Right. I'm very familiar with all that - Loury's been trying to sell this nonsense for years - you may have noticed it hasn't gone anywhere, because it's not worthy of getting anywhere.
This is all pretty embarrassing on Rajiv's part in my opinion, and tellingly so. I wasn't asking him to do anything hard, just stop "arguing from famous n…
Right. I'm very familiar with all that - Loury's been trying to sell this nonsense for years - you may have noticed it hasn't gone anywhere, because it's not worthy of getting anywhere.
This is all pretty embarrassing on Rajiv's part in my opinion, and tellingly so. I wasn't asking him to do anything hard, just stop "arguing from famous name" and lay out the idea in plain language.
Here, let me do it for Rajiv. "When you see a racial disparity, in your effort to explain that disparity, only look for non-genetic explanations."
This is the intellectual equivalent of "the axiom of Calvinball" - "Oh, you say I'm losing because down on points? How about I change the normal rules and three-point shots count as zero? Now, I'm winning!"
If you don't believe me, here is Loury in his own words, "Anti-essentialism is a related notion, and I'm saying, "There's inequality between these racial groups." And one way to account for it would just be to say that they are different, that some people came from Africa, some people came from Northern Europe, some people came from Northeast Asia. These populations are essentially different, different in their genetic makeup in ways that bear on social outcomes. And while that could be true, it's a scientific claim, it's a scientific claim, for the sake of my argument, I was assuming that it was not true. And I'm getting criticized for making that assumption by some developmental and psychologists who study the heritability of human intelligence, because they want to question whether or not the claim is true. I'm not addressing the biology of race, I'm saying for the sake of my argument, I'm going to try to explain racial inequality without reference to essential disparity."
What he's saying is, I'm not making the kind of argument that qualifies as a reliable argument about empirical reality, cause it might go into inconvenient or uncomfortable truth territory. I'm just gonna avoid that whole badland minefield and restrict myself solely to the pleasant and popular meadows of pretty lies. He isn't fooling anybody who doesn't already really want to go along with this nonsense. For a so-called "intellectual", this kind of thing is frankly ridiculous.
Loury was getting criticized because he was taking a whole set of strongly-evidenced and compelling explanations completely off the table because ... uh ... reasons. Cause if you disagree with my special-case argument rules, you're a bad person. When people asked him in what other realm of empirical inquiry does anyone ever apply such special axioms or rules, he couldn't come up with anything, because, duh, that's not how things work.
I think, charitably, Loury's stance is perfectly concordant with addressing what (to him) may seem maddening - that blacks appear to be going in retrograde since the Great Society actions, and what can be done about that.
Just writ small, it must be crazymaking to compare black intellectuals of the past - with those that are most celebrated today. Of course, this phenomenon of intellectual prestige becoming a sort of oxymoron is hardly limited to blacks, much as it may be something that people who read wordy substacks may ignore.
No, his stance is not at all concordant with that concern, let alone 'perfectly'. You're not being 'charitable' in choosing among a set of plausible interpretations of his words, you are acting like his defense attorney, making up arguments he never thought of himself and reasons that never motivated his actions.
Look, I don't know why anyone feels it necessary to make up these defenses for elite public intellectuals that they never made themselves, -for- themselves, when one might assume they should be perfectly capable of doing so.
But, for the sake of argument, let's dive into the multiverse and imagine parallel dimension Loury-2, hovering around in a robotic recliner and sucking down a milkshake while traveling through space with WALL-E on humanity evacuation vessel "The Axiom".
Loury-2 *could* say, "Ok, I am *not* actually talking about the big disparities between the groups. Those - like most things in human affairs - are caused by some combination of Nature and Nurture, and Nature definitely plays a big, important role. Those who deny the contribution of Nature to those differences are just wrong. It's not that I'm "not willing to go there" or "not gonna look at that", that would be ridiculous. As a courageous and brave explorer for truth wherever it may lead, I am perfectly willing to look ugly truths square in the face and call them facts regardless of what society may prefer to believe. No, I am only talking about the *part* of those differences which we can say with high confidence is caused almost exclusively by Nurture, per my rigorous argument that I can demonstrate from scientific, empirical data. Now, this is only important and actionable in those few cases when Nurture (or 'environment', or 'culture' or however you want to say it) is definitely much more important than Nature in explaining some big difference, because only then would a disparity reveal itself to be at least theoretically avoidable or amenable, and only then would it make much sense to call for political action, state regulation, intervention, and redistribution or major changes in environment and culture, as something that would have a major impact in narrowing those disparities.
