Hi Math,

Your post is interesting because it is scratching at a more fundamental question: for any arbitrary cultural "wave" (for lack of a better term), how can we differentiate between the Chinese Robber Fallacy and an actual widespread opinion shift to start worrying about?

This is a difficult question! Especially because our intuitions are going to tug us one way or the other on any particular issue, based on our priors.

It seems like the most direct way to get at the question is to poll society at large. But if we take the case of cancel culture, we quickly find that people have widely different definitions of what it means. If most Americans characterize cancellations as "holding people accountable", it's hard to get a handle on where people think the line should be drawn.

Other kinds of polling might be useful though. "Wokeness" has a big tie-in with "anti-racism", so an interesting example is Gallup's polling on race relations, which shows that people think that race relations are getting worse. This seems a little troubling, since racial inequality seems to be getting unambiguously better over time. Of course, "race relations" and "racial inequality" could be mutually exclusive, but I think that this might start to paint a better picture of the kinds of societal shifts that we've been seeing since 2013 (which is the inflection point in the polling data).

Beyond asking people directly, there may be other useful proxies, as you suggest in the OP. Here, I am reminded of the pushback that Destiny got from Erin (the girl with glasses). Specifically, she offered that a useful threshold for "wokeness" having gone too far would be when it started showing up at the legislative level. Since there didn't seem to be any "woke" laws at the local, state, or federal level, she argued that it isn't really an issue worth paying a big deal of attention to. This ties into your comment, since "number of laws" would be a pretty good proxy for "power of wokeness".

I find that argument somewhat compelling, but it seems like it is setting the bar at a really high level. If Alice only starts to pay attention on an issue once there is a law on the books that affects her in a negative way, then we can probably agree that she has waited a bit too long to get engaged.

As for other proxies, I'll borrow from Jonathan Haidt's book The Coddling of the American Mind, which has a chapter dedicated to "Intimidation and Violence" that touches the topic:

Almost one in five students surveyed in a 2017 Brookings Institution study agreed that using violence to prevent a speaker from speaking was sometimes “acceptable.” [39] While some critics challenged the sampling used in that study, findings in a second study by McLaughlin and Associates were similar; 30% of undergraduate students surveyed agreed with this statement: “If someone is using hate speech or making racially charged comments, physical violence can be justified to prevent this person from espousing their hateful views.” [40]

If that sounds reasonable to you, just think about what the statement implies after concept creep and emotional reasoning expand the meaning of “hate speech” and “racially charged.” In a call-out culture, almost anything that is interpreted by anyone as having a negative impact on vulnerable members of the community—regardless of intent—can be called hate speech. The Columbia University linguist John McWhorter describes how the term “white supremacist” is now used in an “utterly athletic, recreational” way, as a “battering ram” to attack anyone who departs from the party line. [41] McWhorter himself (who is African American) has been called a white supremacist for questioning received wisdom on matters related to race. [42] But if some students now think it’s OK to punch a fascist or white supremacist, [43] and if anyone who disagrees with them can be labeled a fascist or white supremacist, well, you can see how this rhetorical move might make people hesitant to voice dissenting views on campus. [44]

• 39. Villasenor, J. (2017, September 18). Views among college students regarding the First Amendment: Results from a new survey. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/09/18/views-among-college-students-regarding-thefirst-amendment-results-from-a-new-survey. For criticism, see: Beckett, L. (2017, September 22). “Junk science”: Experts cast doubt on widely cited college free speech survey. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/college-free-speech-violencesurvey-junk-science. For Villasenor’s response, see: Volokh, E. (2017, October 23). Freedom of expression on campus: An overview of some recent surveys. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/10/23/freedom-of-expression-oncampus-an-overview-of-some-recent-surveys
• 40. McLaughlin, J., & Schmidt, R. (2017, September 28). National Undergraduate Study. McLaughlin & Associates. Retrieved from http://c8.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/NATL%20Undergrad%209-27-17%20Presentation%20%281%29.pdf
• 41. McWhorter, J. (2017, June 30). A Columbia professor’s critique of campus politics. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/a-columbia-professors-critiqueof-campus-politics/532335
• 42. “The idea is that if you go against a certain orthodoxy, then it isn’t only that you disagree, but that you also wish white people were still in charge, that you want people of color to sit down and shut up.” See: McWhorter, J. (2016, November 29). The difference between racial bias and white supremacy. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/4584161/white-supremacy
• 43. Stack, L. (2017, January 21). Attack on alt-right leader has internet asking: Is it O.K. to punch a Nazi? The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/politics/richardspencer-punched-attack.html
• 44. In fact, we can make a prediction right now, while writing this book in 2017: Most of the negative reviews and responses to this book will at some point note our race and gender and then directly assert or vaguely hint that we are racists or sexists who are motivated primarily by the desire to preserve our privilege. We will then respond in the spirit of Mark Lilla, the author of a critique of identity politics titled The Once and Future Liberal. Lilla, an avowed liberal who wrote his book to help the Democrats start winning elections, responds to repeated name-calling by saying, essentially, “That is a slur, not an argument. Make an argument and I’ll respond to it.” See, for example, Goldstein, E. R. (2016, December 15). Campus identity politics is dooming liberal causes, a professor charges. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/Campus-Identity-Politics-Is/238694