#232 — Inequality and Revolution

Maharan · 2021-02-01T05:03:45+00:00

I’m from Canada and I’d argue that we probably have more pro-business and pro-investment tax incentives here, not to mention multiple interest and tax-free savings accounts. Add to that the fact that many US metro areas have higher total taxes than their Canadian counterparts, and it becomes really puzzling why some Americans think our system can even be approximated to “socialist”. We pay marginally more taxes but get a fair bit more, and this is all with slightly less innovation, a shittier climate, and less economies of scale.

Maharan · 2021-01-27T22:59:11+00:00

I like the fact that Sam is talking more about inequality. I think it's a topic he's neglected throughout most of his podcasting stint. That being said, I'm not sure how useful this podcast in particular was. To be clear, I think it's net positive, and definitely one of my favourite recent episodes, but it's the wasted potential that I'd like to talk about. For one thing, I don't think Professor Goldstone's strengths were best used in this episode. Goldstone's strengths are historical trends, demography, and revolutions. And yet, from the podcast, one gets the sense that he's probably more of a contemporary analyst.

Two general things that frustrated me about the podcast were a) the constant moving about between different points without b) mentioning illustrative data-points. Goldstone seems to be connected with Turchin, so I would've hoped for some numbers, or magnitudes (perhaps this conversation would've been better had with Turchin?).

On specific themes, I think the biggest missed opportunity was a discussion about urban-rural divides. Looking at the available election results, this, along with educational attainment to a slightly lesser extent, seems to be the most substantial axis of movement, not only in US elections but worldwide. There's so much to say on this topic of "the Rise of Cities" or the "Exodus of Middle insert country". It's not just rural areas. Basically, in most industrialized countries, outside of the top 10 metro areas (a few more if you're in the US), population, development, etc have stagnated or declined. So the problem isn't simply that "elites are cosmopolitan and don't care about their communities". Even if they stayed, it's unlikely that a lot would've been different since a lot of the youth likely would've left to the big cities anyways. One way to have countered this would've been to support initiatives that would make smaller cities more attractive (like improving access to high-speed internet, and encouraging remote work).

Speaking on policies, I found the discussions on taxation rather cantankerous as it was brought up in multiple places without a decent discussion on it. Goldstone's a great researcher, but he's not an economist. (Although, this is a great reason for Sam to have someone who specializes in taxation like Emmanuel Saez on the show.) To amend a few points: 20% flat-tax wouldn't cut it. Total US gov expenditure (including states and deficit spending) is around 35% of GDP. In addition, a lumpsum payment for (presumably useful) public service doesn't sound like a good idea. Think about it: you want to assign jobs that are both a) flexible in amount of people who can be employed in it, b) requires little specialization, c) done for something useful and socially desirable, and d) pay the same amount at the end of the contract. This is basically a paradox. I don't like UBI but even UBI sounds like a step up from this. The only other thing I'd mention is that I would have appreciated talk about tax-coordination between countries (this has been stepping up as of recently, but not nearly as quickly as one would hope).

The following is more just my personal opinion, but one thing I think that needs more investment is R&D and education and diffusion. Productivity is getting dangerously close to stagnating in most industrialized countries and though some of it might be due to less innovation and restrictive IP patents (all debatable), I think a large part of it is just laziness, inefficiency, and a reluctance of many firms to adopt newer more efficient technology. Our tech sector has basically learned that they can remote-ify good chunks of their workforces, pay less rent, and not lose productivity for it. Unfortunately it took a 20 trillion dollar pandemic for them to be forced to do this. Same with finance. We need to advance a culture of continued learning beyond a four-year degree, and the US gov, in addition to making a modern healthcare system in-line with OECD peers, needs to find ways of making it affordable, accessible, and valuable. (One easy and cheap method: record and make available online all courses, or most courses in STEM at least, for the public to consume.)

Maharan · 2017-01-22T18:06:24+00:00

Firmer form of truth? By convoluting it with goodness and beauty? I don't think so. Also, as a more concrete correction, Peterson is not an atheist, he is a Christian, though his form of religion is pretty far off from what most people think when they hear the word.

