Results for “straussian” 192 found
*Barbie*
You can object to the lack of plot impetus in this work, or cite several other objections, not entirely without reason. Yet the film is fresh, interesting, and creative throughout. It is full of ideas, starting with an investigation of how lookism oppresses women, and then it continues to deepen. By the end, the surface-level and Straussian readings dovetail nicely and converge. The song “Closer to Fine” is used well. By no means fully satisfying, but insightful throughout.
The EJMR doxxing issue
The only summary I have seen is from Karlstack, noting that he is siding against the doxxers and has defended EJMR in the past. Most of the people who care already know the details, so I won’t repeat them. I will however add a few observations:
1. I don’t read EJMR, so however bad it is, or however useful it sometimes may be, is a closed book to me. It is not the next marginal thing I might read if I had more time. And I have never posted there. So my comments should not be taken as reflecting any deep knowledge of the site itself. I would rather listen to Wings songs, if that is what it came down to.
2. The soon to be published paper supposedly reveals IP addresses of many EJMR posters. This seems wrong to me, noting that many posters (presumably) are making entirely innocent observations, or if not innocent remarks nonetheless remarks that should not be doxxed. They may wish to criticize a colleague or superior, or express a repugnant political opinion. Or whatever.
2b. What about posters from Turkey, China, Russia and elsewhere, who have expressed political opinions? Isn’t this point enough on its own to settle the matter?
2c. Two side notes — first, I am delighted to see that GMU does not appear in the list of top baddies — and yes we do have a large graduate program. I strongly suspect we have significantly better mental health. Perhaps the rest of you could learn something from us?
2d. All those “nice” real economists who write such terrible things — and people say I am the Straussian! Instead, I am the one who teaches you Straussian codes.
3. It is often possible to turn an IP address into an identity of a specific person. There is a raging debate about various statistical methods for doing this, presumably to be done by non-authors of the paper. It seems wrong to me to offer weakly coded information to the world on matters that were originally confidential, even if (let us say) ten percent of the posters were engaging in illegal libelous or harassing activities. The others were not.
There are always ways of identifying some IP addresses and tying them to specific humans, even if the above-mentioned statistical methods do not succeed. (No, I am not going to mention them, but they do not require rocket science.)
4. GPT-4 says it is hacking. (The answer I received included: “It is both unethical and illegal, as it infringes on various privacy and computer misuse laws.”) But what does it know? The fact that, through mistakes of the hosting site, some of the information was semi-public may change the legal status of the hacking claim, but I don’t think it alters the moral issues. What if Amazon, by mistake, left a bunch of credit card numbers out there to be scraped, and then you picked them up? That is still the wrong thing to do, even if those card numbers were used to order nasty books.
5. Some significant percentage of hostile on-line posters are mentally ill, or whatever other word you may wish to use. (There is plenty of good evidence for mental health problems being rampant in economics academia.) In other cases, these individuals may simply have a very different understanding of social reality, whether or not they would count as mentally ill. I believe in generosity of spirit and behavior toward the mentally ill, rather than taking their worst pronouncements and spreading them around and immortalizing them. I would not go running down the halls of Bellevue with a tape recorder, and then post the contents on-line, with possible voice identification, on the grounds that the shouted ravings were “toxic.” Not even if the ravings were accompanied by written posts.
6. It is striking to me how little regard cancel culture has for the mentally ill, for bipolar individuals, for schizophrenics, and also for many autistics. These individuals, at least at times, have very different standards for what they will say publicly. I don’t believe in punishing them per se for those different standards, though I do believe in trying to help or educate them when possible. I don’t believe in doxxing them.
7. If a platform is say 20 percent malicious libel and harassment (not making this claim about any specific place!), and that same platform is 20 percent the mentally ill (with who knows what degree of overlap?), I don’t believe in pulling down the entire curtain on the whole thing and exposing everybody, or exposing a significant share of those on the platform. That is deontologically wrong. Instead, you ought to find a way of dealing with the problems from the first twenty percent without so seriously harming the interests of the second twenty percent, the mentally ill ones. I don’t believe in promoting toxic behavior against the mentally ill, just to punish some earlier toxic behavior, much of which was done by the non-mentally ill.
So — and I do not say this lightly — I believe the authors of the paper under consideration are behaving unethically, and I hope they will retract their work and then destroy it.
