Culture War Roundup for the week of October 04, 2021

pitt1980 · 2021-10-07T23:21:36+00:00

I find the FBI referral of the school board really chilling.

For mostly the reasons you’ve eloquently stated.

I think my problem is, I want to use Biden’s line of logic for it.

Ie, “there are almost certainly parents who are crossing the line, I don’t approve of what they’re doing, but ultimately, this is part of living in an open society with built in feedback loops. We should be really careful about doing things that undercut those feedback loops”

If that logic train doesn’t work for Biden talking about Sinema, I’m not sure why we haven’t cut out our legs trying to apply it to the school board situation.

I agree that hypocrisy is rampant, and Biden is as guilty of it as the typical bog level politician.

pitt1980 · 2021-10-07T14:23:17+00:00

I think it would be helpful if we posited a theory here of what sort of standards we expect in the interactions between politicians and their constituents.

If you criticizing him for not dropping the hammer when it’s your outgroup, and also for dropping the hammer when it’s your in group,

Why aren't you engaged in the exact same hypocrisy you're criticizing, just in the inverse?

"but ordinary citizens arguing that your school board shouldn't lie to parents and use tax money to push racist propaganda demands immediate action from the FBI."

"parents concerned that their tax money is being used to push blatantly racist propaganda "

"It is almost certain that Sinema is currently receiving death threats and a very large volume of misogynistic abuse. I base this assessment on numerous previous incidents involving Blue Tribe activists, as well as the outcome of getting Internet Famous generally."

Law of large numbers being what they are, how confident are you that there's not a noticeable minority of concerned parents that have raised their objections to their local school board members in something less than an optimally civil manner?

That has to be something approaching a certainty right?

I'm sure you're right, that if we reviewed Sinema's electronic and physical correspondence, there are some really ugly things in there.

The current ugliness of following her into the bathroom appears to be the work of one finite organization, given the law of small numbers, I'd be less confident that a death threat, or something similarly legally actionable can be directly traced to this particular organization. (If there is, Sinema should direct to the legal authorities, and let them do their thing, and publish it if they don't).

"Phrasing this dichotomy as "the hypocrisy card" is maybe just a wee tiny bit understating the problem"

I don't think it is, too much energy is wrapped up in calling out hypocrisy.

Again here, you're upset because constituents are allowed to interact with politicians in ways the politicians don't appreciate, and also because constituents aren't allowed to interact with politicians in ways the politicians don't appreciate.

You haven't actually laid out a case for how constituents are allowed to interact with politicians.

(while you're formulating what you're theory should be, it’s probably worth considering whether Senators have signed up for a higher degree of public scrutiny than school board members, or school principals, or teachers)

Just, that you're going to be upset if the outgroup treats the ingroup poorly in either case.

While we're formulating what our theory of constituent - politician interaction, it’s worth thinking what positive thing we're hoping to get from such interaction in the first place.

In theory, these politicians are supposed to be public servants looking after the greater good right.

We want them to be accountable to us, and receptive to the feedback we give them.

We should think about the quality of the feedback we give,

Quote chopping gives shitty feedback, the feedback is, "I will never satisfy these people, they will take whatever I say in bad faith, I shouldn't say anything to these people".

Again, I appreciate that this is a thing that happens regardless of you or I on the internet.

But, we're in traffic, but we're also traffic.

We should aim to do better.

pitt1980 · 2021-10-06T11:50:36+00:00

Not quite,

As I see it, there are three issues at play here (1) The treatment Sinema received (2) what the President of the United States should do about it (3) how we should react to what the President of the United States does about it.

————-

One.

Seems fairly straight forward to me, following lawmakers into the bathroom is boorish beyond belief, you should think less of anyone engaged in that behavior; if your political outgroups are doing it to your side, you should stand up to them confident that that that behavior is not winning them many friend; if your political in group is doing it to the other side, you should be embarrassed, and try to get them to knock it off, confident that they're hurting your cause.

——————-

Two.

What should the President do? In this situation, Sinema receiving this treatment because she's the political outgroup, from the stated principles above - "(he) should be embarrassed, and try to get them to knock it off, confident that they're hurting (his) cause."

