The biggest threat to progress

Thesis: the biggest obstacle to a political party's goals is not the power and reach of the other party's critics, but the aggressive nature of the party's own fanatics who make more enemies than allies. For example, the biggest threat to a wealth tax isn't Sean Hannity, it's Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. I am going to set my confidence interval at 65%.

At the end of this post, I am going to make a forecast that can be tracked. The forecast will be based on my thesis.

 I've made the case that the biggest threat to things like racial equity and expanding the welfare state comes from the left. I argue that the people Paul Graham would call "aggressive conventionals" (people who are "fighters" when they're in your ingroup but "bullies" when they're in your outgroup) push passive, moderate, or otherwise politically disengaged people to more reactionary positions that fight back against progressives. Their aggressiveness should be curbed so the more civil among us can court these moderates.

The other argument is that reactionaries and aggressive conventionals on the right are the biggest threat to progressive goals. Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham are out there telling lies and saying harmful things that radicalize their listeners. We should deplatform them and limit their speech so they do not expand their audience and bring more people to their side.

If I'm being honest, I cannot prove which is the bigger threat. Based on what I know of human behavior, it is easier to push people than to pull them. They are more likely to identify with an ideology that is against something they hate, than for something they like. 

So, no, I don't think "giving a platform" to some toxic person is going to make much of a difference in their pursuit of gaining followers. However, I also don't think I can court many moderates to the left if the far left would just tone down their "abolish the police" rhetoric. But I still like to try.

So here is my best argument for why I think the aggressive left is making things worse for progressives.

Campaign Tactics

Scott Alexander analyzed the voter turnout approach vs. court swing voters approach to winning elections. He found that there isn't much evidence either approach works better at getting more voters, but the more extreme a candidate is the more she turns out voters to vote against her. 

Likewise, extreme candidates do a better job of making enemies than allies.

Support for BLM

In the following section, I opine about polling data regarding support for Black Lives Matter. It might be too boring/confusing, in which case you can skip to the Bad Phrasing section. My basic point is that support rose sharply after George Floyd's death and dissipated rather quickly. The sharpest change was in the reduction in people who had no opinion on BLM; most of them now oppose BLM. I find it unlikely that this group takes their cues from Fox News and what changed their behavior was the rioting and anti-police rhetoric.

According to FiveThirtyEight, The death of George Floyd polarized White America's attitudes toward Black Lives Matter. If I'm reading this correctly, at the time of his death, attitudes were the same; 35% support, 35% oppose. This means 30% had no opinion. We are now at 49% oppose (an increase of 14%), 37% support (an increase of 2%), meaning 14% have no opinion (a decrease of 16%). 

People could have moved from support to oppose, or support/oppose to no opinion, but it seems more likely that, of the 16% of pollsters who are no longer in the no opinion category, 14% moved to oppose and 2% moved to support. So what moved them, watching Fox News' unfavorable coverage of the riots or reading New York Times op-eds about abolishing the police?

Moving the Fencers

In a past blog post, I coined the term "fencers" to describe the White respondents who are on the fence about supporting BLM, the people who said they "somewhat support" the organization. In a June 2020 poll, those who leaned Democrat were at 30% and those who leaned Republican were also at 30%. In a follow-up September poll, that number for republicans had dropped from 30% to 14%, while the number for democrats rose from 30% to 36%.

However, the overall change--including responses for both "somewhat" and "strongly" support--dropped for both groups of White respondents. Republicans went from 37% to 16%; Democrats went from 92% to 88%. For simplicity, here are the June numbers and here are the September numbers. Notice that left-leaning "strongly support" dropped from 62% in June to  51% in September.

So what likely happened is left leaning respondents moved from "strongly support" to "somewhat support". I doubt that 11% decrease is the result of them turning on Tucker Carlson and drinking his Kool-aid. 

So something happened that shrunk overall support for BLM for every racial group--except Blacks, who picked up a point, although the FiveThirtyEight graph shows even their support has dropped a bit since then--even when controlling for ideology. And according to the FiveThirtyEight data, that drop has continued or at least leveled off.

Why was there such a rise in support that quickly began to fade? Did Fox News give favorable coverage after George Floyd's death and then quickly change their stance? Or did sympathy turn to apathy once rioters began burning down police departments and tearing down statues of Ulysses S. Grant? Whereas "Justice for George Floyd" was a rallying call, "All Cops Are Bastards" became a deterrent. 

(I tried using Infoplease to look at the top stories in August, and found three stories about riots that could have dampened support of BLM, which would then show up in the September polls. But then I looked at June, when poll numbers for BLM were still high, and saw three more stories about riots, so maybe they didn't make much of a difference.) 

Bad Phrasing

David Shor is an election expert and posits that two topics don't poll well and hurt Democrats at the ballot: defund the police and socialism. The main problem is messaging. A recent poll shows that only 18% of respondents support "defund the police." 

This FiveThirtyEight story shows that while most Americans oppose "defund the police" when you break it down by specific policies you get better results.

"For instance, when Reuters/Ipsos queried people about “proposals to move some money currently going to police budgets into better officer training, local programs for homelessness, mental health assistance, and domestic violence,” a whopping 76 percent of people who were familiar with those proposals supported them, with only 22 percent opposed. Democrats and independents supported these proposals in huge numbers while Republicans were split, 51 percent in favor to 47 percent opposed."

So this seems like an easy fix. Just focus your message on the stuff that polls well. But wait! This is a post about how the left can't get out of its own damn way.

It wasn't an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist.

Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government funded murder.

No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed.

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) April 12, 2021

Trump Good for Immigration?

Does this happen on the right? Maybe. This Gallup poll asks people if immigration should increase, decrease, or stay the same. For the first time since they began asking this question in 1966, more people favor increase than decrease. 

