Re: "Here they are in the safest, most welcoming, most inclusive, most antiracist places on the planet, but many of them were acting like they were entering some sort of dystopian, threatening, immoral world.”--Jonathan Haidt
There is a major blind spot in safety on campus: Sex.
There really are dystopian, threatening, and immoral dimensions to the battle of the sexes on campus.
The problem rests on 3 empirical premisses:
1. Young women are more likely than young men to seek a monogamous relationship. (At most residential campuses, this kind of mismatch is exacerbated by imbalance in the sex ratio on campus, where women substantially outnumber men.)
2. What students call "going out" -- the long-weekend, nocturnal party-and-dating scene -- is awash in alcohol. Why need a drug? Why alcohol, more than other readily available mind drugs? Because alcohol *disinhibits.* Many students drink in order to "remove the mask." (Perhaps status anxiety would otherwise inhibit their sociability or openness.)
3. Sex then usually takes place in a private setting (a dorm room or frat house bedroom), behind closed doors. If something goes wrong in the encounter -- whether coercion during the encounter, or murkiness about consent because of drunkenness, or deep "morning-after" regret when sober -- it is hard to establish the facts. "He said, she said."
There are strong norms among students against sexual predation, but norm-enforcement is often thwarted by intractable information problems. Rumors circulate. Students often don't know what or whom to believe. Moreover, students mistrust the motives/competence of "the machine" (official campus investigation of complaints). They are caught (or ensnare themselves?) in no-man's land, where neither norms nor authorities can reliably provide safety or remedy.
An irony is that this real blind spot in safety occurs also because students believe, per college ideology, that safety is an entitlement, regardless of risk-taking. This belief lowers the guard and provides cover for heavy drink.
It is remarkable that elites send their offspring into the moral mess of the battle of the sexes on campus. Perhaps elites feel trapped when they endorse and fund, for their daughters and sons, the college mix of formal credentials, peer matching in romance, delay of adulthood, and rather risky rites of passage.
"Because Haidt talked about a culture of victimhood, he was immediately coded as right-wing." Imagine what it feels like to be the guy he was talking about when he brought it up (he was talking about an article by myself and Bradley Campbell). FYI, I am employed in a sociology department.
To be fair, I am usually in the lower right quadrant of the compass ( I subscribe to Kling, after all), and Haidt probably isn't. Haidt also seems to prefer the term "safety culture," which I think misses the idea that it's only safety for designated victim groups (members of designated privileged groups might actually deserve some horrible punishment). Actually, Campbell and I reject "snowflake" for similar reasons, aside from its almost purely moralistic connotation.
To be fair to us, Campbell and I have went on untill we're blue in the face about why we think the label makes sense for comparative purposes (it is juxtaposed to honor and dignity cultures) and isn't meant as a slur (even if we find many aspects of the culture objectionable). I am writing some more about the topic on Substack (e.g., https://jasonmanning.substack.com/p/moral-cultures-2-victimhood)
We should consider that Gen Z is not the problem and that they arrive at college depressed, anxious, and in defend mode because it is not safe, welcoming, or any other good thing despite the claims of administrators whose actions are shaping the lives of the students...
Re AI: “He suggests that machine learning could turn out to be as important a development as the scientific method.” Many on the other hand are not so impressed. Let’s consider a median view. AI can not think, but it can help us think.
For example, I am trying to learn the history of the formation of Russia. Tyler Cowen has recommend two books: “Russia Myths and Realities” and “Restless Empire: A Historical Atlas of Russia”. I am reading both together chronologically. There are many concepts referred to in the books that I am not deeply familiar with so I open ChatGPT and query it as I read. Here are some questions I asked:
What were the key accomplishments of Constantine the Great?
What are they Key differences between the Orthodox and The Roman Catholic Churches?
Re: "When a computer comes up with an original metaphor that offers insight, I will be willing to call that artificial intelligence."
