Links to Consider, 2/13

Moshe Koppel and me; Dan Williams on beliefs as signals; Coleman Hughes and the moral dyad; Alice Evans on the case against education; Hess and McShane on the case against progressive education

Moshe Koppel and some of my paid subscribers discuss his AI efforts and also the contrast between youth politics in the U.S. and Israel. YouTube link.

Dan Williams writes,

in democracies we would all benefit collectively if we held more accurate, responsible beliefs, but we can often benefit individually by embracing whatever narratives and myths are socially rewarded by our peers and fellow group members.

…when adopting beliefs, narratives, and ideologies, it often makes sense to prioritise impression management over truth. However, most of humanity’s problems arise because of a sharp conflict between behaviours that are individually rational and behaviours that are collectively beneficial.

Even when accurate beliefs do not promote your personal interests, sacrificing truth to win social rewards can impose costs on others. When everyone’s brains make the same cost-benefit calculation, the result is whole societies swept up in collective delusions.

He ends with a hope that we will adopt a social norm of truth-seeking, so that the incentive to coordinate on irrational beliefs goes away. I think that is a lame and naive hope.

I do not think that we can overcome irrationality at the individual level, or even at the group level. It is at the institutional level that we need to focus.

There will always be groups within society that coalesce around irrational beliefs. We’re fine as long as they don’t take over important institutions. That universities have been taken over by irrationality is something a lot of us perceive and worry about, correctly. We will either fix the broken institutions, replace them, or watch them eat away at civilization.

In his new book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America, Coleman Hughes writes

Racists in the antebellum South often viewed black people as warm but incompetent—akin to children or the mentally handicapped. (Though some viewed them as cold and incompetent.) By contrast, anti-Semites in Europe often viewed Jews as cold but competent—that is, cunning, devious, and intelligent enough to run the world, yet also morally corrupt. The way neoracists view white people falls into this category. They accuse white people of being competent agents of evil—of having a disposition toward moral corruption even if they are otherwise competent, unlike black people and people of color generally, who are considered morally pure. (p.34)

Note how closely this resembles to the Moral Dyad framework of Daniel Wegner and Kurt Gray. We are prone to simplify a moral situation by assigning one character feelings without agency and assigning the other character agency without feelings.

Alice Evans writes,

Kim and colleagues argue that taxing spending on education will lower investment and enable the poorest to catch up with the rich and have two children. In their model, a 22% tax on education spending would reduce spending by 39%.

This is for South Korea. the argument is that rich parents are too competitive, they spend too much on education, and this produces a negative externality of leaving people on lower incomes unable to afford to have more than one child.

More than 20 years ago, I wrote,

My guess is that many people would be willing to pay a huge premium in order for their children attend schools that are regarded as the best. Wealthy families might be willing to pay tuition of $25,000 or more per year. It would be difficult to offer that much in vouchers to poor people to enable them to compete.

The case for enabling poor people to compete to send their children to good schools is that the schools are a major transmission mechanism for inequality. If you have the choice between leaving your child a million dollars or leaving her with a good education, chances are that the latter will have a more enduring effect on her well-being.

Therefore, it is conceivable that we would want to enact a "luxury estate tax" on private school tuition. If the tuition is above, say, $20,000, some of the tuition might be taxed. The revenue from this tax could be used to increase the money that is available for vouchers for low-income parents.

Emphasis added. However, I would not write this essay again today. The “choice between leaving your child a million dollars or leaving her with a good education” is a red herring. And I no longer believe that “schools are a major transmission mechanism for inequality.” But a tax on high-tuition private schools still has much to recommend it.

Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane write,

American education is a remarkably left-leaning place. Surrounded by a world of progressive advocates, funders, education schools, and unions, right-leaning reformers feel immense pressure to “be reasonable.” In K–12, even lifelong Democrats get blasted as right-wing zealots if they suggest that parents have a right to choose their child’s school. In higher education, the left-leaning tilt is so severe that conservative professors share tips for living in the shadows. Major education foundations, associations, and advocacy groups rarely employ conservatives. Media coverage of current disputes in education, ranging from Critical Race Theory to student loan forgiveness, is deeply biased against conservatives.

They argue that for conservatives, compromise and “me, too” reforms have failed. Going forward, they suggest an agenda of

Empower K–12 parents with choice. Promote curricula rich in content and rigor. Demand that the teaching of American history be textured, inclusive, and devoid of political agendas. Insist that schools honor hard work, kindness, and mutual respect, while leaving complicated discussions of sexuality to age-appropriate grades. Expect college graduates to repay their loans. Expand career and technical education and cultivate new higher education options. Challenge the double-standards at colleges when it comes to free expression and DEI.

substacks referenced above:

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Fertility is a collective action problem. Can it be tackled with taxation?

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People embrace beliefs that signal their traits and loyalties