What did the Democrats do to sway public opinion? Probably nothing other than give Donald Trump enough rope to hang himself. Trump made the demonization of immigration and the promotion of nationalism the core of his campaign and it seems to have backfired. 

Here is a Google Trend for "illegal immigration":

There is a huge spike in 2006, when the House passed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, which later died in the Senate. Another bump in 2010, when Congress considered the DREAM Act, which later died. And that's about it. Nothing Trump did got people talking about immigration quite like past pro immigration policies.

So it's possible that Trump's angry rhetoric actually tilted public opinion in support of immigration.

Unite the Left

In Against Murderism, Scott Alexander critiques defining racism by its consequences (basically Antriracism before the term was ubiquitous), writing:

"Suppose the KKK holds a march through some black neighborhood to terrorize the residents... The march is well-covered on various news organizations, and outrages people around the nation, who donate a lot of money to anti-racist organizations and push for stronger laws against the KKK. Plausibly, the net consequences of the march were (unintentionally) very good for black people and damaging to white supremacy. Therefore, by the Sophisticated Definition, the KKK marching the neighborhood to terrorize black residents was not racist. In fact, for the KKK not to march in this situation would be racist!"

I know he's trying to be hyperbolic to make a point but I don't think it's quite the own he thinks it is. That is basically what happened during the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally! This Civiqs poll of Black Lives Matter support shows that the Charlottesville rally made people more favorable toward BLM. 

The Hard Work

I get that people want to denigrate what Ibram Kendi called "moral suasion." It's slow-moving and produces small results. But it's the best thing we've got because more aggressive approaches just push people to the other side and embolden the enemy. However, I did set my confidence interval at 65%, so it wouldn't be too difficult to have my mind changed.

Forecast: since Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts, the right will spend the next several months talking about how the trial was unfair and police need more protection. Black Lives Matter will largely be out of the news. As a result, support for Black Lives Matter will increase again. According to the Civiqs poll above, support is at 47% as of April 17, 2020. I predict that it will be 49 percent by June 1. My confidence interval is 55%.

Short Takes Part II

 In my review of How to be an Antiracist, I used #ShutdownSTEM as an example of someone applying antiracism to an area that has nothing to do with racism. I was trying to show an example of well-intentioned activism obstructing innovation and technological progress that will actually improve quality of life for all races.

Two things have changed my mind. First this Twitter thread about motion sensor faucets not working on black skin. Then, an update I made to that same post about facial recognition software producing more false positives on black and brown faces. These things should have been caught before the products made it to the market.

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 In "Diversity Training has a Rationality Problem" I suggested that the best way to fight implicit bias is not with diversity training but with empirical tactics to combat bias at the subconscious level (eg reordering a stack of resumes in a way that preference is given to Black candidates). In that vein, it turns out that using a rubric can completely eliminate racial bias in grading. Much cheaper and more effective than a $20,000 session with Robin DiAngelo. More science, less racism.

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More evidence to support my belief that two parent families are an underrated privilege:

"Children residing in households with unrelated adults were nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries than children residing with 2 biological parents" https://t.co/icG891KFZm pic.twitter.com/ZCHjDWbAbG

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 13, 2021

Two-parent privilege even overcomes racial disparities:

"simply waiting until marriage to have children is a positive predictor of multiple “success variables,” including income. When Prager wrote in 2016, the poverty rate was nearly 25 percent for white children born into single-mother families, but only 7 percent for black children born into two-parent families.”

In my blog post "Through the Lens of Salience" I wrote about how, when intersectionality is used in diversity training, it usually stops at race and gender, which is really unfortunate since more context is always needed. In the example above, the Black child in a two-parent family is more privileged than the White child with a single mom. 

As Conor Friedersdorf shows, controlling for only race and gender will lead to the conclusion:

"that to be Black and female is to be “the most unprotected person in America,” many students might come away with the impression that Black women are the demographic group most likely to be killed by police in America.

According to a 2019 paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the lifetime risk ... for ... white men [is] 39 per 100,000. For Black women, the authors find, the lifetime risk of being killed by police is 2.4 to 5.4 per 100,000." 

Being white and male is a privilege, except when it isn't. Privilege still matters, but it is also context-dependent. So let's choose messaging that doesn't demonize our fellow citizens and actually makes everyone feel included.

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In my post "Everyone is Wrong About Robin DiAngelo" I suggested ways to increase support for Black Lives Matter by thinking of how messages can push or pull "fencers", people who said they "somewhat support" BLM. 

This whole idea of coalition building and gaining the support of fencers comes up a lot in my writing. It turns out that someone already said this much better than me. Here are my favorite quotes from that post:

"Social norms are the only way to achieve cooperation without coercion ...This means that the social norms that promote cooperation are the most valuable thing we have.... 
And this means that nothing is more harmful than the norms that promote polarization and hamper cooperation.”

He then uses an image as a way to picture the spectrum of racist voters.

He then writes: 

"If half the country voted for Trump, the median Trump voter is at the 75th percentile of racism. That’s 0.67 standard deviations more racist than the median American, and 1.33 SDs more racist than the median Clinton voter (and people like the New York Times). On the other hand, there are 6,000 registered KKK members out of 242 million American adults, that more than 4 SDs out on the racism axis."

Which is a math-y way of saying that there is a whole contingent of Trump voters (fencers!) that are much closer to what we consider normal than they are to actual Nazis. Stop calling them names and start working on gaining their trust because, as he writes, we'll need them.

"Trump is especially worrying in regards to racism .... To combat that, we need to build an overwhelming anti-racist coalition. We can’t risk having just 51% of people on our side, we need at least three-quarters of the country. That means we need the “orange quarter” on my chart, the 25% of Americans who voted for Trump but are less racist than the median Trump voter."

