Emily Oster on masking in schools; The Zvi vs. Tyler; Yascha Mounk on Ukraine; Garry Kasparov on Putin; Glenn Greenwald on war propaganda; Amanda Ripley on conflict
"My reading of the history of wars is that they usually seemed very exciting and morally certain early on. But most of them did not up that way."
Moral certainty and excitement index where I live is disturbingly high, whatever one thinks of the merits of the cases on either side of the war. Pro-Ukraine solidarity merchandise signaling is expanding around 10% per day, viral meme sharing at 100% per day. I barely go out during the work week and I've already seen t-shirts, hoodies, flags, bumper stickers, decals, lapel pins, and - no joke - Ukraine flag athletic socks.
Zelenskyy is already getting the hero champion savior treatment, and we're just getting started. The stage is set and people's psychological pumps have been primed. It wouldn't take much at this point to throttle this up into full-blown war hysteria. Americans are more than a little nuts lately about literally everything, and it wouldn't surprise me if we totally lose our minds over this and react in some suicidally unwise ways. Pray for calm, pray for peace.
1. When I was a kid, everybody was genuinely afraid of the Russians. The headlines from a few days ago, "Russia puts nuclear forces on high alert" would have forced many people to change their pants. But now, instead of mass simultaneous pant laundering, no one really believed it meant anything or that it could possibly be serious, and so they just went on with their normal lives and bought more Ukraine brand merch. DEFCON is still at perma-3 (though I'm guessing 50/50 to hit 2 by May.) Today, a lot of people think that Russian leaders and 'oligarchs' are a bunch of villains, but they have forgotten to stay afraid of them, because the reason to stay afraid of them - their enormous nuclear arsenal - has not gone away.
This is because we have become distracted from the risk of nuclear war as the Cold War recedes into the past and "End of History" complacent mindset set in deep and deeply stupid internal fights took the fore. "And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back" - was said to be a sick burn at the time, but will now be remembered forever as recklessly naive. A lot of people think of the CCP leaders as villains too, but have also forgotten to stay afraid of them and their nukes. Being really afraid all the time has its own bad consequences, but one important function of fear is to maintain that reflexive shyness and hesitance about jumping eagerly into bad fights you might lose. But now it's kind of too late - you can't convince people to be rationally afraid once things have started, because now you are echoing the enemy's same line, "you should be afraid of us." Overall this is not a good sign.
2. Some anti-Russian folks have been crowing about "the world being united against Russia!" which isn't true at all, indeed, while China (and India, and many mideast countries) has been officially neutral, most Chinese online are incredibly pro-Russian as they characterize the war as being anti-USG, which they despise. So the crows use the fallback, "Half the world's GDP is united against Russia!" But, as Hanson pointed out, half of the world's *future* GDP is *for* Russia. That message, which should be diluting the false impression of unanimous support from all good people everywhere, is just not getting through to people, drowned out by memes carrying the opposite impression.
And the trouble is that this is leading people in the West to support measures that should never be used unless there is the kind of truly global consensus that does not actually exist, because if they are used in such circumstances it will only be once because they can never be used again.
To the extent anything short of war actually works to force Russia to back off, the holders of all that future half of global GDP are *not* going to sit back and continue to tolerate a world in which the US and its close partners continues to hold such leverage over them with control over key institutions for which there are no good alternatives, because, having control over all that GDP, they will no longer have to. SWIFT is not going to be the only game in town for long. And then what do you do, next time?
Yeah, as I think you mentioned previously in another context, some of these people seem not to be aware that social media activities like upvoting Ukrainian TikTok videos and using anti-Putin hashtags on Twitter aren't going to actually contribute to any important real world goals like defeating of the Russian Army. It's uh....a tad disturbing.
These posts make me feel like there's about 35 other substack letters I should or would like to be subscribing to, but I don't have the money or the time to read them all....
1. So long as we don't get carried away and actually end the world, it's a good opportunity for us to do a FIT style evaluation. Who's kept their head amidst the hysteria? Who's lost it? Who's said things so utterly crazy they should never be listened to again, and by the way, thank god they aren't in power.
Sensible members of both parties should be noting who the excitable and dangerous crazies are and making long-run plans to further sideline them.
2. It'll be worth seeing how much the war hysteria has legs in the absence of actual fighting by us. As bad as the hysteria is, once can already see it receding and other stories creeping back into the news. I think of this as the Sports Story test in my head. In most European countries (at least, I watch Belgian and French outlets semi-regularly), the big story gets a lot of attention and then at some point, they switch to talking about local issues and inevitably have a story about football or cycling or something. On really "serious" big story days, the Sports Story gets jettisoned. By this week, the Sports Stories are back. The hysteria will die down and the situation will stabilize. As that happens, the calls for unwise and dramatic action will fall too.
I generally try to avoid everything Greenwald says, but his warning regarding war propaganda (beware narratives, especially universal ones, especially in times of war) is sobering. Thank you for the link.
Greenwald is an impeccable journalist because precisely because he's a complete contrarian. Sometimes he's right and sometimes he's wrong, but he's nearly always running away from popular opinion screaming as he goes.
Mask mandates just lifted in Virginia. In rough correlation to proximity to the White House, most kids still wearing them anyway. I suspect that will fade away soon, but it definitely wasn't an overnight thing.
One must not condition authority on reality because they will conflict and authority will win.
There's a reason "the science" has become a dark joke and a fully justified term of derision and sarcastic satire.
I was a firm legal formalist beforehand, but the experience of watching the complete breakdown, abandonment, and abuse of every epistemic standard during the pandemic has only strengthened my confidence in the superiorty of that approach.
