Friday, April 29, 2022

What happened to the anti-evangelical movement?


I.

Scott Siskind made the claim that the social justice movement came about from the New Atheism movement when they no longer had a battle to fight.

I think that’s giving too much credit to atheists, who only represent a small portion of the population. Instead, I think it’s better to think of the pushback that formed the movement. 

Christian fundamentalists tried to codify into law two unpopular, and illiberal, beliefs: that gay marriage is wrong and should be outlawed and that evolution is wrong and intelligent design should be taught in it’s place, or at least as a similarly-plausible theory. Or, more plainly, they were anti-gay and anti-science.

Obviously atheists opposed this movement, in addition to the Catholic Hispanics, Muslims, and Baptist African-Americans who made the transition to a pro-social justice movement much easier for the atheist activists. But the anti anti-gay coalition also included many classical liberals, people who oppose illiberalism and government overreach. 

So I think it’s better to think of this group as the anti-evangelical movement than a New Atheism movement, they were defined but what they stood against more than what they stood for, as is often the case in most coalitions.

My theory for explaining the current culture war is that, yes, part of this anti evangelical coalition broke off once this gay rights war was won and rebranded themselves as fighting for racial justice instead. But I think the other part of the coalition that Scott never identified have rebranded themselves as fighting for free speech. So now you have social justice warriors and free speech warriors. The crux of the culture war now is issues of free speech conflicting with issues of racial justice, with both groups trying to build a dam to hold back conflicting floods. 

The Christian fundamentalists are still there lurking. They tend to hop on the free speech side when it suits them, which does make me wonder if I have to renege on my “moral purity is always bad/coalitions are always good” takes. 

But my other worry is that the Christian fundamentalists have an opportunity for a power grab with the two coalitions fighting each other. We're already starting to see it with book bans that started off as anti-CRT but have morphed into traditional conservative prudishness. Maus isn't promoting CRT, but it's being banned because of "curse words."

II.

The image Elon Musk tweeted at the top of this post isn't totally accurate, but it is hinting at something. The "Me" character is a stand-in for free speech advocates who opposed the anti-evangelical movement. Their closely related social justice friends have moved to the left. You can argue about how much the right has moved but I think the more worrying trend is how powerful and authoritarian they have become since the anti-evangelical coalition has not only dissolved, but turned on itself.

But I also believe in popularism, not necessarily as an election strategy but as a North Star for predicting cultural change.

Chris Rufo recently tweeted about a "sexy" summer camp that teaches kids things like BDSM and how to be a sex worker. His tweets and screenshots led to the camp scrubbing their website and they probably received a lot of, let's say opinions, from his followers. I think that the camp gross and inappropriate so I am going to respond by ... not sending my kids there.

Rufo built a strong anti-CRT movement by exposing Tema Okun-inspired DEI sessions being forced on school children, government workers, and other public and private employees. You are going to draw the support of free speech warriors anytime you coerce people into having to hear absurd ideas. The problem with the sexy summer camp is that it's a private business with a transparent curriculum. So as long as public funds aren't being used and parents are kept in the loop, the true free speech advocates won't care.

Here is my prediction: Rufo has overplayed his hand. If he keeps going in this direction, which I think he will, his coalition is going to fracture when the free speech types abandon his moral crusade. I don't know a better way of tracking this so I'm going to try going by his follower account. As of this writing, it sits at 358,000. Here's to hoping it drops.


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Monday, April 4, 2022

Updating my Priors: Short Takes Part VI

I had saved a link that now seems to be deleted, but it was in regards to AOC's recent turn to YIMBYism. Some in the neoliberal crowd were critical of how she framed her argument. Which reminded me of my "Diffusion of Rhetoric" post, and how I want to muzzle these people and shout "LET HER FRAME THE IDEA YOU AGREE WITH HOWEVER SHE WANTS!"  She knows her audience best and has way more sway with them than you ever will. Let AOC cook!

My post “Who Watches the Epidemiologists?” included another dichotomy, and you know I cannot resist a good dichotomy on this blog. 

I contrasted paternalism with individualism. I think this helps explain why the ReUpswing (the current move from individualism to conformism) is different from the Upswing (the 20th century shift from individualism to communitarianism). 

If you think too much individualism is bad, do you push back with paternalism (“this is what’s best for society so you must do it”) or communitarianism (“we’re all in this together.”)? It’s the difference between a top-down or a bottom-up approach. In this framing, I’m more confident that paternalism, whether excessive wokeness or Trumpism, will not win. At the very least they will remain in stasis as they push back on one another and remain unpopular with normie Americans. 

Communitarianism might not be popular right now, but at least it's rooted in humanism, in seeing the universal humanness in our fellow citizens. And humanism always seems to win.

Checking back on my BLM prediction: support is now above water! Civiqs shows how support lines up with the Derek Chavin conviction and the Arbery conviction. I wonder how much also has to do with the illiberal anti-CRT bills being introduced, creating more of a backlash?

From an Inside Higher Ed story:

“Another quoted parent takes issue with the new education elective, EDU 290, including scholar Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist on its syllabus. “The book is pure CRT,” the unnamed parent says. “When I questioned a professor on campus about this course, he defended it by saying it’s better for us to teach our kids how to think and engage with topics we agree and disagree on, then leave them to figure it out on their own. At face value I totally agree, but developing a class using that book as the text gives too much credibility and focus to the topic.”

If you want to live in a world with deplatforming, know that it goes both ways and prepare for it to come for you. 

Or, try liberalism!