Anyway, the whole blog post is fantastic and speaks to everything I care about.

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In my blog post "Kill the Demon, Destroy the Wall" I wrote about how the racial makeup in a school can make things better or worse for African-American students, but we didn't have enough research into the right ratio. I found some new research that looked at "acting white," something I am very uncomfortable writing about and I feel like a need a disclaimer before continuing.

Disclaimer: the authors of the report are testing the thesis of whether "acting white" is real and find that it mostly is not. However, they find certain instances in which data suggests it could be happening. So when I write "acting white" I'm just using their words to describe the data points they are referencing, I am not making any claims about whether or not it exists. I'm only interested in the data as it relates to my idea of Maxwell's Demon in the classroom.

They find that "acting white" is most prominent in schools that are less than 20 percent black, and tends to disappear in schools that are more than 80 percent black. They say it increases with "interracial contact." This aligns with Judith Harris' work--the more interracial contact a student has, the more race becomes a salient category, the more likely students will adopt opposing stereotypes to distinguish themselves from their peers. 

The researchers also say "acting white" is more salient in public schools and low-income families, this makes sense as Harris suggested that in a predominantly White school, a Black student would be assimilated into the culture.

Also of note, the report mentions the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment, which assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to public housing residents in five large cities. They found that females exhibit lower arrest rates, improvements in education and mental health, and are less likely to engage in risky behaviors. Males, on the other hand, were more likely to engage in risky behaviors, had no decrease in arrest rates, and experienced more physical health problems (e.g., injuries or accidents).

This accords with the New York Times study which showed that controlling for class eliminated the wealth gap between black and white girls, while a gap persisted when looking at black and white boys.

Is Malcom X Winning?

Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images

(disclaimer: I refer to the ideas of Dr. King and Malcolm X throughout this blog post. I acknowledge that their views are complex and continued to evolve throughout their tragically short lives. My intention is not to narrow their beliefs. I purposefully use the term "legacies" because what I'm writing about is how they are most remembered today, what the most influential aspect of their beliefs are, what ideas of theirs are shaping today's discourse, even if those ideas represent a small part of their overall ideologies.)

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are probably the two biggest names from the Civil Rights era. They both wanted to end the system that treated African Americans as second-class citizens, but they had opposing visions of what a future America would look like for their children. 

For most of my life, it seemed that King's vision won, by which I mean captured the narrative and dominated the discourse. His face was the one most associated with Black History Month. Everyone in my elementary school could recite the first few lines from his "I have a dream" speech. Everyone in college read Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Over the last year, however, I've noticed that Malcom X's ideas are making a comeback. In fact, within certain groups, I think his ideas have won.

Although he later changed his views, his legacy is separatism, similar to a term today known as "spaces." From Wikipedia:

"While the civil rights movement fought against racial segregation, Malcolm X advocated the complete separation of blacks from whites. The Nation of Islam proposed the establishment of a separate country for African Americans in the southern or southwestern United States as an interim measure until African Americans could return to Africa."

So Malcolm envisioned a world apart from White America, a world in which they are free from White oppression. Dr. King, on the other hand, envisioned the Beloved Community.

"As early as 1956, Dr. King spoke of The Beloved Community as the end goal of nonviolent boycotts. As he said in a speech at a victory rally following the announcement of a favorable U.S. Supreme Court Decision desegregating the seats on Montgomery’s busses, “the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”

This sounds more like integration. It's definitely not separatism or "segregation, but woke."

In a private community Facebook group, I asked if using pandemic pods that include students from marginalized backgrounds could help reduce the inevitable inequity that will arise through remote learning. I was directed to this blog post and admonished that pods are bad and you cannot even try to diversify them. 

The blog writer addresses the question "Would it be more socially just to invite families with fewer resources to join our pod?", saying, "this entire conversation is largely an exercise in privileged people trying to feel better about their own complicity in generations of inequality and injustice." Wow, bad faith much?

What struck me wasn't so much the poor reasoning as the aggressively shutting down of any notion of mixing. I think this is X's legacy bubbling up: Help Black Americans but do it from a distance.

It reminded me of this article by a Black writer who describes the COVID-19 lockdown like a dream come true because he doesn't have to interact with White people. Or Jamele Hill writing "It’s Time for Black Athletes to Leave White Colleges." Or the families that bought 97 acres of land in Georgia to create a city safe for Black people. These aren't people interested in a Beloved Community. These are people who want their own space.

Patents and Racism

One of the most interesting stories I've read is this research into the effects of racism on patents. Around the turn of the 20th century, African Americans filed patents at roughly the same rate as white inventors. They invented all kinds of stuff during this time—an elevator, rotary engines, a tapered golf tee, a dough kneader, a telephone system, a fertilizer distributor, and a bunch of other things.

Two things killed their progress: Plessy v. Ferguson and the Tulsa massacre. The former supports King's vision, the latter supports X's.

Tulsa was known as the Black Wall Street. It had become famous as a bustling, affluent community, a place where Black Americans could settle and live well. It had its own newspaper, hospitals, schools, banks, and a bus service. In other words, it was a Black space free from White oppression. That is, until a White mob massacred its residents and burned the place down.

Plessy v. Ferguson, on the other hand, led to segregation. African Americans became locked out of libraries and commercial districts. But they were also cut off from talking to other (White) inventors. In other words, they were denied the social capital and networking opportunities available in integrated communities.

Risk/Reward

I believe that if we pursue X's vision, there will never be equality. You can tax and redistribute money all you want, which will help some. But social capital is a source of the privileged that cannot be taxed and redistributed. The only way to tap into that is through integration, which cannot happen in Malcom X's world. 

