What happened to the anti-evangelical movement?

pic.twitter.com/Q9OjlJhi7f

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022

I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II.

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

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

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

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

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

Updating my Priors: Short Takes Part VI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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From an Inside Higher Ed story:

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

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

Or, try liberalism!

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

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

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

Most other risks don't change like this. The risks of skydiving or driving without a seatbelt or casual sex are about the same now as 2 months or 6 months or 3 years ago. With most risks we make a one-time decision about whether an activity is "safe" and rarely revisit it.

— Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits) April 3, 2022

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

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

New Bloomberg column from me looking at fresh research from @dbroockman & @j_kalla on a cool experiment where they paid dedicated Fox News viewers to switch to CNN instead. https://t.co/WpS5MqT5FW

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 3, 2022

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

Who Watches the Epidemiologists?

 

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

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

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

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

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

Why Economists

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

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

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

Understanding Conflict

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

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

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

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

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

The Risk of Risk

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

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

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

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

The ReUpswing

Photo from Flickr

 

In The Upswing, Robert Putnam notes a pattern. In the late 19th century we were an individualistic country. As we moved into the 20th century, we became less individualist and shared more of the same values, something he calls "communitarian." After the 1960s, we reverted to becoming more individualistic. 

Putnam believes that if we shifted away from individualism before, we can do it again. My hypothesis is that this shift has already started, but it looks nothing like the previous move to communitarianism, instead it’s more of the conformity side of those communitarian/shared values. 

The culture war that is happening right now is about two dominant groups trying to enforce conformity. Both the cancel culture left and the natcon right want Americans to conform to their values. 

Take pronouns. They started off as a way for people to be open and accepting to all gender identities, very individualistic. Now you have employers forcing their employees to put their pronouns in their email signatures and Zoom names. Conform or be fired.

Take education. You had conservatives saying school choice (ie charter schools) is good; parents need more options. Now you have anti CRT laws censuring curriculum, leading to fewer options for learning. These laws don't happen at the local level; they apply to the all public schools in the whole state. You must conform. 

So I do think we are becoming less individualistic. But it’s not a reversion to the Putnam’s good communitarian values, but the darker conformist side. And two cultures are fighting it out while liberalism is standing on the sideline like, "Can't we go back to 'live and let live'?"

I don't know where this is going to go, but it doesn't seem like either side wants to make concessions. And classical liberalism, which has been the past solution to this problem, doesn't seem to have much sway. 

It's almost like community and conformity have decoupled. If I had to guess, I would say the cancel culture left will win out because it has youth on its side. As Tanner Greer wrote, Culture Wars are Long Wars. In a few generations, the nationalist conservatives will die out and the leftist will be dominant. 

However, illiberalism has historically been unpopular and I think cancel culture will make too many enemies for it to have too much cultural power. Something novel will replace both ideologies and maybe it will look something more like communitarianism. 

In Defense of Objectivity

I've seen too many people attack objectivity as stupid and wrong; abandoning all notions of neutrality to buttress their naked partisanship. I think this belief is not only wrong, but dangerous. 

I hate to go Reducto ad Hitlerium, but ya know who doesn't believe in journalistic objectivity? Putin. He doesn't allow journalists to report "just the facts," if those facts make him look bad.

The reason I find the absence of any pretense of objectivity to be dangerous is that it becomes a slippery slope to propaganda.

In describing what he dubbed "Social Justice U", Jonathan Haidt invoked this quote from Marx: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

The important role of journalism is to report the news and keep an informed citizenry. As soon as you abandon that mission, and adopt something like "moral clarity", you've then stepped into activism. You've changed your mission to something closer to Marx's vision of trying to change society. Then you're just a small step from propaganda. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with activism; it's just that it is decidedly not journalism. And journalism is too important to do away with.

Objective Communities

As I've quoted before, Scott Siskind states that objectivity isn't a binary, but a spectrum. But in The Constitution of Knowledge, Jonathan Rauch described a Karl Popper quote that I like even better.

“Truth, as Karol Popper said, is a regulative principle. Like north, it is a direction, an orientation, not a destination."

Rauch then goes on to describe how truth and objectivity are something that comes about from a community, not an individual.

"When we join the reality-based community … we resolve to conduct ourselves as if reality were out there and objectivity were possible, even while acknowledging that reality is elusive and perfect objectivity is impossible.”