My intuition is that creation of metaphors requires not only intelligence, but also imagination. I suppose that intelligence and imagination are distinct powers.
For example, in The Godfather films (I and II), Tom Hagen exhibits keen intelligence, whilst Michael Corleone exhibits both intelligence and imagination. Intelligence enables Tom to discern that two circumstances -- a norm against killing cops, and the impossibility of killing Sollozzo without killing also Captain McCluskey -- create a seemingly insoluble conflict between the Corleone family's group interest ("business"), which Tom champions, and the mafia norm of vendetta ("personal"), which has a grip on Sonny Corleone's mind. By contrast, imagination enables Michael to use a signature Corleone resource, corruption, to conceive of transforming the norm from a constraint into a resource:
"MICHAEL
Where does it say that you can't kill a cop?
HAGEN
Come on, Mikey...
MICHAEL
Tom, wait a minute. I'm talking about a cop that's mixed up in drugs. I'm talking about ah... ah... a dishonest cop...a crooked cop who got mixed up in the rackets and got what was coming to him. That's a terrific story. And we have newspaper people on the pay roll, don't we, Tom? Hagen nods in the affirmative. And they might like a story like that.
HAGEN
They might, they just might...
MICHAEL
It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business." -- Screenplay, The Godfather, p. 55
Viewers understand that what Michael really means is that his way might enable the Corleone family to have it both ways: business *and* personal.
Tom's keen intelligence doesn't suffice to eliminate deep conflict of motivations: interest vs passion. Michael's rare psychological combination -- keen intelligence and creative imagination -- enables the Corleone group to transcend the seesaw of motivations (and implicit disequilibrium).
If my intuition is correct, then AI faces a formidable challenge; namely, to model and incorporate imagination.
Just a note - whatever you're doing with the names of the people you're linking to gets blanked out in my feed reader (inoreader). I see a bunch of "writes: " without the author's name or link.
Re: "Here they are in the safest, most welcoming, most inclusive, most antiracist places on the planet, but many of them were acting like they were entering some sort of dystopian, threatening, immoral world.”--Jonathan Haidt
There is a major blind spot in safety on campus: Sex.
There really are dystopian, threatening, and immoral dimensions to the battle of the sexes on campus.
The problem rests on 3 empirical premisses:
1. Young women are more likely than young men to seek a monogamous relationship. (At most residential campuses, this kind of mismatch is exacerbated by imbalance in the sex ratio on campus, where women substantially outnumber men.)
2. What students call "going out" -- the long-weekend, nocturnal party-and-dating scene -- is awash in alcohol. Why need a drug? Why alcohol, more than other readily available mind drugs? Because alcohol *disinhibits.* Many students drink in order to "remove the mask." (Perhaps status anxiety would otherwise inhibit their sociability or openness.)
3. Sex then usually takes place in a private setting (a dorm room or frat house bedroom), behind closed doors. If something goes wrong in the encounter -- whether coercion during the encounter, or murkiness about consent because of drunkenness, or deep "morning-after" regret when sober -- it is hard to establish the facts. "He said, she said."
There are strong norms among students against sexual predation, but norm-enforcement is often thwarted by intractable information problems. Rumors circulate. Students often don't know what or whom to believe. Moreover, students mistrust the motives/competence of "the machine" (official campus investigation of complaints). They are caught (or ensnare themselves?) in no-man's land, where neither norms nor authorities can reliably provide safety or remedy.
An irony is that this real blind spot in safety occurs also because students believe, per college ideology, that safety is an entitlement, regardless of risk-taking. This belief lowers the guard and provides cover for heavy drink.
It is remarkable that elites send their offspring into the moral mess of the battle of the sexes on campus. Perhaps elites feel trapped when they endorse and fund, for their daughters and sons, the college mix of formal credentials, peer matching in romance, delay of adulthood, and rather risky rites of passage.
