Standardized tests to get IN to college? Standardized tests INSTEAD of college.

More and more universities are waiving standardized test requirements for admission on the grunds that there are racial achievement gaps in such tests (this is like shooting the messenger—it’s far better to help fix the underlying problem that creates the gap). Obviously, this will attenuate the primary function of universities—signaling the ability to get in and complete the requirements of a college. Because of the waste, bloat, inefficiency, and intolerance of campuses, social theorists keep looking for the educational model that is going to “disrupt” higher education and send it to the ash heap of history (where it probably belongs). For Clay Christensen, it was going to be online education; for Peter Thiel, it was going to be private fellowships; for Sal Kahn, it was going to be lecture videos—none of these has worked out. The college degree (particularly elite college degree) remains the standard way to signal ability to employers and society. But what if the disruptive signal has been underneath our noses this whole time? What if it’s the standardized test itself that is a terrific way to signal one’s intellectual abilities to employers and society? Instead of waving around a degree from Yale, why not wave around a 1500 SAT score? If those SAT’s correlate really tightly with success in college (they do), and are a terrific way to signal ability to college admissions committees (they are), and college is mostly about signaling (it is), then why not skip that intermediate step of spending four years to acquire a degree as a signal, and use the standardized test itself? The shift would need to be cultural: somehow, it’s currently seen as unseemly to flaunt one’s standardized test scores, but not one’s college degree, but this is arbitrary. Employers should begin asking for those scores. Employees should begin putting those scores on their résumés. Writers should begin putting their scores in bylines the way they currently do with their college degrees. If society needs a signal of ability, let’s save ourselves four years and thousands of dollars per person, and simply have the standardized tests be the first barrage against the inefficient and largely corrupt higher education system that, as Bryan Caplan has pointed out, is primarily a remarkably expensive signaling system.

Bringing morality into politics?

To a friend who was looking for answers when students asked him about legislating morality and bringing religion into politics:

As far as reading material that addresses these issues, the first that came to mind was a 2011 speech by Elder Oaks called “Truth and Tolerance”:

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/dallin-h-oaks/truth-and-tolerance/

Basically, he identifies one of the two key fallacies that your students are making (and the way you worded your inquiry suggests you already understand all of this, so I’m a little embarrassed to be writing to you “sharing” my thoughts—but, hey, you asked for it :)

1. First, as Elder Oaks points out, it’s a fallacy to assume that we “can’t legislate morality” since all laws (all of them) legislate morality. Every single one. Laws against theft are legislating the morality of “thou shalt not steal.” Laws against murder are legislating the morality of “thou shalt not kill.” Laws providing government assistance are legislating the morality of helping the poor. Laws against slavery are legislating the morality of racial equality (etc. etc.).

So the question isn’t, “Should we legislate morality?”—we already know the answer is “yes”—but “Which morality should we legislate?” For Latter-day Saints, Section 134 gives clear guidelines on this (as do the rest of the scriptures, but just in a less direct, concise way).

2. The second fallacy is the idea that some people get their moral insights (and, by extension, their beliefs about which morality we should legislate) from religion while others do not, and that it’s somehow illegitimate to bring religious values into politics. This is a critical error.

The reality is that everyone gets their morals (and therefore their ideas of which morality we should legislate) from religion, i.e., faith. As Paul pointed out, faith is knowledge of the unseen and since moral truths are completely invisible, then what we know about morality is entirely a matter of faith. Science is the realm of the empirical (the seen) and can give empirical knowledge, but the most important truths, such as truths about morals, are non-empirical. No scientist ever looked into a microscope and said, “Hey, will you look at that? It’s wrong to torture innocent children!” or looked at a test tube and said, “I’ve just found out that we should be compassionate!” We know such moral truths (and much else) by the faith which precedes scientific investigation.

Anyone who says otherwise is deceiving themselves, but boy are they trying hard and getting good at this self-deception. My friend Michael Shermer, for instance, once sent me a long article he wrote arguing that we can get morals from science because we can see that “Humans everywhere seek to survive and flourish and therefore we should do what helps human flourishing and survival.”