For example, there has recently been a big uptick in reckless driving-related fatalities among young black American males. It is not plausible that today's YBAM are significantly genetically distinct, as a group, on average, from those of just a few years ago, or from similar subpopulations in other countries, and so here is a big change in behaviors and outcomes that also expanded the disparity in outcomes between that group and other subpopulations, that we can say with confidence is NOT due to nature and has mostly to do with some kind of big change in nurture, the environment, culture, law enforcement's give-a-damn-ness or however you want to say it.
We don't have to think about race and genetics when we ask about the causes of this bad change, and we don't have to think about race and genetics when trying to figure out how to make things better again. These are the very narrow set of sub-areas on the broader controversial topic that are the only ones I'm interested in investigating, because, one would hope, the analysis wouldn't prove to be as controversial and triggering as the rest of the stuff.
But, by the honor of my name of Loury-2, I must confess that I was naïve about the ability to avoid getting snared up in the nest of heated racial controversy, but when the analysis pointed to the cause of "less traffic law enforcement" and then pointed toward the solution of "try more traffic law enforcement, like you used to do a few years ago" - the enforcement had disparate impact, and the usual suspects called it all 'racist' anyway. Man, no matter how hard you try to be careful and nice, you just can't win on this stuff anywhere in the multiverse!
I’m only going by having listened to him speak on his podcast a few times. I imagine he thinks it is entirely possible that government policy has had a dysgenic effect across the board.
It seems you are against focusing on the disparities that aren't racism and aren't genetic, be they environmental, cultural, social, or whatever. WHY? To me this seems the sweet spot, a combination of under-considered and likely to have high potential for a large benefit.
Good grief, you got this completely backwards; did you even read the thing I mentioned about the reckless driving deaths? That is a prime example of a sudden increase in bad things happening disproportionately to YBM because of a non-racist change in policy which could and should be reversed to the also-not-racist former policy. Of course we should look for and act upon those things, duh!
But guess what, we can't, because common sense, fair law enforcement has disparate impact and the usual suspects are going to call it racist and by doing so, successfully oppose it anyway.
It's like saying I'm against gardening which I should recognize is a good, easy, and fun way to get some fresh, tasty produce. Hardly! I am an avid gardener! However, we are currently under Mongol invasion, and it doesn't make sense to plant a garden when it is predictably going to get immediately crushed under the hooves of golden hordes cavalry, just like for each of the last 40 attempts. It is suicidally foolish to indulge in any of these futile distractions while the enemy is at your gates and within them. You need to defeat the Mongols first, there is no alternative. Loury, "As Euclid taught, if we start by assuming there are no Mongols, then ..." No! The problem is the systemic embrace of the claim that reality is such that when one sees disparate impact on protected groups, one should presume that unjust discrimination is to blame. That claim is false, and everything that stems from it is wickedly unjust, and there is no end to possible newly wicked innovations that are variations on that theme that will eventually grow like a cancer to infect and control all human affairs without exception or place of refuge. This is exactly analogous to what occurred with the false tenets of socialism in all "actually existing" communist societies, and with this stuff it's now happening to us. Genghis Khan is right there staring us in the face, and Loury is saying maybe we should focus on what we can do that won't make him try to conquer us. Um, hello, he's a Khan, his business is conquering, and business is good. Especially when people are trying really hard not to do anything that might actually stop him.
You are mostly right about your driving example. But I can't follow your train of thought. I can't see how it fits with what you said before that. I don't know what aspect of all this the Mongols is supposed to be an analogy for. I don't know what you are accusing Loury of. Are we at least agreed he isn't claiming the differences are mostly the result of racism?
Maybe I should try to summarize a little and you tell me what I'm missing. There are lots of likely and possible contributors to unequal outcomes. Without getting too precise or detailed, they include:
- racism at an individual level (maybe discrimination is more relevant)
- systemic racism (ignoring it's precise definition and whether/how it continues today)
- unintended consequences of govt policies
- intelligence (both genetic and losses correlated to poverty)
- motivation-killing assumptions on ability to succeed or self-doubt as a result of being told one can't succeed because of racism.
