Best of 2018

In no particular order, these are the best essays/blog posts I read in 2018.

Conflict Theory vs. Mistake Theory, by Scott Alexander.
The entire Slate Star Codex post is long but worthwhile. However, I'll use David Brooks to sum it up:

"Mistake theorists believe that the world is complicated and most of our troubles are caused by error and incompetence, not by malice or evil intent...Basically, we’re all physicians standing over a patient with a very complex condition and we’re trying to collectively figure out what to do. 

In the conflict theorist worldview, most public problems are caused not by errors or complexity, but by malice and oppression. The powerful few keep everyone else down. The solutions to injustice and suffering are simple and obvious: Defeat the powerful."

Complicating the Narrative by Amanda Ripley
A fantastic, long read that builds a roadmap for the future of journalism.

"Journalism has yet to undergo this awakening. We like to think of ourselves as objective seekers of truth. Which is why most of us have simply doubled down in recent years, continuing to do more of the same kind of journalism, despite mounting evidence that we are not having the impact we once had.... If we want to learn the truth, we have to find new ways to listen.

The lesson for journalists (or anyone) working amidst intractable conflict: complicate the narrative. First, complexity leads to a fuller, more accurate story. Secondly, it boosts the odds that your work will matter — particularly if it is about a polarizing issue. When people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen, in other words."

The Anthropology of Manhood by Sebastian Junger, National Review. I've written about this before and it still holds up well.

The Bulverizing of the American Mind, by Aaron Sibarium, The American Interest. I've mentioned this before as well and come back to it for two reasons. This quote: "Give people too much freedom, and soon they’ll come crawling back to their chains," which reminds me of the paradox of choice in moral terms. And that it introduced me to the term bulverizing, which exposes ad hominem, identity politics arguments for the logical fallacy they are (or am I only saying that because I'm a straight, white, cisgendered man?).

Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth, by Russ Roberts.
Speaking of complicating the narrative, this Medium post by Russ Roberts made me think that maybe income inequality isn't as bad as we think. Make sure you watch the videos too.

A Better Way to Look at Most Every Political Issue by Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic. Talk about nuance. His focus on "limits and equilibrium" reminds me of my post about viewing topics as trying to minimize false positives or false negatives.

"Most political stances can be understood in terms of an equilibrium. For instance, some people might believe that access to abortion in a conservative state is too restricted under the status quo, and favor relaxing the rules regulating abortion clinics. That is, they might favor shifting the equilibrium in a “pro-choice” direction.

But ask those same voters, "Should there be any limits on legal abortion?" and they might declare that the procedure should be banned in the last trimester of pregnancy unless the mother's health is threatened. Insofar as the abortion debate is framed around the equilibrium, they will align with the pro-choice movement; but insofar as it is framed around limits, they will align with the pro-life movement."

Libertarian Paternalism

I often read thought-provoking books that get deep into the "what is wrong with modern society" discussion. I enjoy them, but their next-step conclusions often leave me underwhelmed.

They amount to things like "people just need to understand that..." or "we need a public discussion about..." and other pie-in-the-sky proclamations that will never fucking happen. There just aren't enough people who are going to make serious enough changes in their lives to have an impact.

For example, I truly believe if everyone read The Righteous Mind, the world would be a better place. At the very least, we would fight less, understand more, and tone down our self-righteousness. But I'm grounded enough to know that most people are not going to read that book.

I keep coming back to one of Jonathan Haidt's essays, which he opens by talking about how the cosmic settings of the universe are tweaked just so, allowing for the possibility of life. He then relates how our founders searched for the same fine tuning to establish a Republic that would work.

Maybe Richard Thaler and Cass Sustein's concept of libertarian paternalism would do a better job of fine tuning the settings to improve society.

We all know that social media is bad for us, but we lack the self-restraint to do anything about it. What if a community decided to shut off internet access every Sunday, but allowed people to fill out an opt-out form if they didn't want to be included.

Or each Sunday, designate several streets closed to traffic. Pedestrian only. Let kids play in the street without fear and encourage them to get outside, play, interact, and develop their social skills--something our schools no longer allow them to do.