For most of the 20th century, we had trust in the media because it was composed of a community that strove for objectivity. Rauch writes that when the American Society of Newspaper Editors was founded in 1922, its first order of business was to promulgate an ethics code, including things like distinguishing between news and opinion, soliciting a response from anyone whose reputation or moral character might be impugned in print. "To news professionals, correcting error should be a point of pride, a distinguishing and defining feature of the culture.”

These journalistic norms induce writers to paint a more complete, fair, and accurate picture of their reporting. Abandoning these norms because they reek of "performative neutrality" and you abandon truth.

In as much as biases exist, that makes the strongest case for viewpoint diversity. A single opinion writer might not present an objective view, but an editorial board with panoply of perspectives will do a pretty good job.

Knowledge of Self

When Rauch writes about conducting ourselves as if objectivity were possible, even while acknowledging that perfect objectivity is impossible, he's talking about something very real that I think many different groups of people can understand.

• Christians know that we are not free from sin. That knowledge doesn't lead them to rob, rape and pillage but to try seek redemption for when they do sin and strive to do better.
• White readers of Robin DiAngelo don't read White Fragility, learn about implicit biases and microagressions, and then conclude they can never not be racist so they might as well join the Klan. They try to be more mindful and look for ways to minimize harm against the black community.
• The rationalist community doesn't read about cognitive biases and conclude that people are hopelessly irrational. They develop systems and norms for overcoming biases and being less wrong.

This is even measurable. Phillip Tetlock's research into Superforcasters detailed observations about which personality traits led to people being right more than everyone else: they developed base rates to anchor beliefs and avoid recency bias, they thinked in probabilities rather than absolutes, they updated their positions as new information arrived. 

They kept a broad curiosity about the world, using multiple lenses rather than getting bogged down in one. They were more objective and this led to them being more right and less wrong. (To circle back to Rauch's point, Tetlock also found that a superforecaster's performance improved when grouped together with other superforecasters, thus proving the point about communities' ability to point toward a more truthy reality.)

If partisans, activists, or hedgehogs had the correct world view, then they would be ones making the most accurate forecasts. 

Words Matter

A professor started a twitter thread about "performative neutrality" that started off looking like a knock on objectivity but ended up actually defending it. Better yet, it was more like "saying you are objective isn't enough, you have to do these things to be something closer to objective."

He gives a good example.

What word did you choose? That word matters! It frames how someone new to the is going to perceive and frame the conflict.

While there will be lots of answers in class Monday, I expect most will say something like:

• War
• Invasion
• Conflict

— Jeremy Littau (@JeremyLittau) February 25, 2022

He pointed out how careful one has to be in choosing words. Yes, ten different writers might choose ten different words to describe what is happening in Ukraine. But a reasonable group of editors can agree on a ranking of those words from most to least objective and choose accordingly.

This takes work, but it is far from impossible. And while I still think there is a place for activist writing, it should never replace actual objective-seeking journalism.

Evolve

Now, all of this isn't to say the what our society needs is a reversion to "the way things were." For instance, I hate fact-checking journalism. It does nothing, really. And it often suffers from a bias that journalism is supposed to solve.

But if there is a direction for journalism to evolve, I think it's closer to the work of Amanda Ripley and Solutions Journalism Network. In her groundbreaking essay, Complicating the Narratives, Ripley notes that traditional journalism no longer has the same impact. 

"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. We continue to collect facts and capture quotes as if we are operating in a linear world. But it’s becoming clear that we cannot FOIA our way out of this problem. If we want to learn the truth, we have to find new ways to listen."

If people like Wesley Lowery want journalism to evolve to something like activism or moral guidance, Ripley thinks it should evolve to be more like conflict mediation. 

"If any of us want to understand what’s underneath someone’s political rage, we need to follow stories to these moral roots — just like mediators. “People tend to keep describing their stories in the same way,” McCulloch says. “In mediation, you try to flip that over and say, ‘How did you come to that? Why is this story important to you? How do you feel when you tell it to me?’”

In a way, this is activism as it has the potential to change society. But it's antitribalist as opposed to the bias-confirming moral clarity that increases tribalism. 

I do worry that the move from community journalism (eg New York Times) to individualistic journalism (eg Substack) will lead to more biases and less objectivity. But if there is a path for journalism to get us out of conflict and serve a great societal need, this is it.

Hygiene Theateria and AntiVaxtopia

About ten years ago I was listening to David Brooks on some news talk show. He had a take about America's declining trust in government that went something like this:

"Social Security would never pass today. You couldn't tell people: 'We're going to take some money out of your paycheck each month, spend it on other things, but don't worry, it will be there for you when you retire.'"