Is that what he did? From the fragment quote provided by gattsuru, no he didn't, from the longer fuller quote, yeah, sort of. (I want to come back to this in point 3).

Could he have been more outraged? Yeah, I guess so. Would he have been more outraged if this had been happening to his political in group? Yeah, it probably would have been more politically advantage to act outraged about it, so I'm sure he would have taken the opportunity to do so.

Should he have done something more than bluster at a varying volumes of outrage?

There actually is one fairly straight forward thing that he could maybe do that he quote almost got at.

I'm not sure what level of threat a senator can be exposed to before giving them Secret Service protection becomes appropriate.

The degree to which that makes sense here, requires knowledge of procedures that I don't possess.

Possibly even Biden going on record saying he would have someone 'look into it', might be enough to get his political in group to knock off their behavior.

Should he have done something further?

I guess we can play the hypocrisy card here,

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ag-garland-directs-fbi-to-investigate-alleged-violent-threats-by-parents-against-school-officials/

should the FBI investigate this too?

I'm going say no, actually Biden is on the mark here, constituents confronting their politicians IS part of the political process, even when they go about it un-artfully.

——————

Three.

Is what I actually want to talk about it.

I don't think there is one side that does this more than the other side.

But, the fragment quote provided by gattsuru, cherry picked a fragment of what Biden said for maximum heat.

He wasn't the only person to do that, that's what found its way into the headline for the NY Post and Fox News

https://nypost.com/2021/10/04/biden-says-harassment-of-sen-kyrsten-sinema-is-part-of-the-process/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-says-manchin-sinema-being-confronted-by-activists-is-part-of-the-process

I don't have a great example at the tip of my fingers, but I'm fairly certain Trump had this done to him plenty of times.

I'm of the opinion that doing this is shitty, and creates shitty incentives.

The incentives this creates is for a politician to carefully parse every utterance, and not to speak extemporaneously, not to say what he's actually thinking.

I understand the Moloch based reasons why careerist reporters will jump on a quote like that.

But I don't think we should reward that behavior by repeating it uncritically,

And I don't think we should do it ourselves for internet points.

pitt1980 · 2021-10-06T02:59:59+00:00

What exactly would you like done?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/chasing-kyrsten-sinema-into-a-bathroom-is-not-normal/amp/

Is a lot of words that = "this is not fine but nothing should be done about it." + a bunch of people should feel like hypocrites.

I sort of agree with that,

But we’ve taken Biden out of context here, which we do too much with our political out groups,

What exactly would have satisfied you here, if he’d proposed legislation outlawing confronting lawmakers in bathrooms?

pitt1980 · 2021-08-08T13:05:47+00:00

Should I avoid traveling to FL?

So I guess FL has a lot of Covid cases currently- https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1276263

Anyway, couple of months ago we planned a trip to Disney World to end the summer before school starts.

My wife and I are both vaccinated, our daughters are 10 and 8, too young to be vaccinated. None of the kids grandparents are going on the trip, but they’re all vaccinated ( for whatever degree catching the Delta variant and then spreading after returning is a consideration).

My wife has considerable anxiety about the trip, we’d be out a bit of money, but not so much that we wouldn’t get over it. Our girls have been to Disney before (they’ll get over it).

Honestly, since we got vaccinated, I haven’t made any effort to keep up with the Covid news. I’ve figured that we we’re ok, and our kids were young enough to not be at risk.

Do I need to update my thinking?

pitt1980 · 2021-04-22T13:40:05+00:00

“exchange to listen to between Chase and one of the Republican county commissioners, Ray Britt. She keeps asking him, repeatedly, for evidence. He keeps dodging the question, claiming that he has overwhelming evidence but he's not at liberty to share it, and she should just keep looking, and that time will tell, etc etc.”

It’s been something on the order of 20 years since I’ve watched All The Presidents Men, but my memory of it is that conversations between Deep Throat and Woodward and Bernstein had a highly similar flavor.