This is bad reasoning because he’s engaging in the futile task of trying to derive an IS from an OUGHT. Philosopher David Hume showed this was impossible over two centuries ago, but it’s also just basic common sense. Every rational person knows that it’s absurd to say, “It IS the case that men abuse their wives therefore men OUGHT to abuse their wives” or “it IS the case that humans are greedy therefore we OUGHT to be greedy.”

If we used Shermer’s logic, then we would need to conclude that we OUGHT to commit every evil act because it IS the case that humans do commit every evil act (genocide, rape, murder, cruelty, etc.). Sorry, but Hume was right: IS has nothing to do with OUGHT.

So Shermer saying “It IS the case that humans survive and flourish therefore we OUGHT to promote human survival and flourishing” is no more empirically valid than saying, “It IS the case that COVID-19 viruses survive and flourish and therefore we OUGHT to promote COVID-19 survival and flourishing” (actually, we OUGHT to do the opposite, which is why Shermer got vaccinated). IS has nothing to do with OUGHT and therefore science (the realm of IS) can’t even begin to shed light on morality (the realm of OUGHT).

And it’s not just Shermer. Pretty much every atheist begins their appeals to a scientific basis for morality with, “If we can just agree that…” but this “just agree” is where the leap of faith comes in. What are we agreeing on, and how do we know it? They’ll say something like, “If we can just agree that we should maximize human well-being…” or “If we can just agree that we should respect human rights…” or “If we can just agree that compassion is better than cruelty…” but these are all appeals to non-empirical assumptions for the “agreement.” They are all taking a leap of faith before the scientific investigation even begins.

Atheist Steven Pinker’s claim that, “I don't want other people to hurt me so I shouldn’t hurt others” is no more scientifically valid than saying, “I don’t want other people to hurt me so I should kill and control others to prevent them from hurting me.” And, in fact, the latter statement is far more justified and common from a Darwinian point of view: those most successful in reproducing their genes throughout history (e.g., Ghengis Kahn) were those who were the most ruthless in killing and controlling other people. The most successful reproducers throughout history have made the Kahn survival calculation, not the Pinker one, and it has paid off big time. So why should we heed Pinker instead of Kahn? There’s no good reason except that we know through faith (i.e., intuitions) that the Kahn survival strategy is morally wrong and the Pinker survival strategy is morally right-. You simply can’t get that knowledge by conducting experiments in a laboratory, observing nature, or reading a biology textbook. All other “science gives morals” arguments are based on the same faulty reasoning. Nietzsche understood this, but current-day atheists do not (or, more likely, pretend not to).

Which brings us back to the two fallacies: since morals can’t be known empirically, then they can only be known through revelation, i.e., “moral intuition,” and since this is non-empirical knowledge, then we are knowing moral truths through faith, i.e., “religion.” Everyone gets their morals from religion, no matter how “secular” they believe themselves to be, ergo, the idea that we “shouldn’t bring religion into politics” is absurd because it would mean excluding all morality from politics and yet all law, as Elder Oaks pointed out, is an implementation of someone’s idea of morality

Just this past week Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor fell into this error, when she claimed that it was somehow illegitimate to oppose abortion because believing the fetus is a life is a "religious issue." It’s true that believing that an unborn child is a person is a religious belief, but so is the belief that slaves were people—does she believe, then, that the Supreme Court shouldn’t have overturned the Dred Scott or Plessy rulings? Would she have excluded all of the 19th century anti-slavery arguments from public discourse since virtually every abolitionist organization in America was explicitly Christian? The essence of personhood is not something we find out through scientific investigation, nor is the idea that persons have rights. These are non-empirical truths known only by religious means—faith—and nobody is seriously considering excluding morality from laws, and therefore, by definition, they can’t be in favor of excluding religion from consideration in the making of laws.

