Links to Consider, 7/21

Rob Henderson on polarization and communication; John Cochrane and Noah Smith on climate industrial policy; Michael Lind on elites; Lauren Hall and me on Generations

Rob Henderson writes,

The comparative psychologist Michael Tomasello has suggested that people cannot communicate properly without “shared intentionality.” Communication did not evolve to negotiate with people we believe want to hurt us. It evolved to share and exchange useful information with individuals who share our goals, desires, ends, etc. We can only effectively communicate with others if we believe they share the same goals as us. The increasing political polarization and associated breakdown of communication across political lines in the Western world is one indicator that this kind of common ground no longer exists. Based on Tomasello’s view, communication is literally not possible when both sides believe the other has different goals than themselves.

In TLP terms, a conservative cannot communicate with others if he believes that they do not have a goal of preserving civilization. A progressive cannot communicate with others if he believes that they do not have the goal of eliminating oppression. A libertarian cannot communicate with others if he believes that they do not have a goal of protecting individual liberty.

John Cochrane writes,

A total ban on gas power, a forced move to huge cars with huge batteries, and no clear quantitative understanding that this actually saves any carbon at all, let alone the other environmental consequences of massively increasing resource extraction, will obviously end badly. Freeman says "they're coming for your cars." They may, but we are still a democracy. More likely, this will join corn ethanol, switchgrass, high speed trains, urban mass transit, and a hundred other enthusiasms in a pile of eternal subsidies while the chattering classes move on to the next great enthusiasm.  The sad effect of this is that slow diffusion of sensible electric cars may be stalled, along with development of the technology--whatever it is--that will eventually win out 20 or 30 years from now. 

Noah Smith takes the opposite view.

Interestingly, the biggest slice of this accelerated emissions reduction comes from the decarbonization of the power sector — not from the shift to electric vehicles. That’s probably because the initial buildout of the EV fleet will consume a lot of carbon. But the long-term impacts of the switch to EVs could still be the IRA’s most significant achievement after 2035.

It just goes to show that when the U.S. government decides to act, we can do big things, both for consumers and for the environment.

I share the grumpy position. I have described our current economic regime as “doing less with more.” Substituting expensive domestic production for cheaper foreign goods. Substituting costly and less reliable energy for fossil fuels. I speculate that over the next five to ten years, the productivity losses from our new industrial policy will be sufficient to more than offset the gains from AI.

Michael Lind writes,

Those who manage to squeeze through the stem of a few prestigious colleges and universities in their youth can then branch out to fill leadership positions in almost every vocation, including the arts, outside of the military and the clergy.

He contrasts this with

the siloed career with internal upward mobility and little or no lateral mobility at higher stages

…Today, sadly, America is becoming a society with lessening vertical mobility and increasing lateral mobility at the top

Yuval Levin has written about this, also. When different realms have different hierarchies, their values can diverge. When every realm elevates people with the same background, you get a monoculture.

I recently discussed Jean Twenge’s Generations with Lauren Hall. She pointed out the significance of pessimism among young people.

confirmed some some patterns that I've seen among college students and just in conversations I've had with both

05:37

Millennials which is my generation and gen Z which is the generation I'm teaching right now um is this that there's a deep and probably not rational pessimism in in these generations and I thought that was really interesting in the section on Millennials she points out that Millennials have very very negative views about the economic their economic prospects despite the fact that they actually have better on average or at least as good economic prospects as the generation before but you see this binary all the time particularly on social media about um the Millennials claiming that uh you know they can't buy a house for example and we actually look at the data and housing prices and housing access is actually about the same as it was before and the same thing is very much true among gen Z when I teach college students today what strikes me from about them is just a deep pessimism about where we are right now on social justice on the economy on a range of other issues and um and a lot of that pessimism is just not supported by the data

They think that capitalism has failed, America has failed, racism and sexism are worse than ever, etc. Later in the episode we return to this, and I try to suggest that young people may be projecting their personal psychological problems onto the society at large (I did not say this as succinctly).

I recommend this one more than other recent podcasts where I have appeared.

Substacks referenced above:

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At least five interesting things for the middle of your week (#6)

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Jordan Peterson's Personality Lectures—Reaction to Episode 1