The direction we take for civil rights is important to me because these visions are not compatible. And my ideas, like here and here, involve integration. If we choose Malcom X, I will be fighting a losing battle. 

My sense is that the direction people take will depend on their comfort with risk. Malcom X's vision is the safer route, but it has a lower ceiling and will never close the racial wealth gap. Dr. King's vision has the highest ceiling, but comes with the risk of microaggressions, racism, stereotype threat, and screwing up the Maxwell's Demon ratio so that Black students perform worse and/or seek riskier behavior (especially boys).

But I also recognize that it's not up to me. African Americans can and should be the ones deciding which type of world they want.

The Off Ramp to Herd Immunity

One of the things coronavirus has done is change the way I think about my behavior. I've moved from thinking about what consequences my actions have on myself to what consequences they have on others. This move doesn't come naturally to people and I think it helps explain the resistance to things like masks and vaccines. 

A lot of the arguments against lockdown are some version of this: "If I want to put myself at risk, that is my decision and the government does not have a right to make it for me," or "The vast majority of COVID deaths are the elderly or immunocompromised. I am neither, so why can't I eat indoors/attend a wedding/go to church/etc."

People easily understand risk of death but not risk of transmission. Risk of death involves thinking of the self; risk of transmission involves thinking of others. 

Another common anti-lockdown argument is that the COVID-19 recovery rate is between 97% and 99.75%, meaning only 1-3% of the people who get it die from it. More people die from car crashes than COVID, and we don't ban cars.

But car crashes are not contagious and that mortality rate grows the more the disease spreads. And the disease spreads based on our actions. The question we should ask is "Three percent of what?" 

If we throw caution to the wind, it's 3% of the US population, all 328 million people, and nearly 10 million people die. If we limit exposure by wearing masks and practicing social distancing, it might only be one-third of the country that gets exposed, roughly 100 million people, and 7 million fewer people die. 

My point is that our individual behavior determines how many people that 3% mortality rate applies to.

Muh Freedoms

The individual vs. society-wide thinking is also evident in discussions about a post-vaccinated world. Biden, Fauci, and the CDC have been saying that even after you are vaccinated, you will still have to wear a mask and practice social distancing. 

The individual thinker hears this and thinks "what is the point of getting vaccinated if I can't get my freedom back." The society thinker hears this and thinks "I'm protected but transmission is still possible; I need to keep others safe until we reach herd immunity, so I will continue to wear a mask."

Unintended Signaling

The other thing I've learned from coronavirus is the disastrous consequences of politicizing behaviors. To an antimasker/antivaxxer, you can show all the studies and give all the convincing arguments until you are blue in the face. There is one giant hurdle that no one wants to talk about. Even if unintentional, wearing a mask has the secondary effect of signaling membership in the Blue Tribe.

And every time an antimasker/anti-vaxxer sees their Blue Tribe Facebook co-worker/family member change their profile to a mask-wearing headshot or give the status update "Just got my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine" it unintentionally reinforces the idea that mask wearing and getting a vaccine correlates with Blue Tribe membership.

People often make public displays to normalize behavior they think is good for society. But I think this is one of the examples in which it makes things worse. So what should we do? Be more like Eric Weinstein and less like Patton Oswald.

Got vaccinated yesterday. I will continue to speak about the overselling of vaccines at the same time I talk about the virtues of vaccines.

I elected to go w/ the somewhat lower efficacy of the virus based J&J because novelty of the mRNA approach had a more opaque risk profile.

— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) April 6, 2021

When the polio vaccine dropped in 1955 people lined up to get it, & we were 2 years away from artificial satellites. Now in 2021 we carry external world-brains in our pockets & there’s robots on Mars and idiots think the COVID vaccine is full of wizard poison.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) April 6, 2021

Which one do you think got piled on? Surprisingly, not the one that called a whole group of Americans "idiots."

Why did it get piled on? Because of the on-ramp theory. The belief is that Eric has a large platform, including many right-wing followers, and questioning the science of vaccines is going to put people on the path to extremism.

Promoting vaccine suspicion is legitimizing antivaxx conspiracy thinking. He presents himself as bold and scientific, but he just leads people onto a dangerous anti-science highway and soon they are following QAnon.

Patton, on the other hand, has "the right views" and rightfully makes fun of anti-vaxxers. 90K likes and 18K retweets.

For the vaccine-hesitant crowd, which tweet is more likely to move them in the direction of vaccination? Which is more likely to politicize vaccines and push them to vaccine resistance?

Off Ramp to Herd Immunity

The problem with the on-ramp theory is that it ignores the off-ramp theory. 

Regarding the New York Times piece on Scott Alexander, Scott Aaronson writes:

"The piece devotes enormous space to the idea of rationalism as an on-ramp to alt-right extremism.  The trouble is, it never presents the idea that rationalism also can be an off-ramp from extremism ... precisely because he gives right-wing views more charity than some of us might feel they deserve, [he] actually succeeded in dissuading some of his readers from voting for Trump."

Eric is the antidote to craziness. He provides influence for a certain group of people who, in his absence, would continue on the highway of craziness all the way to Alex Jones.

I recently heard a quote about Joe Manchin, saying that he isn't the Democrat that progressives want, but he's the Democrat that can get elected in West Virginia. Likewise, Eric Weinstein isn't the liberal progressives want, but he's the liberal that can convince vaccine-hesitant citizens to put a needle in their arms.

