How to Save America: Individualism or Centripetal Forces

I don't make a lot of bold claims, but there is one #hottake that I think about more and more. I believe that, within my lifetime, American democracy as we know it will come to an end.

I don't think our government will dissolve and I don't see civil war in our future either. I'm thinking of something closer to secession. Or, as David French wrote, a divorce.

There are too many forces pulling us apart and too few binding us to one another. I can only think of two solutions for keeping this country together.

I. Massive decentralization of our national government and returning of more power to the states (i.e. federalism). If you believe in a public option for healthcare, your state can tax its citizens and start one up. But you're not going to force people in other states to have their own if they vote against it.

If you think bakers shouldn't have to make cakes for gay weddings, you pass legislation protecting that right. If you want all employers to cover their employees birth control, go for it. Just keep it at the state level.

or

II. A return to a nation-wide belief in an American civil religion.

The problem with multiculturalism is that, while it keeps individual groups together, it does nothing to bind these cultures into the larger tapestry of American life. An American civil religion means we would all have to buy into certain values that our country represents, even as we retain our unique and specific cultural identities.

This option would be less likely to happen than the first option, a libertarian's dream, but here are some additional thoughts on it anyway:

• I used the word "return" but it would only work if we took what we had and modernized it, rather than expecting people to revert back to something from the past. Nostalgia feels nice but culture always moves forward. 
• This new American civil religion would have to incorporate ideas from the right and the left. We would have to decide on what we agree upon and what we agree to disagree upon. Right now, our Venn Diagram does not overlap at all. 
• We would derive this new civil religion from Enlightenment values as well as our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence. It would have to somehow acknowledge our stained history w/r/t slavery and Native American genocide, rather than brushing these things under the carpet. More importantly, it would have to incorporate modern concepts like multiculturalism, privilege, and intersectionality.
• Once agreed upon, this civic religion would be taught in all schools, public and private. It would be required for all immigrants to agree to before becoming U.S. citizens.
• If necessary, it could spawn a new national anthem. Football players kneeling during the national anthem would have had far less support 50 years ago because the song meant so much to so many. That is no longer the case, which means we need a new set of values to get behind, something we all believe in. Something we would collectively get upset about if one of our citizens disrespected. We should celebrate and honor the ideals that make the country great while acknowledging our sins and pledging not to repeat them. Imagine social justice warriors and MAGA supporters being fervently enraged over someone disrespecting the same American ideal. What would that even look like?

Aberration or Precursor?

In 20 years, will we look back on the Trump presidency as an aberration or a precursor?

I want the answer to be "aberration" but I worry that I'm wrong.

"Precursor" is very vague, which makes it more likely. It doesn't necessarily mean Trumpism will win. It might mean the country swings harder in the opposite direction.

"Aberration" means we go back to electing candidates from the political establishment and never again consider unqualified demagogues. I wish I believed this.

I think the 2020 Democratic candidate is more likely to be a Kamala Harris/Elizabeth Warren type (not demagogues; but not the most experienced either), or even Oprah, than a Tim Kaine. And I think the reason is the Internet.

It used to be that cabinet-level experience was a ticket to the white house. That is the only reason Hillary Clinton took the Secretary of State position. If she believed staying a senator offered better presidential prospects she never would have taken the job.

However, in the Information Age, I believe that type of experience is a detriment. It probably makes you more qualified, but less electable. It makes your record public and allows your choices to be picked apart by the opposition.

Obama was a relative outsider and Trump had no experience. Rather than a flaw, this acted as a shield. It meant there were more opportunities for their opponents to get picked apart.

Clinton's time as Secretary of State and the scandal/not scandal involving her email server and Benghazi did nothing but hurt her. She probably would have been better off staying in the Senate.

That is why I think the trend of Washington outsiders will continue. I think Trump is a precursor that will lead to more candidates with less experience who pick apart the hypocrisy of established candidates and take advantage of voters.

Would you like your War on Terror with Type I or Type II errors?

A recent column in National Review credited President Trump with the defeat of ISIS' stronghold in Iraq. The writer was also critical of a New York Times piece that was critical of the loss of civilian life in Iraq, seemingly at the hands of Trump.

I think it's important to synthesize these two views because they essentially tell the same story. Unlike Obama, Trump decided to give more control to his generals to do what was necessary to win the war. Obama was reluctant to do so because he wanted to minimize civilian casualties. Trump was okay with that, and thus, ISIS is now very close to being wiped out.

This brings up my new fascination with viewing the world as a continuum of Type I or Type II errors. Civilian casualties are Type I errors, false positives. They were thought to be terrorists, killed, and later identified as innocent civilians. It's a pretty impersonal way to talk about murder but it helps illustrate a larger point.

By using more caution, Obama was more comfortable with Type II errors. However, withholding a drone strike due to uncertainty about the target's innocence can lead to false negatives, identifying someone as innocent who is, in fact, a terrorist.

It's a really tough decision to make and I don't think there is an easy answer. The more you drag out the war, the more American soldiers you lose. However, the more civilians you kill, the more unpopular you become abroad and the harder nation-building becomes.

