Jonathan Haidt on the intrinsic harm of phones; Dancing away depression; Larry Summers, Yascha Mounk, and higher ed; recent sessions with paid subscribers
“Kids need to be freed from the grip of…” TV, Elvis Presley, Rock n’ Roll, the Beetles, etc. We all need to be freed from prodnoses who have solutions to all ills, who want to control our lives and tell us what we should be doing.
Have you read what Haidt has said on this issue? If so, do you think he is wrong? What is your evidence, other than anecdotal comparison to past claims by others on tangentially related issues?
I’m 71, so my evidence is a lifetime listening to people telling us what’s wrong with ‘the kids of today’ and what’s wrong with society and how we should be living our lives.
You were hearing, but you weren't listening. Dude, look around. This isn't just the same old "these kids today!" with the kids being like they've always been. Things have changed, and the kids are not all right.
As one example among many, when you were ten years old in 1963, the obesity rate for American kids your age was under 4%. Today it's *five times* that high. You also have a lifetime of listening to people telling us what's wrong with food and sedentarism and how kids need to diet and exercise ... they were correct!
A recent introduction of new stimulating and habit-forming experiences of completely unprecedented intensity before slow-changing-biology and even quick-changing-culture can possibly discover mitigations in adaptation is what makes "this time is different" worries reasonable and accurate.
That sounds like how some old timers say "Oh come on, weed is no big deal, I tried plenty way back when and I'm fine, it was fine." In the 60s, average THC levels of unrefined leaf products were under 2% and still only 4% thirty years ago. Today it's over 16% with many sellers openly advertising strains well above 20%. I mean, congrats to those horticulturists I guess; whatever you think about the product those are still impressive results. Borlaug is spinning in his grave, but talk about a green revolution. But for anyone who got high on a 2% joint, puffing down a 20% sample would put them on the express train to psychosis.
We now know from genetic history that genes for more and better enzymes that help metabolize ethanol went to fixation quite quickly in populations which have been drinking alcoholic beverages for a long time. What that means is, after that stuff got introduced, it wreaked total havoc on entire populations causing premature death (one way or another) for large numbers of people. Cultural adaptation was neither quick nor powerful enough to prevent serious biological change, which didn't happen the nice way. Oh well, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! YOLO!
Oh, so you smoke, don't exercise, and after your meat and potatoes dinner you have a couple mixed drinks. Nice. Should we go back to rivers on fire too? Have we done too much to reduce air pollution or release of hydrofluorocarbons?
No doubt lots of people have made bad predictions based on minimal evidence. Haidt might prove to be wrong too but he has what I'd argue is some pretty good evidence that he isn't wrong.
There are solutions to problems, and warnings about problems. The alarmists against sex, drugs, & Rock n’ Roll were not just wrongly screaming “wolf”, but the freedom loss for small benefit seems excessive. Today’s alarmists against carbon, or Trump, or Biden, are also excessive. Maybe not on immigration.
It’s possible that too much individual freedom results in so much social dysfunction that less freedom is better—almost certainly the case if there is freedom to shoplift.
Increased drug addiction was always part of the cost of legalization—is that cost too high?
Smart phone digital addiction was not known to be a cost, is it too high? This is an uncommon case of an unknown unknown problem, quite different than the known unknown cost of reduced privacy with cell phones.
Our 3 older kids were already 16+ by 2012, and we kept our youngest on an older Nokia until 14, I wish the culture and school rules had pushed for 16.
The prior false positive Wolf! alarms, doesn’t mean this alarm is false, tho even if it is a real problem, that doesn’t mean Haidt’s solutions are optimal, tho they might be an excellent start.
I don’t agree with this argument because the concern today with phone use is about the medium, not the content. I also think the concern with phone use applies to adults as well as children.
I don’t want the government regulating this. As Haidt explains, it’s a very worthwhile topic from the cultural perspective.
“Also she vowed a vowe, & said, O Lord of hostes, if thou
wilt loke on the trouble of thine handmayd, & remember me,
& not forget thine handmayd, but give unto thine handmayd
a manchilde, then I wil give him unto the Lord all the daies of
his life, and there shal no raser come upon his head.
And as she continued praying before the Lord, Elí marked
her mouth.
For Hannáh spake in her heart: her lippes did move
onely, but her voyce was not heard...”
-Samuel I, 11-13
There are the minor thematic coincidences, of course, living in a dark age, childlessness, voicelessness, and a “Razer” being a type of smart phone, but importantly, the question of which culture a parent chooses to give their child, a traditional culture or the dominant digital culture.
Of course simply liberating a child from cell phone dependency is not the same as giving the child their cultural birthright. Leaving a phone-less child planted in front of the television or a child-marriage to a laptop can hardly be reckoned a gift, but ensuring, as Haidt recommends, the child enjoys opportunities to experience life beyond screens is an important step. However, it is not fully the same as creating the conditions under which a child will mature into an individual who can choose to either enter the dominant digital culture or enter into and maintain the traditions of their birthright culture. That choice requires education and exposure to the traditional culture.
Reasons for sparing a child the dangers of the dominant digital culture can be as simple as safety, both from online dangers as well as the negative consequences threatening online speech. We see where in Canada life in prison is being considered as a punishment for online hate speech, and another proposal to outlaw the promotion of internal combustion engines. And in the US we see endless litigation related to online speech. Online speech seems to have many negative consequences and very few positives. Avoiding those traps by nonparticipation may be beneficial in avoiding these potential liabilities as well as by avoiding the compliant thought grooming the system engenders. The blessings of liberty require freedom of thought, not the compulsion to participate in the dominant digital culture.
Hannah’s gift of Samuel at the temple was emulated by many affluent parents in the middle ages who gave their sons to monasteries which they felt to be a sacrifice to God. Chapter 59 of The Rule of St. Benedict addresses this phenomenon: https://ccel.org/ccel/benedict/rule/rule.lxi.html These children often obtained good educations and training in crafts, however, unfortunately, there was no guarantee that as an adult, the oblate would be permitted to leave monastic life if they so desired. This of course produced some miserable cases. Although monasteries abolished the practice in the 12th century, parents still must decide if they will present their children to a god or tradition, or if they will gift them to the dominant digital culture. A young life free of digital culture is a gift of immeasurable value, not just to the child but to humanity, for, as history has shown, the preservation of culture through dark ages has been the seed of human flourishing.
Perhaps one of the silver linings of covid hysteria may have been the birth of the concept of educational pods. This model might offer a new form of screen-free monasticism outside the grip of digital dominance and coerced conformity and offer a light to lead human flourishing forward.
I look forward to reading Haidt’s latest. I increasingly think those who focus on the toxicity of social media are missing the forest for the trees. It’s the phone! There’s an endless stream of addictive, frustrating, stimulating, happy, sad, etc content for both *kids* and *adults*. And there’s no friction to obtaining that addicting content. It feels us leaving ungrounded - “what did I just do or learn with my time?”
My intuition is adding a tiny bit of friction could solve most of this problem. Encourage kids and adults to use a family computer for internet use. It introduces just the right amount of friction and oversight of one another in the home.
"No Screens In Bedrooms". See also Andy Crouch's "The Tech-Wise Family" (2017).
I met a guy who was a senior executive at a Big Name Tech company about 15 years ago. He was a family-oriented guy and we were talking about this subject of raising kids around tech. He was right in the middle of the "How do we 'optimize to monetize'?" project - that is, how do we develop these things in a way that leverages human psychological tendencies (or 'weaknesses' or 'vices') and turn them into maximum profits for us?
He ... had qualms, and had already had his share of "Hans ... are we the baddies?" moments. It felt kind of like being at a pharmaceutical company, "You know, demerol is ok, good revenues for us. But are we really hitting that opioid receptor as hard as we can? What if we made it an amide instead of an ester, then added a benzyl group to the n-methyl on the piperidine and - whoa! - fentanyl! Awesome!"
His advice, "No Screens In Bedrooms", as a simple, hard and fast rule - the kind easy to monitor, enforce, and explain even to very young kids. I don't think he made it up, it was probably circulating around that scene, and I remember reading an article about someone else giving the same advice no long afterwards. It's such a good rule, it ought to be the 11th Commandment.