- self-segregation
- correlations with poverty (ignoring the cause of the poverty)
- single parent
- cultural differences besides anything listed.
I'm not aware that Loury is denying any particular contributor exists. Does he? As I understand it, he want to add another possibility to the list. "That is, would an observer be prepared to consider that the apparent inequality was really an artifact, and not a deep or essentialist feature of the two groups?" Is there a problem with proposing this contributor to inequality?
Imagine you are comparing two historical populations that differ significantly in height, say wealthy Americans in 1850 and Chinese peasants. You say you will consider lots of explanations but you will be anti-hungerism. You will not consider any explanations involving differences in nutrition. You conclude that race is a cause, income is a cause, lots of other things are causes. But if you present your results as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you will be committing a fraud because you left out the most important cause at the beginning. And in so doing, you let in some spurious causes, ironically, like race.
Who within this conversation is dismissing any causes other than you?
Did you read the transcript I linked? In what way does the cause Loury proposes exclude ANY other possibilities?
In your analogy, how is race or income anything more than a correlation? Isn't assuming they are causes without other evidence a totally different problem?
How do you know what is "the most important cause"?
From the transcript, Loury seems to be dismissing possible causes. He very perceptively says,
"That’s a very fine setup to characterize the three different possible explanations: (1) external forces of oppression, (2) internal lack of coordination and development of the cultural nexus to support success, or (3) “there’s something wrong with these people.” And it hymns in the discourse, the fear that you might give credit to the essentialist theory, and the injury, that any entertainment of the idea that Black people are somehow inferior or unfit or somehow in their nature, not able to, you know, accommodate the modern world. There’s a threat to the psyche, to the sense of value. So yes, that’s all true. And I’m an internal man.
He goes on to say that ,"I’m acknowledging that there might be something wrong with Black people." But he is at pains to distinguish himself from "the essentialist out there who would want to use the confession of dysfunction as evidence of intrinsic unfitness". This throws out any genetic explanations, anything like "the average IQ of blacks is a standard deviation below the average IQ of whites." I don't know if that's true but I see it from "race realists". And if it is true, it would explain so much about "the gap" in education and high IQ jobs. I really wish we had good research on this rather than treating it like a third rail that nobody respectable should touch.
There is excellent research on average IQs, although it is not publicized much for reasons you mention. Research on the causes of the gap in average IQs is both more third-raily and less solid - it is hard to establish causation in the best of times - but it does tend to rule out go-to progressive explanations as causes (not enough books in the home, underfunded schools, lead, redlining and so on). As for Loury, it shouldn't surprise anybody that it sticks in his craw to say "we blacks as a group are genetically less intelligent on average and because of that we will not in the foreseeable future be represented on equal footing in most prestigious and/or remunerative roles and occupations". Imagine yourself having had a dumb child and having to admit to yourself (never mind in public) that he's going to flip burgers instead of going to Harvard. Loury's problem is that he can't credibly offer whites to trade whites' shutting up about racial essentialism for blacks' shutting up about racism and external forces of oppression, which if anything have been solidly in the negative territory for decades.
Average IQ - absolutely. I listened to a few YouTube clips and skimmed a couple one-on-one talks of Loury. With Peterson he completely recognizes the impact of G. In another talk he seems to completely dismiss our ability to determine intelligence and I'd argue he dismisses it as a factor, though he really never says the latter explicitly. Anyway, with Peterson they talk about one way intelligence isn't genetic. They agree (mostly Peterson talking) intelligence can be destroyed via malnutrition, lack of stimulation, etc. Your comments miss that the measured IQ differences between groups aren't necessarily genetic, or more likely, might be part genetic and a large component not,
Causation ("success," not IQ) - Right. I know of no research determining how IQ impacts outcome, though there have to be studies corelating IQ with income, wealth or other outcomes. Of course correlation doesn't tell us the cause either.
Agreed racism has been in negative territory. I don't think it is wise to shut up about racism or IQ but it would be nice if proponents of each cause were a little smarter about what and how they do and say.
Perhaps he is more interested in the possible and pragmatic, in both getting us off this path and maintaining an atmosphere of comity.
The sort of pragmatism that led Washington to reverse course, ignore his own ingrained feelings on the matter, from the relationships he was used to, and permit blacks to serve in revolutionary army.