In Defense of Violating Social Norms

tl;dr

• Aggressive-independents violate social norms. Historically, some social norm violations are now viewed as good. We won't know which current violations are good until years from now. 
• It is important to distinguish between violations that are a by-product and violations that are intentionally cruel. 
• Higher education no longer protects against norm violations; aggressive-independents need a new institution.
• Do aggressive-independents have a responsibility for how crazies use their arguments? (No)
• Should people avoid true statements that can be weaponized by hateful people against marginalized groups? (Mostly, no)

Cancel Controversy

The debate swirling around Cancel Culture comes down to one thing: there is no consensus on which social norm violations are beyond the pale. There is the outrage and then the outrage against the outrage; outrage that a social norm was violated, then outrage that one was not violated and a person was unfairly punished for it.

What's relatively new is that the pressure comes from ordinary people untethered to any institution. The pressure used to come from oppressive governments or religions. We built solutions to this through the protection of free speech via the U.S. constitution and tenured faculty. Today the pressure looks much different. Now it's angry Twitter mobs pressuring nervous business owners.

Cancel Culture defense usually sounds like this: 

• Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. 
• Those in power have been allowed to say hateful things for far too long. Now they are finally being held accountable. 
• Free speech is protection from the government, it doesn't say anything about a private business making a decision to fire a bigot.

I believe that a healthy society grants space for social norm violators. It's not always a bad thing. When Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, that was a norm violation against our segregated society. When Copernicus proposed the heliocentric model of the universe, that was a norm violation for the Catholic Church. 

I don't know what next great paradigm shift will resort from a social norm violation. I just know that it will not be popular right away. It will violate a sacred social norm for many people. 

But without some sense of security, we'll never see it if we don't allow some amount of space for what Paul Graham calls "aggressive-independents".

Sorting the Violators

How do we distinguish the "good trouble" violators from the trolls? I draw distinctions between people like James Damore and David Shor, and people like Stephen Crowder and Myles Leonard. 

Are you violating a social norm out of selfish, hateful reasons? Or is it a byproduct of your pursuit of a greater good? 

Colin Kaepernick was canceled because he violated a social norm by using the national anthem to call attention to a social cause, he wasn't looking to troll conservatives (however, his pig cop socks were trolling and he deserves any hate mail he gets for that). J.K. Rowling was making an argument about feminism, she wasn't engaging in facts-don't-care-about-your-feelings anti-trans trolling, à la Ben Shapiro.

So it's important to look at the intentions of the social norm violators. If they did not have support from their ingroup for this norm violation, would they still pursue it? Shapiro being dismissive of preferred pronouns gains him more followers, while Rowling is losing fans for her beliefs. She cares more about her cause than starting a culture war and should be granted admission into Free Speech Zones (trademark pending). 

Remember, this is all about creating space for the next Jackie Robinson. If it feels wrong to defend Rowling's comments, history might look at you as a brave defender of the oppressed or it might look at you as a "passive-conventional" (more on this) trying to stop progress. The point is that we don't know which norm violations decades from now will be viewed the way we look at Jackie Robinson. So we have to allow for some things that make us uncomfortable.

Safe Spaces for Violators

The next question is how do we create space for good trouble social norm violators? Paul Graham described "aggressive independents"  as the school children who question every rule. They are the smallest population in his aggressive/passive conventional/independent matrix. As such, they need protection.

"Why do the independent-minded need to be protected, though? Because they have all the new ideas. To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong...  it's no coincidence that societies prosper only to the extent that they have customs for keeping the conventional-minded at bay."

Aggressive-independents need a new institution where they can pursue their interests, academia is no longer that institution. People care less about free speech today because it is no longer in the crosshairs of government or the Vatican. 

Therefore, academia has become less of a draw to aggressive independents. It is now a training ground for moral activists who pursue Justice rather than Truth. A by-product of their well-intentioned pursuit of Justice has been censoring speech.

There are popular arguments against free speech that is viewed as hate speech. Let's examine them.

Free Speech/Hate Speech

My personal rule for self-censorship is to check off at least 2 of: is it true? is it kind? is it necessary? The moral activists who punish norm violations have another addendum that is sort of a combination of kind and necessary: can this be weaponized by some hateful group to harm (even if only via words) marginalized groups?

David Shor was (probably) fired for linking to a study showing that violent protests hurt Democrats during elections. Even though it is true—and necessary if you want to elect people to enact police reform—it gives conservatives a talking point to criticize the George Floyd riots. After some outside pressure, Shor was fired.

The main critique of the infamous Tom Cotton op-ed had nothing to do with the merits of his argument, but simply that "this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger." I like to take an argument, such as this, and ask if someone would make the argument if the role was reversed. A good example of this is Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, who executed two police officers. Brinsley wrote a social media post insinuating it was revenge for Michael Brown. 

Is Black Lives Matter responsible for drawing the support of people of people like Brinsley, who wish to harm police officers? Do they deserve blame for rushing to judgment in the Michael Brown case, when all evidence points to justified self-defense on the part of the officer? Should their speech be restricted by societal pressure because it puts police officers' lives in danger?

Or what about the Iraq War? Is it right to publicly speculate that Bush is a liar and only invaded Iraq because he wanted the oil, knowing these sound bites can be picked up and used as recruitment for Al-Qaeda extremists who want to harm our soldiers?

I say no because I believe that groups like Black Lives Matter are in pursuit of a greater good. But because I take that stance, I have to apply it in all situations. That means supporting Tom Cotton's ability to write about the Insurrection Act in the New York Times.

Consequences and Accountability

Popular arguments upholding Cancel Culture usually feature something about "consequences" and "accountability." These are obviously important ideas and should be taken seriously, even if your interlocutor might be arguing in bad faith. 

Once again, let's flip the scenario and see if it still holds up. The right-wing version of passive-conventionals are the law-and-order conservatives. They want a strong police force to ensure order. They want strong borders to stop illegal immigration. They want tough sentences and unhospitable prisons for lawbreakers. 

