Tyler Cowen on living remote; The Zvi on schooling remote; Harvey Mansfield on Trump; Sullivan and Rufo; Hanania's FITs tour; FAIR links on declining rationality
I thought Cowen's "living remote" thing missed the obvious point that there's a vast difference between living in a city and living in a big elite coastal city.
For instance, sure, if you want to move to the middle of nowhere in Indiana, there won't be Israeli dance classes. On the other hand, this does exist in Indianapolis. https://www.israelidanceindy.com
When I moved from NoVA to Indy, the property values were such that I went from having a mortgage to buying my home outright. Traffic is better, I have a huge increase in available time. I'd argue that governance is notably better in Indiana. Schools and school choice seem better. Pretty much everything a person would want to actually live seems better. Basically, moving from a huge metro area to a moderately sized metro area was a huge increase in practical wealth for me.
Randomly too, I've always though it'd be a great tool of economic development to break up the bureaucracy of DC by physically relocating major agencies to cities doing poorly. Like, relocate 75% of the IRS to Detroit.
When I read Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton I was struck by how deeply concerned he was with avoiding too much democratization. He warned of the dangers of democracy up to the very last night of his life.
"Since one purpose of the duel was to prepare to head off a secessionist threat, he wrote a plea to Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts, warning against any such movement among New England Federalists: “I will here express but one sentiment, which is that dismemberment of our empire will be a clear sacrifice of great positive advantages without any counterbalancing good.” The secession movement would provide no “relief to our real disease, which is democracy”—by which he meant unrestrained, disruptive popular rule."
On the three layers of CRT - this understanding is fatally flawed if it does not include the layer making money off CRT, including HR employees, DIE consultants, and all those getting special preferences for school admissions, hiring, promotions, awards, publications, etc.
Re: Rufo, he misses the layer of useful idiots. The No Enemies to the Left types who will swallow anything you put on their plate, as long as it's served up as part of The Struggle. IE, The impressionable morons who hear "social justice" and think "oh, I like justice and fashionable causes du jour; guess I should sign up for CRT" and they jump on the bandwagon with both feet. These people exist, there are a lot of them, and they suck.
Mansfield "on Trump" could also have been "on close-mindedness in college":
"It's striking that the range of argument in the universities is so much more narrow than in American society as a whole. That, I think, is a great danger, more for the universities than for American society. The universities are the source of our experts and, it should be, of our open mindedness. But they've stopped being open-minded. That is a real problem, and that is getting worse and worse. I would say this “wokeism” characterizes the recent decade or so. There's been a real change even in the last ten years, I would say, toward aggressive intolerance in the universities.
...
Harvard hasn't hired a conservative professor… I don't know, in the last decade for sure, across all fields."
He's right.
Mansfield seems oblivious to the idea that Democrat aggressive intolerance has led Republicans to look for somebody, anybody, to "fight back". He had implicitly opposed fighting back as vulgar and lacking conservative dignity, as he discusses Trump as:
"against conventions. [Trump is] against morality, and propriety—I’ll use that word. The one thing he totally lacks is a sense of propriety, what is appropriate. And conservatives live by that, by propriety, by wearing neckties and so on, and trying to behave, and in trying to maintain one’s dignity. I think that's the way in which conservatives express their support for liberty."
If conservative propriety, like in Romney, means losing both culture and economics, the successful oriented Republicans will prefer Trump, and winning, or at least fighting to win.
Re: Scheffer et al., "Language is getting less rational" (PNAS 2022)
The study highlights also a second, parallel finding—a synchronous shift from "collectivistic" to "individualistic" language:
"use of words associated with rationality, such as 'determine' and 'conclusion,' rose systematically after 1850, while words related to human experience such as 'feel' and 'believe' declined. This pattern reversed over the past decades, paralleled by a shift from a collectivistic to an individualistic focus as reflected, among other things, by the ratio of singular to plural pronouns such as 'I'/'we' and 'he'/'they.' Interpreting this synchronous sea change in book language remains challenging. [... .] All in all, our results suggest that over the past decades, there has been a marked shift in public interest from the collective to the individual, and from rationality toward emotion. [... .] the universal and robust shift that we observe does suggest a historical rearrangement of the balance between collectivism and individualism and—inextricably linked—between the rational and the emotional or framed otherwise."
