"One might have thought that professors who care about pediatric suicides and professors who care about LGBTQ students would be interested in policy proposals that increase access to private schools."
Well, inclusivity is their thing, and public schools are more inclusive. The above is an unfortunate thing they're certainly working on, as we all know.
The Substack post kind of hit me over the head. Two books have forever altered my thoughts on the current mischief: The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer, and The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz.
They describe with great insight the tyranny of the minority dominating the majority.
The epigram from The Captive Mind, even though I had to look it up, still sticks in my head.
“An old Jew of Galicia”
When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever say he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.
Re: Ed West, that reminds me of Scott Alexander's observations about faux dissent, where you get away with being a dissident in the USSR by going around hectoring everyone for not being Stalinist enough. The state gets to pretend it allows for political opposition or pluralism, while you get to signal your loyalty and commitment to Stalinism and angle for a job somewhere down the line.
"One might have thought that professors who care about pediatric suicides and professors who care about LGBTQ students would be interested in policy proposals that increase access to private schools."
To me, your "solution" sounds like something a liberal would propose. It seems to ignore secondary affects which could be larger.
The difference is a correlation.
Maybe it has nothing to do with schools, just which students attend them. Maybe the students offing themselves in public schools will do it at private schools.
Maybe it would increase suicide at private schools.
Maybe it would increase suicide at public schools.
The incidence of birth defects in the offspring of cousin marriage probably depends a great deal on how common cousin marriage is in the society. In populations where cousin marriage is rare, we'd expect a higher rate of such defects than in societies in which such marriage is common.
The frequency of deleterious genes in a population of organisms depends on two major factors: the rate at which mutation creates new such genes, which we can assume is constant whatever the population's sexual system; and the rate at which those genes are removed, owing to the death or reproductive disability of homozygotes. At equilibrium, those two rates are equal.
But the frequency of those genes depends heavily on the sexual system. If the organism regularly mates with close relatives (the extreme case being self-fertilization), significantly deleterious recessive alleles are quickly removed, and their frequency in the whole population is low. At the other extreme, if there's random mating within a very large population, the frequency of harmful recessives can be quite high. In either case, though, the rate of birth defects within the population is the same—enough to offset the production of new deleterious alleles by mutation.
So the problem with marriage to cousins or other close relatives arises when it occurs within a society where such marriages don't generally occur. Such a society would have a fairly high frequency of harmful recessives, so there'd be a fairly high likelihood that the two cousins would share one; and if they do, there's a one in four chance that any one of their offspring would be homozygous for that allele.
But if cousin or even sib mating were the usual practice in the society, the frequency of deleterious recessives would be low, so it'd be much less likely that the partners would share such an allele.
I'm trying to reconcile what you say with the Amish, known for birth defects that entail reproductive disability. I guess I might be wrongly inferring that the word "cousin" means any relative in a small population rather than a true first cousin. Is "cousin" really key?
I think Hroswitha means any person with a "degree of genetic relatedness" greater than or equal to a cousin's "degree of genetic relatedness", which is 12.5 %. You are related 50% to a parent, the parent is related 50% to a sibling and that sibling is related 50% to their offspring--so 0.5 X 0.5 X 0.5 = 0.125.
Re: "That might be the true value of going to college. It immerses you in the environment of the dominant social class."
College also immerses you in the environment of the professoriate, who differ in peculiar, systematic ways from corporate and government elites. Casual observation suggests that students (a) are quick to tell professors what the latter want to hear on exams, but (b) are nonetheless hard to brainwash.
At colleges that have (highly?) selective admissions, selection effects are the real treatment effect. Students, especially at residential campuses, pick up much more from one another than from professors.
What is the environment of the would-be dominant social class?:
• Communal residence/dining
• Agonistic extracurriculars
• Diffuse status anxiety
• High prevalence of mood drugs (especially the disinhibition drug, alcohol; and performance drugs)
• A culture of impossibly broad resume building (2 majors, a minor, a sport, community service off campus, 3 clubs etc etc etc).
The tendency to check all the breadth boxes at the expense of depth fits Michael Spence's signaling model of higher educational credentials.
But there are exceptions where narrow depth is the whole experience: D1 big-time sports athletes; computer science/engineering majors at Ivy+ universities.
"One might have thought that professors who care about pediatric suicides and professors who care about LGBTQ students would be interested in policy proposals that increase access to private schools."