I think any praise heaped upon either leader's choice should come with an admission of the flaws that come with Type I or Type II errors in the war on terror.

Rethinking Our Criminal Justice System

People have strong feelings about the flaws in our criminal justice system, which are best described as Type I and Type II errors.

Type I errors, false positives, draw the ire of progressives. This happens when a person is falsely accused of a crime he did not commit. In the worst case, he is given the death sentence. As this is most likely to happen to minorities, members of the protected victim class, progressives view this as a form of oppression and stand on their side (the falsely convicted) and against what they perceive as "systemic racism."

Type II errors, false negatives, are the bane of conservatives' existence. This happens when a criminal is set free due to something like police tampered evidence or some other fluky event. (This phenomenon is what gave rise to the TV series Dexter.)

This can also happen if someone is sent to prison and is let out early for good behavior or is sentenced to counseling/community service in lieu of prison and proceeds to commit another heinous crime. The last part is the important one. In conservatives' view, criminals are bad and should be removed from society. Police protect us from bad people so we should stand on their side and against the lawyers and activist judges who want to put bad people back on the streets.

An Imperfect System

Our criminal justice system, like the humans who designed and run it, is imperfect. There will always be Type I and Type II errors. All we can do is tweak things so there is less of one and more of another. Which begs the question, which way should we lean?

My hope is that when people think of it in terms of Type I or Type II errors, they will see that there is no easy answer—only what is less wrong.

Got Spam?

Think of it like an email spam system. You can either tighten restrictions so you don't get spam, but will occasionally miss an email you really need. Or you can loosen restrictions, never miss an important email, but have to deal with some spam.

After much deliberation, I think Type I errors are worse, making a system that leans toward Type II errors less wrong. Not properly convicting a dangerous criminal is bad. But falsely convicting an innocent person is not only harmful for that truly innocent man, it means the real criminal gets to go free.

I look forward to changing my mind several times about this; that's the great part about being pragmatic.

The Google Memo

So some Google employee released an internal memo that leaked and people lost their minds. Then the employee lost his job. He wrote many interesting things that are great if you agree with them and offensive if you disagree with them. I'm less concerned with his conclusions than his methods. So I did some fact checking.

Gender Differences in Spending 

"Considering women spend more money than men and that salary represents how much the employees sacrifices (e.g. more hours, stress, and danger), we really need to rethink our stereotypes around power."

Survey says: on average ... I guess so.
 "Women have been shown to be associated more so with money pathologies than are men: females are more prone to compulsive spending, for instance"

Gender Differences in Personality Traits 

"Women, on average, have more ... Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."

Survey says: sure.*
"In college and adult samples, women score higher then men on the Five Factor Model (FFM) personality traits of Neuroticism and Agreeableness."
Although it's difficult to tell when the author is talking about women in leadership roles in the tech field or just the tech field. The data on these traits, if true of women in the entire population, might explain why they are disproportionately not choosing tech. However, if women already in tech are not represented in leadership roles it would be helpful to see if these traits match up within this specific sample.

In other words, do women already in the tech field still score high on neuroticisim? Or does this specific group share more traits with the average man and therefore are being discriminated against? We need more data.

Gender Differences in Leadership 

"We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life."

I disagree with the implication that leadership positions are unequivocally harder. The balance that comes with the "long, stressful hours" of leadership is the ability to make decisions and operate the way you think is best.

The Whitehall Studies showed that a secretary is more likely to die from heart disease than a CEO. It's not stress that causes heart problems, it's a lack of agency.

"The studies ... found a strong association between grade levels of civil servant employment and mortality rates from a range of causes: the lower the grade, the higher the mortality rate. Men in the lowest grade (messengers, doorkeepers, etc.) had a mortality rate three times higher than that of men in the highest grade (administrators). This effect has since been observed in other studies and named the "status syndrome." (Unfortunately, the study only observed men.)

While it's possible that women are more likely to avoid stressful jobs based on their personality traits, that doesn't necessarily preclude leadership positions. I think everyone wants more control over their own life, regardless of the status/stress conflict that "leadership" brings. I don't have the data, but I would guess the search for agency and self actualization is gender neutral.

I'm grading this: unfounded.

Gender Differences in Homelessness, Work-Related Deaths, Prisons, and Dropouts

"Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts."

Survey says: yes.
A bit of a strawman, but I get his point. If men are more likely to be homeless, suffer work related deaths, be in prison, and drop out of school, is discrimination the cause? Or is some other (biological/psychological/sociological?) factor at play?

First, is this gender representation true? Yes, yes, yes, and yes.  So if it's reasonable to assume these biases against men are not strictly due to discrimination, it's possible that women's under representation in tech is also more complicated.

Missing Data

What would bolster his argument about women avoiding (in the aggregate) leadership or tech positions is if there was data about the gender differences in those who apply for these positions. If the applicant pool is 50% men and 50% women but overwhelmingly men are hired, discrimination is more likely. The memo's author seems to suggest the applicant pool heavily favors men, but I can't seem to find any data on this, but it would tell us a lot.