For problems like rampage shootings, defraying social trust, addiction, depression, and suicide, maybe tackling them head on is the wrong approach. It might be better to attack the conditions that cause them: isolation, technology/social media, and hyper individualism. These causal problems are better addressed by looking at changes to their environment than trying to educate individuals and expecting them to change themselves.

I've lost some interest in Better Angels because I don't think it's sustainable. You get a few reds and blues in a room, they talk it out, and and feel more comfortable around those they met in the workshop. I don't see that reverberating throughout the community.

But if you invest in social infrastructure that gets parents talking to each other in social spaces, gets kids making friends in unstructured, unsupervised play, rally everyone together around a virual bowling league at the library or a Friday night football game, you might not need to worry about convincing people that reds and blues are actually normal people just like you. You'll already be identifying them first as friends and neighbors than by political ideology.

And the more reason you give people to leave their home, the less lonely and at-risk for depression, suicide, and anti-social behavior they will become.

American mythology

I'm reading Sapiens and learned something fascinating. Several similar species lived alongside homo sapiens at the same time. One of our distinguishing characteristics was the ability to tell fiction.

Most tribes, of all sapiens, couldn't grow by much more than 150 people without destabilizing. At that point it took a belief in the same story to get a large group of people to work together. That is how we got spirit animals, Greek Gods, contemporary religion, and patriotism.

One of the problems with America is that there are two competing fictions about our identity.

One says that we created a system based on freedom, pluralism, checks and balances, and a refuge to people seeking a better life and economic opportunity. This produced the longest lasting government in world history and the most powerful country ever.

The other fiction says that colonizers came here and wiped out native americans while stealing their land. They imported African slaves and made mint off their backs. All progress is from from slavery and thievery. We are the products of mass murderers who used their power to oppress women and minorities and continue to do so today.

The problem is that, hyperbole aside, both stories are true. But if we don't find a fiction we agree on, this isn't going to last.

We're always at war

I've been troubled by the recent rampage shootings. I've also been re-reading Sebastian Junger's Tribe. It reminded me of an unusual fact. Look at U.S. rampage shootings in the last three decades:

Notice anything unusual? Is it odd that, since 1986, the only year with no shootings was 2002, the year after our country was attacked? And there was only 1 per year in the years that followed, before it spiked again as the war became unpopular.

Here is another unusual fact: Israel has only had one mass shooting in recent years. The country is constantly at war. Does that give their lives more purpose?

For hundreds of thousands of years, tribes had to be prepared for war at any moment. But as Stephen Pinker illustrates in Enlightenment, we are living in, quite possibly, the safest time in human history. And yet, we cannot escape our longing for war.

As Scott Alexander notes, our levels of violence are about more than easy access to guns.

"The United States’ homicide rate of 3.8 is clearly higher than that of eg France (1.0), Germany (0.8), Australia (1.1), or Canada (1.4). However, as per the FBI, only 11,208 of our 16,121 murders were committed with firearms, eg 69%. By my calculations, that means our nonfirearm murder rate is 1.2. In other words, our non-firearm homicide rate alone is higher than France, Germany, and Australia’s total homicide rate."

I'm coming to the sobering conclusion that war is a part of the human DNA. And my fear is that, if we are not at war with an outside enemy, we will turn on ourselves.

And it isn't just the mentally disturbed, Islamic terrorists, or neo nazis. The most successful political campaigns are the ones that convince people that the other party is trying to destroy American democracy. So we create an enemy where none exists.

We are convinced that immigrants are coming here to take our jobs, rape our women, and sell drugs to our children. Or that republicans are going to increase inequality, establish a police state, only look out for the rich, and take away our healthcare, our unions, our rights. That democrats are going to turn us into a classless Marxist society where all hardworking Americans will be taxed to feed the lazy.

And we need your vote so we can fight them because we cannot let them win. 

The War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Things We Don't Like.

We need to create a system that satisfies our need for war. Repression until the point of rampages doesn't appear to be working.