All the best --

Enchantment and Morality

Atheism advocates a disenchanted world, but morality itself is a kind of enchantment. For instance, atheistic materialism disenchants humanity itself, saying that humas are just matter, like rocks or bacteria—there is no spirit, God, or divinity setting us apart from anything else (living or non-living) in the universe. But does the atheist say that rocks or bacteria should “work together for the good of all other rocks or bacteria” as a matter of morality? If not, then why should humans, whom the atheist insists, are mere matter themselves, do so? If the atheist says that humans are different than rocks or bacteria because they have free will, then he’s just re-enchanted the world and violated his own materialism, since free will is decidedly non-material (and not detectable scientifically). They dismiss spirit, God, miracles, and other products of religion as “superstition” and claim to be hard-nosed realists willing to confront the harsh reality of a disenchanted world, until the moment they realize that this would lead them straight where Nietzsche went—to a transvaluation of all values—at which point they pull back and re-enchant the world with talk of “moral duties” “human rights” and “the golden rule,” all of which goes against their entire materialist/disenchantment project. This, as I see it, is the ultimate problem of trying to ground morality in atheism.

Disrupting Higher Education with Assessment

As someone who believes there is quite a bit of corruption, sclerosis, and waste in higher education, I welcome the announcement of the creation of Austin University—a new institution dedicated to the pursuit of truth—but I also think it’s not going to be the disruptive force that higher education needs. The main reason colleges and universities (particularly the Ivies and their equivalents) have had such staying power, despite their well-documented dogmatism and decline in quality, is their signaling function. Currently, we have nothing comparable to a college degree that adequately communicates intelligence, conscientiousness, the ability to work with others, and flexibility across a wide range of dimensions (academic fields and modes of activity). So the disruption will come from an alternative signaling system that communicates what university degrees currently do. The ideal institution, then, would not be just another university with a mission statement that most of the others already have (Harvard’s motto is “veritas”), but one that assesses, measures, and communicates what a bachelor’s degree currently communicates, but at much lower cost in both time and money. I can foresee, for instance, a six month (rather than four year) “boot camp” for young people in which they are constantly evaluated on a range of exams and activities that, for six months, test what it currently takes colleges four years to test. Young people might brag someday about “tier 1 at boot camp” the same way they currently brag about a bachelor’s from Yale. I’d say the place to start, then, is to take standardized testing, use that as a core, and build from there.

The Virgin Birth, the Male Birth

Yet more evidence that the New Woke Orthodoxy is a religion that replaced the old Christian orthodoxy: they both require belief in immaculate conception miracles. Christianity had as one of its founding doctrines the idea that a virgin miraculously gave birth; the New Orthodoxy has as one of its central doctrines the idea that a man can miraculously give birth. Five centuries ago, if you had asked an independent observer who had never encountered Christianity which would be more miraculous, a virgin giving birth or a man giving birth, she likely would say the latter. The “rational optimists” who encourage us to abandon the old orthodoxy and embrace “rationality” are not themselves being rational. Those who took the Pinker/Dawkins/Ridley advice and “progressed beyond” Christianity only embraced a new irrationality that requires just as much faith to accept, but employs medieval methods of enforcement. A thousand years ago you could lose your job for refusing to believe in a virgin birth, now you can lose your job for failing to believe in a man birth. Is there any doubt that this is a regress to barbarism?

Hard writing means easy reading

The easier something is to read the harder it was to write. This is counterintuitive. We assume easy reading means easy writing, but the opposite is the case. Authors need to get in this mindset of doing the work of cutting the clutter, making clear, and rendering intelligible their sentences so that their readers don’t have to. From a utilitarian point of view, this is ethically preferable since sentences are generally read more times than they are written.

Smoking and Socialism

The arguments for socialism are like arguments for smoking—they depend on anecdotes. There’s the person who just started smoking who is nonetheless healthy, leading many to proclaim the virtues of smoking until the moment the person falls deathly ill (like Venezuelan socialism). There’s the person who smoked heavily, got really sick, and so cut back to a pack a month and now is seen as the model of a healthy smoker (like Swedish socialism). And then, of course, there are all the people who just smoked and died (like Soviet socialism), to which we can always say, “They just weren’t smoking the right way.” As with socialism, the best way to know the effect of smoking is to run a regression analysis. When we do, we find that—controlling for other variables—the more smoking the less healthy the body, and the more socialism the less healthy the economy. Until we can find a correlation between socialism and positive economic outcomes, I’ll be considering smoking and socialism in the same light.