(Update: I did find an article here that states: "Only 18 percent of undergraduate computer science degrees and 26 percent of computing jobs are held by women. It’s worse at the top of the corporate world — just 5 percent of leadership positions in the technology industry are held by women." Give a little perspective but I'd still like to know who is applying.) However, I did find two interesting studies that seem to contradict one another.

The UC Berkely gender bias study showed that men applying to their grad programs were more likely than women to be admitted. A deeper dive into the data revealed something else:
"But when examining the individual departments, it appeared that six out of 85 departments were significantly biased against men, whereas only four were significantly biased against women. In fact, the pooled and corrected data showed a 'small but statistically significant bias in favor of women.'

The research paper by Bickel et al.[15] concluded that women tended to apply to competitive departments with low rates of admission even among qualified applicants (such as in the English Department), whereas men tended to apply to less-competitive departments with high rates of admission among the qualified applicants (such as in engineering and chemistry)."

From the Hewlett Packard internal report: Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them.

These examples explain a bias against women that has nothing to do with discrimination, however seem to say different things about women. Do they apply to competitive college programs but not competitive jobs? The memo's author may be on to something but we need more data to confirm.

*Update: more thoughts on this. I actually can't imagine a more stressful job than being a classroom teacher, a career dominated by women. I don't buy the argument that women avoid stressful, high anxiety jobs. If we buy the author's argument that women tend to choose service jobs and men seek high status jobs, then people trade off job-related stress if it's worth it to them. Some will deal with stress if it means making a difference in a kids life. Some will deal with stress if it means a corner office and fat paycheck.

The most important books I've ever read

These aren't necessarily the best books I've ever read, but the most important as far as shaping my world view.

Walden
I can't even count how many times I've read this book and it never gets old. The best part is that you can open to any page and find something compelling in the third line of the second paragraph.

My favorite section is when he talks about a man living in a house not too far from the pond whom Thoreau would often visit. When asked what he would change about the world the man paused, laughed, and said he thinks it's fine the way it is.

Thoreau was struck by the man's simplicity, unable to decide if he was a fool or a genius. Sometimes that line is thin. (FYI, the title of this blog is a line from Thoreau).

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
The barefoot running movement started here. Not just a great story about this reculsive Mexican tribe that dominates ultra marathon running, it provides great research into what makes us human and why technological progress can stifle our natural abilities.

The Story of B
Tribalism is a hell of a drug.

Sex at Dawn
This draws on themes of my previous two selections by looking to our tribal instincts to explain modern pathologies (although this work goes back even further, looking at chimps and bonobos). While there have been criticisms regarding the authors' cherry-picking of evidence, they make a pretty compelling case that humans evolved to be polyamorous creatures and pair bonding is against our nature.

Antifragile
I'm pretty sure anything else I read by Nassim Taleb will make this list eventually, Antifragile was just the first I got my hands on. A brilliant guy who takes a simple concept (natural systems are strengthened by volatility, not harmed) and applies it to numerous instances. And pulls it off.

The Righteous Mind
Probably the book I recommend the most to anyone who ever has a political opinion about anything. Haidt's research shows why people believe they way they do when it comes to politics and uses that research to humanize our political opponents. This should really be required reading at all colleges.

The Three Languages of Politics
Might be jumping the gun here because I just read it, but like The Righteous Mind it really helps you understand how different groups of people see the world. Like Haidt, the author isn't trying to say one language (he uses the term "axis") is correct. Rather he preaches the importance of being able to view the world through all three lens (oppressor vs. oppressed, civilization vs. barbarism, coercion vs. liberty) to better understand why people think they way they do. This should shape the way we approach political discussions.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Philosophy writing that is at once cerebral and accessible. If nothing else, it allows you to crawl around the mind of a literal genius. You see how such a simple concept (what does "quality" actually mean?) can drive a man to madness and watch him beautifully crawl his way back to clarity and happiness.

A plea for a more inclusive intersectionality

Leonard Pitts once wrote a column about the Don Imus/Rutgers women's basketball/"nappy headed hoes" controversy that I still think about to this day. Pitts posed the question: Why can Imus get away with making fun of Oprah but not the Rutgers women's basketball players?

He said that the unwritten rule in our society is that you cannot bully. A nationally-syndicated radio host is in a position to bully a group of college female ballers. But when you're Oprah Winfrey, who the hell is Don Imus? He's the dust you brush off your shoulder as you think about your next billion dollar industry to conquor.

I think about this when I think about intersectionality, which I understand as essentially the layers of victims of oppression. The top of this layer is white men, the ultimate beneficiaries of privilege. However, the above example places a black woman in a more privileged position than a white man. How can this be?

I think we're starting to bump up against the flaws of intersectionality, which is that it does not include class, namely the poor. (I realize many definitions include class but I only hear the term deployed in reference to race or gender discrimination.) The broad brush of "white, straight, native-born men" necessarily includes high school dropouts, with no old money, living on welfare. This groups earns a fraction of a penny for every dollar Oprah makes. That's not a wage gap you hear a lot about.

These are bleak times for being in the bottom 20 percent, regardless of race or gender.

For intersectionality to truly be inclusive, it has to include poor people. Even if that means identifying a certain class of white men as victims of systemic classism.