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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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I'm committing a major faux-pas by posting a second consecutive top-level comment, but it's been 12 hours and people need to post more. (Seriously, post a top level comment. Do it now.)

What's something that you were wrong about?

I'll start. I was wrong about marijuana legalization. It was a bad idea and we never should have done it. Marijuana is, contra urban legend, actually pretty addictive. And it makes productive people into unproductive people. The benefits, such as they are, are best enjoyed in moderation. But legalization has resulted in a whole new class of junkies that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Also, weed culture is gross.

Scott, as always, says it best:

My views evolved in something like the way Steve implicitly points at here: decriminalizing marijuana seemed to go okay, it seemed hypocritical and dumb for the law to be “marijuana is illegal but we won’t punish you for it in any way wink wink”, so (I thought) why not go all the way and legalize it? And the answer turns out to be: if it’s illegal but tolerated, then it’s supplied by random criminals; if it’s legal, it’s supplied by big corporations. And big corporations are good at advertising and tend to get what they want.

In any case, what were you wrong about?

Okay.

I’m less and less in favor of libertarian ideas than I was before. There are some behaviors that are harmful to society even if done behind closed doors because the pathologies they cause or enable tend to be a net drain on resources. Drug use is a big one, which is being made more obvious by the recent legalization of marijuana. But the same can be said of both the consumption and production of porn, the glorification of overconsumption and consumerism, and the normalization of ignorance.

There is an actual fate. Blank slates and infinite possibilities are both absurd lies we tell ourselves because we can no longer tolerate the notion of limits to ourselves and others around us. The results have been a disaster. We teach kids to want things that they won’t be able to achieve and then they get stuck with the horrific realization at 25 that they will have lifelong consequences for believing that junk we told them in school and on TV. It also creates social problems as those who were promised a future in the now over saturated elite ranks agitate for what they were told was a birthright, and at the same time the low status jobs go unfilled because those who should be doing those jobs went for elite jobs. Or we tell women to girlboss which, frankly only maybe 5% of women can even be middling good at, and get shocked when it means that women aren’t filling the traditional female jobs or having kids.

Crime is only deterred by the certainty and harshness of punishment. Compassion is nice, but what it teaches criminals is that there are no consequences to doing serious crimes. The results are that areas of the city where criminals are most active become too dangerous to live or work in. And this harms those too poor to flee. What those areas need is over-policing, harsh punishment for first time offenders, and zero tolerance for crime no matter what the criminal’s past is. When people don’t have reason to fear the lawman, the law doesn’t exist, and eventually you have people forced into defending themselves.

Most of the wokeness in schools and Hollywood is a result, not a cause of the decline of those institutions. We aren’t teaching that just because the state says to. We teach it because we have lost the institutional ability to teach math, science, reading and writing. Test scores on those subjects are not good, and a ten minute conversation with even college graduates shows a shocking level of ignorance about the world outside of their bubble. Unless you’re a STEM student, chances are that you know less about the outside world than their high school educated grandparents at the same age. In the arts, I suggest the same thing — the complexity of characters, plots and dialogue have fallen quite a bit from the kinds of things people were writing a generation ago. Modern art frankly sucks at this point, as artists generally lack the skill to make representations of the real world.

Would you agree if I said that these "harmful behaviours" all depend on the people who engage with them? The trade-off is actually what age limits achieve. Why can't children drink alcohol? Because children can't bear that much freedom, they'd likely destroy themselves. So before 18, drinking is a "harmful behaviour", and afterwards, it's not, under the assumption of course that people above the age of 18 have more self-control. I agree that, for society, more rules can be better, but I personally don't need nearly that many myself. So less libertarianism is only best under the assumption that everyone should live by the same rules. A more flexible "Every individual should have as much freedom as they can handle" opens up more more interesting possibilities. Finally, may I add that rules are of almost no importance? Same with police, laws, restrictions. These are just symptoms of deeper problems. If you need them in the first place, something has already gone wrong. Even if cocaine was legal, I would still avoid it. For a society, it's more important that its citizens don't want to do drugs, than it is for said society to ban drugs.