In Leon Trotsky's autobiography, "My Life," he talks about his experience. There is apttern, something like this: "the first professional revolutionary I met was a Pole," "the first Marxists I read about in prison were Hungarian," "my best friend, with whom we aimed to convert the proletariat, was Czech," etc.
In the Russian Empire, it was not only Jews who were disproportionately represented in the communist movement (though Trotsky himself did not use the term "communist," preferring Marxists or Bolsheviks, and Mensheviks). Ethnic minorities were notably overrepresented, particularly in the upper ranks: Jews, Poles, Armenians, Georgians, Latvians, etc. It is still a common assertion in Russian nationalist circles that the 1917 Revolution was financed by German money and executed with Latvian rifles.
One possible explanation is the late Russian Empire's aggressive Russification programs, which may have driven ethnic minorities towards various anti-tsarist movements.
But maybe even more importantly, the Marxist (communist movement) was predominantly an educated urban middle-class movement. Trotsky's memoirs include amusing anecdotes about him and his friends discussing where to find workers to convert and wandering the streets of Odessa in search of the proletariat. Ethnic minorities, facing limited opportunities for upward mobility and often required to convert to Russian Orthodoxy—renouncing their religion and ethnicity—gravitated towards cities and became the backbone of the urban middle class.
I do not think phones are as bad as everyone thinks. Without a phone, kids still have internet, video game consoles, Netflix, Super Bowl, World Cup, and many others. I do agree phones are bad, but relative to everything else - not that bad.
I would look at parents as well, what are they doing? What example are they setting. Are they hounding their kids to get outside (parenting) or are they playing video games with them? What types of vacations are they taking? Cruises? Or something more active?
My younger son has had a smart phone since 5th grade, my older son did not get one until junior year of high school (were not around/too expensive). Part of the reason I gave my younger son one so early was to teach him how to use it. If you wait until high school, a parent’s influence is already waning.
We have always pushed they to go out and explore on their own. Other parents, play dates, schools requiring permission to come and go on their own, etc. make that extremely hard.
Rather than blame phones, people should look inward. Be a parent.
"A new, large-scale analysis of different treatments for depression found that by far the best was simply dancing."
The results (https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-075847.full.pdf) have some surprising sex skews (starting on page 10, the lower the purple hyberbola, the stronger the impact). They make me suspect an important selection effect factor - that people with depression are different from the average population in the responsiveness of their moods to theses things, and so it's not easy to extrapolate or gain insight into what might help blue, but not depressed, people feel more upbeat.
For example they don't find much impact on strength training for (depressed) men. This is so much at odds with my personal experience and those of men I've observed that it takes some intellectual discipline for me to accept the results even adding a grain of salt.
Everybody's different, and people incline towards wildly variant forms of physical exercise. Intense strength training works wonders for my mood and attitude. Then again, I rarely get blue, so people like me aren't going to get in most studies like this.
Anyway, back to the skews (for depressed participants). They seem to find:
Men benefit more from aerobics
Women benefit more from strength training
Men benefit a lot, and a lot more than women, from tai chi or yoga
All those seem odd to me, especially the third. It's not possible to do double-blind trials with tai chi and yoga, and I suspect the kind of men who are going to keep doing those for the whole trial are not representative. Or perhaps those yoga classes are, ahem, co-ed. Chip Wilson call your office.
It would be kind of funny if the proper interpretation of these results is merely that it turns out that the cure for depressed people is to throw them into an environment that gets the blood pumping and where the percent of men or women out of the total skews in their favor.
Very interesting Summers (D) discussion - with absolutely no mention of the huge intolerance by Dems in power at colleges with Republicans/ conservatives. Tho he did mention the hypocrisy of supporting some free speech after many publicized cancel culture censorships.
Laughingly, he recalled his inauguration (as Harvard President early 2000s) when he dishonestly claimed about Harvard that "today it was so much better because it reached to every corner of the nation, every subgroup within the population, every part of the world. It did that as a vehicle for providing opportunity and excellence for those who could make the greatest contribution."
I'm pretty sure he knowingly refused to hire any Republican professors, but certain it was less than 30%. That 30% Republican number is what I thought of when Summers said "for any kind of private institution, it has to find a social contract in which it can operate with the broader society."
I was also glad he brought up DEMONIZATION, against Israel, as his wake up call; naturally this demonization is based mostly on lies & half-truths. Similar to the unmentioned demonization that Dems do against Trump. Which they also did in the 80s against Reagan, and maybe Summers was involved in such demonization at the time, as he recalls Regan's opposition to the chaos at Berkeley leading to political success. Summers rightfully described colleges as "actually among the most narrow, insular and inward-looking in the way they evaluate themselves and in the way they think of the necessary decision making." This includes Summers himself, who misses his critique of Reagan and the voter "tide of fury about “welfare Cadillacs." I recall it more as fury against "welfare queens in Cadillacs". *
Interesting that one potential response is to make the Jews a protected group, rather than getting rid of censorship to protect some group. They don't mention that, when dividing between oppressors and oppressed, all oppressors were at one time oppressed themselves. Part of Rob's Luxury Beliefs is how so many Yalies found ways to exhibit victimhood -- we were oppressed, we can't be oppressors.
AI & Econ points were also good.
--
US Congress should change the laws to require tax-exempt orgs to include at least 30% Reps & 30% Dems in their top decision making Board of Trustees, or Directors. Inside of the Dept. of Education, there should be a group of Reps who judge, and a group of Dems who judge -- with the respective caucus deciding who will be in that group. Their only job is to decide who is or is not a Dem or Rep for purposes of tax-exemption; along with govt loans & govt research.
For each college, the identified Reps & Dems will form alumni D & R groups who approve R or D claimed designations by professors.
Yes, this will not be perfect, but is so much better than now AND more feasible than total de-funding the colleges.
There are no solutions, just trade offs. Before prescribing the treatment, make sure of the right diagnosis.
In my school we were not allowed to eat sweets or chew gum in class. Had mobile phones existed we would not have been allowed them in school. When my Dad said it’s bedtime, protesting I was watching telly didn’t work. Bedtime!
The cause is bad teachers and poor parenting. Every device these days comes with parental controls. Every parent comes with - No!
If children are using their devices too much or seeing the wrong content, that’s a problem with parenting, not the technology.
Religion is non-evidence based belief in what the latest prophet says because it makes sense - the Earth being flat made sense - still does in fact, although external data shows us it isn’t.
Finally: those kids today had parents. What they are is all down to their parents - not mobile phones. Start with parents and teachers - fix them - not mobile phones or content.
You make my point - the kids today… which day? The kids have never been what they have always been. Nothing stays the same. Society is a process of discovery and natural, spontaneous evolution. Those who seek to control and mold society according to their desires are tyrants.
There are billions of kids on this planet and you know everyone of them enough to make your proclamation?
F A Hayek called it the fatal conceit - those who think they have complete knowledge about everything. Then the arrogance to know how to bring about the best outcome by imposing their will on others.
People make choices - that is called Right to life, liberty and enjoyment of their property. When people who don’t agree with the choices of others, want to stop them making those choices about their life, liberty and property - that’s tyranny.
We all are very good at seeing the fault in others, but remiss in seeing our own faults. Before attempting to remove the speck in your brother’s eye, remove the great beam in your own.
Education Realist is aptly pointing out constantly that parents aren't going to go for this no phones at school stuff as long as the phenomenon of school shootings exist. Maybe it can exist briefly... until the next school shooting.
“Let me be clear: there is no way to make social media safe for children by just making the content less toxic.” This depends on the definition of social media. I’m fine with this statement as long as it’s limited to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., and doesn’t include the current implementation of Substack.
Let’s ask two simple questions. Is Substack good for kids? Sure. It can be.
Is Substack social media? No, it’s a discourse platform.