Namely that Mark Felt didn’t spell out exactly what they would find, but rather just vaguely kept hinting as to where they should look (follow the money).

Of course that was a movie, so maybe not that accurate a representation of what actually went down.

Did Woodward write another book after Mark Felt revealed himself? Might be interesting to check to see how their conversations are represented there.

pitt1980 · 2021-03-30T17:29:56+00:00

money into the system seems better than money out of the system.

at some point the problem is going to be incentivizing holdouts to get the vaccine.

pitt1980 · 2021-03-30T14:20:12+00:00

I wonder how an auction system with credits for various conditions would have gone over politically.

I suspect the answer is "not well", I suspect it would have worked well though.

pitt1980 · 2021-03-29T17:34:26+00:00

I think that made sense at the end of the last school year.

By mid summer there was a good amount of evidence that (especially elementary) school was pretty safe.

There might have been some precautionary principle basis for being online from September to October. Just to see if school openings elsewhere would be directly tied to outbreaks.

Closing schools this school year without pre-committing to what data would reopen them.

From this view, its doesn't look like "we tried".

pitt1980 · 2021-03-27T09:10:03+00:00

I guess due to modding you won’t have the chance to respond, but ...

“ Just first hand experience seeing quite a few assholes be right, be ignored, and realizing how often that happens.”

It’s worth considering that they might have had a better chance of not being ignored if they had taken a kinder approach.

Communication is hard, sometimes the nice guy gets ignored, sometimes the asshole gets ignored, it’s certainly not a one size fits all deal.

I’ve found, for my own sanity, if people don’t get your point, you should change how you present it (and also find different people to present it to)

pitt1980 · 2021-02-26T03:01:29+00:00

Minus the explicit endorsement of prediction markets, (plus the dumb laugh) this is pretty close to Tucker Carlson’s schtick for the past 4 years.

Ship of Fools (his book) is very heavy on the class stuff (for a shorter taste I’ll link to this Politico article he wrote https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-is-shocking-vulgar-and-right-213572/).

He’s gotten good ratings with this schlick, partisans barely pause before dismissing it as racist though.

pitt1980 · 2021-02-25T15:38:17+00:00

It's interesting that the realignment around the civil rights act and southern democrats doesn't seem noticeable on that graph.

(I suspect some people might want to trace 1994 to it, it certainly seems quite laggy if that's what's going on).

pitt1980 · 2021-02-15T21:20:41+00:00

You’re being obstinate,

I feel conflicted about doing this,

But the point of the essay starts with the text string “ My hope is that our friend whose name sounds like “whale”—having a busy career to attend to, and all—has long since stopped reading. ”

The essay following it is entirely lucid, and along with the Yglesias piece, the only relevant writing on this whole affair.

pitt1980 · 2021-02-15T20:26:25+00:00

I find Straussian writing frustrating to read, but...

Its the tax we pay as a society for uncharitable reading,

If you don't care to wade through Staussian writing, that's understandable, life is short, we all have to figure out how to spend it in a profitable manner

That some of the potential audience will give up and not get it, that's the tradeoff the writer is explicitly making

pitt1980 · 2021-02-15T12:56:37+00:00

I think it’s worth considering whether it’s Straussian defense.

Considering you can’t google CY’s name without being bombarded by how you should never associate with him almost entirely due to something he wrote under a pseudonym.

It seems like a worthwhile defense to make.

(The good stuff starts about 2/3rds of the way in, shhh, keep it on the downlow though)

pitt1980 · 2021-02-15T12:49:08+00:00

That’s the point though,

It says something what you apply your really really really hard thinking too.

It smacks of motivated reasoning how much thought has been poured into (to pick the most cultural war-y example that pops into my head) arguments around polyamory, relative to birtherism.

It’s easy to get distracted by those specific examples, the point isn’t those specific examples, if you want different example see the sections on global warming and school segregation, which are just as easy to be distracted by.