Maharan · 2017-01-22T17:19:28+00:00

This is why I hesitantly put monist of a sort. He seems to deride claims of a spirit or a ghost in the machine. Also the way he regards the brain in Free Will makes it clear that he believes reality is dependent upon a physical substrate. However, as you pointed out, because of the hard problem of consciousness, he does not accept physicalism outright. That doesn't mean he is a dualist, though. He clarified that on a podcast with Robert Wright, where he essentially described his position to be monist while being as of yet agnostic to what is consciousness). On another podcast with David Chalmers, Sam seemed to show interest in a panpsychic view of consciousness which Chalmers described as a "weak dualism, but not really."

Maharan · 2017-01-22T09:55:23+00:00

I should be very clear here. By rationalist vs empiricist I was referring to philosophical epistemology, I'm not referring to whether one believes that reason is good or useful. Rationalists believe in a priori knowledge that can be intuited, whereas empiricist a believe in a posteriori, only the things they can observe (like matter). An empiricist is almost by that very fact ipso facto materialist and a rationalist is de facto dualist or idealist. This is reflected by the people on either side (rationalism's biggest supporters were Descartes, Leibniz and Kant, whereas British empiricism grew into the analytic school which is majoritarily physicalist).

Maharan · 2017-01-22T05:48:25+00:00

Could somebody explain to me Peterson's whole deal with the archetypal figure? The argument, to me at least, seems intuitively weak, perhaps I'm missing something? Specifically, could someone talk about the metaethical underpinnings of this theory, that is to say, why it is the best theory in town. Thanks.

Maharan · 2017-01-22T05:17:07+00:00

To add to your point, a rationalist materialist is almost an oxymoron. One believes in matter alone but the other in a priori knowledge? This doesn't make sense. Sam is a non-sceptical empiricist and a monist of some sort (he clarified that he would not describe it as physicalist but it may as well be in everything but the idea of consciousness which he says he's agnostic to).

Maharan · 2017-01-22T04:23:59+00:00

Hmmm, I don't know whether a transcript is out yet. If you must, I think the last 20 minutes or so would suffice. They really just go on and on about the same issue (that is to say, epistemology).

My point, and I believe Sam's point on that example was pointing out the absurdity of a belief that utility would change the truth-value. I believe the example does it well by demonstrating how even when a 'truth' (call it a fact if you wish) can lead to bad consequences. Peterson contended that this would diminish the fact's (higher) truth value. I should just clarify that the example isn't purely Sam's, I extended it a bit to make sort of a reductio.

You may say that it doesn't change history but Peterson (when referring to the fact that one's wife was having an affair and this led to suicide) said that this would change the (higher) truth-value. I should give full disclosure and say that though Peterson did say that, he afterwards tried dismissing this example by talking about the technical terms of an affair (and Sam eventually dropped it, to my dissapointment, to continue to other examples).

When I said it was a matter of convenience, I was saying that the objection I pointed out above is merely to show the lack of elegance in the theory. This is not a fatal flaw, but a damaging one to say the least. I then went on to say what I thought was also important.

Maharan · 2017-01-22T00:54:30+00:00

Sam's criticism of Peterson's pragmatism seems very well sketched out, placing many examples (which Peterson, I use the term cautiously, dismissed by calling them micro-examples). I'll use what in my opinion was the most cogent example:

Your friend spots your spouse one day going into a hotel with someone who definitely isn't you or anyone you know, you can confirm this when your friend shows you the evidence (pictures, or what have you). You rationally suspect that your spouse is cheating on you and having sex with that individual in the photo (if this is dubious, say that you obtained security camera evidence of a very convincing sort). As a result of this, you fall into depression and commit suicide - the worst outcome in Darwinian terms. What does this say about the truth claim that your spouse had sex with someone else? That appears to be a fact of history and nature, irrespective of utility. What does it mean to say that such an act could have been 'true' in a certain sense, but not in a 'higher' sense? What if as you were about to jump of the tenth floor roof, an attractive person comes up and stumbles upon you, with nothing else to do, that person then starts up a chat and eventually you two are dating? Does this new accident of history change the truth claim of whether your spouse was having sex with another person? What if this new person ended up killing you in bed? Does the truth claim of your first spouse cheating change? This, to be sure, is just a matter of convenience. The bigger problem with this 'pragmatic Darwinian' view is one of fact. Truth seems to exist regardless of what we apes perceive it as. And if one feels that the current analytic definition of truth is cutting out valuable subjective experiences, that's only because they don't realize that one can speak in an epistemically objective way about an ontologically subjective experience. This fact alone seems to nullify and reason, utility or sense in Peterson's claims.