What the difference between a discourse platform and social media? An ethos of respect (e.g. respect for learning, respect for others and their rights); direct payment between the writer and the reader (not based on advertisements). Social media is like a tabloid version of a discourse platform. Reading In My Tribe is like sitting with wise mentors. Does anyone want to second this motion? :)
For example, Substack could be made better by improving the commenting hierarchy. Rather than just using the simplistic, “Like” or “Null” ranking system, one could rank comments based a wide variety of virtues. If well-moderated, kids could learn excellent moral character through this type of comment moderating. More on this below.
Here’s a more extreme example. The books that Rob Henderson read as a kid are the best example of a “passive discourse platform.” Yes, discourse platforms can be more or less passive just like books. Each book is a way to access wisdom and mentorship from the author. Digitizing a book doesn’t make it harmful. Or does it? In fact Rob’s book Troubled is a perfect example of a passive discourse platform that seeks to help kids. Combined with his Substack posting, it pretty clearly helps young people. https://open.substack.com/pub/scottgibb/p/rob-hendersons-good-fortune?r=nb3bl&utm_medium=ios
I have still not updated my too-long comment/post on Discourse Platforms, but I include some highlights from it below. One of these days I chop it down and tighten it up.
——
What is a “discourse platform?” It’s a town square or forum for Socratic discourse. Social media on the other hand is a look-at-me selfie-fest in which engagement is optimized to maximize profit. A discourse platform is more sophisticated. The best example of it is Substack; itself a precursor to a “Network Based University.” https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/white-paper-for-network-based-higher
We should ask why Substack is so much better than Facebook for Socratic dialogue and how it can be even better? Same with Twitter.
The ultimate goal here is to promote virtuous leadership, virtuous governance and lifelong learning.
Currently the only merit function we have uses “Like” or “null”—or chronological ranking. I imagine that we’ll probably look back on this method of ranking comments as crude and simplistic; worse than a skateboard with metal wheels. “Like” can mean dozens of things. It’s binary; no magnitude other than 1 or 0. Surely there are many times we want to promote a comment or sort it based on some emotion, some idea or some merit other than 0 or 1.
This reminds me of the public choice arguments against one vote for one person. Using money to communicate desire has big benefits. We need sophisticated merit functions to promote comments and other components of discourse. We need a more sophisticated selection mechanism that uses emergence. Think of this an “impartial spectator” that promotes virtue.
Rather than just one axis to promote good comments with the most-liked comments at the top of the hierarchy, we might consider a multi-axis model in which comments can be pushed to the sides or diagonally, or in 360 degrees—sorted so to speak into categories chosen by the owner of the Substack. Think of Substack as using a single-axis “Best Work Board.” Up and down only. (I’m stealing this idea from elementary school classrooms in which the teacher motivates students to do their best work by elevating the status of students that do superior work).…
In order to implement this, we would need merit variables or virtue variables. Call them what you want. These merit variables could be incorporated into a merit function—a differential equation that solves (optimizes) for some desirable output such as leadership or beauty. A higher level optimization algorithm would solve these merit functions, to sort comments into categories onto the Best Merit Sphere. The winners of this contest would then be elevated in status, or showcased in a “Fantasy Intellectual League.” Awards, status, respect would ensue. The ultimate goal is to motivate, and promote virtuous leadership and lifelong learning.
In a multi-axis comment ranking model, the platform authority (Substack) would allow the teacher (Arnold Kling) to choose the merit variables or virtue variables from a list of options.
Arnold - Do you distinguish between communism and socialism? I’ll have to look up his definition again, but in one of his books, Richard Pipes defines both as the absence of private property rights. Would you agree with that simple definition? What is your definition?
I am not the expert. I sense that socialists believe that a democratic government can oversee economic activity in a just and fair way. I think of Communists as believing in a dictatorship of the proletariat, to be followed in vague wispy terms by the state "withering away," which of course it has never done.
Do communists really believe in a dictatorship of the proletariat? How is this any different than majoritarian democracy? A robust definition has to include a description of the property rights, otherwise democracy blurs into communism.
From David Friedman’s recent post Words Washed Clean:
Something similar has happened to pejoratives applied to the left such as “red,” or “commie.” “Socialist” has, for a very long time, been used by the right as a negative term, by much of the left as a positive. By the time Bernie Sanders, a self-identified socialist, was competing for the Democratic nomination the negative usage had lost much of its force. Earlier still, in the European context, the meaning of “socialism” largely shifted from state socialism to welfare capitalism, most obviously in the Scandinavian welfare states. If I describe the American public school system as a socialist institution that will be interpreted by almost anyone, with the possible exception of a fellow economist, as a right wing complaint against what is taught, not as the observation, obviously true, that it is a means of production owned and controlled by a government.
Most "socialists" & Marxists seem to be more Social Democrats wanting a bigger role of govt ownership and control over an expanded social safety net -- like more mental institutions for crazy folk (as Marxist Freddie deBoer argues for). There was likely also quite a bitt of Israeli socialism kibbutz equality idealism, mostly with the freedom to exit and continuing the freedom to vote to change.
True. Here's a little fact from Richard Pipes. "...shortly after seizing power in Russia, he [Lenin] changed the name of his party from "Social Democratic" to "Communist," and we shall use the term Communism to mean Leninist theory and practice."
I don't know about Arnold, but trying to look up a definition for some authoritative distinction between Socialism and Communism is a totally futile exercise. There is no "cutting Nature at the joints" possible here. Nature itself sometimes doesn't give us any good joints to cut on, which is the source of the whole lumpers vs splitters problem on where to draw lines in taxonomy and categorization.
This happens any time the description of members of some set is highly multi-variable or information dense, and the differences between members are usually small changes in many of those variables, so that in the big picture things are more approximately continuous than quantized, even those they may actually be quantized at the highest level of precision and granularity.
This is not just true of any attempt to draw boundaries between political / ideological / religious labels (how many small disagreements can you have with orthodox Presbyterianism and still be a Presbyterian?) but is additionally complicated by the fact that the humans involved in using the labels sloppily, inconsistently (even within their own lives and writing) and as part of the overall social game of ideological influence in the struggle for ideological / message control and political power make a complete mess of it.
A lot of them will even try to declare "dictionary definitions" as part of this game, and even if they succeed in getting that definition into dictionaries, it doesn't imply that's how other contemporaries actually used and understood the term, it just means that particular person got their particular interpretation published in their winning of the "who controls what gets in the dictionary" game.
Even worse, what also ends up happening with these labels (as Orwell wrote about 'Fascism') is a kind of "Russel's Conjugation", in that, depending on who is using them, labels for ideas that are hard to distinguish are instead just used to *emotionally* distinguish them in terms of their love-by-association or guilt-by-association usefulness, and are just deployed as either feel-good terms or epithets. We are good, they were bad, and so our Socialism is good, while their Communism is bad, even though they also called themselves Socialists, rarely "Communists". And as for National Socialists, who also obviously labelled themselves Socialists, they weren't real Socialists, because ... um ...
Stepping away from the ideological and political content for a minute, my impression is that the best one can do in terms of an observable and historically descriptive way to tell the difference is not so much in terms of beliefs or arrangements of organization and control over important social institutions, but in terms of "unlimited ruthlessness" in determination to obtain and keep power and the kinds of tactics justified and used for those purposes.
One could already see this kind of "rule by terror to any degree necessary" in operation during the worst days of the French Revolution, but Lenin and the Bolsheviks developed that art to a whole other level of depravity and the Chinese Communists were also talented virtuosos and no slackers in that regard.
To say this is to declare defeat. Our side should have a definition of communism and socialism, and not let our enemy define themselves anyway they see fit.
I’ll have to write this up in a longer post. You’re not going to change my mind on this, but I appreciate your discourse.
"But the rest of the time I spend reading stuff online, which I am sure more than counterbalances the benefits of exercise."
As I understand it, the issue is long periods of sitting, especially without frequent breaks. If you are literally sitting all day, you might also consider doing some reading while standing.
"I think one would find for any Ivy League school that the federal government was ten times as large a donor, at least, as any other donor."
