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.
Getting to this late, Sorry. Let’s generalize then. Could a small minority of secular universities be influenced to return to some old fashioned enforced standards? Could there be a market niche for a more wholesome (and honor-code enforced) environment even in a secular university? I don’t know. My main point is - it doesn’t have to be this way.
There is nothing unique about campus sexual life compared to off campus sexual life.
"Get drunk at a party/bar and hook up" is what everyone is doing.
I would guess that any complaints about sex on campus are worse off campus, and any complaints about college demographic sexual relations is worse in the lower classes.
One can of course decide not to participate, but that is true on campus to. The religious group I eventually met my wife through was one of two related organizations for a college campus (one for undergrads, one for grad students or just working grads).
The revealed preference seems to be that the women want the drunken hookup model. Now it may well be that this is a "least bad equilibrium" outcome, but still there doesn't seem to be much energy to change it. If the women stopped going to the parties, things would change.
Most colleges have substantially more females than males. When supply is so much greater than demand, few females can get what they want at the price they want.
"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)
I think it's fair to say that campuses are some of "the safest, most welcoming, most inclusive, most antiracist places on the planet", but their whole method is to constantly make everybody anxious. As the saying goes, nobody can be "woke" enough. And that is going on at many (if not most) high schools now, too, so they already have that fear and anxiousness when they get to college.
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?
What was the key impacts from Prince Vladimir of Kiev?
Describe the Byzantine empire?
Describe the Ottoman empire?
Describe the Hagia Sofia?
Describe Justinian I?
Describe St. John of Damascus?
Describe St. Thomas Aquinas?
Summarize the key points of Summa Theologica?
What did the Summa say about the role of reason in Human nature and the importance of free will?
Describe the attack on Constantinople in April 1204?
Did Vladimir I have many wives and concubines (800 children)?
For me, ChatGPT helped a great deal with it’s answers to accelerate my learning. Thus, the AI is exceptional at helping us think, but it does not think. This tool is as powerful as “the scientific method”, the PC, the mobile phone, and books in it’s ability to improve humans.
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.
This is substack's way of highlighting authors of substacks. Probably they use some code that makes the names visible only if you read as a web page or in the substack app. If I didn't use the substack "mention" tag, you would see the names, but I like using the tag.
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.
Doesn’t have to be that way. I will send my kids to BYU.
Getting to this late, Sorry. Let’s generalize then. Could a small minority of secular universities be influenced to return to some old fashioned enforced standards? Could there be a market niche for a more wholesome (and honor-code enforced) environment even in a secular university? I don’t know. My main point is - it doesn’t have to be this way.
There is nothing unique about campus sexual life compared to off campus sexual life.
"Get drunk at a party/bar and hook up" is what everyone is doing.
I would guess that any complaints about sex on campus are worse off campus, and any complaints about college demographic sexual relations is worse in the lower classes.
One can of course decide not to participate, but that is true on campus to. The religious group I eventually met my wife through was one of two related organizations for a college campus (one for undergrads, one for grad students or just working grads).
The revealed preference seems to be that the women want the drunken hookup model. Now it may well be that this is a "least bad equilibrium" outcome, but still there doesn't seem to be much energy to change it. If the women stopped going to the parties, things would change.
Most colleges have substantially more females than males. When supply is so much greater than demand, few females can get what they want at the price they want.
If you're going to teach sexual economics, teach marriage economics too. Here's two old Dalrock posts to get you started: https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/the-economics-of-divorce-theft-and-exploitation-and-why-we-should-repeal-unilateral-no-fault-divorce/ https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/threatpoint/
"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?
I think it's fair to say that campuses are some of "the safest, most welcoming, most inclusive, most antiracist places on the planet", but their whole method is to constantly make everybody anxious. As the saying goes, nobody can be "woke" enough. And that is going on at many (if not most) high schools now, too, so they already have that fear and anxiousness when they get to college.
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?
When did the mongols invade russia?
When did the tsars lead Russia?
What was the key impacts from Prince Vladimir of Kiev?
Describe the Byzantine empire?
Describe the Ottoman empire?
Describe the Hagia Sofia?
Describe Justinian I?
Describe St. John of Damascus?
Describe St. Thomas Aquinas?
Summarize the key points of Summa Theologica?
What did the Summa say about the role of reason in Human nature and the importance of free will?
Describe the attack on Constantinople in April 1204?
Did Vladimir I have many wives and concubines (800 children)?
For me, ChatGPT helped a great deal with it’s answers to accelerate my learning. Thus, the AI is exceptional at helping us think, but it does not think. This tool is as powerful as “the scientific method”, the PC, the mobile phone, and books in it’s ability to improve humans.
Onward!
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.
This is substack's way of highlighting authors of substacks. Probably they use some code that makes the names visible only if you read as a web page or in the substack app. If I didn't use the substack "mention" tag, you would see the names, but I like using the tag.