I agree that "over-policing" is a good idea now. It worked in El Salvador I believe. But why is it necessary in the first place? I think it's possible to cultivate people in such a way that you don't need rules. For example, I allow myself to be as immoral as I want, but I don't ever feel like doing anything bad, so the natural consequences of doing whatever I like is that I do what's right.

Perhaps, the need for rules is a sign of decline?

I think it's possible to cultivate people in such a way that you don't need rules.

But you can't control them then. The need for control is a need for rules is a sign of decline; people who love are more productive than people who fear, but fear is the fallback option (per Machiavelli).

under the assumption of course that people above the age of 18 have more self-control

The assumption that people under the age of 18 don't have self-control is actually very, very damaging to those of them that already have it but also take social messaging [a little too] seriously. The people you want to accelerate hold themselves back for the benefit of the people who will never be responsible- these rules are redistributionist, communist even (while the most common person to scream about this won't make this argument they are, trivially, directionally correct).

A more flexible "Every individual should have as much freedom as they can handle" opens up more more interesting possibilities.

Yes, but that pipeline is ripe for abuse. Best example for that is gun licensing in areas that do more invasive checks; they're going to come for that freedom with the excuse of "nobody needs it" and there's strength in numbers.

It requires a more temperate people to do this properly. Europeans can do it more often these days (and have more liberal gun laws than several very populated US states); Americans clearly can't (I think it's a genetic problem with the English). But the fact the freedoms are granted by default is what brings in liberals-who-deserve-liberalism, temperate people who don't want to jump through the hoops.

I love being around people who are competent and developed, around such people you can just let cause and effect do its thing, without worrying about where you're heading. Is your point that a mentally healthy society cannot be properly controlled, which is why people in power are implementing changes which reduce the mental resilience of the population? Because if so, I do agree.

The assumption that people under the age of 18 don't have self-control

Oh, I don't believe that myself, I just agree with society that there's more people with self-control above 18 years of age than below. We are punishing capable people by designing society in a way which protects the lowest common denominator. But my point is that, while I'd like to give everyone more freedom, it would only result in a more hedonistic society. The sort of "rights" that people are after today just seems like the desire to indulge in harmful behaviour and to destroy oneself. Activists are trying to get rid of social judgement towards behaviour which is harmful (like being obese, having casual sex, or fetishism) but one is in a really bad state if one seeks agency for such reasons.

Yes, but that pipeline is ripe for abuse.

By the government? Sure. Our society isn't good enough that we can give somebody the authority to decide who gets to have freedom and who doesn't. By the way, I said as much freedom as one could handle, not as much as they needed :) Here's a quote by Taleb that I quite like: "I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist". I must agree with him that something goes wrong as a result of scaling. I've only experienced "rules aren't necessary" in smaller communities.

It requires a more temperate people to do this properly

Perhaps the sort of calm which is a result of confidence and competence? For I don't think being "temperate" is good on its own, if it means having no strong convictions, not caring much, and having weak emotions and drives. It has been said by Nietzsche, Jung and Jordan Peterson that one cannot be a good person if they can't be dangerous, and I can only agree with them.

Anyway, is this temperateness something we can cultivate in people? For it's my point that there's something fundamental in people which makes all the difference. Something that, if it turns out alright, everything will work out, and if it doesn't, then you need rules, and regulations, laws, and punishment, surveillance, micromanagement, and so on. My point is that improving society can only be done by improving people directly (from the inside, not outside), and that this kind of improvement is sufficient. People are the atoms of society, any "solutions" on the upper layers are wasted. Japan doesn't have less crime because they have better laws, but because they're Japanese. The Japanese are not a consequence of Japan, Japan is a consequence of the Japanese people. People, their characters, and their nature is the root of everything, and everything else is downstream from that and barely worth bothering with (at least, that's my current worldview). Please let me know if I misunderstood you along the way

It’s so intriguing to me how the quality of our art, music, entertainment, education, ability to build things, and political discourse all seemed to decline together.