And what about the mass incarceration of millions of citizens who break these laws, including a disproportionate number of African-Americans? Well, I guess they're just being held "accountable." No one said they are free from the consequences of breaking the law.

If you're like me, and you think our prison system is a stronger signal of unjust laws than rampant criminal activity, you'll agree that maybe this has gone too far and we need to rethink criminal justice.

There should still be consequences for breaking laws and social taboos, we just need to be mindful of proportion. 

Harassment 

Beyond physical violence, there is also an argument against speech that might draw online bullying and other threats. Consider this line in a post about Matt Yglesias:

"Matt Yglesias, who publicly cites polite pushback from a trans femme colleague as the Problem With Media Today — exposing the woman he named to massive harassment from Fox News and online TERFs alike..."

Despite the fact that this framing is 99 percent bullshit, let's go with it anyway. Should Yglesias refrain from publicly saying part of the reason he left Vox was because of "polite pushback" from a particular employee who happens to be trans, if this will bring the employee online harassment from anti-trans bullies?

I think it depends. But before I dive into nuance, let's talk about who is the victim of bullying.

Aggressive-independents are often white, male, highly educated, well off. But they are the victims of bullying and harassment as well. Aggressive-conventionals are the bullies, but they can come from the right and the left.

Scott Alexander's life was threatened because he violates social norms in his blog. David French violated a norm by being a Never Trump Republican, and his family has routinely been threatened. Jesse Singal violated a social norm by writing about trans desisistors and he receives constant bullying. White, male, cis, hetero privilege does not protect you from bullying and threats of violence. 

I guess if you are going to violate social norms, as aggressive-independents do, or if you are going to punish norm violators, as aggressive-conventionals do, you are opening yourself to harassment. My rule is to keep the passive people out. 

The passive-conventionals, whom Graham describes as the sheep who just don't want to cause trouble, should be able to cringe as their co-worker tells a racist joke without the expectation that they report them to the mob police. You should be able to opt-out of the culture war.

The passive-independents, whom Graham describes as the dreamers, should be forgiven for doing something like deadnaming Eliot Page, not knowing Page had transitioned. You should be forgiven for not being highly-tuned to sensitivity when you intend no harm.

To get back to my original question, aggressive-independents with a large following should be mindful of any bullying their words and actions might have if ... IF ... they come at the expense of passive-conventionals (rule followers) or passive-independents (daydreamers). Otherwise, fair game. 

So the fact that Yglesias signed the Harper's letter, which through a weird chain of cause-and-effect might have led to someone else getting bullied (it didn't), is an insufficient reason for him not to take the stand that he did. (In the example I listed, the writer in question is framed as passive but she is actually a low-grade aggressive-conventional. Plus, she "exposed" herself, not Yglesias.)

(To be clear, no one should bully or harass a trans writer. No one should bully or harass anyone, in my opinion. I'm just saying the possibility of bullying is, in most cases, not a good enough reason for an aggressive-independent to resist violating a social norm.)

More often the victims of harassment are no-names, so again it becomes important to distinguish the motives of the social norm violater. Trump calling COVID-19 the "Chinese Wuhan Virus" or "Kung flu" is unnecessary trolling. If people want to cancel or harass someone who does that, I'm fine with it.

But someone prodding at whether or not it was created in the Wuhan lab is looking for answers to better understand how to respond to the current outbreak and prevent the next one. The people who are inspired to commit hate crimes against Asian-Americans listen to Trump, not people like Bret Weinstein. Bret is trying to solve problems, Trump is trying to create them. People like Bret get admission to the Free Speech Zone. Trump does not.

Bret might be wrong about the Wuhan lab. He might be wrong about most things. But he also might be a black box that's only right 1% of the time, but when it's right it's game-changing right, like when he discovered a huge oversight in lab testing on mice.

Conclusion

There needs to be a tradeoff where we allow a certain class of people in our society to break social norms, knowing that a certain portion of the population will be offended and some might even be exposed to bullying. We should pursue paths to protect both the innocent from bullying and the next Copernicus from being silenced.

This isn't about protecting bigots' right to bigot. It's about acknowledging that, while aggressive-conventionals aren't always historically wrong in enforcing social norms, when they've been wrong, they've been wrong big. We can't afford that.

I don't know what these Free Speech Zones should look like. I just think aggressive-independents should abandon academia. It's a lost cause. The need to build something new.

Balancing Action and Theory

 "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." 
William Butler Yeats

I.

There is a scene in Waking Life where four young men are walking down a street, taking turns mumbling about their nihilistic philosophies. Here is an excerpt from the transcript:

"Society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence....

"To rupture the spell of the ideology of the commodified consumer society so that our repressed desires of a more authentic nature can come forward."

So ... yeah.

Eventually, they come across a man on top of a telephone pole. They ask him what he's doing up there and the old man replies, "Well, I'm not sure."

As the four young men walk away, one quips, "Stupid bastard." To which another replies, "No worse than us. He's all action and no theory. We're all theory and no action."

II.

The people who loot neighborhood businesses and tear down the statue of Ulysses Grant are all action and no theory. The people who set up police-free, autonomous zones are all action and no theory. The insurrectionists who storm the Capitol are all action and no theory.

Then there are people who are all theory and no action, like think tanks, policy analysts, and bloggers (hey!). They do fascinating research and write compelling think pieces but rarely leave the office to try and change things.

Another way to think of theory vs. action is Yuval Levin's idea of formative vs. performative institutions. A formative institution is one which shapes an individual; a performative institution is one that individuals use as a platform to build their brand.

All-Action activism tends to be performative and ineffective because its movement lacks theory and direction. It focuses on the Other (marginalized groups) and ways to improve their lives. But its lack of improving the self leads to individuals who are nasty and ineffective.