Donor or funder? Universities get lots of funds via student loans and grants. They also get lots of money through research contracts. Strictly speaking, none of these are donations to the universities, even if it's money wouldn't have otherwise been able to obtain. Strictly speaking, research grants are donations but underperformance can weaken that funding stream. Have I missed something that is more like a donation?
It's a metaphorical rhetorical flourish and use of poetic license, not something meant to be taken completely literally and nitpicked on grounds of technicalities.
The point is, "Follow the money" / "Who is paying for this?"
What goes on at the top universities is mostly paid for by streams of funds which trace back to being a variety of subsidies paid out of the federal budget.
And that means that all that money is "political", and can have strings attached or be turned off to those places for political reasons if those universities piss off too many politicians or, theoretically, the people who vote for those politicians. Without those funds, most top universities could not continue to function or exist in anything remotely resembling their current form and scope of operations, and many below the very top tier would effectively implode overnight.
Top universities are VERY aware of all this. After Clinton's 1993 "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was implemented, many universities stopped letting military recruiters on their campuses. The 1996 Solomon amendment said, "Fine, but, then you don't get research grants." This went to SCOTUS (Rumsfeld v FAIR - 2006) where the universities lost 8-0. And they all capitulated the next day. Not fake capitulated like after the SFFA "win", but actually capitulated. Money talks.
The universities are banking (literally) on their lobbying and influence in Congress, and in the future success of """free expression""" and """equal protection""" legal arguments (a perverse irony if there ever was one) that Congress can't pick and choose who gets the money on political grounds. And they may indeed win those cases. But then again, in the game of escalation, Congress CAN always just cut off ALL the money to EVERYONE, and (constitutionally, that is, theoretically) the judges can't do anything about THAT.
If Congress did cut 100% of that money off, it still wouldn't put much of a dent in the deficit, which is going to get dented one way or the other eventually. Just like most employers have a kind of unwritten list of the poor performers they would want to let go first in case of a downturn, politicians have a list of programs they most want to defund should the opportunity present itself. So, when the situation becomes pressing, as it already kind of is and inevitably will a lot more, it will be awfully tempting to turn all those fancy university buildings named after all those billionaire donors into homeless shelters.
That seems mostly or all true but I'm not at all certain he meant it the way you suggest. And I meant what I wrote as more of a question than it sounds. Did I miss a major mode of government funding?
The claim I found most startling in the Summers interview was that the development of AI is likely to involve an increase in energy use comparable to that of the industrial revolution. Still trying to wrap my head around that.
Chicken and egg. Best not to overlook the fact that the Industrial Revolution was only possible because of an increase in energy OUTPUT. In the beginning it was limited by the lack of energy, water drove the machines in textile mills (hence mills), horses/mules, Humans provided the rest. Then along came coal or solar batteries as the black nuggets should properly be called.
Since AI consumes energy, it will be limited by the energy available. Given that Governments and the Climatrons are combined in a concerted effort to reduce energy available to Net Zero, AI will have an early demise - as will many Humans too.
Net zero, if it ever even comes close to happening, could certainly cause some short-term shortages but it in no way equates to inadequate energy for AI.
There is a large misunderstanding of what Net Zero means in practice.
The plan is an all-electric World. The aim is to close all fossil fuel power stations, to rely on intermittent wind and solar whilst forcing everyone to use battery electric cars, and electricity in place of natural gas for industry, home heating and cooking. That intermittency will unbalance grids meaning frequent load shedding - rolling black outs, power available at certain times depending on the area.
Net Zero will require 2 to 3 times more electricity output and grid infrastructure to carry and distribute the increased load. Neither exist, nor are planned and in any case wouldn’t be ready for the 2050 deadline.
Even if by some miracle electricity output could be increased, the grid could not carry the load and the massive upgrade required could not be achieved within the time scale for lack of resources and just the time needed. In any case the materials for this new grid infrastructure - Worldwide - aluminium, copper and the raw materials to produce them - simply could not be produced on the scale required. (Estimates of 50 million miles/82 million kilometres of transmission wires to replace and upgrade grid infrastructure.)
The available power would be very expensive, would be needed to sustain basic life functions and most people will be more interested in that than faffing about on the Internet on the rare occasions they can access it.
I agree a 2050 "deadline" is unlikely to be met. That said, it sounds like you have a very narrow view of the possible future based solely on today's technology and resource markets. And I think you are very much missing my disclaimer, of a sort - "Net zero, if it ever even comes close to happening, ..." There is no reason to think wind and solar will ever become primary energy sources without the capacity to store large amounts of energy. Blackouts have happened in the past and can happen today. Cost-benefit nearly ensures some minimal number of blackouts. Changing the energy sources is a recipe for more frequent blackouts but with adequate storage, wind and solar dependence doesn't make more blackouts a long-term destiny. It wasn't long ago that wind wasn't a cost effective addition to the grid. Today it is, at least up to a limit where storage is needed. Solar and batteries are both coming closer to the point where they can be cost-effectively added (without big subsidies). Will they reach a cost-effective point? IDK. Nobody knows. And if they do, can enough materials be obtained to implement at scale? Again, IDK but I wouldn't bet against the market figuring that one out.
Your analysis assumes that the 'plan' is completely to displace fossil fuels with wind and solar plus storage capacity, presumably batteries. That would require the production of massive quantities of wind turbines and solar panels, because solar and wind are low-density and intermittent, and also because wind turbines and solar panels have relatively short service lives compared to fossil fuel power plants and would have to be replaced frequently. Then there is the requirement to mine and process massive quantities of lithium, metals, and other raw materials, and to manufacture massive quantities of batteries. All of this is extremely energy intensive.
We don't have the skilled manpower, production capacity and other requirements for this, so the only way displacing fossil fuels with wind and solar could be remotely feasible is by relying on overseas mining and manufacturing capabilities, most likely in Asian countries that still rely heavily on coal power plants, and that have no immediate plans to commit civilizational suicide by switching to wind and solar. So you wouldn't get much of a reduction in emissions by switching to wind and solar in this country.
In reality, the plan is to reduce emissions by shutting down fossil fuel plants, and by regulating ICE cars, gas stoves, gas heating and so forth out of existence, without replacing them with wind and solar. Blackouts are the solution to the problem of emissions. Further emissions reductions would also be achieved through knock-on effects. People will die from cold in the winter and heat in the summer, especially old people, as well as from starvation due to food shortages. The only question is whether the politicians and activists pushing the switch to renewables are ignorant believers in magic fairy dust, or alternatively, they know exactly what they are doing and are simply evil.
But your statement was that net-zero, if it did happen, would not equate to inadequate energy for AI. On the contrary, net-zero -- as it is currently envisioned -- would result in inadequate energy for everybody and everything (except for the very rich and powerful, I suppose). I really think the only way net-zero could be achieved is through nuclear energy, which most net-zero boosters are vehemently against. And I'm pretty sure a 2050 "deadline" is not realistic in any case.
We really have no idea how the tech will advance in the next couple decades but I agree 2050 seems unlikely and it is far from certain that tech advances will be adequate without a significant increase in nuclear.
The third most valuable company in the world is a meme stock. Revenue is up 500% in four years, but it's all baloney. In just five years it's gone from a "mostly graphics cards for computer games" company to "80% of revenues from non-graphics high performance computing" company, but it's just a consensual hallucination. Facebook just ordered 350,000 H100s for over $10B, but these people don't have any idea what they're doing. Loudon county is panicking about giant concrete warehouses as big as the UDC popping up like mushrooms so fast that it might crowd out other kinds of development, and Dominion energy is lobbying for another nuclear reactor on Lake Anna in anticipation of what they are going to need to power all those chips, but they are also a bunch of mentally ill lunatics.
“Kids need to be freed from the grip of…” TV, Elvis Presley, Rock n’ Roll, the Beetles, etc. We all need to be freed from prodnoses who have solutions to all ills, who want to control our lives and tell us what we should be doing.
Have you read what Haidt has said on this issue? If so, do you think he is wrong? What is your evidence, other than anecdotal comparison to past claims by others on tangentially related issues?
My evidence?
I’m 71, so my evidence is a lifetime listening to people telling us what’s wrong with ‘the kids of today’ and what’s wrong with society and how we should be living our lives.