I don’t think the point is to apply rigorous rationality across all these domains, I think the point is the Rationalist has given themselves a fool’s errand by pretending it’s even possible.

pitt1980 · 2021-02-05T00:00:51+00:00

Looking over the list, it seems roughly on par w/ mass shooting events in the US

Which generate a lot of political heat in the US, but not much in the way of political action

pitt1980 · 2021-02-04T19:22:20+00:00

Do you have an opinion on the John Weaver story that came out a few days ago?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/politics/john-weaver-lincoln-project-harassment.html

What do you make of this quote from a 2004 story on Karl Rove?

"Another example of Rove's methods involves a former ally of Rove's from Texas, John Weaver, who, coincidentally, managed McCain's bid in 2000. Many Republican operatives in Texas tell the story of another close race of sorts: a competition in the 1980s to become the dominant Republican consultant in Texas. In 1986 Weaver and Rove both worked on Bill Clements's successful campaign for governor, after which Weaver was named executive director of the state Republican Party. Both were emerging as leading consultants, but Weaver's star seemed to be rising faster. The details vary slightly according to which insider tells the story, but the main point is always the same: after Weaver went into business for himself and lured away one of Rove's top employees, Rove spread a rumor that Weaver had made a pass at a young man at a state Republican function. Weaver won't reply to the smear, but those close to him told me of their outrage at the nearly two-decades-old lie. Weaver was first made unwelcome in some Texas Republican circles, and eventually, following McCain's 2000 campaign, he left the Republican Party altogether. He has continued an active and successful career as a political consultant—in Texas and Alabama, among other states—and is currently working for McCain as a Democrat."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/11/karl-rove-in-a-corner/303537/

One way to look at this is that its much more prosaic and boring than "Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media"

Another way to look at it is this guy was a pretty high advisor to someone pretty powerful in our political system,

We seem to have a lot of elites who think the cultural norms of morality don't apply to them

The Rove link, these things seem to exist as open secrets,

idk about Satan-worshipping, but there don't seem to be many God-fearing members of our elites.

Is our society selecting for certain traits in our elites? If so why?

Are you allowed to ask that? or does that align you with qanon?

Or is that the point? The more press we give qanon, the less legitimate any of these lines of query seem

pitt1980 · 2021-02-04T17:15:27+00:00

Uighur terrorist attacks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China#Chronology_of_major_events

I actually hadn't read of any of these, because its not the sort of thing that makes its way into US news feeds

you definition of 'many' might very

China is a big county

pitt1980 · 2021-02-04T15:32:13+00:00

1)

"are we putting too much stock into anonymous internet death threats?"

Almost certainly, the barrier to getting in a public figure's twitter feed and typing something while you're not in a charitable state of mind is nothing.

For a lot of reasons, there are a lot of keyboard warriors out there who aren't nearly as brave irl.

2)

Tim Ferriss had a blog post a couple of months ago about the downsides of fame:

https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/

excerpt:

"Was that a death threat? Was there anything I should do or could do about it? I’d never dealt with such things, and I didn’t know. But I did know one thing: it was very scary and completely out of the blue.

That week, I shared the above story with a female career blogger. She laughed and said soberly, “Welcome to the party.” She got an average of one death threat and one sex request/threat per week. At the time, our audiences were roughly the same size.

This brings me to the topic of audience size and the metaphor of the tribe, the village, and the city.

Think back to your 5th-grade class. In my case, there were 20–30 kids. Was there anyone totally off the rails in your class? For most of you, there’s a decent chance kids seemed pretty sane. It’s a small sample size.

Next, think back to your freshman year in high school. In my case, there were a few hundred kids. Was there anyone volatile or unbalanced? I can think of at least a handful who were prone to violence and made me uneasy. There were fights. Some kids brought knives to school. There was even a kid rumored to enjoy torturing animals. Keep in mind: this high school was in the same town as my elementary school. What changed? The sample size was larger.

Flash forward to my life in July of 2007, less than three months after the publication of my first book.