Right. I'm very familiar with all that - Loury's been trying to sell this nonsense for years - you may have noticed it hasn't gone anywhere, because it's not worthy of getting anywhere.
This is all pretty embarrassing on Rajiv's part in my opinion, and tellingly so. I wasn't asking him to do anything hard, just stop "arguing from famous name" and lay out the idea in plain language.
Here, let me do it for Rajiv. "When you see a racial disparity, in your effort to explain that disparity, only look for non-genetic explanations."
This is the intellectual equivalent of "the axiom of Calvinball" - "Oh, you say I'm losing because down on points? How about I change the normal rules and three-point shots count as zero? Now, I'm winning!"
If you don't believe me, here is Loury in his own words, "Anti-essentialism is a related notion, and I'm saying, "There's inequality between these racial groups." And one way to account for it would just be to say that they are different, that some people came from Africa, some people came from Northern Europe, some people came from Northeast Asia. These populations are essentially different, different in their genetic makeup in ways that bear on social outcomes. And while that could be true, it's a scientific claim, it's a scientific claim, for the sake of my argument, I was assuming that it was not true. And I'm getting criticized for making that assumption by some developmental and psychologists who study the heritability of human intelligence, because they want to question whether or not the claim is true. I'm not addressing the biology of race, I'm saying for the sake of my argument, I'm going to try to explain racial inequality without reference to essential disparity."
What he's saying is, I'm not making the kind of argument that qualifies as a reliable argument about empirical reality, cause it might go into inconvenient or uncomfortable truth territory. I'm just gonna avoid that whole badland minefield and restrict myself solely to the pleasant and popular meadows of pretty lies. He isn't fooling anybody who doesn't already really want to go along with this nonsense. For a so-called "intellectual", this kind of thing is frankly ridiculous.
Loury was getting criticized because he was taking a whole set of strongly-evidenced and compelling explanations completely off the table because ... uh ... reasons. Cause if you disagree with my special-case argument rules, you're a bad person. When people asked him in what other realm of empirical inquiry does anyone ever apply such special axioms or rules, he couldn't come up with anything, because, duh, that's not how things work.
I think, charitably, Loury's stance is perfectly concordant with addressing what (to him) may seem maddening - that blacks appear to be going in retrograde since the Great Society actions, and what can be done about that.
Just writ small, it must be crazymaking to compare black intellectuals of the past - with those that are most celebrated today. Of course, this phenomenon of intellectual prestige becoming a sort of oxymoron is hardly limited to blacks, much as it may be something that people who read wordy substacks may ignore.
No, his stance is not at all concordant with that concern, let alone 'perfectly'. You're not being 'charitable' in choosing among a set of plausible interpretations of his words, you are acting like his defense attorney, making up arguments he never thought of himself and reasons that never motivated his actions.
Look, I don't know why anyone feels it necessary to make up these defenses for elite public intellectuals that they never made themselves, -for- themselves, when one might assume they should be perfectly capable of doing so.
But, for the sake of argument, let's dive into the multiverse and imagine parallel dimension Loury-2, hovering around in a robotic recliner and sucking down a milkshake while traveling through space with WALL-E on humanity evacuation vessel "The Axiom".
Loury-2 *could* say, "Ok, I am *not* actually talking about the big disparities between the groups. Those - like most things in human affairs - are caused by some combination of Nature and Nurture, and Nature definitely plays a big, important role. Those who deny the contribution of Nature to those differences are just wrong. It's not that I'm "not willing to go there" or "not gonna look at that", that would be ridiculous. As a courageous and brave explorer for truth wherever it may lead, I am perfectly willing to look ugly truths square in the face and call them facts regardless of what society may prefer to believe. No, I am only talking about the *part* of those differences which we can say with high confidence is caused almost exclusively by Nurture, per my rigorous argument that I can demonstrate from scientific, empirical data. Now, this is only important and actionable in those few cases when Nurture (or 'environment', or 'culture' or however you want to say it) is definitely much more important than Nature in explaining some big difference, because only then would a disparity reveal itself to be at least theoretically avoidable or amenable, and only then would it make much sense to call for political action, state regulation, intervention, and redistribution or major changes in environment and culture, as something that would have a major impact in narrowing those disparities.