Maybe it's like Nassim Taleb's idea of antifragility. Maybe men seek volatility in order to strengthen our evolutionary role as protectors. Too much peace weakens us, so something in our DNA convinces us that there is an enemy afoot.

The New(est) American Religion

In a wonderful critique of The Coddling of the American Mind (which, by the way, I loved), writer Aaron Sibarium writes:

"Give people too much freedom, and soon they’ll come crawling back to their chains."

The more I think about it; the more I think he's right.

John McWhorter writes a wonderful column about our new American religion, Antiracism. Some call it wokeness. But I believe the most inclusive term would be Social Justice. Either way, it shares some commonality with traditional religion.

McWhorter notes:

"It is inherent to a religion that one is to accept certain suspensions of disbelief. Certain questions are not to be asked ... The Antiracism religion, then, has clergy, creed, and also even a conception of Original Sin. Note the current idea that the enlightened white person is to, I assume regularly (ritually?), 'acknowledge' that they possess White Privilege." 

It seems that in an effort to free ourselves from the restrictions of religion, liberalism has only gone on to redefine a new religion. My concern is that it's hostility to heretics is approaching (or surpassing) hostility to other races and genders in contemporary times.

In one of his most popular blog posts, Scott Alexander comments on this ideological hostility.

"Someone finally had the bright idea of doing an Implicit Association Test with political parties, and they found that people’s unconscious partisan biases were half again as strong as their unconscious racial biases. For example, if you are a white Democrat, your unconscious bias against blacks (as measured by something called a d-score) is 0.16, but your unconscious bias against Republicans will be 0.23." 

He continues:

"Iyengar and Westwood ... asked subjects to decide which of several candidates should get a scholarship (subjects were told this was a genuine decision for the university the researchers were affiliated with). Some resumes had photos of black people, others of white people. And some students listed their experience in Young Democrats of America, others in Young Republicans of America.

Once again, discrimination on the basis of party was much stronger than discrimination on the basis of race. The size of the race effect for white people was only 56-44 (and in the reverse of the expected direction); the size of the party effect was about 80-20 for Democrats and 69-31 for Republicans."

How do liberals and conservatives feel about their children marrying a different race? I'm glad you asked.

 How about marrying outside one's political party?

To recap, 1% of consistent liberals would be unhappy if their child married a different race but 23% would be unhappy if they married a Republican and 31% would be upset if they married a gun owner.

23% of consistent conservatives would be unhappy if their child married a different race but 30% would be unhappy if they marred a Democrat.

I admire my college's goal of increasing racial diversity: It better prepares students for interacting with people of different cultures. But if political ideology is a more emotionally-charged topic, it might make more sense to increase diversity of thought to better prepare students for the real world.

What's going on?

Beyond Social Justice being the raison d'etre of liberals, I think there is another reason race gets more attention than politics. We have a long, documented history of racial injustice in this country. Although things have improved dramatically, SJWs are so sensitive to any perceived racial slight—with the image of Emmet Till's face burned into our minds.

What we don't have is a long history of political discrimination on which to draw. The reason blacks were treated so poorly was because it was, for the most part, acceptable. Currently it is, for the most part, unacceptable. We'd like it to stay that way, hence the racial sensitivity.

But political discrimination is different. It is acceptable. We are not yet sensitive to it.

The next recession will be like the last one. I don't mean a housing bubble; I mean it will be something no one sees coming. I think the current political climate is like that. It won't be until decades from now that we realize how poorly we treat our ideological opponents.

Toxic Society

A professor recently gave a talk about toxic masculinity. He described it has not showing emotion, engaging in risky behavior, and a desire for physical strength, suggesting this leads to substance abuse, aggression, abusing women, depression, and other health problems.

My question is: is this type masculinity toxic, or is our society toxic to this type of masculinity?

While I often agree with the phrase "prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child," there is one area I dissent. Our school system has moved into a structure that is more conducive to girls than boys. As a result, this hinders social and physical development at best and at worst leads to males being overrepresented in the school dropout, homelessness, and prison populations.

