which should be unsurpising given the FBI statistics on gun homicides. While I think Woodard is being deliberately deceptive- basically lying by omission- I have encountered the fact that a lot of white people outside the South don't truly grasp how many African-Americans live in the South. I am often met by disbelief when I tell them that the states of the deep South, VA, NC, SC, GA, AL, MS, LA have between 22%-38% African- American population. The only state that is an outlier in this regard, what is considered an "Northern State" with such a large fraction of African Americans, is Maryland at 32%.
In my own state, Tennessee, it is 17% African-American. When you examine the FBI crime data on non-negligent homicides for 2016- almost all of the murders occur in the 5 biggest cities of Tennessee- Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Clarksville. My own town of Oak Ridge has between 0 and 1 murders most years, with the occasional 50% spike to 2. A large majority of the jurisdictions in Tennessee have zero murders every year. I imagine this is true in all the states of the US. Murders are highly concentrated in the most urbanized areas of every state.
I grew up not that far from Newark, Paterson, and Hackensack NJ that are all high black % and I think the first time I really met a black person was in high school. Of the 100 people in our high school class we had one black kid.
The North is VERY segregated. Much more so than the south. It costs money to segregate.
I remember an analysis that you can predict the homicide rate in cities based on the proportion of black residents with very high accuracy, something like r=0.8 or 0.9.
“ It would create loyalty through a sort of sunk cost fallacy.”
This doesn’t seem right to me. Having already gone through a hazing may create a sunk cost mentality.
But I think the point is that ex ante the high cost of joining has a selection effect. While the high cost of joining may on margin compel people to remain, I think the bigger effect is that it selects out—before they even make an attempt—those people who don’t have the commitment or wherewithal to go through it in the first place. Special forces selection programs would be a good example.
Good point. I'll add another: a second goal of hazing is to create a shared experience for the people going through it that serves to bind them together. I did not join a fraternity in college, but I had a couple friends who did, and I remember them saying that the hellishness of being a "pledge" created a kind of bond between the guys who joined at the same time precisely because they were all suffering together.
This seems to match my experience as well. My first job out of college was at a CPA firm, and suffering through tax season together made everyone feel like part of a special team there, and so to do this day I probably keep in touch with more people from that little company I worked for 12 years ago than all the other people I've worked with since then combined.
Disappointing about Woodard. I quite liked his American Nations, to the point of considering assigning a chapter to my students. Now I regard it with more suspicion, though I suppose this could be a case of an intellectual being fine until they talk about the sacred and the taboo.
A much better and more useful MR link, that highlights a practice that would do more to improve American culture (including taking guns off the street) than anything else:
"It would create loyalty through a sort of sunk cost fallacy." For some reason this made me immediately think of Zappos program cash to quit. Program seems to be more overcoming loss aversion, not sure how this compares and links up to sunk cost psychologically exactly. A carrots for buy in and loyalty instead of a stick like hazing. It also made me think instead of the US government charging people to renounce their citizenship we should be offering to pay people to leave.
"The argument is that hazing creates loyalty and selects for loyalty. It would create loyalty through a sort of sunk cost fallacy. “I suffered so much to get here, it must be worth it.” "
While it's certainly possible hazing would sometimes have a positive effect, it seems to me it has way more downsides:
- If the benefit comes through sunk cost, it seems like that might not be selecting for loyalty as much as flawed recruits, not that bright and capable can't also fall victim to sunk cost fallacy.
- It seems more likely the hazers are doing it to because they are jerks, or at least behaving like jerks. That doesn't seem particularly good for a group.
- I'd argue the short term hazing is less effective than something longer term like like giving up alcohol or dancing that Haidt wrote about in his book Righteous Mind.
- Just because difficult requirements correlates or even contributes to group life span doesn't mean it is good for the group.
- I'm doubtful most sports teams or militaries need hazing to assure their life span.
- Military often does something akin to hazing to break down recruits under difficult and stressful conditions so they bond and are more willing to die for each other. That doesn't seem like the same thing as hazing.
With some GMU libertarians when they post something I think is wrong I still believe that they believe it, they aren't purposely lying. With Cowan I just get a slimy feeling all around that he thinks being a Green Grocer makes him sophisticated.