The most staunch antiracists are some of the meanest people I have ever met. You don't need a bible to see that they are motivated by the deadly sin of anger and wrath. The third principle of the Theory of Enchantment (itself a formative institution) is to root everything you do in love. It's not hard to distinguish the antiracists who act out of love from those who act out of anger, the former will always be the most successful activists.

Theory is built in a formative institution, usually a church (actually the best formative institution is the military, but that shapes people for war, which isn't relevant for what I'm talking about). But sometimes churches are, well, selfish. They can de-emphasize action directed toward others and instead focus on getting one's self into heaven. They aren't always designed to create meaningful change through action. Sometimes a lot of it just sounds like the nihilistic philosophers from Waking Life, all theory and no action monks who kneel and pray all day (to be fair you also have nuns who build hospitals and schools.)

III.

Most "activism" I see today is the opposite: it's performative. It's designed to get the attention of people who are likely to, or already do, agree with you. It's people going to progressive colleges to give lectures about white supremacy. It's screenshotting a letter to your boss and posting it on Twitter. It's Antifa standing up to fascism by marching through Portland, the most liberal city in America.

MLK activism, however, was noticeably different. It was designed to get the attention of people who disagreed with you. It was the melding of formative roots (theory) put into performance (action).

"and there is no plan to strategically escalate"

For protests to be effective they must be inconvenient, uncomfortable, and they must continuously increase what MLK called "creative tension".

If they can ignore you, then your protest is no longer effective. https://t.co/JxZcNq7VSf

— Dr. Mansa Keita (@rasmansa) July 6, 2020

Dr. Keita makes a great point, the all-action/no theory people are making it uncomfortable for the powers that be. And the all-theory, no-action bloggers can just be ignored. But the "creative tension" of the Civil Rights movement seemed more purposeful and I think that's because of the people leading the charge.

IV.

The rituals of formative institutions are helpful in that they restrain our worst impulses. In Philip Gorski's American Covenant, he talks about how Puritans viewed freedom as being more than what libertarians harp on about. From a religious perspective, it was being free from our own passions. In his famous speech that I love to reference, David Foster Wallace wrote about what happens when we give into these passions:

"And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly...

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out."

Without the formative institutions that shape character and free us from our own passions, we fall into "all action, no theory" performative demonstrations that always fall flat on their faces and often produce backlash that makes things worse.

In my view, formative institutions are at their best when they do two things. First, they give your mind something to worship (as opposed to compress) so that you can mentally train yourself to be free of your passions. So instead of worshipping money or beauty or power or intellect, we are free to focus our attention on something meaningful. 

Second, they give an answer to Levin's question, "Given my role as (member of formative institution XYZ) how do I respond in this situation?"

I always loved Levin's line because it assumes an individual's responsibility to the public good, which brings me back to Catholicism. 

V.

Martin Marty wore about the two ways Protestant churches view their role. Private Protestantism is primarily concerned with the afterlife and promoted saving souls and individual salvation. Meanwhile, Public Protestantism believes that the way to God is through the transformation of society. (Another way to think of this is the difference between faith and works.) 

Catholicism doesn't fit neatly into either, but it feels more private than public. Catholicism focuses on the self and ways to ensure admission to heaven. 

Sure, Lent is kind of a big deal, which helps free ourselves from our passions. I think that is a good thing. There is a social justice component to Catholic life, which turns attention to the Other and ways to improve public life. 

But these things are not as important as the sacraments and the focus on the self. There are penalties for missing Mass or not going to confession. It's hard to break the sacrament of matrimony (get divorced). You are expected to pray daily.

Conversely, there is no penalty for never helping the poor. There is no expectation to volunteer in your community. Anything you would call Public Catholicism--performative, action-based work--is extra credit stuff. 

As a non-believer (technically apatheist) I still care because my wife is Catholic and we are raising our children Catholic. My oldest goes to Catechism (basically Sunday School) and I'm okay with this because I'm not against religion. But I'd rather be for it. And it's hard when I see what he's learning and none of it has to do with public life or giving him an answer to Levin's question.

To me, Martin Luther King Jr. had the best blending of formative, theory-based roots that could be put into performative, public-facing action. Malcom X, for all the ways he contrasted with King, fit this description as well. I have many thoughts on their legacies, but that is for another post.

For now I just want to say that I've been critical of activism that I thought was too performative and ineffective. But I also recognize that I shy away from action and I actually envy that level of passion. However, there is a reason I shy away from action and it has to do with a calling I am more drawn toward.

VI.

Performative vs. formative. Theory vs. action. Public vs. Private. I think all of these conflicts come down to one thing: the tension between Truth and Justice. 

Justice without Truth will unfairly punish the innocent. Truth without Justice will allow injustice to fester and people to suffer. Both are important but I am just more emotionally drawn to Truth.

I disagree with tax cuts for the rich and think there should be more wealth redistribution. Yet, when then-Senator Kamala Harris tweeted:

The average tax refund is down about $170 compared to last year. Let’s call the President’s tax cut what it is: a middle-class tax hike to line the pockets of already wealthy corporations and the 1%.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) February 11, 2019

... I was bothered because, well, it's just not true. Likewise, what happened to Michael Brown was awful and I hope the pain we feel leads to serious police reform. But when Senators Harris and Warren say he was murdered, that is also a lie. Hate crimes against the gay community are awful, but the Pulse nightclub shooting narrative was a lie and the Matthew Shepard narrative was a lie. I hate Trumpism and bullying but the Covington Catholic narrative was a lie. 

These are just little white lies but even if they are in the pursuit of Justice I agree with, I feel an obligation to call them out. Part of what holds me back from a stronger pursuit of Justice is a strong commitment I have to Truth. Justice without Truth feels tainted to me. 