You were hearing, but you weren't listening. Dude, look around. This isn't just the same old "these kids today!" with the kids being like they've always been. Things have changed, and the kids are not all right.
As one example among many, when you were ten years old in 1963, the obesity rate for American kids your age was under 4%. Today it's *five times* that high. You also have a lifetime of listening to people telling us what's wrong with food and sedentarism and how kids need to diet and exercise ... they were correct!
A recent introduction of new stimulating and habit-forming experiences of completely unprecedented intensity before slow-changing-biology and even quick-changing-culture can possibly discover mitigations in adaptation is what makes "this time is different" worries reasonable and accurate.
That sounds like how some old timers say "Oh come on, weed is no big deal, I tried plenty way back when and I'm fine, it was fine." In the 60s, average THC levels of unrefined leaf products were under 2% and still only 4% thirty years ago. Today it's over 16% with many sellers openly advertising strains well above 20%. I mean, congrats to those horticulturists I guess; whatever you think about the product those are still impressive results. Borlaug is spinning in his grave, but talk about a green revolution. But for anyone who got high on a 2% joint, puffing down a 20% sample would put them on the express train to psychosis.
We now know from genetic history that genes for more and better enzymes that help metabolize ethanol went to fixation quite quickly in populations which have been drinking alcoholic beverages for a long time. What that means is, after that stuff got introduced, it wreaked total havoc on entire populations causing premature death (one way or another) for large numbers of people. Cultural adaptation was neither quick nor powerful enough to prevent serious biological change, which didn't happen the nice way. Oh well, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! YOLO!
Oh, so you smoke, don't exercise, and after your meat and potatoes dinner you have a couple mixed drinks. Nice. Should we go back to rivers on fire too? Have we done too much to reduce air pollution or release of hydrofluorocarbons?
No doubt lots of people have made bad predictions based on minimal evidence. Haidt might prove to be wrong too but he has what I'd argue is some pretty good evidence that he isn't wrong.
There are solutions to problems, and warnings about problems. The alarmists against sex, drugs, & Rock n’ Roll were not just wrongly screaming “wolf”, but the freedom loss for small benefit seems excessive. Today’s alarmists against carbon, or Trump, or Biden, are also excessive. Maybe not on immigration.
It’s possible that too much individual freedom results in so much social dysfunction that less freedom is better—almost certainly the case if there is freedom to shoplift.
Increased drug addiction was always part of the cost of legalization—is that cost too high?
Smart phone digital addiction was not known to be a cost, is it too high? This is an uncommon case of an unknown unknown problem, quite different than the known unknown cost of reduced privacy with cell phones.
Our 3 older kids were already 16+ by 2012, and we kept our youngest on an older Nokia until 14, I wish the culture and school rules had pushed for 16.
The prior false positive Wolf! alarms, doesn’t mean this alarm is false, tho even if it is a real problem, that doesn’t mean Haidt’s solutions are optimal, tho they might be an excellent start.
I don’t agree with this argument because the concern today with phone use is about the medium, not the content. I also think the concern with phone use applies to adults as well as children.
I don’t want the government regulating this. As Haidt explains, it’s a very worthwhile topic from the cultural perspective.
Reading Haidt one is tempted to think of Hannah:
“Also she vowed a vowe, & said, O Lord of hostes, if thou
wilt loke on the trouble of thine handmayd, & remember me,
& not forget thine handmayd, but give unto thine handmayd
a manchilde, then I wil give him unto the Lord all the daies of
his life, and there shal no raser come upon his head.
And as she continued praying before the Lord, Elí marked
her mouth.
For Hannáh spake in her heart: her lippes did move
onely, but her voyce was not heard...”
-Samuel I, 11-13
There are the minor thematic coincidences, of course, living in a dark age, childlessness, voicelessness, and a “Razer” being a type of smart phone, but importantly, the question of which culture a parent chooses to give their child, a traditional culture or the dominant digital culture.
Of course simply liberating a child from cell phone dependency is not the same as giving the child their cultural birthright. Leaving a phone-less child planted in front of the television or a child-marriage to a laptop can hardly be reckoned a gift, but ensuring, as Haidt recommends, the child enjoys opportunities to experience life beyond screens is an important step. However, it is not fully the same as creating the conditions under which a child will mature into an individual who can choose to either enter the dominant digital culture or enter into and maintain the traditions of their birthright culture. That choice requires education and exposure to the traditional culture.
Reasons for sparing a child the dangers of the dominant digital culture can be as simple as safety, both from online dangers as well as the negative consequences threatening online speech. We see where in Canada life in prison is being considered as a punishment for online hate speech, and another proposal to outlaw the promotion of internal combustion engines. And in the US we see endless litigation related to online speech. Online speech seems to have many negative consequences and very few positives. Avoiding those traps by nonparticipation may be beneficial in avoiding these potential liabilities as well as by avoiding the compliant thought grooming the system engenders. The blessings of liberty require freedom of thought, not the compulsion to participate in the dominant digital culture.
Hannah’s gift of Samuel at the temple was emulated by many affluent parents in the middle ages who gave their sons to monasteries which they felt to be a sacrifice to God. Chapter 59 of The Rule of St. Benedict addresses this phenomenon: https://ccel.org/ccel/benedict/rule/rule.lxi.html These children often obtained good educations and training in crafts, however, unfortunately, there was no guarantee that as an adult, the oblate would be permitted to leave monastic life if they so desired. This of course produced some miserable cases. Although monasteries abolished the practice in the 12th century, parents still must decide if they will present their children to a god or tradition, or if they will gift them to the dominant digital culture. A young life free of digital culture is a gift of immeasurable value, not just to the child but to humanity, for, as history has shown, the preservation of culture through dark ages has been the seed of human flourishing.
Perhaps one of the silver linings of covid hysteria may have been the birth of the concept of educational pods. This model might offer a new form of screen-free monasticism outside the grip of digital dominance and coerced conformity and offer a light to lead human flourishing forward.
I look forward to reading Haidt’s latest. I increasingly think those who focus on the toxicity of social media are missing the forest for the trees. It’s the phone! There’s an endless stream of addictive, frustrating, stimulating, happy, sad, etc content for both *kids* and *adults*. And there’s no friction to obtaining that addicting content. It feels us leaving ungrounded - “what did I just do or learn with my time?”
My intuition is adding a tiny bit of friction could solve most of this problem. Encourage kids and adults to use a family computer for internet use. It introduces just the right amount of friction and oversight of one another in the home.
"No Screens In Bedrooms". See also Andy Crouch's "The Tech-Wise Family" (2017).
I met a guy who was a senior executive at a Big Name Tech company about 15 years ago. He was a family-oriented guy and we were talking about this subject of raising kids around tech. He was right in the middle of the "How do we 'optimize to monetize'?" project - that is, how do we develop these things in a way that leverages human psychological tendencies (or 'weaknesses' or 'vices') and turn them into maximum profits for us?
He ... had qualms, and had already had his share of "Hans ... are we the baddies?" moments. It felt kind of like being at a pharmaceutical company, "You know, demerol is ok, good revenues for us. But are we really hitting that opioid receptor as hard as we can? What if we made it an amide instead of an ester, then added a benzyl group to the n-methyl on the piperidine and - whoa! - fentanyl! Awesome!"
His advice, "No Screens In Bedrooms", as a simple, hard and fast rule - the kind easy to monitor, enforce, and explain even to very young kids. I don't think he made it up, it was probably circulating around that scene, and I remember reading an article about someone else giving the same advice no long afterwards. It's such a good rule, it ought to be the 11th Commandment.
About Jews and Communism
In Leon Trotsky's autobiography, "My Life," he talks about his experience. There is apttern, something like this: "the first professional revolutionary I met was a Pole," "the first Marxists I read about in prison were Hungarian," "my best friend, with whom we aimed to convert the proletariat, was Czech," etc.