Rozado. Of course no other ex-President has run for office on a platform of having failed to overthrow the government. :) But it would be nice if he just faded away.
Why the waiving away of suicides? It's a plague that does real harm, and especially to men. And guns make it much easier.
I can only guess it's the cold yet conscientious I-gots-mine attitude of alot on the right. Suicide is a "you" problem, but black criminality...well, actually, that's a "you (guys over there)" problem too, seeing as how many of the red tribe gun defenders don't live in Baltimore or Chicago.
So then I guess it's a kind of symbolic trigger, so to speak. Seeing black criminality invokes a law and order adventure, whereas suicide is just a sad sack thing more appropriate for women's "helping profession" sensibilities.
> Why the waiving away of suicides? It's a plague that does real harm, and especially to men. And guns make it much easier.
No one is "waiving away" anything, but it's an established pattern of gun control advocates to equivocate between gun deaths and gun homicides in order to stoke fears of public safety.
Furthermore, the only way to solve any problem is to have as specific of an understanding of it's causes as possible. Knowing that most gun deaths in the US are a combination of male suicides and inner-city gang violence gives us more angles for attacking these problems.
> I can only guess it's the cold yet conscientious I-gots-mine attitude of alot on the right.
Why should I surrender my natural right to self-defense (including access to effective means of that defense) because a relative minority of the population fail to exercise that right responsibly?
> Seeing black criminality invokes a law and order adventure
Most black people living in these high crime areas want more policing.
> whereas suicide is just a sad sack thing more appropriate for women's "helping profession" sensibilities.
I actually lost a friend to this many years ago. Indeed, it is probably much more likely in general for someone who is pro gun rights to have lost someone in this way. Do not assume we don't care. We just don't like ham-fisted attempts to solve a problem from people who are generally more motivated by self-righteousness than by actual empathy.
If you map gun homicides across the US, it will look like this map:
https://www.energyjustice.net/justice/index.php?gsLayer=black&gclid=Cj0KCQjwr82iBhCuARIsAO0EAZxXVqPvi-1jHjLhPGng1wHrRKZlt2Lgw3ZdG0GU1fhNRKBXFji8N90aAtPtEALw_wcB
which should be unsurpising given the FBI statistics on gun homicides. While I think Woodard is being deliberately deceptive- basically lying by omission- I have encountered the fact that a lot of white people outside the South don't truly grasp how many African-Americans live in the South. I am often met by disbelief when I tell them that the states of the deep South, VA, NC, SC, GA, AL, MS, LA have between 22%-38% African- American population. The only state that is an outlier in this regard, what is considered an "Northern State" with such a large fraction of African Americans, is Maryland at 32%.
In my own state, Tennessee, it is 17% African-American. When you examine the FBI crime data on non-negligent homicides for 2016- almost all of the murders occur in the 5 biggest cities of Tennessee- Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Clarksville. My own town of Oak Ridge has between 0 and 1 murders most years, with the occasional 50% spike to 2. A large majority of the jurisdictions in Tennessee have zero murders every year. I imagine this is true in all the states of the US. Murders are highly concentrated in the most urbanized areas of every state.
I grew up not that far from Newark, Paterson, and Hackensack NJ that are all high black % and I think the first time I really met a black person was in high school. Of the 100 people in our high school class we had one black kid.
The North is VERY segregated. Much more so than the south. It costs money to segregate.
I remember an analysis that you can predict the homicide rate in cities based on the proportion of black residents with very high accuracy, something like r=0.8 or 0.9.
“ It would create loyalty through a sort of sunk cost fallacy.”
This doesn’t seem right to me. Having already gone through a hazing may create a sunk cost mentality.
But I think the point is that ex ante the high cost of joining has a selection effect. While the high cost of joining may on margin compel people to remain, I think the bigger effect is that it selects out—before they even make an attempt—those people who don’t have the commitment or wherewithal to go through it in the first place. Special forces selection programs would be a good example.
Good point. I'll add another: a second goal of hazing is to create a shared experience for the people going through it that serves to bind them together. I did not join a fraternity in college, but I had a couple friends who did, and I remember them saying that the hellishness of being a "pledge" created a kind of bond between the guys who joined at the same time precisely because they were all suffering together.