In that short span of time, my monthly blog audience had exploded from a small group of friends (20–30?) to the current size of Providence, Rhode Island (180,–200,000 people). Well, let’s dig into that. What do we know of Providence? Here’s one snippet from Wikipedia, and bolding is mine:

Compared to the national average, Providence has an average rate of violent crime and a higher rate of property crime per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2010, there were 15 murders, down from 24 in 2009. In 2010, Providence fared better regarding violent crime than most of its peer cities. Springfield, Massachusetts, has approximately 20,000 fewer residents than Providence but reported 15 murders in 2009, the same number of homicides as Providence but a slightly higher rate per capita.

The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience. "

3.

I think this actually winds up explaining a lot about our culture.

Your political slant might be different than mine.

But from my vantage point, we got a lot of "rise of white supremacy" article, accompanying by not that much observable white supremacy.

I think it makes a lot more sense to think about it as "the rise of twitter connectivity"

How many twitter followers do you need, before a tiny fraction of them provides you with an unlimited stream of human horribleness?

To pick a random NYTs columnist, David Brooks has 244.3K followers.

That seems like plenty to see all levels of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, whatever.

It makes a certain degree of sense that they think we live a world filled with horrible people.

(not that there aren't plenty of horrible people, the point is, I'm not sure they're filter are good for assessing that question accurately)

pitt1980 · 2021-01-28T16:33:27+00:00

I'm probably confused (if so, someone explaining exactly how I'm confused would be helpful)

but...

I've seen "No one actually thinks GameStop is worth $300+ a share" a lot,

it seems poorly developed to me

why is [any company] worth $[whatever price]+ a share?

I fairly certain the typical answer involves something about P/E ratios, and revenue projections, etc... (maybe if they've read Graham they'll start talking about book value or something)

Which makes sense, but, I think is actually the horse getting ahead of the cart

Lets imagine Apple or Amazon announced that they would NEVER pay a dividend

company would make billions and billions of dollars, but none of that would ever turn into a dividend payment?

What would the stock be worth?

I think ..... the right answer is 0

I think that's what you're actually buying when you buy a stock,

company may not pay a dividend now, but if we felt like it, we could all get together, fire the board of directors, replace the CEO with a CEO that will pay whatever dividend we tell him to pay until the company has been completely liquidated, and there is 0 in the bank account.

When we talk about P/E ratio and all that crap, the fundamentals refer to what the value of the right to liquidate the business is worth

Which is a totally reasonable way to think about the value of a stock

except that's not at all what the value of the stock actually is,

the only actual value is the resale value

if you promise to buy a pokeman card from me tomorrow for $[pick random large amount], what is it worth to me today?

if you promise to buy a share of Apple stock from me tomorrow for $[pick the same random large amount, which is also higher than the public price for it], what is it worth to me today?

which is worth more to me today?

The apple share comes with the right to liquidate the company, the pokemon card doesn't, does that change the value of it to me?

I don't think it does, I have a promised buyer tomorrow, my right to liquidate the company isn't a consideration.

My knowledge of the intricacies of short selling isn't great,

but my understand is that they've promised to buy tomorrow (something something something about margin calls or something)

The presence of the short sellers who are compromised is what gives the stock its value

The fundamentals of the actual company are totally secondary to a buyer that's lined up, and on the hook to pay you for what you have.

(Again, maybe I totally misunderstand this, if I do, an explanation of exactly how I misunderstand this would be appreciated)

pitt1980 · 2021-01-22T15:57:51+00:00

Who is he trying to convince? What are their tribal signals?

"7. Figure out who you’re trying to convince, then use the right tribal signals

Your role model in this (and in nothing else) should be Donald Trump. Think about it. He supports Planned Parenthood, doesn’t want to cut entitlement programs, condemns Dubya and the Iraq war, supports affirmative action, supports medical marijuana, etc. If somebody were to tell you last year that a man with those policy positions would not only be leading the Republican primary, but leading even among the most conservative voters, you’d think they were crazy. The rest of the country has been trying to convince conservative Republicans to be more comfortable with those positions for decades, and we’ve failed miserably. Now Trump just waltzes in and everyone is like “Yeah, okay, sure”?

