Category: Current Affairs
The Bari Weiss letter
Here is one part of it:
But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.
What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.
Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.
Do read the whole thing. And Andrew Sullivan is stepping down at New York magazine.
What should I ask Matt Yglesias?
I will be doing a Conversation with him, based in part on his new forthcoming book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger. While I have not yet read it, I strongly expect it will be excellent.
And to be clear, this will be the conversation with Matt I want to have, not the one that you might think you wish to hear.
So what should I ask?
What is the future of the intellectual right?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column. I suggest it will take three major forms, namely anti-China, pro-internet as a communications medium (as an offset to left-wing media), and dislike of the Left, most of all the latter. Note these are predictions rather than normative claims about what should happen. Here is one excerpt:
Last and perhaps most significant, the intellectual right will dislike the left. It pretty much does already, but the antagonism will grow. Opposition to political correctness and cancel culture, at least in their left-wing versions, will become the most important defining view. As my colleague Bryan Caplan succinctly put it four years ago: “Leftists are anti-market. … Rightists are anti-leftist.”
The intensity of this dislike will mean that, within right-wing circles, free speech will prosper. As long as you take care to signal your dislike of the left, you will be allowed to hold many other heterodox views without being purged or penalized.
If you are on the Left, note that it does not suffice to dislike the Right, you have to dislike most parts of the Left as well (why is that? Can you model this?).
I also consider social conservatism, libertarianism, communitarianism, and Sam’s Club Republicanism as possible alternative directions for the intellectual Right. The entire column repays careful study.
Ethiopia dam fact of the day
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam when filled will have capacity to hold 74bn cubic metres of water, more than the volume of the entire Blue Nile. Makes Egypt nervous about water supply in a drought.
That is from Adam Tooze.
Excess deaths are down — below average — for those younger than eighteen
In the United States that is, link here, from Lyman Stone, photo here:
In other words, lockdown and shelter at home have limited some of the otherwise risky activities that young people engage in.
Excess deaths more generally seem to have reached a normal range, albeit at the upper end of that range:
I wouldn’t want to call this “good news,” but it is one form of putting the current situation into perspective.
The Harpers free speech letter and controversy
Many of you have been asking for a more detailed account of what I think. Here is an NYT summary of the debate, in case you have been living under a rock. Of course I side with those who signed the letter, but I would add a few points.
First, I don’t think the letter itself quite pinpoints what has gone wrong, nor do I think that such a collective project is likely to do so. Most of us would agree there is nothing wrong per se with voluntary standards of affiliation, or voluntary speech regulations in private institutions, nor should the NYT feel obliged to turn its platforms over to tyrants such as…say…Vladimir Putin.
The actual problem is that we have a new bunch of “speech regulators” (not in the legal sense, not usually at least) who are especially humorless and obnoxious and I would say neurotic — in the personality psychology sense of that word. I say let’s complain about the real problem, namely the moral fiber, emotional temperaments, and factual worldviews of the individuals who have arrogated the new speech censorship functions to themselves. I am free to raise that charge, a collective letter signed by 153 diverse intellectuals and artists really is not, and is strongly constrained toward the more “positive” and “constructive” approaches to the problem, or at least what might appear to be such.
The letter is descriptively accurate in blaming lack of “toleration” and increased “censoriousness” for our problems, but those words only make sense if you have a much deeper mental model of what is actually going on. There is ultimately something question-begging about words that do not pin down the proper margin of objection, or what might be a correct worldview, or what might be a worldview we should in fact not tolerate in our affiliations. In other words, a non-question-begging answer has to take sides to some extent, and that is especially hard for a collective or grand coalition to do.
That is fine! No complaint from these quarters, and I am very glad they took the trouble to move forward with this project. I know many of the signers, and those individuals I like, admire, and respect, to a person. But in reality, the letter itself, de facto, decided to elevate consensus and reputational oomph over actual free speech about the real truths in our world.
So in the Straussian sense it is actually a letter about the limits and impotence of true free speech, and the need to be constrained by social consensus.
How about the signers and non-signers? Here is from the NYT piece:
“We’re not just a bunch of old white guys sitting around writing this letter,” Mr. Williams, who is African-American, said. “It includes plenty of Black thinkers, Muslim thinkers, Jewish thinkers, people who are trans and gay, old and young, right wing and left wing.”
Only a very small number of individuals in the world even had the option of signing, and it seems the particular individuals chosen were selected with an eye toward their public and intellectual palatability. Do you really think they would have invited [fill in the blank with name of “evil” person of your choice] to sign? Or how about such a letter signed only by white males? More prosaically, how about a few vocal Trump supporters or members of the IDW?
You can’t expect readers to scroll through thousands of names, but of course with internet technology you could have a linked pdf with a second tier of signers, more numerous and also more truly intellectually diverse. The de facto message seems to be: “free speech is too important a cause to let just anybody sign onto.”