Well, inclusivity is their thing, and public schools are more inclusive. The above is an unfortunate thing they're certainly working on, as we all know.
The Substack post kind of hit me over the head. Two books have forever altered my thoughts on the current mischief: The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer, and The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz.
They describe with great insight the tyranny of the minority dominating the majority.
The epigram from The Captive Mind, even though I had to look it up, still sticks in my head.
“An old Jew of Galicia”
When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever say he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.
Re: Ed West, that reminds me of Scott Alexander's observations about faux dissent, where you get away with being a dissident in the USSR by going around hectoring everyone for not being Stalinist enough. The state gets to pretend it allows for political opposition or pluralism, while you get to signal your loyalty and commitment to Stalinism and angle for a job somewhere down the line.
Called "artificial negativity" by Marxists
"One might have thought that professors who care about pediatric suicides and professors who care about LGBTQ students would be interested in policy proposals that increase access to private schools."
To me, your "solution" sounds like something a liberal would propose. It seems to ignore secondary affects which could be larger.
The difference is a correlation.
Maybe it has nothing to do with schools, just which students attend them. Maybe the students offing themselves in public schools will do it at private schools.
Maybe it would increase suicide at private schools.
Maybe it would increase suicide at public schools.
The incidence of birth defects in the offspring of cousin marriage probably depends a great deal on how common cousin marriage is in the society. In populations where cousin marriage is rare, we'd expect a higher rate of such defects than in societies in which such marriage is common.
The frequency of deleterious genes in a population of organisms depends on two major factors: the rate at which mutation creates new such genes, which we can assume is constant whatever the population's sexual system; and the rate at which those genes are removed, owing to the death or reproductive disability of homozygotes. At equilibrium, those two rates are equal.
But the frequency of those genes depends heavily on the sexual system. If the organism regularly mates with close relatives (the extreme case being self-fertilization), significantly deleterious recessive alleles are quickly removed, and their frequency in the whole population is low. At the other extreme, if there's random mating within a very large population, the frequency of harmful recessives can be quite high. In either case, though, the rate of birth defects within the population is the same—enough to offset the production of new deleterious alleles by mutation.
So the problem with marriage to cousins or other close relatives arises when it occurs within a society where such marriages don't generally occur. Such a society would have a fairly high frequency of harmful recessives, so there'd be a fairly high likelihood that the two cousins would share one; and if they do, there's a one in four chance that any one of their offspring would be homozygous for that allele.
But if cousin or even sib mating were the usual practice in the society, the frequency of deleterious recessives would be low, so it'd be much less likely that the partners would share such an allele.
I'm trying to reconcile what you say with the Amish, known for birth defects that entail reproductive disability. I guess I might be wrongly inferring that the word "cousin" means any relative in a small population rather than a true first cousin. Is "cousin" really key?
I think Hroswitha means any person with a "degree of genetic relatedness" greater than or equal to a cousin's "degree of genetic relatedness", which is 12.5 %. You are related 50% to a parent, the parent is related 50% to a sibling and that sibling is related 50% to their offspring--so 0.5 X 0.5 X 0.5 = 0.125.
Sibling = 50%
Half-sibling = 25%
Nephew = 25%
Aunt or Uncle = 25%
Interesting!
Re: "That might be the true value of going to college. It immerses you in the environment of the dominant social class."
College also immerses you in the environment of the professoriate, who differ in peculiar, systematic ways from corporate and government elites. Casual observation suggests that students (a) are quick to tell professors what the latter want to hear on exams, but (b) are nonetheless hard to brainwash.
At colleges that have (highly?) selective admissions, selection effects are the real treatment effect. Students, especially at residential campuses, pick up much more from one another than from professors.
What is the environment of the would-be dominant social class?:
• Communal residence/dining
• Agonistic extracurriculars
• Diffuse status anxiety
• High prevalence of mood drugs (especially the disinhibition drug, alcohol; and performance drugs)
• A culture of impossibly broad resume building (2 majors, a minor, a sport, community service off campus, 3 clubs etc etc etc).
The tendency to check all the breadth boxes at the expense of depth fits Michael Spence's signaling model of higher educational credentials.
But there are exceptions where narrow depth is the whole experience: D1 big-time sports athletes; computer science/engineering majors at Ivy+ universities.