Links to Consider, 6/4

Racket interviews Jonathan Haidt; Tim DeRoche presents my public choice model; Peter Gray on learning; William Galston on resentment and politics

I recommend this interview of Jonathan Haidt. I could include many excerpts, but I’ll just pick one.

the great majority of us in the heterodox space used to be Democrats, libertarians, centrists. And when you critique a problem on your side, the result is not often gratitude. It’s usually that you’re banished. And that’s what happened to me. I shouldn’t say banished, I’ve not been banished, but I am frequently criticized by people on the left who have not read my books and will not read them. That’s been a surprising thing. There’s been no real critique of me from the left because it seems that purity laws seem to prevent activists on the left from actually reading anything I’ve written. So, they say bad things about me, but I’m still waiting for a critique of the common American mind. Nobody has actually even written an essay saying why we’re wrong.

I can tell you from an experience I had a few years ago that the social justice activists really have him coded as right wing and unredeemable.¹

Tim DeRoche writes,

What is Kling’s theory? In key sectors of the economy, he says, the US government has been, first, restricting supply and, second, subsidising demand. The effect of both is to drive prices higher. And higher. And higher.

Peter Gray writes,

Real learning (that is, learning something worth learning) is not passive absorption of information in such a way that all you can do with it is parrot it back. It is always an active process that requires thought and initiative on the part of the learner. Such learning is always a creative act of discovery. Events that the learner experiences—including sometimes words presented by a teacher—are stimuli that can help, as clues to the discovery, but those aren’t what produce the discovery. The learner produces it.

Are you motivated to apply what you are taught? If you take French in school, you may be motivated to pass a test. But if you spend time in France, you will be more motivated to apply what you learn.

William Galston writes,

History doesn't end. History has no side. And it doesn't end, it has no side, because something fundamental does not change, and that is us. And if we inspect ourselves honestly, we will see that some of these dark passions, this sense of resentment, we can all feel in certain situations where we think we've received less than our due, where some people have taken advantage of the situation, taken advantage of us, et cetera. In small but telling ways, we can find these seeds in ourselves, and we have to ask ourselves, if we were in less fortunate situations than we are, how would we feel, how would we act? Would we be vulnerable to these sorts of appeals to the dark passions that politicians throughout history have always been adept at? 

…There is no way that any policy in a large democracy can make all of the people or all the groups happy all of the time, but a certain awareness of the balance of gains and losses among different parts of the society is required. And if people get the sense that they simply don't matter, they're not visible, they're not being heard, their interests are not being taken into account, the likelihood that the dark passions will be mobilizable by unscrupulous leaders rises astronomically.

Conservatives will tell you that this awareness of the “dark passions” in all of us is essential wisdom. Galston is a liberal Democrat, but in this sense he is conservative.

substacks referenced above: @

William Galston on 2024 and Trump's Conviction

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#42. Nothing Worth Learning Can be Taught

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Substack Q&A: Jonathan Haidt's "Anxious Generation"

1. This was at an event where Cato invites a bunch of teachers to come to DC at Cato’s expense and participate in a program there. I was the leader of a breakout session the day after Haidt gave a talk on Zoom. I started my session by saying that what he said was similar to what I would say. One of the teachers said loudly, “I hope not.” I spent the entire session listening to them denounce Haidt. It was not the sort of criticism that you or I would make. It was social justice language impugning his motives for defending free speech and other liberal values. Listening to the teachers was a painful and disturbing experience for me. If Haidt is worried about social media’s effect on kids, this made me worried about K-12 education.