I would not have guessed a positive correlation of individualism and the emotional. Upon reflection, neuroticism might be the link.
The parallel positive correlation of collectivism and the rational is more baffling. What am I missing?
If language embodies social psychology, and if libertarianism combines individualism and the rational, then libertarianism is swimming against a "sea tide" expressed in language change.
"As a thought experiment, imagine what you would do with your children if there were no state-provided day care, but the money that went for it went to you instead."
One obvious answer is 'private school', but that feels like cheating. The whole point is "what if you can't send them to a building" Maybe an additional fair constraint would be that they have to stay home or in small pods.
People may be less rational than they used to be. But part of the language shift may simply be more honesty. When people say, "I conclude", they may want people to think they have rationally considered the relevant evidence and thought about the relevant possibilities and rationally come to a conclusion. They may even believe it. But often they are actually acting more on feeling than reason. And it is more honest to say, "I feel this is true" or "I feel this is what we should do."
(This comes partly from reading Haidt, and Simler and Hanson, and Mercier and Sperber.)
Interesting hypothesis regarding women in academia. Of course the rational thing to do would be to look for empirical evidence regarding it and competing hypotheses. Has anyone done this?
“ The more that we elevate women in academia, the more that written words will come from women, which means that more language will reflect empathizing rather than systemizing. ”
The other day, Arnold, you confessed to making up a trend (growth in non-profits), did a thought experiment (too many of the next 10 young professionals I meet will be employed by non-profits), and thus was self-triggered into a parody of a rant for ATLAS SHRUGGED. If you instead had empathized with these imaginary young professionals and tried to figure out why they would be working for these imaginary non-profits, I think your writing would have been far more insightful.
Wright and Hanania link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsVA77iLkyo&t=6s
I thought Cowen's "living remote" thing missed the obvious point that there's a vast difference between living in a city and living in a big elite coastal city.
For instance, sure, if you want to move to the middle of nowhere in Indiana, there won't be Israeli dance classes. On the other hand, this does exist in Indianapolis. https://www.israelidanceindy.com
When I moved from NoVA to Indy, the property values were such that I went from having a mortgage to buying my home outright. Traffic is better, I have a huge increase in available time. I'd argue that governance is notably better in Indiana. Schools and school choice seem better. Pretty much everything a person would want to actually live seems better. Basically, moving from a huge metro area to a moderately sized metro area was a huge increase in practical wealth for me.
Randomly too, I've always though it'd be a great tool of economic development to break up the bureaucracy of DC by physically relocating major agencies to cities doing poorly. Like, relocate 75% of the IRS to Detroit.
Re: Mansfield
When I read Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton I was struck by how deeply concerned he was with avoiding too much democratization. He warned of the dangers of democracy up to the very last night of his life.
"Since one purpose of the duel was to prepare to head off a secessionist threat, he wrote a plea to Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts, warning against any such movement among New England Federalists: “I will here express but one sentiment, which is that dismemberment of our empire will be a clear sacrifice of great positive advantages without any counterbalancing good.” The secession movement would provide no “relief to our real disease, which is democracy”—by which he meant unrestrained, disruptive popular rule."
On the three layers of CRT - this understanding is fatally flawed if it does not include the layer making money off CRT, including HR employees, DIE consultants, and all those getting special preferences for school admissions, hiring, promotions, awards, publications, etc.
Re: Rufo, he misses the layer of useful idiots. The No Enemies to the Left types who will swallow anything you put on their plate, as long as it's served up as part of The Struggle. IE, The impressionable morons who hear "social justice" and think "oh, I like justice and fashionable causes du jour; guess I should sign up for CRT" and they jump on the bandwagon with both feet. These people exist, there are a lot of them, and they suck.