The New Orthodoxy summarized in two slogans

“Latest is greatest,” and “Might makes wrong.”

The Boy Who Wolf Cried

We are all aware of the “crying wolf” phenomenon: past lies destroy credibility when real threats arise. But isn’t there a related and opposite phenomenon that past truths can create credibility for false threats? Just because there was no wolf twice in the past, that doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a wolf the third time; but just because there were wolves twice in the past, that doesn’t mean there is a wolf this time. People cried racism in the past and there was racism, but the “Boy Who Wolf Cried” principle means that, because of past racism, we are far more likely to have a lower threshold of evidence when people cry racism in the present (even accusing those who ask for evidence of themselves being “Racist”). The Boy Cried Wolf when it came to Covid suppression (don’t wear masks! Masks can end the pandemic! Lockdown for two weeks! Lockdown indefinitely to reach zero COVID) and now people don’t believe public health officials when they are telling the truth about vaccination. Similarly, The Boy Wolf Cried when there was slavery and Jim Crow, but that shouldn’t lead us to throw out standards of evidence about racism in the present and often times claims of “systemic racism” simply use the word “systemic” as a stand-in for “invisible” (i.e., lack of evidence). Take claims of racism seriously but demand regular standards of evidence lest we become like the Boy Who Wolf Cried.

How's this for a grand sounding claim?

The great conflict of our time is between truth and fashion, and fashion is currently winning.

Film Review: A Hidden Life (2019)

Terrence Malick’s latest film, A Hidden Life, confirms his status as among the most original directors of our time. The story—which centers around an Austrian man in the early 1940s refusing to swear loyalty to the Reich because of his Christian convictions—is less interesting than Malick’s signature cinematographic approach. Most directors tend to hold shots stationary during conversational scenes and introduce movement during action sequences, thereby putting us on a level with the characters and identifying with their state of mind. With Malick, on the other hand, it’s as if he’s putting us in the perspective of a disembodied observer that floats, bobs, and hovers around and through the characters and the breathtaking vistas of the Austrian Alps. The observer is neither situated as a character nor as an omniscient watcher, but rather as a curious spirit who’s not quite sure what is going on, so the spirit probes, turns, and retreats inquisitively and whimsically, oblivious to the tragedy unfolding around it. The effect is captivating rather than disorienting or vertigo-inducing. The constant sweeps and pulls of the camera inevitably pulls the viewer into the world that powerfully integrates character, viewer, and scenery. It can become hypnotic. Malick’s movies are not for everyone—they unfold slowly, and with sudden temporal jump cuts within scenes that leave our disembodied observer constrained by sequence, but not time—and yet this is all part of the experience. The film rewards the patient, curious viewer with an experience of how radical film techniques can be used to tell a highly traditional story about the power of old-fashioned decency and family bonds to overcome in even the most challenging times.

Power and Free Speech

A popular idea circulating among the woke is that free speech is a tool of the powerful and therefore a weapon of oppression. Not only does history say otherwise, but so does logic. Notice that suppression of free speech, by definition, requires power to censor, therefore it is always, without exception, carried out by the powerful (usually governments—generally the most powerful entity in a given society). There are logically coherent (although bad) arguments for censorship—such as Willmoore Kendall’s idea that the best society is marked by majority rule and censorship is a tool the majority should use to protect itself from subversive minorities—but those making such arguments never delude themselves that somehow it’s the weak, powerless, oppressed doing the censoring. The most powerful and oppressive institution in nearly every society is the body with a monopoly on force—the government. When governments censor, it is therefore the strong and powerful shutting down someone weaker, ergo the claim that free speech is a tool of the powerful is quite misguided.

Popper or Bayes?

I read a book review the other day in which the author said he wasn’t a Popperian who believed in falsification, but a Bayesian who believed in updating. In my view, this is a false dichotomy, on par with saying, “I don’t believe in math, I believe in engineering.” Just as math is the preconditional method of engineering, so Popperian falsification is the preconditional method of Bayesian updating. We can only update beliefs if we have submitted them for falsification. Those people who don’t make their beliefs falsifiable (Freudians, astrologers, etc.) always find ways to make their theory “confirmed” by any outcome, regardless of what happens. They never get to the point where they can update a belief because an unfalsifiable belief never needs updating. Updating beliefs as we find outcomes contrary to our expectations is the essence of rationality and the only weapon we humans have against confirmation (and other) bias, and the only way we can truly be Bayesian. Falsification is not opposed to updating, falsification is what makes updating possible.