Again, what they did is fine! I work with voluntary institutions all the time, and am quite familiar with “how things have to go.”
But again, let’s be honest. To produce a paean to free speech, acceptable to Harper’s and worthy of receiving a non-condemnatory article in The New York Times, the organizers had to “restrict free speech” in a manner not altogether different than what they are objecting to.
Fortunately, most people will read the Harper’s letter straight up rather than in Straussian terms. The Straussian reading is far more depressing than the pleasure you might feel at seeing this missive take center stage, if only for a day.
Southeast Asia coronavirus update
Health officials praise Laos after coronavirus-free declaration (some new concerns here, so far nothing major)
Cambodia has zero reported deaths, broadly consistent with anecdotal evidence too.
Vietnam reports 14 new cases, all imported. Broader record of zero deaths.
No new Covid cases in Thailand Tuesday.
Have you noticed that those four countries are right next to each other? (Within southeast Asia, most cases are in the relatively distant Indonesia and Philippines.)
I genuinely do not understand why this heterogeneity is not discussed much, much more.
Those countries also have very different institutions and systems of government and state capacity. Do you really think this is all because they are such policy geniuses?
Those countries have instituted some good policies, to be sure. But so has Australia, where there is a major coronavirus resurgence.
Inquiring minds wish to know. One hypothesis is that they have a less contagious strain, another is that they have accumulated T-cell immunities from previous coronaviruses. Or perhaps both? Or perhaps other factors are playing a role?
I do not understand why the world is not obsessed with this question. And should you be happy if you have, in the past, traveled to these countries as a tourist?
Megan McArdle on Patrick Collison on China
On first read, that sentiment might seem banal. Of course we should clearly oppose China’s intensifying political repression. But is easier to list American business leaders who have cravenly excused the inexcusable than to name those such as Collison, who have been brave enough to state the obvious. When it comes to China’s human rights abuses, the position of the American business community is prone…
“It must be possible,” Collison tells me, “to acknowledge the basic facts — for example, that concentration camps and forced sterilization programs are reprehensible evils. If it becomes de facto unacceptable to do so, as part of some kind of self-perpetuating silence, it really seems to me that that’s a positive feedback loop that we should hurry to break.”
There is much more at the link, definitely recommended.
Tales from Trinidad barter markets in everything
One of my favorite countries, this is from the newspaper:
DESPERATE to get his taxi badge, a man bought a $500 used typewriter and donated it to the Licensing Office…
The seller, who asked not to be named, wrote: “So funny story. I had a typewriter for sale on Facebook marketplace for some time. I get this call from a young man. We chat for a bit. He says he’s down at licensing office. He’s coming right now.
“When he arrives he gives me the story. Since December he’s been trying to get his taxi badge. He bought a maxi taxi and can’t use it because he’s waiting for his badge. Then when he passed pandemic lockdown happened. Three months later, Licensing Office opens with an appointment system, appointment to pay, then appointment to collect. The day arrives to collect. He’s told typewriter is not working over a week.”
The post goes on to say that officials at Licensing agreed that if they got a typewriter they would be able to provide the taxi badge.
The seller continues: “He finds me on Facebook marketplace. When he arrives he says ‘You ever heard of a private person buying a typewriter for the State?’ Money paid. He calls later to say everyone is getting their license today. He actually called twice while at licensing office to get further instruction on operating the typewriter. Well done, young man. Well done!”
Via K.
My Conversation with Annie Duke
Here is the transcript and audio, here is the opening summary:
Annie joined Tyler to explore how payoffs aren’t always monetary, the benefits and costs of probabilistic thinking, the “magical thinking” behind why people buy fire insurance but usually don’t get prenups, the psychology behind betting on shark migrations, how her most famous linguistics paper took on Steven Pinker, how public policy would change if only the top 500 poker players voted, why she wasn’t surprised to lose Celebrity Apprentice to Joan Rivers, whether Trump has a tell, the number one trait of top poker players, and more.
Here is one bit from Annie:
DUKE: So when I went on my first date with my husband, my brother and brother-in-law immediately decided to make a market, and it was whether we were going to get married. Now to be fair, my husband and I — before we went on our first date, we’d been friends. Both my brother and my brother-in-law knew my eventual husband, but this is when we’re going on our first date. They make a market. I think that my brother-in-law ended up bidding 23.
My brother then called me up, cracking up, that my brother-in-law had bid 23 when we hadn’t been on a first date yet. And I then started laughing at my brother, said, “Well, that means you had to bid 22. Why are you laughing at him? You somehow bid 22. It’s our first date.” Now, that’s because we’re all people who sort of think this way. And so this sort of becomes the fun of the friendship, but there are other people . . .