Saturday assorted links
1. The Mechanical Turk is increasingly mechanical in fact.
2. Participating in a climate prediction market increases concern about global warming.
4. Taliban markets in everything, “Cash-strapped Taliban selling tickets to ruins of Buddhas it blew up.”
5. Guess who is being blamed for high rates of Swedish inflation?
6. SpaceX hires fourteen-year-old engineer, he is then denied a LinkedIn account.
7. Ross on C.S. Lewis and the weirdness of our time (NYT). Good Straussian clincher at the very end.
8. Daniel Ellsberg, RIP (NYT).
Monday assorted links
1. Why do many people find slow motion appealing?
2. Canine markets in everything, Austin edition. And the hotel version (NYT).
3. News stripped of all hype and emotion, by AI. And new tool for co-authoring long form articles with AI.
5. Everleigh? Nova? Good to see that “Tyler” is dropping in popularity. Rising and falling baby names.
6. Why you should visit Ravenna.
7. The Straussian that is Magnus Carlsen (WSJ). Thanos!
Ask the beast
“why does tyler cowen mean when he says something is “Straussian”?”
That is perhaps the question I have received the most often over the last five years, subbing in “what” for “why.” And, via Jeremy Davis, here is the answer he received:
Tyler Cowen is an economist and author who is known for his use of the term “Straussian” to describe certain ideas or perspectives. The term “Straussian” is a reference to the political philosopher Leo Strauss, who was active in the mid-20th century. Strauss is known for his belief that there is a fundamental tension between reason and tradition, and that the best way to understand political ideas is to look at the underlying assumptions and hidden meanings that are present in the text.
When Cowen says something is “Straussian,” he typically means that it is characterized by a focus on underlying principles and hidden meanings, rather than surface-level appearances. He might also be referring to the ideas of Leo Strauss, who is known for his emphasis on the study of classical texts and his belief that political philosophy should be grounded in an understanding of the great works of the past.
In general, when Cowen uses the term “Straussian” he is using it as an adjective to describe a perspective or approach that is characterized by an emphasis on careful reading, attention to detail, and an appreciation for the complexity of ideas. It is often used by Cowen to point out that some perspectives are not as straightforward as they seem, and that there is always more to be discovered if we look beneath the surface.
Now you can stop asking!
Friday assorted links
1. Which condiments or sauces are worth being obsessed with?
2. Why life on Titan is such an important question.
3. The House of Representatives is making its first film ever, on economic inequality.
4. What would Rene Girard say? (Couples with the same name, WSJ)
5. Are you a brokenist? And is there a category “Straussian non-brokenist”?
6. Merchandise (self-recommending).
Sunday assorted links
1. U.S. restrictions on GPU sales to China.
2. Inside (one part of) the pro-natalist movement.
3. What is going on in Quebec’s health care system?
4. Annie Lowery on women in the economics profession.
5. Intentional, or was there a trickster (or Straussian) involved in this one?
6. Thread on the Chinese protests. And ChinaTalk on the China protests.
Wednesday assorted links
1. Swedish Zoom reading group on classical liberal themes.
2. Monty Python Argument clinic, but with an app.
4. Legislation looks to stop insurers from rating/excluding coverage based on dog breed.
5. EU may block Polish nuclear investment.
6. Admission to a research university causally shapes your politics. But it is more about the peers than the instruction.
Friday assorted links
1. Why did wind power take so long?, part III.
2. The importance of permitting reform for the environment.
4. Redux of my 2016 post on what is neo-reaction.
5. There has been catch-up at the bottom end of the U.S. wage distribution.
6. Negativity bias in the media is increasing over time, most of all it is pronounced for the Right.
7. Elad on how well will the new AI companies capture value.
A simple explainer on global warming positions
Here is Chris Hayes calling for lower gas prices, here is the White House. I do understand the median voter theorem!
But let me explain how a lot of the Right wing sees this issue. They believe the Left was never entirely serious about the climate change crusade in the first place, but wanted to use it to achieve certain political goals. “Why go along with this charade if the Left is going to pull the plug on the effort anyway?” A lot of the Right is less naive about climate change than you might think. They won’t come out and say all this, but they also think the Left is at least as dishonest about the issue, albeit in a more self-deceiving, ostensibly more sincere fashion. The Right sees messages like this and then they feel “Ah, we were right!”.
To be clear, I believe that economists should present good policies to internalize externalities in simple, straightforward non-Straussian fashion. Someone has to! So we ought to stay the course.
