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He has published a regular book, a comic book, multiple blog posts, done multiple podcasts on the topic, been in multiple public debates, and has lectured on this topic in his University classes for two decades.
I think you just disagree with him so you want to call him non-serious.
And I think you just agree with him so you want to venerate him.
A serious person would contend with the obvious and hard objections to the proposed policy. Caplan has never done that. In fact, his advocacy is a perfect example of non-serious thinking. Divorced from reality and extrapolated from fiction. A fiction partially maintained by institutions that you allege lend Caplan credibility.
I mean, you're not going to debate anyone in a public setting that points out that, outside of East-Asia and Europe, almost every single immigrant population group that moves into EU countries is a net negative. That seems like kind of a big deal. But no, Caplan is a serious thinker who writes books, blogs, does podcasts, has lectured at a university for 20 years and never interacts with any of it. Just create a magic category called 'Immigrant' and compare it to a magic category called 'American Native' and voila.
I'd acknowledge any of the people that caplan has debated with on immigration as "serious". I'd acknowledge anyone that has written a book or academic paper on the subject as "serious". Regardless of their viewpoints.
Are you "serious" about immigration? Is anyone by your standards?
When people curtail their viewpoint diversity to be within the Overton Window and then ignore obvious blindspots to legitimate contradiction then no, they are not serious. Regardless of how much they work and waffle within those parameters.
There is an entire cottage industry of academics and media that exists for little other than venerating immigration. There can exist no serious thought within that sphere when alternatives are functionally verboten. The people who exist within this sphere without acknowledging just how ridiculous the entire thing is are not serious.
Are you "serious" about immigration?
Is anyone by your standards? Is Emil Kirkegaard serious?
I honestly don't even know what you mean by the word anymore other than "if they acknowledge my objections are correct and completely agree with me". Now that I know that is what you meant, I withdraw any objections to calling Caplan "not serious".
I've spent a few paragraphs voicing exactly what my problems are. Whatever it is you are doing now, including antagonistically mischaracterizing what I write, should be beneath you. I can just as well assert that the only reason you are here is because you agree with Caplan and that your fixation on the word "serious" is the only in you have to play defense, irrelevant though it might be. But that would be a tad low brow and fruitless.
To answer your question about who is serious:
Insofar as people present reasons for why they believe things, they can be held to that standard. I gave examples where Caplan is actively ignoring contradictory information. Be that human differences between population groups or economic data from outside the US. Because Caplan is ignoring information pertinent to his own standard he can not be considered serious.
By the same token a leftist open borders moralizer is serious. They don't need to pretend that their advocacy has any locally positive economic benefits based on statistical extrapolations and human behavior. They just assert that people fleeing a country need refuge and that there is a moral duty to provide shelter. They can volunteer their time and effort to solidify the fact they actually believe this, but the argument is ultimately just moral.
I wrote this for you, but to me, these distinctions are largely irrelevant to the topic at hand. My point was about Caplan. He was presented by you and others as being something he is not. I did not argue that point by asserting that he is not serious so I don't see the relevance about some universally applicable definition of the word.
I'm nearly certain he is aware of these points, but there are certain topics he is unwilling to broach in public. He is still a professor at a public university, and tenure doesn't protect you much from student activists choosing to make your life hell.
Your descriptions of Caplan just don't ring true to me. I don't think you've really read much of his stuff. Which is fine by itself, I don't really read very widely of critics or even people on my own side. But I also don't make claims about those people or what they are saying.
And yes I do tend to nail down specific claims and hammer on them. Otherwise I face a gish gallop of arguments and none of them ever get resolved. I took your weakest argument and probed it to see how wedded you are to your ideas. Some responses might have indicated we could have a productive discussion. Not the ones you gave me. Next item would have been doing some research and finding out if caplan had actively written about the arguments you claim he had never heard of. I got ahead of myself and already looked. He has written about them, but I already got the sense of where the conversation would go from your earlier responses, you'd just pivot to different claims, or say he wasn't specific enough.
It's hard for me to address your claims when you keep the intentionally vague.
As an example, you say that my descriptions of Caplan don't ring true. You don't say which ones, but one of them was obviously true: That the environment Caplan inhabits purposefully prohibits certain things from being discussed.
My problem here is that earlier in this comment chain you rested one of your claims on the fact that Caplan has done a lot of work within this gestapo environment to be a point in his favor. This irks me a bit, since instead of arguing against an actual argument I made relating to the fact that a person purposefully inhabiting such a stifling environment and that the work produced within is not 'serious', you ignore it.
Related to that, you assert I am not familiar with Caplan and his work. Insinuating that my lack of familiarity is a point against me. But by the same token, you assert that Caplan could probably not address these points publicly, given the environment mentioned above. So how could my alleged unfamiliarity with Caplan be of any relevance?
My description of Caplan was that he has not engaged with population group differences within the US and the lackluster result of immigration into the EU when it comes to his assertions. I, as a consequence, said he is not a serious person. I am, given all of this, at a loss as to how my descriptions are not true.
To top it all off: You, despite having allegedly far greater knowledge of his work, don't point to where he addresses these contentions. Instead you just spend one too many a comment floating the possibility that he has. Well, you now say he has written about them, but you're just not telling. OK man.
I think the word choice of "serious" sucks. Most people would consider it to mean the opposite.
Like if a historian doesn't address all the claims of Holocaust deniers you'd say they aren't "serious" about history.
Whereas most people would say that engaging with them at all is a sign of not being serious.
I've been responding to you on mobile in my spare time. I don't have the article with me. Caplan talks about Emil Kierkegaard, and his disagreements on immigration. It's a blog post. I think from two or three years ago.
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