And this from Annie:
DUKE: My suspicion is that if only the top 500 poker players voted, people would be thinking a lot more about edge cases — where things could go wrong, for sure, because poker players just are obsessed with that. I think that there would be more long-termism as opposed to short-termism, again, because you have to be obsessed with that as a concept. I think that people would be thinking about “What are the unintended consequences? How does this look?”
Another thing that’s really important that poker players think about is, “If I put this policy in that looks like it’s awesome, how can someone come in and find the cracks in it so that it can turn into something bad?” I feel like the top 500 players would definitely be thinking in that way more.
You will have to read or hear the dialogue to take in my many good questions.
China update of the day
Chinese authorities are carrying out forced sterilisations of women in an apparent campaign to curb the growth of ethnic minority populations in the western Xinjiang region, according to research published on Monday.
The report, based on a combination of official regional data, policy documents and interviews with ethnic minority women, has prompted an international group of lawmakers to call for a United Nations investigation into China’s policies in the region.
The move is likely to enrage Beijing, which has denied trampling on the rights of ethnic groups in Xinjiang, and which on Monday called the allegations “baseless”.
Here is the full story from The Guardian.
UK fact of the day
#COVID19 mortality in UK hospital patients has been falling steadily from >6% in March to ~1% now, with similar trends elsewhere. The reasons behind this pattern remain unclear, but #COVID19 Infection Fatality Rates will likely have to be revised downward. tinyurl.com/ybnlmkdz
That is from Francis Balloux. And again here is the source link. And please do not conclude the virus is becoming less dangerous, that is not a necessary implication of the above! Alternative explanations are given at the latter link. Most broadly, I will say it again: if your model does not have long-run elasticities as much greater than short-run elasticities, it is likely to be off in some significant ways.
The Long-Term Belief-Scarring Effects of COVID-19
The largest economic cost of the COVID-19 pandemic could arise from changes in behavior long after the immediate health crisis is resolved. A potential source of such a long-lived change is scarring of beliefs, a persistent change in the perceived probability of an extreme, negative shock in the future. We show how to quantify the extent of such belief changes and determine their impact on future economic outcomes. We find that the long-run costs for the U.S. economy from this channel is many times higher than the estimates of the short-run losses in output. This suggests that, even if a vaccine cures everyone in a year, the Covid-19 crisis will leave its mark on the US economy for many years to come.
That is from a new NBER working paper by Julian Kozlowski, Laura Veldkamp, and Venky Venkateswaran.
We are living in a (very temporary) dining paradise
Of course current arrangements are terrible for restaurants, and pretty soon they will be bad for your dining too, as more restaurants close up for good. But right now we live in a window of opportunity.
The owner and/or best chef is in the restaurant at a higher rate than usual — where else can he or she go?
Menus have been slimmed down, so there are fewer dishes, which means fresher ingredients and less delegation of cooking tasks.
Most menus have new dishes, not otherwise available, often in the direction of comfort food, which is a comfort because it tastes good!
They are cooking just for you, yum.
Show up for lunch at 11 a.m. or for dinner at 4:30 p.m. Please only eat outside. Bring a mask as well. And please don’t linger at the table, so that others may follow in your footsteps.
Note which places have good outdoor dining arrangements, and which have nice park benches right nearby. (Don’t drive the food back home as it becomes soggy and non-optimal for human consumption.) You won’t end up with that many options to choose from.
Nonetheless I’ve had some very good and special meals as of late.
Why Americans Are Having an Emotional Reaction to Masks
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, easier read through than excerpted, but here is one bit:
When no one can see our countenances, we may behave differently. One study found that children wearing Halloween masks were more likely to break the rules and take more candy. The anonymity conferred by masks may be making it easier for protestors to knock down so many statues.
And indeed, people have long used masks to achieve a kind of plausible deniability. At Carnival festivities around the world people wear masks, and this seems to encourage greater revelry, drunkenness, and lewd behavior, traits also associated with masked balls. The mask creates another persona. You can act a little more outrageously, knowing that your town or village, a few days later, will regard that as “a different you.”
If we look to popular culture, mask-wearing is again associated with a kind of transgression. Batman, Robin and the Lone Ranger wear masks, not just to keep their true identities a secret, but to enable their “ordinary selves” to step into these larger-than-life roles.
And:
The tension of current mask policy is that it reflects a desire for a more obedient, ordered society, for public health purposes above all, but at the same time it creates incentives and inclinations for non-conformity. That is true at least within the context of American culture, admittedly an outlier, both for its paranoia and for its infatuation with popular culture. As a society, our public mask-wearing is thus at war with its own emotional leanings, because it is packaging together a message based on both discipline and deviance.
What can we do to convince people that a mask-laden society, while it will feel weird and indeed be weird, can be made stable and beneficial through our own self-awareness?
Recommended.