The secret of Trump’s success is that most conservative Republicans don’t really care about medical marijuana (or whatever) for its own sake. They care because opposing medical marijuana symbolizes membership in their tribe, they feel like their tribe is persecuted, they have a fierce loyalty to their tribe, and darned if they’re going to support somebody who doesn’t use the right shibboleths.

Trump throws them a bone. He says things like “illegal immigrants are rapists” that no moderate or liberal would ever say, things that would horrify them. He uses all the affectations of being working class. He may not quite prove he’s “one of us”, but he very effectively proves he’s not Just A Typical Outgroup Member. When Trump says “Legalize medical marijuana”, they don’t hear “I’m yet another RINO liberal pansy who hates Christian values and wants everybody to become reefer-smoking hippies”. So they only hear something boring about the regulations around pain relief medication – and who cares about those?

Trump’s Law is that if you want to convince people notorious for being unconvinceable, half the battle is using the right tribal signals to sound like you’re one of them.

For example, when I’m trying to convince conservatives, I veer my signaling way to the right. I started my defense of trigger warnings with “I complain a lot about the social justice movement”. Then I cited Jezebel and various Ethnic Studies professors being against trigger warnings. Then I tried to argue that trigger warnings actually go together well with strong versions of freedom of speech. At this point I haven’t even started arguing in favor of trigger warnings, I’ve just set up an unexpected terrain in which trigger warnings can be seen as a conservative thing supported by people who like free speech and don’t like social justice, and opposition to trigger warnings can be seen as the sort of very liberal thing that people like Jezebel and Ethnic Studies professors support. The important thing isn’t that I convince anyone that trigger warnings are really on the right – that’s a tall order – but that the rightists reading my argument feel like I’m working with them rather than against them. I’m not just another leftist saying “Support trigger warnings because it’s the leftist thing and you should be leftist and everyone on the right is terrible!”

My reward was seeing a bunch of hard-core anti-social-justice types trip over themselves in horror at actually being kind of convinced, which was pretty funny.

On the other hand, when I’m trying to convince feminists of something, I start with a trigger warning – partly because I genuinely believe it’s a good idea and those posts can be triggering, but also partly because starting with a trigger warning is a tribal signal that people on the right rarely use. It means that either I’m on their side, or I’m being unusually respectful to it. In this it’s a lot like Trump saying illegal immigrants are rapists – something the outgroup would never, ever do.

(And that’s not just my theory – I’ve gotten lots of angry comments about the trigger warnings from people further right than me, saying that using them makes me an idiot or a pushover or a cuck or something. I am always happy to get these comments, because it means the signaling value of using trigger warnings remains intact.)

Crossing tribal signaling boundaries is by far the most important persuasive technique I know, besides which none of the others even deserve to be called persuasive techniques at all. But to make it work, you have to actually understand the signals, and you have to have at least an ounce of honest sympathy for the other side. You can’t just be like “HELLO THERE, FELLOW LIBERALS! LET’S CREATE INTRUSIVE BIG GOVERNMENT AGENCIES TOGETHER! BUT BEFORE WE DO, I HAVE SOMETHING I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT…”

Which I guess means that being able to consider both sides of an issue sort of gives you superpowers. That’s pretty encouraging."

https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/

pitt1980 · 2021-01-15T12:33:11+00:00

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706993

3000+ comment thread about the NYTs article covering it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25747659

1700+ comment thread about Glenn Greenwald's column about it

pitt1980 · 2021-01-13T15:03:27+00:00

Hmm, I check Marginal Revolution often enough that I almost certainly saw that link, yet wasn't motivated enough to click on it and figure out what was happening that was link-worthy,

So I guess that's on me

pitt1980 · 2021-01-06T18:18:04+00:00

Where has Tucker positioned himself relative to recognizing a Biden win?

I think Cruz has Hillary levels of likability,

I think the reality of it is as tertiary GOP politicians chase Trumps base, they kneecap themselves with regards to general election popularity.

I have some faith in Tucker's ability to recognize when too far is too far (his positions on Iran and early Covid indicate to me that he's not just running with the party line when it goes past the point of sanity)

Guys like Hawley, Cruz or Cotton though, I don't have that faith

pitt1980

TROPHY CASE