Been thinking about the focus on high-skills immigration. It sounds like a nice compromise between the pro-immigration left and anti-welfare right, ie you only let in people who contribute to economic growth and don't drain resources. But I worry about the impact it has on those countries as it relates to the Maxwell’s Demon problem. If we take only the highest performing people from a given country, that leaves the whole country worse off. If we become a more isolationist country, it’s not as big of a problem for us (huge problem for them, though). But if we remain globalist/free trade nation, it hurts our trading partners. 

An interesting post on three types of thinkers: provoker, explainer, illuminator.  I wonder if there would be less pushback to teaching the 1619 Project in high schools if Nikole Hannah-Jones was labeled as provoker and not presented as explainer? 1619 is more of an accompaniment to "explainer" textbooks. And I think provocative material is a good thing to include in curriculums, as long as it is labeled as such.

In regards to my "Hygiene Theateria and Antivaxtopia" post ...

... I identified a group of people for whom Covid has recalibrated their acceptable level of risk. I didn't stop to think how much it's messing up everyone's calibration, as the risk keeps changing. I think it's another area where the pandemic is ruining us emotionally at a level we don't quite understand.

Cool story about how researchers paid Fox News viewers to watch CNN and they realized how much they were missing.

Reminds me of my bottom feeders post. Of course, I would like to see the opposite of this; if you paid people who only watch MSNCB to read the National Review, how much would that reset their priors? 

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Friday, April 1, 2022

Who Watches the Epidemiologists?

 

I read a take down of Emily Oster that I think is mostly hot garbage; a lot of guilt-by-association written by conflict theory authors who view everything through a conflict lens and have no understanding of how others might view things through a mistake theory lens. In essence, the authors see people like Oster as the enemy in their conflict. Oster doesn't view herself as being in a conflict, but as someone challenging ideas as she tries to better understand the world.

I also think it follows a Covid-inspired trend of the growing hostility between epidemiologists and economists, which I will return to.

But there was one critique I found meaningful. In one of her books, Oster cast doubt on studies that show the effects of alcohol on pregnant women. She found the studies lacking, which reminds me of the ACX post “The Phrase "No Evidence" Is A Red Flag For Bad Science Communication”. Or the Nassim Taleb idea that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

As much as I trust and appreciate Oster’s writing, there’s no way I would read that and then tell my pregnant wife it’s okay to drink. (Granted, I have not read Oster’s book and don’t know the context. It’s possible she’s speaking to pregnant alcoholics who are trying to wind down their drinking and are worried quitting cold turkey would cause serious bodily harm. In that case, the risk of a small amount of booze might be the less bad choice.)

Instead, the authors invoked the precautionary principle, a very Taleb-approved idea. We know alcohol is bad for you. We know that whatever a pregnant mom consumes will affect her fetus. Just because we don’t have good data to prove the harmful effects of alcohol doesn’t mean we should throw caution to the wind.

Why Economists

I find value in economists, not as generating science, leave that to the actual scientists, but in evaluating risks and tradeoffs. But alcohol in pregnancy is one area I would leave to the medical profession.

It reminds me of one of my favorite arguments against a Richard Thaler take. If a doctor tells a terminally-ill patient that a treatment has a 90 percent success rate, they are likely to pursue it. If they say it has a 10 percent mortality rate, they will decline. Therefore, Thaler says you should always frame it in the positive.

The argument against this idea is that doctors know what they are doing. If they know the rates but have other information that suggests it’s not in the best interest of their patient, let them frame it in a way they think is best for the patient. But this introduces a method of power and persuasion that requires a lot of trust in the medical profession. 

Understanding Conflict

I appreciate what people like Oster are doing and I think her popularity is more of a demand than a supply issue; people are seeking her out because they are losing trust in the science community. She is trying to give people a better understanding of their options so they can make informed choices.

I also understand why scientists don’t like her. They believe that people should not be making their own choices when it comes to pregnancy and Covid, they should listen to the medical and epidemiological experts. But I can’t help that this feels like a “who watches the watchers” scenario. 

I think pushback and good conflict is a good thing. I think people with funnel-approved credentials should weigh in and offer their perspectives rather than staying in their own lane (which, for economists, I guess means forecasting GDP and unemployment rates ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

The other issue at hand is the battle between paternalism (represented by the medical community) and individualism (represented by the economists). Give people too much freedom to make their own choices and many people will make poor choices and be unable to distinguish charlatans from funnel-approved intellectuals. This becomes a society-wide problem when hospital have to turn new patients away because they are at capacity with covid-infected antivaxxers.

Give institutions too much power to make decisions for you and you risk corruption.

The Risk of Risk

There is also an asymmetry between economists and epidemiologists. The medical community is overly cautious because their message is binary, ie safe vs. unsafe. And if they tell people safe, and people die, they will lose credibility. So the cost of being wrong falls disproportionally on the medical community.

Economists are more nuanced and view safety as a spectrum. If economists say "here are the tradeoffs and this is how you can calculate your own risk" and people die, they can just fall back on saying they knew the risks when making their decision. They have no skin in the game. So the cost of being wrong is less severe.

So my heuristic is skin in the game. Both Oster and Bryan Caplan say schools are safe and they both have their own kids in school, so I trust them. If a governor says masks are important and we should all follow the science, and is then photographed at an indoor crowded event maskless, I will distrust him.

It's a tricky balance. You have to weigh the opinions of experts and major institutions versus some version of "doing my own research." You have to stay open to going against public opinion if it seems right. And I don't always know when going against the grain is right. I'm still trying to figure it out.
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