Mansfield "on Trump" could also have been "on close-mindedness in college":
"It's striking that the range of argument in the universities is so much more narrow than in American society as a whole. That, I think, is a great danger, more for the universities than for American society. The universities are the source of our experts and, it should be, of our open mindedness. But they've stopped being open-minded. That is a real problem, and that is getting worse and worse. I would say this “wokeism” characterizes the recent decade or so. There's been a real change even in the last ten years, I would say, toward aggressive intolerance in the universities.
...
Harvard hasn't hired a conservative professor… I don't know, in the last decade for sure, across all fields."
He's right.
Mansfield seems oblivious to the idea that Democrat aggressive intolerance has led Republicans to look for somebody, anybody, to "fight back". He had implicitly opposed fighting back as vulgar and lacking conservative dignity, as he discusses Trump as:
"against conventions. [Trump is] against morality, and propriety—I’ll use that word. The one thing he totally lacks is a sense of propriety, what is appropriate. And conservatives live by that, by propriety, by wearing neckties and so on, and trying to behave, and in trying to maintain one’s dignity. I think that's the way in which conservatives express their support for liberty."
If conservative propriety, like in Romney, means losing both culture and economics, the successful oriented Republicans will prefer Trump, and winning, or at least fighting to win.
Good theoretical worry about Trump although in his case it's the tyranny of the minority.
Israeli dance sessions—that’s culture!
As for moving to a start-up seastead: You would expect a preponderance of libertarians, therefore a preponderance of men over women.
Re: Scheffer et al., "Language is getting less rational" (PNAS 2022)
The study highlights also a second, parallel finding—a synchronous shift from "collectivistic" to "individualistic" language:
"use of words associated with rationality, such as 'determine' and 'conclusion,' rose systematically after 1850, while words related to human experience such as 'feel' and 'believe' declined. This pattern reversed over the past decades, paralleled by a shift from a collectivistic to an individualistic focus as reflected, among other things, by the ratio of singular to plural pronouns such as 'I'/'we' and 'he'/'they.' Interpreting this synchronous sea change in book language remains challenging. [... .] All in all, our results suggest that over the past decades, there has been a marked shift in public interest from the collective to the individual, and from rationality toward emotion. [... .] the universal and robust shift that we observe does suggest a historical rearrangement of the balance between collectivism and individualism and—inextricably linked—between the rational and the emotional or framed otherwise."
I would not have guessed a positive correlation of individualism and the emotional. Upon reflection, neuroticism might be the link.
The parallel positive correlation of collectivism and the rational is more baffling. What am I missing?
If language embodies social psychology, and if libertarianism combines individualism and the rational, then libertarianism is swimming against a "sea tide" expressed in language change.
Have a nice day.
"As a thought experiment, imagine what you would do with your children if there were no state-provided day care, but the money that went for it went to you instead."
One obvious answer is 'private school', but that feels like cheating. The whole point is "what if you can't send them to a building" Maybe an additional fair constraint would be that they have to stay home or in small pods.
In that case I'd probably go for a pod.
People may be less rational than they used to be. But part of the language shift may simply be more honesty. When people say, "I conclude", they may want people to think they have rationally considered the relevant evidence and thought about the relevant possibilities and rationally come to a conclusion. They may even believe it. But often they are actually acting more on feeling than reason. And it is more honest to say, "I feel this is true" or "I feel this is what we should do."
(This comes partly from reading Haidt, and Simler and Hanson, and Mercier and Sperber.)
Interesting hypothesis regarding women in academia. Of course the rational thing to do would be to look for empirical evidence regarding it and competing hypotheses. Has anyone done this?
“ The more that we elevate women in academia, the more that written words will come from women, which means that more language will reflect empathizing rather than systemizing. ”
The other day, Arnold, you confessed to making up a trend (growth in non-profits), did a thought experiment (too many of the next 10 young professionals I meet will be employed by non-profits), and thus was self-triggered into a parody of a rant for ATLAS SHRUGGED. If you instead had empathized with these imaginary young professionals and tried to figure out why they would be working for these imaginary non-profits, I think your writing would have been far more insightful.