Stimulus for Tests

The Covid-19 problem is ultimately an epistemic problem. That is, the pandemic could end in a week if we simply knew exactly who had it. If every person infected with Covid gave off a big red glow, those people would quarantine themselves (and we would avoid them, literally like the plague), not infect anyone else, and then the virus would have no hosts to carry it on.

It’s for this reason that so many bright minds, such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Romer, have hammered home the importance of an efficient testing system. If testing were widespread enough, that would be a terrific substitute for lockdowns, closures, and masking. A possible proposal: instead of having the government send out stimulus checks with no strings attached, why not make them contingent on weekly testing? That is, you go to a testing booth (perhaps private contractors?) and in exchange for your getting tested for Covid, the government releases the check. That would both have the stimulative effect they are looking for by sending out the checks, but also have much of the epistemic “cure” for the virus that we are looking for.

1619 Project and Conservatism

Virtually every history textbook frames the American Founding in terms of right and left, calling the revolutionaries, such as Adams, Washington, and Jefferson, “liberals,” and those who opposed the revolution, such as Galloway and Dickinson, “conservatives.” Now that the 1619 Project has declared that the movement for independence was immoral, does that mean the “conservatives” were correct all along and that the 1619 project promoters are on the political “right”?

Genetics, corn, and free will

Geneticist Richard Lewontin made one of the best arguments for the importance of environment in human development by pointing out that if you take genetically identical handfuls of seed corn and plant one handful in Iowa and the other in the Sahara, you will get radically different results—healthy, abundant corn growing vs. no corn at all. The implication for humans is clear: environment matters and genetic determinism is incorrect. But what Lewontin didn’t consider that is every bit as telling, is that you can take humans who are genetically the same or close to it (siblings) and “plant” them in the same environment and get radically different outcomes. That doesn’t happen with corn or any other organism. The divergences of outcome among humans who share genetics that we don’t see in other organisms is powerful evidence for the essential, but invisible human trait—free will.

Vaccines and Crying Wolf

Why aren’t people getting vaccinated for COVID? Misinformation and media echo chambers are part of the explanation, but there is also the low credibility of the public health authorities because of repeated dishonesty. First, they told us “masks don’t work.” That wasn’t true. Then they told us, “We will lock down for just two weeks to flatten the curve.” That wasn’t true. Then they told us that wearing the masks would eradicate the disease and end the pandemic. That wasn’t true. Then they told us that staying indoors would minimize the spread of the disease (e.g., California laws against going to parks and beaches). That wasn’t’ true. Then they told us that Texas was “neanderthal” for giving up its mask mandates and told us cases and deaths would spike in the coming weeks. That also wasn’t true. With so much crying wolf, is there any wonder that people don’t believe them now that the wolf is really here? Vaccines really do save lives and can end the pandemic, but repeated dishonesty from those telling us to get vaccines have cost them their credibility. Credulity on team read and deception on team blue are jointly responsible for persistent COVID deaths.

Why We Don’t Have Self-Driving Cars

It seems that many of the failed promises of technology are marked by an asymptotic trajectory, that is, it’s like a curved line in mathematics that gets ever closer to another line, but never quite touches it (or, like the proverbial traveler who goes half way to his destination, then half way more, then half way more for eternity, thereby getting microscopically close but never arriving). I’m guessing that many of the promises of artificial intelligence haven’t been realized and won’t be realized because of this “closer and closer but never getting there” problem we are encountering. My hunch is that “asymptotic” is a word we will hear more and more in the 21st century as the promises of technology, especially AI, fail to materialize.