Fascinating to think about what the underlying cause to the general decline has been.

I think in a lot of cases, it’s a set of cultural norms that drive all three.

First of all, most high achievement societies tend to have a culture of hard work and value their high achieving people. When society promotes things like learning science and maths and building things and creating new businesses and so on obviously everyone seeks status and they want to learn, invent and build as well. When high status people like good art, then artists arise to create it. And even in behavior, when high status people choose to not associate with vulgar ideas, fashions, music and art, it becomes unfashionable to like that stuff as well.

Second, most high achievement societies tend to not mollycoddle failure as much as we do. If you aren’t trying to make it, the rest of us aren’t going to do it for you. If you want it you work for it. Modern society just doesn’t do this anymore, in fact quite the opposite— we pay quite handsomely for lack of effort and doing horrifically self destructive things and making terrible life decisions. A guy who does drugs and plays video games all day won’t miss a meal. If you have six different baby-daddies, you still get lots of help from the rest of us to live life.

Third, there’s a lot more effort put into keeping the marketplace of ideas free from promoting bad memes. Up until the 1990s, TV and movies were much more reluctant to make positive role models of people doing stupid things. You wouldn’t find heroines who had sex with random men. You wouldn’t see heroes doing drugs.

Third, there’s a lot more effort put into keeping the marketplace of ideas free from promoting bad memes. Up until the 1990s, TV and movies were much more reluctant to make positive role models of people doing stupid things. You wouldn’t find heroines who had sex with random men. You wouldn’t see heroes doing drugs.

This was true during the Hays Code era. Not sure it was really true in the 90s. You already had things like heroines cheating on their fiances with random bums (Titanic), heroes marrying single mom strippers (Independence Day), heroes marrying girls who friendzoned them for decades until they were rich and famous (Forrest Gump), etc. Those are all pretty stupid decisions.

I think you’re hitting the nail pretty much on the head.

Interestingly, just today I was writing some notes on the importance of pressure in making us humans get things done and become better people.

As context, I’m currently doing a STEM PhD. I’m one of the people who has always been smart enough to have my intelligence make up for poor work habits. That is, right up until now when the demands of my program have become challenging enough that I need to develop my work habits at a much higher level to keep afloat.

Meanwhile I’m advising a bunch of undergraduates on their big year long final project. Maybe 5% of them have good work habits, usually the more anxious and detail oriented types. The rest don’t get started on time, miss important meetings, don’t tend to read simple instructions, etc.

I’m chatting with the professor today, and he’s laughing, telling us about the methods he uses to make the students feel “pain”, get “nervous”, put them under “pressure”. He tells us his catchphrase is “you’re never early when doing a project like this. You’re always late. You need to catch up!” And his demeanor really got me thinking.

Personally, I had a realization that in order to execute my longer term projects I needed to place pressure on myself from the get go. Positive motivations are nice, but they don’t get you out of bed in the same way as pressure does. The panic monster needs to be on my shoulder, and be there, at least in a small way, from the get go. I’m a very relaxed person, I was raised in a very lenient household, and I grew up thinking this kind of pressure was bad. But I increasingly think I’ve been wrong.. in moderation, this pressure is truly good, it’s formative. And that golden mean of moderation in pressure may be much further to the harsher side than our culture currently appreciates.

Our culture has really devalued using pressure to shape people. We look at the Chinese kids being forced to study and exercise for all their waking hours and say.. not us!

But perhaps if not fully to that extreme, we’d do better to go further in that direction.