It's an interesting hypothesis, and one I'm inclined to believe, but it's not testable. But we might have something close that is testable.

I have a prediction for how I see Covid-19 changing our society. I think people are going to sort into two types of communities: Hygiene Theateria and Antivaxtopia. Both will feature very different people but movitaved by the same phenomenon: we're never going back to normal.

What is Normal?

It's a freezing cold take to say that antivaxxers are refusing the jab because they don't trust institutions: whether it's public health officials, Big Pharma, or mainstream media. It's beyond political; they even boo Trump when he touts the vax. 

No, my take is that antivaxxers are going to go beyond resisting the covid-19 vaccination. They are going to start resisting all vaccines and all institutions that require any of them. This is Brooks' hypothesis in play; something that we used to go along with (vaccination) is being reintroduced and many of the public are resisting. Whereas "normal" was getting all your shots, the new Covid normal is refusing all shots and rejecting places that require them.

So I think antivaxxers will start sorting into communities, employers, and other institutions that shun ALL mandates. They will create their own Antivaxtopia (and natural selection will have its way with them in a few generations).

New Risk Normal

My other prediction has to do with Covid's endemic stage. We are (hopefully) approaching a place where the lethality of Covid is falling under normal levels of risk, like the flu or car accidents. But for a certain portion of society, that concept of "normal risk" has been recalibrated and they will never feel safe again. 

They will never trust being in crowded places without a mask. They will seek out communities and institutions that have strict mandates where entrants must show a passport that proves you've been boosted in the last six months. 

They will always carry hand sanitizer and extra N95 masks. They will continue to hang plexiglass in front of their businesses registers. They will only work at jobs that allow full remote work. They will create their own Hygiene Theateria. 

Of course, there will still be a plurality of normies who continue to get vaccinated and wear masks in places that require them but otherwise continue living their life as normally as they can. But for these two groups, I think there is no going back to normal.

The Job Market as Your Therapist

I have a friend who once told me that everyone, everyone, should have a therapist. If nothing else, he said, it's someone to unload all of your shit on so you don't unload it on your family.

I've written ad nauseam about the death of the community and what this means for how people interact with the market. But the problem keeps staring me in the face. 

Case in point, I'm in a webinar about Gen Z and I'm told that they want a job that is meaningful. For my generation and older, this sounds like "I want a job where it feels like I'm having some positive impact on the world." But for Gen Z, it means they want the values of the employer to reflect their values.

This is new. 

People used to belong to churches or civic organizations or other moral communities that reflected their values, but Gen Z does not. As such, they unload all their shit on their employer.

This will massively change how our country looks. It will result in ideological sorting in the market. In the state, it will either swing back and forth with each election or lead to divorce.

Vampire Perks

I wish I believed there was a path for the community to arise as a place for people to unload their need for meaning. The common thing for people in my situation is to bemoan the morally bankrupt values of this younger generation and fight against it. But I am reminded of the Vampire Problem.

Most people--given the option to have an undead creature bite their neck, suck their blood, and transform them into a creature of the night that can only subsist on hunting and killing the living--would say "No, thanks." Even though every single vampire, who used to be human, loves being a vampire. They prefer it to their old life as a mortal human. So who's to say I wouldn't like being a vampire even if it's not my choice?

This is the Vampire Problem. Just because I don't like living in a world in which moral communities shift from the community to the employer, doesn't mean my children's generation won't prefer it that way. If this shift happens in my lifetime, I might even find myself liking it better.

Full Circle

I'm also encouraged by The Third Pillar. Reading it made me realize the long, surviving legacy of the community. As a bayesian who is partial to base rates, I have to ask myself, what is more likely: a change in society completely destroys the community as we know it, never to return? Or it finds a way to survive and push back against the state and the market, just as it always has.

What if this trend of transparently-politicized businesses continues and every employer explicitly states their political and moral values and employees self select into jobs that match their values? Reducing your pool of potential employees in half is going to make you weaker, just like any employer that only hired blonde-haired candidates would be weaker.

The first employer to defect (ie be open to job candidates of all ideologies) is going to outcompete all the other businesses that only hire social justice advocates or nationalists or whatever. The defections to becoming apolitical and to prioritizing the best employees over those who match your values will increase and the ideologically-minded companies will start to go out of business.

But the ideological businesses won't go away completely! People will have become so attached to having that tight moral community that they will continue to meet regularly. The old ideological businesses will just become the new churches and the community will return back where it belongs.

There, I galaxy-brained myself into it. I feel better now. I guess I don't need a therapist after all.