Social Darwinism

I believe in social Darwinism only inasmuch as it applies to human artifacts, not to humans themselves. The term “social darwinism” triggers people and causes an instant recoil because they assume it means allowing (and even encouraging) the starvation and “weeding out” of less fit humans in the same way that less fit species go extinct in the natural world. This is obviously morally wrong, but it’s practically important to let the survival of the fittest logic apply to human artifacts (things humans produce), such as ideas, positions, companies, and products. If we are not weeding out and letting “die” worse ideas, then we are necessarily preventing better ideas from replacing them. If we are not weeding out and letting “die” bad theories (such as the four humors theory of disease), then we are preventing more correct theories (the germ theory of disease) from replacing them. We can’t let a knee-jerk reaction to the phrase “social Darwinism” or “survival of the fittest” turn us away from the important role that this process must necessarily play in social improvement. To anyone who thinks social Darwinism is always wrong, I ask, do you think a genocidal political leader should be “weeded out” and replaced in favor of a better president? If so, then you believe in social Darwinism in the correct sense: survival of the fittest applied to human artifacts, but not to humans. I’m also curious as to how atheists, who make no distinction between the natural and human world, can oppose social Darwinism but applaud natural if there is no distinction between the social and natural worlds (i.e., if humans are not “special” and are just animals like any other, then how can we logically oppose Darwinian logic in the realm of one animal—humans—but not in the realm of another—say, the first land animals?).

Postmodernism: A Strategy for the Imposition of the New Orthodoxy

There was much discussion about the “relativism” of universities in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., as found in Allen Bloom’s, The Closing of the American Mind), but it turns out this was a mirage. Relativism was not a conviction (can relativism even be a conviction?) but the most effective way to quickly sweep away the old orthodoxy in favor of a decidedly non-relativistic new orthodoxy. The “tolerance” and “open mindedness” talk, it turns out, was nothing but an effective tactic for weakening the old orthodoxy in preparation for sliding a new orthodoxy into the recently vacated space. Postmodern “relativism” has now turned into postmodern dogmatism.

Summarizing the problems of the two ostensible public philosophies

Philosophical progressivism cannot make a distinction between fashion and truth.

Philosophical conservatism cannot make a distinction between fashion and falsehood.

Bipartisan Fascism

Fascism is an inflammatory term, but if we look at it as a phenomenon, rather than a scare word, and divorce it from any spurious left-right associations, we find that both of our political tribes today have fascistic elements. Those in tribe blue, like the Nazis, believe in racial essentialism, anti-Semitism (white hatred, which includes Jews, is suddenly fashionable in tribe blue), statism, and anti-capitalism. Tribe red, meanwhile, has the fascistic cult-like devotion to a strong man, an insurrectionist anti-democratic will to power, a blood and soil nationalism, and, as of this century, the same statist impulses as tribe blue. The false left-right conception obscures the kinship of our two ideologies and the way that both of them draw on elements that Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo drew on the 1930s. If either side should adopt all of the fascistic elements of the other side, we could head down the same path Germany went down a century ago. I’m particularly worried about a cult figure emerging to draw the worship of tribe blue and serve as a rallying point/figurehead for them to focus their fascistic tendencies and energies. Currently, their movement is Maoism without Mao—if they get a Mao, the Cultural Revolution light that we have been experiencing over the past decade would become a Cultural Revolution heavy.

Civility as Status Quo Bias?

An argument against civility and free speech more generally (which even prominent advocates of civility concede) is that civility and free speech have “status quo bias” and therefore “privileges” certain “powerful” positions. I see no evidence this is the case. The most important, revolutionary changes in American history have come from free, open, civil discourse. MLK effected radical change in race laws and relations by engaging in constructive, open, civil speech (Letter from Birmingham Jail is a model). Gay marriage is now universal because of the civil, persuasive arguments made by Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, and others. And even though abolitionism had its uncivil radicals (e.g., Garrison), overall, its most powerful exponents, such as Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, convinced the country to abolish slavery by reasoned persuasion. As with science, radical changes come about through a stable, unchanging framework. The framework of democratic openness and civility are necessary for whatever radical political changes we want to pursue, just as the framework of hypothesizing and testing is the framework for the radical innovations scientists discover. Democratic openness is, using information theorist Claude Shannon’s metaphor, the “low entropy carrier” for a “high entropy signal.” We must conserve that to appropriately change everything else. Throwing out the framework as itself “biased” and a “tool of the privileged” is what Hitler, Stalin, and Mao did. I don’t see any historical examples where constructive change followed the jettisoning of the democratic framework. Those who want to get rid of the carrier (civil discourse) in the name of “change” actually destroy the system that is a necessary precondition for the constructive change they seek.