In the Russian Empire, it was not only Jews who were disproportionately represented in the communist movement (though Trotsky himself did not use the term "communist," preferring Marxists or Bolsheviks, and Mensheviks). Ethnic minorities were notably overrepresented, particularly in the upper ranks: Jews, Poles, Armenians, Georgians, Latvians, etc. It is still a common assertion in Russian nationalist circles that the 1917 Revolution was financed by German money and executed with Latvian rifles.
One possible explanation is the late Russian Empire's aggressive Russification programs, which may have driven ethnic minorities towards various anti-tsarist movements.
But maybe even more importantly, the Marxist (communist movement) was predominantly an educated urban middle-class movement. Trotsky's memoirs include amusing anecdotes about him and his friends discussing where to find workers to convert and wandering the streets of Odessa in search of the proletariat. Ethnic minorities, facing limited opportunities for upward mobility and often required to convert to Russian Orthodoxy—renouncing their religion and ethnicity—gravitated towards cities and became the backbone of the urban middle class.
I do not think phones are as bad as everyone thinks. Without a phone, kids still have internet, video game consoles, Netflix, Super Bowl, World Cup, and many others. I do agree phones are bad, but relative to everything else - not that bad.
I would look at parents as well, what are they doing? What example are they setting. Are they hounding their kids to get outside (parenting) or are they playing video games with them? What types of vacations are they taking? Cruises? Or something more active?
My younger son has had a smart phone since 5th grade, my older son did not get one until junior year of high school (were not around/too expensive). Part of the reason I gave my younger son one so early was to teach him how to use it. If you wait until high school, a parent’s influence is already waning.
We have always pushed they to go out and explore on their own. Other parents, play dates, schools requiring permission to come and go on their own, etc. make that extremely hard.
Rather than blame phones, people should look inward. Be a parent.
"A new, large-scale analysis of different treatments for depression found that by far the best was simply dancing."
The results (https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-075847.full.pdf) have some surprising sex skews (starting on page 10, the lower the purple hyberbola, the stronger the impact). They make me suspect an important selection effect factor - that people with depression are different from the average population in the responsiveness of their moods to theses things, and so it's not easy to extrapolate or gain insight into what might help blue, but not depressed, people feel more upbeat.
For example they don't find much impact on strength training for (depressed) men. This is so much at odds with my personal experience and those of men I've observed that it takes some intellectual discipline for me to accept the results even adding a grain of salt.
Everybody's different, and people incline towards wildly variant forms of physical exercise. Intense strength training works wonders for my mood and attitude. Then again, I rarely get blue, so people like me aren't going to get in most studies like this.
Anyway, back to the skews (for depressed participants). They seem to find:
Men benefit more from aerobics
Women benefit more from strength training
Men benefit a lot, and a lot more than women, from tai chi or yoga
All those seem odd to me, especially the third. It's not possible to do double-blind trials with tai chi and yoga, and I suspect the kind of men who are going to keep doing those for the whole trial are not representative. Or perhaps those yoga classes are, ahem, co-ed. Chip Wilson call your office.
It would be kind of funny if the proper interpretation of these results is merely that it turns out that the cure for depressed people is to throw them into an environment that gets the blood pumping and where the percent of men or women out of the total skews in their favor.
Very interesting Summers (D) discussion - with absolutely no mention of the huge intolerance by Dems in power at colleges with Republicans/ conservatives. Tho he did mention the hypocrisy of supporting some free speech after many publicized cancel culture censorships.
Laughingly, he recalled his inauguration (as Harvard President early 2000s) when he dishonestly claimed about Harvard that "today it was so much better because it reached to every corner of the nation, every subgroup within the population, every part of the world. It did that as a vehicle for providing opportunity and excellence for those who could make the greatest contribution."
I'm pretty sure he knowingly refused to hire any Republican professors, but certain it was less than 30%. That 30% Republican number is what I thought of when Summers said "for any kind of private institution, it has to find a social contract in which it can operate with the broader society."
I was also glad he brought up DEMONIZATION, against Israel, as his wake up call; naturally this demonization is based mostly on lies & half-truths. Similar to the unmentioned demonization that Dems do against Trump. Which they also did in the 80s against Reagan, and maybe Summers was involved in such demonization at the time, as he recalls Regan's opposition to the chaos at Berkeley leading to political success. Summers rightfully described colleges as "actually among the most narrow, insular and inward-looking in the way they evaluate themselves and in the way they think of the necessary decision making." This includes Summers himself, who misses his critique of Reagan and the voter "tide of fury about “welfare Cadillacs." I recall it more as fury against "welfare queens in Cadillacs". *
Interesting that one potential response is to make the Jews a protected group, rather than getting rid of censorship to protect some group. They don't mention that, when dividing between oppressors and oppressed, all oppressors were at one time oppressed themselves. Part of Rob's Luxury Beliefs is how so many Yalies found ways to exhibit victimhood -- we were oppressed, we can't be oppressors.
AI & Econ points were also good.
--
US Congress should change the laws to require tax-exempt orgs to include at least 30% Reps & 30% Dems in their top decision making Board of Trustees, or Directors. Inside of the Dept. of Education, there should be a group of Reps who judge, and a group of Dems who judge -- with the respective caucus deciding who will be in that group. Their only job is to decide who is or is not a Dem or Rep for purposes of tax-exemption; along with govt loans & govt research.
For each college, the identified Reps & Dems will form alumni D & R groups who approve R or D claimed designations by professors.
Yes, this will not be perfect, but is so much better than now AND more feasible than total de-funding the colleges.
*The real welfare queen story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/21/she-was-stereotyped-welfare-queen-truth-was-more-disturbing-new-book-says/
There are no solutions, just trade offs. Before prescribing the treatment, make sure of the right diagnosis.
In my school we were not allowed to eat sweets or chew gum in class. Had mobile phones existed we would not have been allowed them in school. When my Dad said it’s bedtime, protesting I was watching telly didn’t work. Bedtime!
The cause is bad teachers and poor parenting. Every device these days comes with parental controls. Every parent comes with - No!
If children are using their devices too much or seeing the wrong content, that’s a problem with parenting, not the technology.
Religion is non-evidence based belief in what the latest prophet says because it makes sense - the Earth being flat made sense - still does in fact, although external data shows us it isn’t.
Finally: those kids today had parents. What they are is all down to their parents - not mobile phones. Start with parents and teachers - fix them - not mobile phones or content.
You make my point - the kids today… which day? The kids have never been what they have always been. Nothing stays the same. Society is a process of discovery and natural, spontaneous evolution. Those who seek to control and mold society according to their desires are tyrants.
There are billions of kids on this planet and you know everyone of them enough to make your proclamation?
F A Hayek called it the fatal conceit - those who think they have complete knowledge about everything. Then the arrogance to know how to bring about the best outcome by imposing their will on others.
People make choices - that is called Right to life, liberty and enjoyment of their property. When people who don’t agree with the choices of others, want to stop them making those choices about their life, liberty and property - that’s tyranny.
We all are very good at seeing the fault in others, but remiss in seeing our own faults. Before attempting to remove the speck in your brother’s eye, remove the great beam in your own.
Opinions aren’t fact.
Education Realist is aptly pointing out constantly that parents aren't going to go for this no phones at school stuff as long as the phenomenon of school shootings exist. Maybe it can exist briefly... until the next school shooting.
“Let me be clear: there is no way to make social media safe for children by just making the content less toxic.” This depends on the definition of social media. I’m fine with this statement as long as it’s limited to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., and doesn’t include the current implementation of Substack.
Let’s ask two simple questions. Is Substack good for kids? Sure. It can be.
Is Substack social media? No, it’s a discourse platform.
What the difference between a discourse platform and social media? An ethos of respect (e.g. respect for learning, respect for others and their rights); direct payment between the writer and the reader (not based on advertisements). Social media is like a tabloid version of a discourse platform. Reading In My Tribe is like sitting with wise mentors. Does anyone want to second this motion? :)
I don’t see why we can’t build a discourse platform built on virtue—one that would inculcate excellent moral character as described in Bob Luddy’s book The Thales Way. https://www.thalesacademy.org/assets/docs/the-thales-way-bob-luddy.pdf
For example, Substack could be made better by improving the commenting hierarchy. Rather than just using the simplistic, “Like” or “Null” ranking system, one could rank comments based a wide variety of virtues. If well-moderated, kids could learn excellent moral character through this type of comment moderating. More on this below.