This seems to match my experience as well. My first job out of college was at a CPA firm, and suffering through tax season together made everyone feel like part of a special team there, and so to do this day I probably keep in touch with more people from that little company I worked for 12 years ago than all the other people I've worked with since then combined.
Disappointing about Woodard. I quite liked his American Nations, to the point of considering assigning a chapter to my students. Now I regard it with more suspicion, though I suppose this could be a case of an intellectual being fine until they talk about the sacred and the taboo.
I liked his book, also.
A much better and more useful MR link, that highlights a practice that would do more to improve American culture (including taking guns off the street) than anything else:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/04/the-two-parent-privilege.html
"It would create loyalty through a sort of sunk cost fallacy." For some reason this made me immediately think of Zappos program cash to quit. Program seems to be more overcoming loss aversion, not sure how this compares and links up to sunk cost psychologically exactly. A carrots for buy in and loyalty instead of a stick like hazing. It also made me think instead of the US government charging people to renounce their citizenship we should be offering to pay people to leave.
"The argument is that hazing creates loyalty and selects for loyalty. It would create loyalty through a sort of sunk cost fallacy. “I suffered so much to get here, it must be worth it.” "
While it's certainly possible hazing would sometimes have a positive effect, it seems to me it has way more downsides:
- If the benefit comes through sunk cost, it seems like that might not be selecting for loyalty as much as flawed recruits, not that bright and capable can't also fall victim to sunk cost fallacy.
- It seems more likely the hazers are doing it to because they are jerks, or at least behaving like jerks. That doesn't seem particularly good for a group.
- I'd argue the short term hazing is less effective than something longer term like like giving up alcohol or dancing that Haidt wrote about in his book Righteous Mind.
- Just because difficult requirements correlates or even contributes to group life span doesn't mean it is good for the group.
- I'm doubtful most sports teams or militaries need hazing to assure their life span.
- Military often does something akin to hazing to break down recruits under difficult and stressful conditions so they bond and are more willing to die for each other. That doesn't seem like the same thing as hazing.
With some GMU libertarians when they post something I think is wrong I still believe that they believe it, they aren't purposely lying. With Cowan I just get a slimy feeling all around that he thinks being a Green Grocer makes him sophisticated.
Is that what Cowen means by context being scarce?
Rozado. Of course no other ex-President has run for office on a platform of having failed to overthrow the government. :) But it would be nice if he just faded away.
Twenge: Another cost of the decade long disaster of the Bernanke-Yellen Fed.
Why the waiving away of suicides? It's a plague that does real harm, and especially to men. And guns make it much easier.
I can only guess it's the cold yet conscientious I-gots-mine attitude of alot on the right. Suicide is a "you" problem, but black criminality...well, actually, that's a "you (guys over there)" problem too, seeing as how many of the red tribe gun defenders don't live in Baltimore or Chicago.
So then I guess it's a kind of symbolic trigger, so to speak. Seeing black criminality invokes a law and order adventure, whereas suicide is just a sad sack thing more appropriate for women's "helping profession" sensibilities.
> Why the waiving away of suicides? It's a plague that does real harm, and especially to men. And guns make it much easier.
No one is "waiving away" anything, but it's an established pattern of gun control advocates to equivocate between gun deaths and gun homicides in order to stoke fears of public safety.
Furthermore, the only way to solve any problem is to have as specific of an understanding of it's causes as possible. Knowing that most gun deaths in the US are a combination of male suicides and inner-city gang violence gives us more angles for attacking these problems.
> I can only guess it's the cold yet conscientious I-gots-mine attitude of alot on the right.
Why should I surrender my natural right to self-defense (including access to effective means of that defense) because a relative minority of the population fail to exercise that right responsibly?
> Seeing black criminality invokes a law and order adventure
Most black people living in these high crime areas want more policing.
> whereas suicide is just a sad sack thing more appropriate for women's "helping profession" sensibilities.
I actually lost a friend to this many years ago. Indeed, it is probably much more likely in general for someone who is pro gun rights to have lost someone in this way. Do not assume we don't care. We just don't like ham-fisted attempts to solve a problem from people who are generally more motivated by self-righteousness than by actual empathy.
Presumably you oppose all laws permitting Euthanasia in any form whatsoever?
Terri Shiavo has a good reason to kill herself. The average middle-aged white man, not so much.