I’ve come to think of a human being as a system which is shaped by pressures. Long ago this system was shaped… by hunger, by social pressures… into hunters, and farmers, and blacksmiths, and soldiers. But modern society has seen the removal of a great number pressures. And like a body without the influence of gravity, I believe that the system suffers without these.

And going back to your point about status and what society values… if we in the society do not have pressure placed upon us to become better, to do hard things, to face larger and larger challenges, we end up mostly content to just exist. Without an upward force society stagnates. Because in the end, solving problems in the real world tends to be highly challenging and requires hard won expertise.

I agree with this. I’ve long suspected that “pressure” as you call it is necessary in the right doses to bring about what we call maturity. In other words, if you took a child and remove all negative feedback from his life (which were often doing in the name of “mental health”) you short circuit the feedback mechanisms that teach kids to handle adversity in healthy ways, and furthermore, you stunt their ability to mature. What you’d end up with is a human with a mature body but a mind that’s much less mature. I would probably estimate that the median 18 year old kid would be about as mature as a 19th century 12 year old. A 24 year old adult often thinks and acts with the maturity of a 16 or 18 year old.

I’m also fairly convinced that social pressure can and does move society in positive directions. And in that regard shame is a perfectly legitimate thing to use to enforce good behavior and punish bad behavior in the wider culture. At the same time acclaiming the people who are doing great things can often inspire other people to try. I want my kids to build the future, so obviously one way to go about that is to praise great scientific minds, great inventions, and try to make kids want to build and invent. Our heroes are celebrities. There are lots of books about Taylor Swift but not many about Richard Feynman or Elon Musk or the like.

If all our pressure is of the negative kind, then it results in stress, hopelessness, depression, poor sleep, etc. Ideally, we find competition to be both fun and rewarding. Human beings are largely "anti-fragile", but some of us are more anti-fragile than others. I'm extremely harsh with myself, but I have a friend that I'm helping pass university, and I simply cannot help her by applying pressure, it only makes her weak, doubtful of herself, and prone to giving up.

You can cultivate anti-fragility in people, but it's hard to tell what it's made of exactly. Core beliefs, past successes, pride, hormones, masochism, strong drives? What kind of people play video games on hard mode and enjoy it, and how can we make sure that we get more of this type than of the victim-mentality type?

I know some people who broke because of stress, and it's unlikely they will ever be able to work again. Meanwhile, I'd put myself in danger if I did not push myself.

"I'm extremely harsh with myself, but I have a friend that I'm helping pass university, and I simply cannot help her by applying pressure, it only makes her weak, doubtful of herself, and prone to giving up."

Are you trying to sleep with this friend?

I have a girlfriend already, I still like helping people. I don't want to see people procrastinate so much that it fucks up their future, so seeing a better outcome unfold is enough reward for me. It's like cleaning your house so that you can endure looking at it, except you're removing bad futures/possibilities, rather than trash

harsh punishment for first time offenders, and zero tolerance for crime no matter what the criminal’s past is.

You need inevitability and timeliness of the punishments. Harshness should be just enough. You can get this way most rational people to behave. Case in point speed cameras - everyone learns to slow down around them. Eventually.

They learn to obey on two conditions. First that the law is actually enforced to a meaningful degree. Second, that the fines are high enough to feel pain when paying it. Of course even with speed cameras, it tends to work literally how you describe it — people do slow around enforcement zones. Once it’s known there’s a speed check via cop or camera, people slow down there — and go as fast as they can get away with everywhere else. There are roads with a speed limit of thirty where everyone goes 60 — except for the end of the month when the cops enforce the law.

Agreed. Harsh punishments for first time offenders are cruel and unnecessary.

Swift and sure (but mild) punishment for first time offenders would be more effective. But the punishments need to escalate quickly after that. Most crime is committed by serial offenders. The average prisoner has been arrested like 10 times. By removing people from society after their 3rd offense, or 4th, or 5th or whatever, we can reduce crime by huge amounts at little cost to society.