"My reading of the history of wars is that they usually seemed very exciting and morally certain early on. But most of them did not up that way."
Moral certainty and excitement index where I live is disturbingly high, whatever one thinks of the merits of the cases on either side of the war. Pro-Ukraine solidarity merchandise signaling is expanding around 10% per day, viral meme sharing at 100% per day. I barely go out during the work week and I've already seen t-shirts, hoodies, flags, bumper stickers, decals, lapel pins, and - no joke - Ukraine flag athletic socks.
Zelenskyy is already getting the hero champion savior treatment, and we're just getting started. The stage is set and people's psychological pumps have been primed. It wouldn't take much at this point to throttle this up into full-blown war hysteria. Americans are more than a little nuts lately about literally everything, and it wouldn't surprise me if we totally lose our minds over this and react in some suicidally unwise ways. Pray for calm, pray for peace.
Two other observations:
1. When I was a kid, everybody was genuinely afraid of the Russians. The headlines from a few days ago, "Russia puts nuclear forces on high alert" would have forced many people to change their pants. But now, instead of mass simultaneous pant laundering, no one really believed it meant anything or that it could possibly be serious, and so they just went on with their normal lives and bought more Ukraine brand merch. DEFCON is still at perma-3 (though I'm guessing 50/50 to hit 2 by May.) Today, a lot of people think that Russian leaders and 'oligarchs' are a bunch of villains, but they have forgotten to stay afraid of them, because the reason to stay afraid of them - their enormous nuclear arsenal - has not gone away.
This is because we have become distracted from the risk of nuclear war as the Cold War recedes into the past and "End of History" complacent mindset set in deep and deeply stupid internal fights took the fore. "And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back" - was said to be a sick burn at the time, but will now be remembered forever as recklessly naive. A lot of people think of the CCP leaders as villains too, but have also forgotten to stay afraid of them and their nukes. Being really afraid all the time has its own bad consequences, but one important function of fear is to maintain that reflexive shyness and hesitance about jumping eagerly into bad fights you might lose. But now it's kind of too late - you can't convince people to be rationally afraid once things have started, because now you are echoing the enemy's same line, "you should be afraid of us." Overall this is not a good sign.
2. Some anti-Russian folks have been crowing about "the world being united against Russia!" which isn't true at all, indeed, while China (and India, and many mideast countries) has been officially neutral, most Chinese online are incredibly pro-Russian as they characterize the war as being anti-USG, which they despise. So the crows use the fallback, "Half the world's GDP is united against Russia!" But, as Hanson pointed out, half of the world's *future* GDP is *for* Russia. That message, which should be diluting the false impression of unanimous support from all good people everywhere, is just not getting through to people, drowned out by memes carrying the opposite impression.
And the trouble is that this is leading people in the West to support measures that should never be used unless there is the kind of truly global consensus that does not actually exist, because if they are used in such circumstances it will only be once because they can never be used again.
To the extent anything short of war actually works to force Russia to back off, the holders of all that future half of global GDP are *not* going to sit back and continue to tolerate a world in which the US and its close partners continues to hold such leverage over them with control over key institutions for which there are no good alternatives, because, having control over all that GDP, they will no longer have to. SWIFT is not going to be the only game in town for long. And then what do you do, next time?
Yeah, as I think you mentioned previously in another context, some of these people seem not to be aware that social media activities like upvoting Ukrainian TikTok videos and using anti-Putin hashtags on Twitter aren't going to actually contribute to any important real world goals like defeating of the Russian Army. It's uh....a tad disturbing.
These posts make me feel like there's about 35 other substack letters I should or would like to be subscribing to, but I don't have the money or the time to read them all....
I have two thoughts on war hysteria.
1. So long as we don't get carried away and actually end the world, it's a good opportunity for us to do a FIT style evaluation. Who's kept their head amidst the hysteria? Who's lost it? Who's said things so utterly crazy they should never be listened to again, and by the way, thank god they aren't in power.
Sensible members of both parties should be noting who the excitable and dangerous crazies are and making long-run plans to further sideline them.
2. It'll be worth seeing how much the war hysteria has legs in the absence of actual fighting by us. As bad as the hysteria is, once can already see it receding and other stories creeping back into the news. I think of this as the Sports Story test in my head. In most European countries (at least, I watch Belgian and French outlets semi-regularly), the big story gets a lot of attention and then at some point, they switch to talking about local issues and inevitably have a story about football or cycling or something. On really "serious" big story days, the Sports Story gets jettisoned. By this week, the Sports Stories are back. The hysteria will die down and the situation will stabilize. As that happens, the calls for unwise and dramatic action will fall too.
I generally try to avoid everything Greenwald says, but his warning regarding war propaganda (beware narratives, especially universal ones, especially in times of war) is sobering. Thank you for the link.
Greenwald is an impeccable journalist because precisely because he's a complete contrarian. Sometimes he's right and sometimes he's wrong, but he's nearly always running away from popular opinion screaming as he goes.
Oster: Correct, but I wish she would direct the reasoning to public policy, not just parental decisions.
Mask mandates just lifted in Virginia. In rough correlation to proximity to the White House, most kids still wearing them anyway. I suspect that will fade away soon, but it definitely wasn't an overnight thing.
One must not condition authority on reality because they will conflict and authority will win.
There's a reason "the science" has become a dark joke and a fully justified term of derision and sarcastic satire.
I was a firm legal formalist beforehand, but the experience of watching the complete breakdown, abandonment, and abuse of every epistemic standard during the pandemic has only strengthened my confidence in the superiorty of that approach.