they care about you. That is, in short, the problem: they care about me when I do not wish to care about them, they spend millions hunting me while I work to evade them, and then they tap into the passions of vectors like you and in so doing find me once more, force themselves into my consciousness once more.
Ad culture is grotesque. It has been so long before Mulvaney and will be so long after they are replaced by the next in a flood of spokespeople sacrificing their lives to the Machine. Drink what beer you will, treat it as an expression of your deep-felt values if you must, but in my book this ad campaign should receive just as much attention as every other hostile, shrieking intrusion into our minds: none at all beyond a muted channel and averted eyes.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
Honestly, talk to @KulakRevolt. You can aspire to be a scene player fitting into one of the silos, or you can just do interesting enough things that you catch the attention of a lot of silos and build your own specific audience, cross-promoting and jumping between scenes as you see fit. Kulak twittermaxxed and grabbed the attention of everyone from Scott Alexander and Tyler Cowen to Scott Adams and Jordan Peterson in short order. By the time you're at the stage where people tweet about you being a homosexual crypto-Jew, you've already won. If they care enough to slot you into a role in their mind, they care enough to pay attention when the people they like notice something you say. Let them tweet. The people they read will still link you whenever you say interesting enough things about the things they care about.
I dunno. I think basically anyone honest will alienate large swathes of people in their natural circles at times, but that's when you find out which ones are interesting and which are simply tiresome. Heaven knows I've done and said enough to alienate plenty, and as my profile grows I can't imagine that pace of alienation will slow down, but you don't want to be an ideological foot soldier, and interesting people don't want to hear only from ideological foot soldiers.
TracingWoodgrains
1yr ago
It's a bit petty and I haven't talked about it here to my recollection, but basically: when he ran a survey of his fanbase, he copied the format and many of the questions I used to survey r/themotte, repeating a number of items verbatim and copying much of my presentation of the results down to specific color choices. That's totally fine in my book—I'm glad he was impressed enough to use it, and it's a fun format that I think should spread—but when sharing the results of the survey, he first requested someone make an imitation of my results table, then removed all mention of my initial table after someone had copied it. You can see the archive here, where it links my work, with no mention of it in the live version.
Technically he did attribute my original when he was asking the questions, but it left a bit of a bitter taste for me when he edited any attribution out of the results page itself, and when I reached out asking about it, he first replied by saying that he didn't know what I was talking about, then went radio silent. It's not the sort of thing I'm interested in making a huge fuss over, but it did leave the lingering impression that his disagreeable approach is more than just an affect and that he can be a genuinely unpleasant person on an interpersonal level.
I am, but when I was on the dating market I was still trying to figure out whether I should try to make it work with women, so I was dating both men and women pretty actively.
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