Maybe if these men liked school, they wouldn't end up homeless, in jail, or out of work. Maybe they wouldn't use drugs and assault women. Maybe they would feel like valued members of society and wouldn't give in to these toxic behaviors.

A Little Risk Goes a Long Way

We are hardwired for risk taking. Risky, rough-and-tumble play is actually a good an necessary thing for development. But we have eliminated it from our children's lives, which negatively impacts boys more than girls. Maybe that is why risky behavior turns more hardcore later in life; young boys weren't given the opportunity to navigate it.

Maybe instead of telling young men to stop being who they are, we should give them more freedom to develop social skills as youth so they don't feel alienated by society and turn toward toxic behavior.

Toxic just means Testosterone

The professor who gave the talk seemed to believe that young men choose these toxic behaviors because they think it is what society expects of them. I disagree. Research shows a correlation between high levels of testosterone and risk taking.

Sebastian Junger writes:

"Male violence is a problem across all societies, communities, and races, and the primary driver is testosterone, which declines steadily throughout a man’s adult lifetime. As testosterone levels go down, so do rates of violence and accidental death — which would not be the case if socialization alone were to blame."

I think we are wired that way and the "toxic" aggression and violence are a result of not having appropriate outlets for them.

I also disagree that stoicism and physical strength are, prima facie, toxic behaviors. In a great article about different cultures' rites of passage to manhood, the author asks the question of why young men go through these difficult tasks.

The disquieting answer, of course, is to prepare for war...Boys are “tempered” and “toughened” so they may fulfill the classic duties to procreate, provide, and protect that men have performed for millennia. Whether it’s marshaled to ward off the aggression of other males or to capitalize on weakness, violence is the leitmotif of manhood in countless cultures. 

We've moved past a society that needs all young men to be prepared for war, but we haven't solved the biological hardwiring that remains. My belief is that is will be easier, but not easy, to adapt our society to this need with some type of rite of passage for young men then it will be to convince young men to socially neuter themselves.

"In the fall of 1999, the journalist Susan Faludi published Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, in which she interviewed everyone from gang members to shipyard employees to even Sylvester Stallone to suss out the root causes of America’s “crisis of masculinity.” One possible cause: a postwar emphasis on consumerism and vanity. The modern man, Faludi wrote, has been sold the idea that masculinity is “something to drape over the body, not draw from inner resources; that it is personal, not societal; that manhood is displayed, not demonstrated.”

Victim Blaming

Wait a minute, are you saying rapists should be absolved because it's society's fault for turning them into monsters? 

Well, no. I still believe in personal agency and accountability. Put those monsters behind bars. But I think that if we make tweaks to our institutions and social norms we can, in the aggregate, have a positive impact on these toxic behaviors. Society might be more, dare I say, equitable?

A Return to Walter Cronkite news?

In an essay about our growing partisan divide, Jon Haidt and Sam Abrams note:

American newspapers were quite partisan for most of history. But with the emergence of television in the post-war years, and with the popularity of newscasters such as Walter Cronkite, the nation had a few decades in which most Americans got the same news from the same few sources, particularly the three national television networks.

All that changed with the advent of cable television in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s. Now Americans can choose from hundreds of partisan news sources, many of which care more about arousing emotions than hewing to journalistic standards.

Is it possible this course reverses direction and media becomes consolidated again? Seems impossible, information is way too bottom up and widely accessible now.

But is it?

The big 4 (Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple) keep growing and swallowing up their competition. Jeff Bezos even owns the Washington Post. People regularly get their news from Facebook and Twitter, accessing it through Google Chrome on their iPhone.

I know, these are content aggregators and not content producers like NBC, ABC, and CBS. But what's to stop them from filtering content or eventually producing their own content?

We've already seen Alex Jones' Infowars get banned from pretty much every online platform. If the big 4 decide to ban unpopular messages, they can control the content to more palpable tastes. They might tone done dangerous rhetoric at the risk of drowning out important dissent.

I'm still not sure if this would be a good thing or not.