The Uniting Error of Philosophical Progressivism and Conservatism

Philosophical progressivism says that 1) History has an inevitable direction 2) the elites can know what that direction is, and 3) this direction is good. Philosophical conservatism only differs on the third, claiming that this direction is bad. None of these three propositions is justified. The idea that history has a direction is a religious/Hegelian claim, and unjustified on the scientific / secular grounds that its adherents claim to believe in. The idea that elites know the future is clearly wrong, given their long track record of failure in prediction, and the idea that whatever happens next is good is also unjustified (in 1930, Nazism was next, in 2015, Trumpism was next). We can’t look to a purported “direction” of history to know what’s good or bad because we can’t know that history has a direction, we can’t know what that direction is, and whether or not history was going somewhere would have no bearing on whether that “where” was good or bad. Far better than anchoring oneself to a “direction” is to anchor oneself in principles. In politics, that’s what classical liberalism does (equal rights under law) and why we should all be concerned about these principles coming under attack from those invoking a direction to history

I, We, and Government

An unfortunate tendency among many scholars (particularly Robert Putnam, whose latest book I just finished) is to conflate government and community. In their view, more government control over our lives is “collective” and therefore “communal” while less government control is “individualistic” and therefore “anti-communal.” This is a category error that diminishes the value of sociological analysis. It’s also demonstrably false: we find that those states with the lowest levels of government control also have the highest levels of social capital and community bonds (e.g., Utah), we find that those demographics who are most suspicious of government also have the highest sense of belonging and “we” (e.g., actively religious Americans), and we also find that many of the decades that saw the greatest expansions of government power (e.g., the 1960s and 2000s) were also decades that saw the greatest declines in communalism. If more government means more community, why did we get the biggest declines in community in the years of largest government expansion? If we move beyond ideology and take a more granular look at society, we find that community (the sense of “we”) is independent of government power and trying to force “community” through greater government control would be both destructive and futile.

Why the Old Orthodoxy is Preferable to the New

The change society is currently undergoing with the woke orthodoxy taking over all the elite institutions of society (government, corporations, cultural institutions, media, sports, film) is only analogous to the Christian takeover of Europe in the Middle Ages. In either case, a set of dogmas established hegemony and then worked to purge all dissent through force. Neither was ideal, but the Old Orthodoxy, because it contained within its doctrines the concept of free will, had the potential to retreat into the background, eventually allowing for pluralism, liberalism, and science as a way to harmonize all orthodox doctrines (including individual freedom). The New Orthodoxy lacks any conception of free will and therefore is less likely to retreat into the background as the Old Orthodoxy did. Illiberal and a counter-enlightenment tendencies are the inevitable direction and we are already heading down that path. Can we reverse it? That would require a religious awakening to strengthen the Old Orthodoxy, since there is, contra what atheists say, no “neutral ground”—a situation of non-Orthodoxy in which freedom flourishes. The only hope for enlightenment, science, and pluralism is an orthodoxy that prizes free will and only a religious orthodoxy has the resources to allow that.

My Heuristic of Movie Analysis

The tool I commonly use to evaluate movies is seemingly paradoxical: the movie must be at once realistic and unrealistic. The best movies are realistic in character, but unrealistic in plot. If we get a true to life character, we identify with them and the evocation of emotion, which movies are better at than any other medium, begins. If we get a true to life plot, though, we quickly get bored. Put realistic characters (Rick and Elsa) in unrealistic / unusual situations (Nazi resistance in Northern Africa) and the magic begins.