But I am more aware now that holding too tight to Truth prevents Justice and I need to find a better balance.

The four young men in the Waking Life scene are concerned with Truth, to the point that they never do anything. The old man represents a Quixotic quest for Justice, to the point his actions aren't producing any results (if it were a more on-the-nose metaphor he'd say he had climbed up the pole to fight white supremacy). It's obvious that both extremes are bad, but what do we optimize for?

Maybe the answer is for everyone to seek a healthy, balanced pursuit of Truth and Justice? Maybe the answer is for society to have equal numbers of Truth-seeking and Justice-seeking individuals pushing back on one another? 

This is a long post and its conclusion is indicative of my blog. I don't feel like I have an answer but at least I feel like I now understand the question.

A Note About Hypocrisy

You're in a courtroom. The bailiff shouts, "All rise!" The judge enters the room, takes his seat, and everyone else takes their seat. 

The judge asks the defense for their opening statement. The defense lawyer stands up, straightens his suit, and begins to explain why his client is not guilty. But halfway through his statement, the judge interrupts him.

"I'm sorry, but there is no way you actually believe that."

"Excuse me?" the defense lawyer asks, befuddled.

"You're only making that argument because your client is paying you to. Last week you were in my courtroom, making the exact opposite argument for a different client. You sir, are a hypocrite. Dismissed!"

Okay, back in the real world.

I see a lot of arguments similar to the above anecdote about hypocrisy. In the context of a courtroom, it sounds absurd. I think that making these hypocrisy arguments absurd should be the norm. If we are concerned with truth, we should approach all debate as if we are in a courtroom.

A recent example is the issue of allowing trans girls (biological males) to compete in girls sports. A conservative will argue against it, saying it's not fair to the (cis) girls and we need to stand up for their rights. A progressive will shout back, "Oh, now you care about women? If you cared about women's rights you wouldn't vote to defund Planned Parenthood. You're only making that argument because you're a transphobe."

The common belief of the social media age is that pointing out someone's hypocrisy is a way to win a debate. It's not.

First of all, it's a very "let he who hath not been a hypocrite cast the first Twitter dunk" scenario. Most people are hypocritical at some point and not in a position to be morally superior in pointing it out in others. Living a morally consistent life is harder than most people think and it's probably a situation where you'd have to worship this belief and compress everything else to be good at it.

Second, so what? If someone mounts a good argument, who cares what the motives are; engage with the argument. 

If you are pro-choice and you read an essay that argues we have a moral imperative to protect a woman's right to choose, do you then search the Twitter history of the writer and try to find a time they were a hypocrite so that you could dismiss the argument you agree with? Of course not. This makes you a hypocrite (Oh, great. Now I'm doing it).

Versions where this line of thinking is acceptable

Jeffrey Sachs does a good job of demonstrating all the instances of conservatives participating in their version of cancel culture. This isn't a good argument that cancel culture doesn't exist, or that it's okay because "people are just being held accountable." BUT, it is a good argument against the idea that cancel culture is strictly a left-wing phenomenon. 

I know it sounds like an argument accusing one side of hypocrisy but it's really a rebuttal of the idea that "Group X is bad because they do this thing I don't like" when in fact Group Y also does the thing you don't like.

This cancel culture scenario is a situation in which impugning motives might be okay. Once you identify the hypocrisy, you then ask: Is the arguer arguing that the Left is bad and using a shoddy example or is the arguer arguing that cancel culture is bad but is blind to all the other instances of it?  

So calling out hypocrisy works if its goal is to change the nature of the debate--what is the person really arguing?

The limitations of this line of thinking

This does not mean that you must engage with every shitty argument on Twitter. But it does mean that you treat good arguments on their merits and do not dismiss them due to the motivations, character, and possible hypocrisy of the arguer. 

A progressive who cares about fairness and women's rights does have to engage with the question of whether allowing trans girls to compete with cis girls is really fair, but they do not have to engage with the person posing the argument if it's obvious they are a conservative who always takes the position: Progressives Are Always Wrong.

In other words, if it's a bad faith argument you do not have to respond to the arguer and get dragged into a culture war debate. But you should grapple with whether there is some truth to the argument, even if that means doing it on your own terms. 

You might end up deciding that a few cis girls not making the cut on their track team is a tradeoff that is worth trans girls being able to live out their true identity, and your original belief will now be that much stronger.

Citing Hypocrites

Christopher Rufo has made a name for himself by being the go-to guy to leak mandatory diversity training sessions that are racially divisive. He is transparent in his belief that Critical Race Theory is bad and has no place in the public square or mandatory training sessions. He's also a hypocrite because he works for the Discovery Institute, which advocates teaching intelligent design in schools.

As someone who believes public schools should teach neither intelligent design nor Critical Race Theory (nor anything that attempts to influence behavior; that's what local, community-based institutions are for, but that's a topic for another post) I can still reference his arguments against CRT even though I'm aware of his hypocrisy. 

He's probably more of the belief that "The left is bad and CRT is a convenient reason why" than "CRT should not be taught in schools because of something something free speech something something racially divisive." But that distinction doesn't matter to me because I still agree with the argument even if the arguer is motivated to think all things from the Left are categorically bad, a position I do not hold. 

I don't trust Rufo's interpretation of what he says these sessions are really about. But sharing screenshots of some of the slides is pretty damning and I don't have any evidence or reason to believe they have been digitally altered in any way. Sure, he's kind of a clown who takes himself too seriously. But despite his smug culture-warrior mentality, he does curate content that I find valuable and no one else seems to be reporting.

A judge's job is not to determine whether or not the defendant is a good person. Her job is to determine whether or not he committed a crime. Likewise, our job in the public arena of discourse is not to determine the motivations of the arguer but the merits of the argument.