"Because Haidt talked about a culture of victimhood, he was immediately coded as right-wing." Imagine what it feels like to be the guy he was talking about when he brought it up (he was talking about an article by myself and Bradley Campbell). FYI, I am employed in a sociology department.
To be fair, I am usually in the lower right quadrant of the compass ( I subscribe to Kling, after all), and Haidt probably isn't. Haidt also seems to prefer the term "safety culture," which I think misses the idea that it's only safety for designated victim groups (members of designated privileged groups might actually deserve some horrible punishment). Actually, Campbell and I reject "snowflake" for similar reasons, aside from its almost purely moralistic connotation.
To be fair to us, Campbell and I have went on untill we're blue in the face about why we think the label makes sense for comparative purposes (it is juxtaposed to honor and dignity cultures) and isn't meant as a slur (even if we find many aspects of the culture objectionable). I am writing some more about the topic on Substack (e.g., https://jasonmanning.substack.com/p/moral-cultures-2-victimhood)
"but many of them were acting like they were entering some sort of dystopian, threatening, immoral world.”
Let's be honest with ourselves- are they really wrong? Aren't they correct to feel that way, even if it is for the wrong reasons?
We should consider that Gen Z is not the problem and that they arrive at college depressed, anxious, and in defend mode because it is not safe, welcoming, or any other good thing despite the claims of administrators whose actions are shaping the lives of the students...
Re AI: “He suggests that machine learning could turn out to be as important a development as the scientific method.” Many on the other hand are not so impressed. Let’s consider a median view. AI can not think, but it can help us think.
For example, I am trying to learn the history of the formation of Russia. Tyler Cowen has recommend two books: “Russia Myths and Realities” and “Restless Empire: A Historical Atlas of Russia”. I am reading both together chronologically. There are many concepts referred to in the books that I am not deeply familiar with so I open ChatGPT and query it as I read. Here are some questions I asked:
What were the key accomplishments of Constantine the Great?
What are they Key differences between the Orthodox and The Roman Catholic Churches?
Re: "When a computer comes up with an original metaphor that offers insight, I will be willing to call that artificial intelligence."
My intuition is that creation of metaphors requires not only intelligence, but also imagination. I suppose that intelligence and imagination are distinct powers.
For example, in The Godfather films (I and II), Tom Hagen exhibits keen intelligence, whilst Michael Corleone exhibits both intelligence and imagination. Intelligence enables Tom to discern that two circumstances -- a norm against killing cops, and the impossibility of killing Sollozzo without killing also Captain McCluskey -- create a seemingly insoluble conflict between the Corleone family's group interest ("business"), which Tom champions, and the mafia norm of vendetta ("personal"), which has a grip on Sonny Corleone's mind. By contrast, imagination enables Michael to use a signature Corleone resource, corruption, to conceive of transforming the norm from a constraint into a resource:
"MICHAEL
Where does it say that you can't kill a cop?
HAGEN
Come on, Mikey...
MICHAEL
Tom, wait a minute. I'm talking about a cop that's mixed up in drugs. I'm talking about ah... ah... a dishonest cop...a crooked cop who got mixed up in the rackets and got what was coming to him. That's a terrific story. And we have newspaper people on the pay roll, don't we, Tom? Hagen nods in the affirmative. And they might like a story like that.
HAGEN
They might, they just might...
MICHAEL
It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business." -- Screenplay, The Godfather, p. 55
Viewers understand that what Michael really means is that his way might enable the Corleone family to have it both ways: business *and* personal.
Tom's keen intelligence doesn't suffice to eliminate deep conflict of motivations: interest vs passion. Michael's rare psychological combination -- keen intelligence and creative imagination -- enables the Corleone group to transcend the seesaw of motivations (and implicit disequilibrium).
If my intuition is correct, then AI faces a formidable challenge; namely, to model and incorporate imagination.
Just a note - whatever you're doing with the names of the people you're linking to gets blanked out in my feed reader (inoreader). I see a bunch of "writes: " without the author's name or link.