Here’s a more extreme example. The books that Rob Henderson read as a kid are the best example of a “passive discourse platform.” Yes, discourse platforms can be more or less passive just like books. Each book is a way to access wisdom and mentorship from the author. Digitizing a book doesn’t make it harmful. Or does it? In fact Rob’s book Troubled is a perfect example of a passive discourse platform that seeks to help kids. Combined with his Substack posting, it pretty clearly helps young people. https://open.substack.com/pub/scottgibb/p/rob-hendersons-good-fortune?r=nb3bl&utm_medium=ios
I have still not updated my too-long comment/post on Discourse Platforms, but I include some highlights from it below. One of these days I chop it down and tighten it up.
——
What is a “discourse platform?” It’s a town square or forum for Socratic discourse. Social media on the other hand is a look-at-me selfie-fest in which engagement is optimized to maximize profit. A discourse platform is more sophisticated. The best example of it is Substack; itself a precursor to a “Network Based University.” https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/white-paper-for-network-based-higher
We should ask why Substack is so much better than Facebook for Socratic dialogue and how it can be even better? Same with Twitter.
The ultimate goal here is to promote virtuous leadership, virtuous governance and lifelong learning.
Currently the only merit function we have uses “Like” or “null”—or chronological ranking. I imagine that we’ll probably look back on this method of ranking comments as crude and simplistic; worse than a skateboard with metal wheels. “Like” can mean dozens of things. It’s binary; no magnitude other than 1 or 0. Surely there are many times we want to promote a comment or sort it based on some emotion, some idea or some merit other than 0 or 1.
This reminds me of the public choice arguments against one vote for one person. Using money to communicate desire has big benefits. We need sophisticated merit functions to promote comments and other components of discourse. We need a more sophisticated selection mechanism that uses emergence. Think of this an “impartial spectator” that promotes virtue.
Rather than just one axis to promote good comments with the most-liked comments at the top of the hierarchy, we might consider a multi-axis model in which comments can be pushed to the sides or diagonally, or in 360 degrees—sorted so to speak into categories chosen by the owner of the Substack. Think of Substack as using a single-axis “Best Work Board.” Up and down only. (I’m stealing this idea from elementary school classrooms in which the teacher motivates students to do their best work by elevating the status of students that do superior work).…
In order to implement this, we would need merit variables or virtue variables. Call them what you want. These merit variables could be incorporated into a merit function—a differential equation that solves (optimizes) for some desirable output such as leadership or beauty. A higher level optimization algorithm would solve these merit functions, to sort comments into categories onto the Best Merit Sphere. The winners of this contest would then be elevated in status, or showcased in a “Fantasy Intellectual League.” Awards, status, respect would ensue. The ultimate goal is to motivate, and promote virtuous leadership and lifelong learning.
In a multi-axis comment ranking model, the platform authority (Substack) would allow the teacher (Arnold Kling) to choose the merit variables or virtue variables from a list of options.
https://scottgibb.substack.com/p/discourse-platforms
Arnold - Do you distinguish between communism and socialism? I’ll have to look up his definition again, but in one of his books, Richard Pipes defines both as the absence of private property rights. Would you agree with that simple definition? What is your definition?
I am not the expert. I sense that socialists believe that a democratic government can oversee economic activity in a just and fair way. I think of Communists as believing in a dictatorship of the proletariat, to be followed in vague wispy terms by the state "withering away," which of course it has never done.
Here's an expert definition of communism and socialism.
https://scottgibb.substack.com/p/communism-a-history
Do communists really believe in a dictatorship of the proletariat? How is this any different than majoritarian democracy? A robust definition has to include a description of the property rights, otherwise democracy blurs into communism.
From David Friedman’s recent post Words Washed Clean:
Something similar has happened to pejoratives applied to the left such as “red,” or “commie.” “Socialist” has, for a very long time, been used by the right as a negative term, by much of the left as a positive. By the time Bernie Sanders, a self-identified socialist, was competing for the Democratic nomination the negative usage had lost much of its force. Earlier still, in the European context, the meaning of “socialism” largely shifted from state socialism to welfare capitalism, most obviously in the Scandinavian welfare states. If I describe the American public school system as a socialist institution that will be interpreted by almost anyone, with the possible exception of a fellow economist, as a right wing complaint against what is taught, not as the observation, obviously true, that it is a means of production owned and controlled by a government.
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/words-washed-clean
Most "socialists" & Marxists seem to be more Social Democrats wanting a bigger role of govt ownership and control over an expanded social safety net -- like more mental institutions for crazy folk (as Marxist Freddie deBoer argues for). There was likely also quite a bitt of Israeli socialism kibbutz equality idealism, mostly with the freedom to exit and continuing the freedom to vote to change.
True. Here's a little fact from Richard Pipes. "...shortly after seizing power in Russia, he [Lenin] changed the name of his party from "Social Democratic" to "Communist," and we shall use the term Communism to mean Leninist theory and practice."
https://scottgibb.substack.com/p/communism-a-history
I don't know about Arnold, but trying to look up a definition for some authoritative distinction between Socialism and Communism is a totally futile exercise. There is no "cutting Nature at the joints" possible here. Nature itself sometimes doesn't give us any good joints to cut on, which is the source of the whole lumpers vs splitters problem on where to draw lines in taxonomy and categorization.
This happens any time the description of members of some set is highly multi-variable or information dense, and the differences between members are usually small changes in many of those variables, so that in the big picture things are more approximately continuous than quantized, even those they may actually be quantized at the highest level of precision and granularity.
This is not just true of any attempt to draw boundaries between political / ideological / religious labels (how many small disagreements can you have with orthodox Presbyterianism and still be a Presbyterian?) but is additionally complicated by the fact that the humans involved in using the labels sloppily, inconsistently (even within their own lives and writing) and as part of the overall social game of ideological influence in the struggle for ideological / message control and political power make a complete mess of it.
A lot of them will even try to declare "dictionary definitions" as part of this game, and even if they succeed in getting that definition into dictionaries, it doesn't imply that's how other contemporaries actually used and understood the term, it just means that particular person got their particular interpretation published in their winning of the "who controls what gets in the dictionary" game.
Even worse, what also ends up happening with these labels (as Orwell wrote about 'Fascism') is a kind of "Russel's Conjugation", in that, depending on who is using them, labels for ideas that are hard to distinguish are instead just used to *emotionally* distinguish them in terms of their love-by-association or guilt-by-association usefulness, and are just deployed as either feel-good terms or epithets. We are good, they were bad, and so our Socialism is good, while their Communism is bad, even though they also called themselves Socialists, rarely "Communists". And as for National Socialists, who also obviously labelled themselves Socialists, they weren't real Socialists, because ... um ...
Stepping away from the ideological and political content for a minute, my impression is that the best one can do in terms of an observable and historically descriptive way to tell the difference is not so much in terms of beliefs or arrangements of organization and control over important social institutions, but in terms of "unlimited ruthlessness" in determination to obtain and keep power and the kinds of tactics justified and used for those purposes.
One could already see this kind of "rule by terror to any degree necessary" in operation during the worst days of the French Revolution, but Lenin and the Bolsheviks developed that art to a whole other level of depravity and the Chinese Communists were also talented virtuosos and no slackers in that regard.
Here's an expert definition of communism and socialism.
https://scottgibb.substack.com/p/communism-a-history
To say this is to declare defeat. Our side should have a definition of communism and socialism, and not let our enemy define themselves anyway they see fit.
I’ll have to write this up in a longer post. You’re not going to change my mind on this, but I appreciate your discourse.
"But the rest of the time I spend reading stuff online, which I am sure more than counterbalances the benefits of exercise."
As I understand it, the issue is long periods of sitting, especially without frequent breaks. If you are literally sitting all day, you might also consider doing some reading while standing.
"I think one would find for any Ivy League school that the federal government was ten times as large a donor, at least, as any other donor."
