Links to Consider, 4/1

Greg Lukianoff on Abigail Shrier; Rachel Lu on natalism; Lorenzo Warby on our cooperative nature; Steve Stewart-Williams on our economy-hating nature

Greg Lukianoff writes,

If you really want to change the world in a positive way, you need empowered young people who have hope for the future and can think of concrete, practical, and actionable solutions to help improve the world as it is, which is always more complicated than any ideology allows.

But Shrier’s book goes far beyond what Haidt and I did in “Coddling,” and that is why every single parent and K-12 teacher must read it.

What she calls “bad therapy” Haidt and Lukianoff call doing the reverse of cognitive behavioral therapy. If that analysis is new to you, then definitely read at least Lukianoff’s review of the Shrier’s book.

Rachel Lu writes,

Many people “want” more children than they actually have, but what does that really mean? More than 80% of Americans say they want to write a book one day. A sizable percentage have considered running for office. Is anyone confused as to why the great majority don’t follow through? Given a choice, people frequently pass on difficult-but-optional life projects.

…Breeding immortal beings is no joke. To persuade more people to do it, we need to convince them that raising a family is honorable, aspirational, and worthy of sacrifice. We can do hard things! Hannah’s Children offers a glimpse of what it takes, and why it’s worth it. 

Lorenzo Warby writes,

We are the species that is better at non-kin cooperation—that is, cooperation across genetic lineages—than any other species on the planet, by orders of magnitude. The Christian Eurosphere—Europe and its descendant settler Neo-Europes—came to dominate the planet by evolving institutional structures that put our non-kin cooperation on steroids. This evolved from the Christian sanctification of the Roman synthesis: law is human (so not based on revelation); single-spouse marriage with mutual consent (so partnership marriages);⁸ no cousin or other consanguineous marriage; testamentary rights (individual wills). This structure broke up clans and kin-groups in the manorial core of Europe.

This reminds me of a book that I recently read. Nichola Raihani, in The Social Instinct, argues that human cooperation is unlike what we see in insects. She writes,

Social insect colonies often exhibit striking similarities with multicellular bodies, like yours and mine. In particular, the design features and behaviors of the constituent insect “parts” can only be understood with reference to the higher level of organization: the colony.

Her point is that we should not think of insects within a colony as separate individuals. It is the colony that is the individual, and each insect is instead just a part.

From that perspective, humans are the only species that has figured out a way for individuals to cooperate extensively. As Warby points out, the institutions that we developed are very important in fostering this cooperation.

Steve Stewart-Williams writes,

we’re fairly terrible folk economists. If we were to make a list of all our everyday intuitions about economic matters, and then a separate list of economists’ views on the same topics, we’d find almost no overlap between the two lists.

I’m quite confident about this, because that’s roughly what the economists Amit Bhattacharjee and Jason Dana did in a fascinating recent paper titled “Lay Economic Reasoning: An Integrative Review and Call to Action,” published in the journal Consumer Psychology Review. Bhattacharjee and Dana make a persuasive case that laypeople’s views on economic questions routinely part company with those of the experts, and thus that folk economics - unlike folk physics, biology, and psychology - is systematically misguided.

…topics covered include the benefits of immigration, the problems with buying local, the fairness of CEO pay, the effects of markets on the environment, and criticisms of the degrowth movement.

Bryan Caplan is referenced in the paper.

substacks referenced above:

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The Worst Economists in the World

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The Progressive Revolt Against Equality: I

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Abigail Shrier versus the Perfect Rhetorical Fortress