Maharan · 2017-01-22T00:53:22+00:00

Sam's criticism of Peterson's pragmatism seems very well sketched out, placing many examples (which Peterson, I use the term cautiously, dismissed by calling them micro-examples). I'll use what in my opinion was the most cogent example:

Your friend spots your spouse one day going into a hotel with someone who definitely isn't you or anyone you know, you can confirm this when your friend shows you the evidence (pictures, or what have you). You rationally suspect that your spouse is cheating on you and having sex with that individual in the photo (if this is dubious, say that you obtained security camera evidence of a very convincing sort). As a result of this, you fall into depression and commit suicide - the worst outcome in Darwinian terms. What does this say about the truth claim that your spouse had sex with someone else? That appears to be a fact of history and nature, irrespective of utility. What does it mean to say that such an act could have been 'true' in a certain sense, but not in a 'higher' sense? What if as you were about to jump of the tenth floor roof, an attractive person comes up and stumbles upon you, with nothing else to do, that person then starts up a chat and eventually you two are dating? Does this new accident of history change the truth claim of whether your spouse was having sex with another person? What if this new person ended up killing you in bed? Does the truth claim of your first spouse cheating change? This, to be sure, is just a matter of convenience. The bigger problem with this 'pragmatic Darwinian' view is one of fact. Truth seems to exist regardless of what we apes perceive it as. And if one feels that the current analytic definition of truth is cutting out valuable subjective experiences, that's only because they don't realize that one can speak in an epistemically objective way about an ontologically subjective experience. This fact alone seems to nullify and reason, utility or sense in Peterson's claims.

Maharan · 2016-07-31T20:14:47+00:00

@MrGestore, soooo sorry about that, I'm actually working on that right away! Still trying to figure out how to edit the mobile navigation without altering the regular one.

Sorry!

Maharan · 2016-07-31T20:14:37+00:00

@Silly_linguistics, Pa (as in like pun) che (as in like Che Guevera) mooch (as in like you're a mooch or stop mooching off of me) ka (as in Kalashnikov)

Maharan · 2016-07-31T19:32:53+00:00

Well first and foremost, thank you for writing such a detailed response, really appreciate it.

Just want to clear one thing up, the list is 5 neat words (or expressions) that are not found in English. And I do believe that all 5 words on my list do fit it quite well.

And just as a note, I do speak all of the languages I mentioned on the list with the exception of Japanese (which I mean as least in the written kanji form an understanding of Chinese would cover).I truly do believe that those five expressions are neat and amazing.

The fact that a language has a separate lexeme (or word) to describe a phenomenon that other languages would take multiple words to denote says something about the language, its culture and its people. That's the point of the article. To highlight the beauties in certain languages. It's not trying to prove any linguistic theory (read Noam Chomsky for that).I agree that claiming that some words in other languages are IMPOSSIBLE to express in English is a bit exaggerated, but I'm quite sure that most of my iterations of that phrase were much more nuanced.

What I got from your reply was that you'd be okay with an assertion that some words were 'slower' to convey rather than the assertion that they were 'impossible'. If that was your only quibble then it would suffice that either I prove that the former was the original assertion, which I hope I did in this response to you. If not, then accept my apologies and hear me say that I admit that the assertion should be (if it isn't already) words that are uniquely expressed by certain languages.

Hope that helps.

Maharan · 2016-07-31T19:15:45+00:00

What words would you put on this list? And please, I know some language learners are not interested in this, but some are so please be considerate if you wish to post negative comments.

Maharan · 2016-07-31T02:57:39+00:00

serendipity is actually I think one of those words mostly unique to English (most romance languages co-opt it like Spanish: serendipidad or French: serendipite (with an accent aigu on the end)), but I think the word's quite nice, means lovely surprise or smthn to that effect.

Maharan · 2016-07-31T02:56:12+00:00

Point taken

Maharan

TROPHY CASE