For example, there has recently been a big uptick in reckless driving-related fatalities among young black American males. It is not plausible that today's YBAM are significantly genetically distinct, as a group, on average, from those of just a few years ago, or from similar subpopulations in other countries, and so here is a big change in behaviors and outcomes that also expanded the disparity in outcomes between that group and other subpopulations, that we can say with confidence is NOT due to nature and has mostly to do with some kind of big change in nurture, the environment, culture, law enforcement's give-a-damn-ness or however you want to say it.
We don't have to think about race and genetics when we ask about the causes of this bad change, and we don't have to think about race and genetics when trying to figure out how to make things better again. These are the very narrow set of sub-areas on the broader controversial topic that are the only ones I'm interested in investigating, because, one would hope, the analysis wouldn't prove to be as controversial and triggering as the rest of the stuff.
But, by the honor of my name of Loury-2, I must confess that I was naïve about the ability to avoid getting snared up in the nest of heated racial controversy, but when the analysis pointed to the cause of "less traffic law enforcement" and then pointed toward the solution of "try more traffic law enforcement, like you used to do a few years ago" - the enforcement had disparate impact, and the usual suspects called it all 'racist' anyway. Man, no matter how hard you try to be careful and nice, you just can't win on this stuff anywhere in the multiverse!
I’m only going by having listened to him speak on his podcast a few times. I imagine he thinks it is entirely possible that government policy has had a dysgenic effect across the board.
It seems you are against focusing on the disparities that aren't racism and aren't genetic, be they environmental, cultural, social, or whatever. WHY? To me this seems the sweet spot, a combination of under-considered and likely to have high potential for a large benefit.
Good grief, you got this completely backwards; did you even read the thing I mentioned about the reckless driving deaths? That is a prime example of a sudden increase in bad things happening disproportionately to YBM because of a non-racist change in policy which could and should be reversed to the also-not-racist former policy. Of course we should look for and act upon those things, duh!
But guess what, we can't, because common sense, fair law enforcement has disparate impact and the usual suspects are going to call it racist and by doing so, successfully oppose it anyway.
It's like saying I'm against gardening which I should recognize is a good, easy, and fun way to get some fresh, tasty produce. Hardly! I am an avid gardener! However, we are currently under Mongol invasion, and it doesn't make sense to plant a garden when it is predictably going to get immediately crushed under the hooves of golden hordes cavalry, just like for each of the last 40 attempts. It is suicidally foolish to indulge in any of these futile distractions while the enemy is at your gates and within them. You need to defeat the Mongols first, there is no alternative. Loury, "As Euclid taught, if we start by assuming there are no Mongols, then ..." No! The problem is the systemic embrace of the claim that reality is such that when one sees disparate impact on protected groups, one should presume that unjust discrimination is to blame. That claim is false, and everything that stems from it is wickedly unjust, and there is no end to possible newly wicked innovations that are variations on that theme that will eventually grow like a cancer to infect and control all human affairs without exception or place of refuge. This is exactly analogous to what occurred with the false tenets of socialism in all "actually existing" communist societies, and with this stuff it's now happening to us. Genghis Khan is right there staring us in the face, and Loury is saying maybe we should focus on what we can do that won't make him try to conquer us. Um, hello, he's a Khan, his business is conquering, and business is good. Especially when people are trying really hard not to do anything that might actually stop him.
You are mostly right about your driving example. But I can't follow your train of thought. I can't see how it fits with what you said before that. I don't know what aspect of all this the Mongols is supposed to be an analogy for. I don't know what you are accusing Loury of. Are we at least agreed he isn't claiming the differences are mostly the result of racism?
Maybe I should try to summarize a little and you tell me what I'm missing. There are lots of likely and possible contributors to unequal outcomes. Without getting too precise or detailed, they include:
- racism at an individual level (maybe discrimination is more relevant)
- systemic racism (ignoring it's precise definition and whether/how it continues today)
- unintended consequences of govt policies
- intelligence (both genetic and losses correlated to poverty)
- motivation-killing assumptions on ability to succeed or self-doubt as a result of being told one can't succeed because of racism.
- self-segregation
- correlations with poverty (ignoring the cause of the poverty)
- single parent
- cultural differences besides anything listed.