Donor or funder? Universities get lots of funds via student loans and grants. They also get lots of money through research contracts. Strictly speaking, none of these are donations to the universities, even if it's money wouldn't have otherwise been able to obtain. Strictly speaking, research grants are donations but underperformance can weaken that funding stream. Have I missed something that is more like a donation?
It's a metaphorical rhetorical flourish and use of poetic license, not something meant to be taken completely literally and nitpicked on grounds of technicalities.
The point is, "Follow the money" / "Who is paying for this?"
What goes on at the top universities is mostly paid for by streams of funds which trace back to being a variety of subsidies paid out of the federal budget.
And that means that all that money is "political", and can have strings attached or be turned off to those places for political reasons if those universities piss off too many politicians or, theoretically, the people who vote for those politicians. Without those funds, most top universities could not continue to function or exist in anything remotely resembling their current form and scope of operations, and many below the very top tier would effectively implode overnight.
Top universities are VERY aware of all this. After Clinton's 1993 "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was implemented, many universities stopped letting military recruiters on their campuses. The 1996 Solomon amendment said, "Fine, but, then you don't get research grants." This went to SCOTUS (Rumsfeld v FAIR - 2006) where the universities lost 8-0. And they all capitulated the next day. Not fake capitulated like after the SFFA "win", but actually capitulated. Money talks.
The universities are banking (literally) on their lobbying and influence in Congress, and in the future success of """free expression""" and """equal protection""" legal arguments (a perverse irony if there ever was one) that Congress can't pick and choose who gets the money on political grounds. And they may indeed win those cases. But then again, in the game of escalation, Congress CAN always just cut off ALL the money to EVERYONE, and (constitutionally, that is, theoretically) the judges can't do anything about THAT.
If Congress did cut 100% of that money off, it still wouldn't put much of a dent in the deficit, which is going to get dented one way or the other eventually. Just like most employers have a kind of unwritten list of the poor performers they would want to let go first in case of a downturn, politicians have a list of programs they most want to defund should the opportunity present itself. So, when the situation becomes pressing, as it already kind of is and inevitably will a lot more, it will be awfully tempting to turn all those fancy university buildings named after all those billionaire donors into homeless shelters.
That seems mostly or all true but I'm not at all certain he meant it the way you suggest. And I meant what I wrote as more of a question than it sounds. Did I miss a major mode of government funding?
The claim I found most startling in the Summers interview was that the development of AI is likely to involve an increase in energy use comparable to that of the industrial revolution. Still trying to wrap my head around that.
Chicken and egg. Best not to overlook the fact that the Industrial Revolution was only possible because of an increase in energy OUTPUT. In the beginning it was limited by the lack of energy, water drove the machines in textile mills (hence mills), horses/mules, Humans provided the rest. Then along came coal or solar batteries as the black nuggets should properly be called.
Since AI consumes energy, it will be limited by the energy available. Given that Governments and the Climatrons are combined in a concerted effort to reduce energy available to Net Zero, AI will have an early demise - as will many Humans too.
Net zero, if it ever even comes close to happening, could certainly cause some short-term shortages but it in no way equates to inadequate energy for AI.
There is a large misunderstanding of what Net Zero means in practice.
The plan is an all-electric World. The aim is to close all fossil fuel power stations, to rely on intermittent wind and solar whilst forcing everyone to use battery electric cars, and electricity in place of natural gas for industry, home heating and cooking. That intermittency will unbalance grids meaning frequent load shedding - rolling black outs, power available at certain times depending on the area.
Net Zero will require 2 to 3 times more electricity output and grid infrastructure to carry and distribute the increased load. Neither exist, nor are planned and in any case wouldn’t be ready for the 2050 deadline.
Even if by some miracle electricity output could be increased, the grid could not carry the load and the massive upgrade required could not be achieved within the time scale for lack of resources and just the time needed. In any case the materials for this new grid infrastructure - Worldwide - aluminium, copper and the raw materials to produce them - simply could not be produced on the scale required. (Estimates of 50 million miles/82 million kilometres of transmission wires to replace and upgrade grid infrastructure.)
The available power would be very expensive, would be needed to sustain basic life functions and most people will be more interested in that than faffing about on the Internet on the rare occasions they can access it.
I agree a 2050 "deadline" is unlikely to be met. That said, it sounds like you have a very narrow view of the possible future based solely on today's technology and resource markets. And I think you are very much missing my disclaimer, of a sort - "Net zero, if it ever even comes close to happening, ..." There is no reason to think wind and solar will ever become primary energy sources without the capacity to store large amounts of energy. Blackouts have happened in the past and can happen today. Cost-benefit nearly ensures some minimal number of blackouts. Changing the energy sources is a recipe for more frequent blackouts but with adequate storage, wind and solar dependence doesn't make more blackouts a long-term destiny. It wasn't long ago that wind wasn't a cost effective addition to the grid. Today it is, at least up to a limit where storage is needed. Solar and batteries are both coming closer to the point where they can be cost-effectively added (without big subsidies). Will they reach a cost-effective point? IDK. Nobody knows. And if they do, can enough materials be obtained to implement at scale? Again, IDK but I wouldn't bet against the market figuring that one out.
Your analysis assumes that the 'plan' is completely to displace fossil fuels with wind and solar plus storage capacity, presumably batteries. That would require the production of massive quantities of wind turbines and solar panels, because solar and wind are low-density and intermittent, and also because wind turbines and solar panels have relatively short service lives compared to fossil fuel power plants and would have to be replaced frequently. Then there is the requirement to mine and process massive quantities of lithium, metals, and other raw materials, and to manufacture massive quantities of batteries. All of this is extremely energy intensive.
We don't have the skilled manpower, production capacity and other requirements for this, so the only way displacing fossil fuels with wind and solar could be remotely feasible is by relying on overseas mining and manufacturing capabilities, most likely in Asian countries that still rely heavily on coal power plants, and that have no immediate plans to commit civilizational suicide by switching to wind and solar. So you wouldn't get much of a reduction in emissions by switching to wind and solar in this country.
In reality, the plan is to reduce emissions by shutting down fossil fuel plants, and by regulating ICE cars, gas stoves, gas heating and so forth out of existence, without replacing them with wind and solar. Blackouts are the solution to the problem of emissions. Further emissions reductions would also be achieved through knock-on effects. People will die from cold in the winter and heat in the summer, especially old people, as well as from starvation due to food shortages. The only question is whether the politicians and activists pushing the switch to renewables are ignorant believers in magic fairy dust, or alternatively, they know exactly what they are doing and are simply evil.
What you say may prove true of batteries, depending on what advancements come, but not for wind and solar.
https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00001-6
But your statement was that net-zero, if it did happen, would not equate to inadequate energy for AI. On the contrary, net-zero -- as it is currently envisioned -- would result in inadequate energy for everybody and everything (except for the very rich and powerful, I suppose). I really think the only way net-zero could be achieved is through nuclear energy, which most net-zero boosters are vehemently against. And I'm pretty sure a 2050 "deadline" is not realistic in any case.
"as it is currently envisioned"
I have no clue what this is supposed to mean.
We really have no idea how the tech will advance in the next couple decades but I agree 2050 seems unlikely and it is far from certain that tech advances will be adequate without a significant increase in nuclear.
The third most valuable company in the world is a meme stock. Revenue is up 500% in four years, but it's all baloney. In just five years it's gone from a "mostly graphics cards for computer games" company to "80% of revenues from non-graphics high performance computing" company, but it's just a consensual hallucination. Facebook just ordered 350,000 H100s for over $10B, but these people don't have any idea what they're doing. Loudon county is panicking about giant concrete warehouses as big as the UDC popping up like mushrooms so fast that it might crowd out other kinds of development, and Dominion energy is lobbying for another nuclear reactor on Lake Anna in anticipation of what they are going to need to power all those chips, but they are also a bunch of mentally ill lunatics.
Right, bitcoin isn't trading at $62K today near its all-time high.
Whether Nvidia is over valued or not, I'd say the difference from Gamestop is huge.
I'm curious at what PE you think a stock becomes meme and how you determine that.