But if you are trying to understand the debate, and why it is not as morally one-sided as you might think, I find this a useful framework.
Thursday assorted links
1. Why stamp duty is a bad idea.
2. Thread on morale and Russian mobilization.
3. Thread on Russian training.
4. Straussian Magnus. And on Dlugy.
5. The very good Johns Hopkins Agora Institute is advertising a position in political economy.
6. Caplan responds on feminism. I am struck by how Bryan’s response appropriates the “relative grievance” approach of the left egalitarians, rather than the “let’s look at the absolute merits of how things are going and then try to improve them” approach more commonly found amongst classical liberals.
7. And two more links I don’t agree with: David Wallace-Wells on learning loss during the pandemic (NYT), and John Mark McDonald on why nuclear weapons are maybe not such a big deal, a tiny scroll down may be needed.
What I’ve been reading
1. Ian Morris, Geography is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000 Year History. None of the book is bad, and half is quite interesting. Think of the treatment as “Deep Roots for Brexit,” though willing to noodle over earlier and more interesting topics in history. From a good FT review by Chris Allnutt: “Morris succeeds in condensing 10,000 years into a persuasive and highly readable volume, even if there are moments that risk a descent into what he seeks to avoid: “a catalogue of men with strange names killing each other”, as historian Alex Woolf put it.” Now if only he would explain why their hot and cold water taps don’t run together…
2. Michel Houellebecq, Interventions 2020. Grumpy non-fiction essays, with plenty of naive anti-consumerism. You need to read them if you are a fan, but I didn’t find so much here of interest. I was struck by his nomination of Paul McCartney (!) as the most essential musician, with Schubert next in line. Mostly it is MH being contrary. He has earned the right, but he wasn’t able to make me care more.
3. Frank O’Connor, “Guests of the Nation.” One of the best short stories I have read, Irish. Can’t say any more without spoilers! 11 pp. at the link.
4. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest. Has anyone done a systematic accounting of which Vietnam era fictional works have held up and which not? Maybe this one gets a B+? Not top drawer Le Guin, but good enough to read, and better yet if you catch the cross-cultural references and all the anthropological background works.
5. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, some cheap paperback edition. I did a quick, non-studied reread of this, in prep for the new Cambridge University Press reissue edition due out June 30, which has excellent notes and I will study and reread in more detail. One of the very best books! Not only is the story fully engaging and deeply humorous, but it is one of the seminal tracts on progress (largely skeptical), a blistering take on political correctness, wise on the virtues and pitfalls of travel, and one of the first novels to truly engage with science and politics and their interaction. Straussian throughout. Swift is one of the very greatest thinkers and writers and his output has held up remarkably well.
A Ross Douthat proposal on guns
So I would like to see experiments with age-based impediments rather than full restrictions — allowing would-be gun purchasers 25 and under the same rights of ownership as 40- or 60-year-olds, but with more substantial screenings before a purchase. Not just a criminal-background check, in other words, but some kind of basic social or psychological screening, combining a mental-health check, a social-media audit and testimonials from two competent adults — all subject to the same appeals process as a well-designed red-flag law.
Here is the full NYT Op-Ed. And speaking of Ross, and guns, or rather gun, Ross gives the correct Straussian reading of Maverick, namely that Tom Cruise dies early in the movie, and the rest of the film is his pre-death fantasy. This take is all the more plausible if you have seen Michael Powell’s Stairway to Heaven/Matter of Life or Death, where this is clearly the correct interpretation.
The magnitude of depolicing
Using a time regression discontinuity design, we estimate a 72.7 percent decrease in lower-level “quality of life” arrests, and a 69 percent decrease in non-index crime arrests in Minneapolis following George Floyd’s death. Our results also show that the decrease in arrests is driven by a 69 percent decrease in police-initiated calls for service. Using the same approach, we find a much smaller decrease of 2.7 percent in arrests and a 1.5 percent decrease in police calls following police-involved shootings. Our results, thus, suggest that the Ferguson Effect exists, and it is much larger following highly publicized events of police violence such as George Floyd’s death.
That is from the new AER, by Maya Mikdash and Reem Zaiour, “Does (All) Police Violence Cause De-policing? Evidence from George Floyd and Police Shootings in Minneapolis.” The title I find slightly Straussian, I hope not outright naive.