I'm not aware that Loury is denying any particular contributor exists. Does he? As I understand it, he want to add another possibility to the list. "That is, would an observer be prepared to consider that the apparent inequality was really an artifact, and not a deep or essentialist feature of the two groups?" Is there a problem with proposing this contributor to inequality?
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/a-contentious-conversation-on-systemic-racism-in-america/
Imagine you are comparing two historical populations that differ significantly in height, say wealthy Americans in 1850 and Chinese peasants. You say you will consider lots of explanations but you will be anti-hungerism. You will not consider any explanations involving differences in nutrition. You conclude that race is a cause, income is a cause, lots of other things are causes. But if you present your results as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you will be committing a fraud because you left out the most important cause at the beginning. And in so doing, you let in some spurious causes, ironically, like race.
Who within this conversation is dismissing any causes other than you?
Did you read the transcript I linked? In what way does the cause Loury proposes exclude ANY other possibilities?
In your analogy, how is race or income anything more than a correlation? Isn't assuming they are causes without other evidence a totally different problem?
How do you know what is "the most important cause"?
From the transcript, Loury seems to be dismissing possible causes. He very perceptively says,
"That’s a very fine setup to characterize the three different possible explanations: (1) external forces of oppression, (2) internal lack of coordination and development of the cultural nexus to support success, or (3) “there’s something wrong with these people.” And it hymns in the discourse, the fear that you might give credit to the essentialist theory, and the injury, that any entertainment of the idea that Black people are somehow inferior or unfit or somehow in their nature, not able to, you know, accommodate the modern world. There’s a threat to the psyche, to the sense of value. So yes, that’s all true. And I’m an internal man.
He goes on to say that ,"I’m acknowledging that there might be something wrong with Black people." But he is at pains to distinguish himself from "the essentialist out there who would want to use the confession of dysfunction as evidence of intrinsic unfitness". This throws out any genetic explanations, anything like "the average IQ of blacks is a standard deviation below the average IQ of whites." I don't know if that's true but I see it from "race realists". And if it is true, it would explain so much about "the gap" in education and high IQ jobs. I really wish we had good research on this rather than treating it like a third rail that nobody respectable should touch.
There is excellent research on average IQs, although it is not publicized much for reasons you mention. Research on the causes of the gap in average IQs is both more third-raily and less solid - it is hard to establish causation in the best of times - but it does tend to rule out go-to progressive explanations as causes (not enough books in the home, underfunded schools, lead, redlining and so on). As for Loury, it shouldn't surprise anybody that it sticks in his craw to say "we blacks as a group are genetically less intelligent on average and because of that we will not in the foreseeable future be represented on equal footing in most prestigious and/or remunerative roles and occupations". Imagine yourself having had a dumb child and having to admit to yourself (never mind in public) that he's going to flip burgers instead of going to Harvard. Loury's problem is that he can't credibly offer whites to trade whites' shutting up about racial essentialism for blacks' shutting up about racism and external forces of oppression, which if anything have been solidly in the negative territory for decades.
Average IQ - absolutely. I listened to a few YouTube clips and skimmed a couple one-on-one talks of Loury. With Peterson he completely recognizes the impact of G. In another talk he seems to completely dismiss our ability to determine intelligence and I'd argue he dismisses it as a factor, though he really never says the latter explicitly. Anyway, with Peterson they talk about one way intelligence isn't genetic. They agree (mostly Peterson talking) intelligence can be destroyed via malnutrition, lack of stimulation, etc. Your comments miss that the measured IQ differences between groups aren't necessarily genetic, or more likely, might be part genetic and a large component not,
Causation ("success," not IQ) - Right. I know of no research determining how IQ impacts outcome, though there have to be studies corelating IQ with income, wealth or other outcomes. Of course correlation doesn't tell us the cause either.
Agreed racism has been in negative territory. I don't think it is wise to shut up about racism or IQ but it would be nice if proponents of each cause were a little smarter about what and how they do and say.
Perhaps he is more interested in the possible and pragmatic, in both getting us off this path and maintaining an atmosphere of comity.
The sort of pragmatism that led Washington to reverse course, ignore his own ingrained feelings on the matter, from the relationships he was used to, and permit blacks to serve in revolutionary army.
Also, my assumption is I’ve only ever heard/read/glanced at - about 5% of any one person’s views.