On the Pandemic

Sadly, the pandemic, like just about everything else in society today, has been politicized and tribalized. Naturally, this “belief by conformity to my side” blinds ideologues to what each tribe got right and wrong about COVID 19. Tribe-left said the virus was bad and we could stop it (with lockdowns, masks, social distancing, etc.). Tribe right said the virus was not bad and we couldn’t stop it. With a year’s experience and data, we can see that each side was half right. The reality is that the virus was bad and we couldn’t stop it. Over half a million Americans are dead, but non-pharmaceutical interventions appear to have made either no difference (lockdowns) or marginal difference (masking). It seems that the only way the virus could have been “stopped” was to nip it in the bud with a vigorous test and trace program in late 2019, but since that wasn’t even on the table, the pandemic was, sadly, going to take its deadly course and those who want to blame certain politicians or “opening up” don’t seem to have the facts on their side.

Systemic Racism

Both tribes have a point in the debate over systemic racism. It’s clear that institutions can have inertia and consequences independent of human will meaning there can be racism without racist intentions. Ivy League quotas on admitting Jews, for instance, were racist and had racist consequences, even if nobody at those schools was anti-Semitic. The problem is that once we invoke “systemic racism” it is often used as a blanket statement to indicate that “racism is everywhere” like the air we breathe, and this reduces evidentiary standards. Is there systemic racism? Certainly. But that should start the inquiry and not stop it. Using evidence to locate precisely where institutional disadvantages exist (as in current systemic Ivy League discriminations against Asian Americans) so that they can be corrected is the appropriate response. Saying we don’t need evidence because systemic racism is “everywhere” seems to me a superstition (like witches being everywhere in 1690’s Salem).

Epistemology and Chronology

Epistemology of the Past: Those in previous eras embraced an epistemology of the past. The idea was that the wisdom of the ages were embodied in institutions and something was trustworthy by virtue of being old. They said we should trust old institutions (like the Constitution or Great Books) because, in a Darwinian sense, they would not have survived if they were not superior.

Epistemology of the Future: Today’s orthodoxy adheres to an epistemology of the future. The idea is that things are always on an upward course and so newer is necessarily better by virtue of being closer to the future. Reject old ideas and institutions (the American Founding, Great books) and embrace whatever is the latest, since it’s necessarily the greatest (tech companies, wokism). The key to being correct on any given issue is simply identifying trends: see which way the winds are blowing and then conform to those fads. In a Darwinian sense, there is continuous improvement so being closer to the future means being more correct.

Epistemology of the Present: I prefer the epistemology of the present, which evaluates ideas and institutions on the basis of reason and evidence. Truth is independent of age, and we determine belief based on visible evidence in the here and now, as in science.

This shouldn’t be controversial, and if people thought about it, they would agree that a present, scientific, rational approach is better than the epistemology of the past or the epistemology of the future, but it’s remarkable how much those mistaken epistemologies have captured our public consciousness, probably because each one easily attaches to narratives justifying our two political tribes.

Anti-Racism, Anti-Communism

To understand the “anti-racist” phenomenon today, we might profitably compare it to the “anti-communist” phenomenon of the 1950s. In both cases, the threats were bad and real. There were communist spies in the U.S. in the 1950s and there are white supremacists today. Both communism and racism are deplorable and decent people are “anti” both of them. Both communism and racism had their nationally publicized trial in which the bad thing was on display (Alger Hiss, Derek Chauvin). The problem today as in the 50s, is that opportunists (McCarthy, Kendi) have taken a legitimate cause to an extreme. They define their “anti” in narrow terms, link it to a political ideology, and then tarnish those who doesn’t share the ideology as somehow guilty of the bad thing in question. McCarthy couldn’t accept honest disagreement about the extent of communism in America or how best to defeat it and that seems true of too many “anti-racists” today. Just as McCarthy took a legitimate anti-communist cause and turned it into an ugly witch hunt with loyalty oaths and anti-communist training programs, so a legitimate anti-racist cause has turned into an ugly witch hunt with loyalty oaths and anti-racist training programs. The establishment seems more on board with anti-racism today than they were with anti-communism in the fifties, but in each case, there was widespread acquiescence as cowardice prevailed over courage and everyone went to extreme lengths to prove that they were not associated with the bad thing. I’m just waiting for a turning point when someone asks, “Have you no decency” to break the fever of a legitimate cause turned into hysteria.

Secession: Why it Might Happen, Why it Might Succeed

Why it might happen: the new orthodoxy that reigns in academia, media, entertainment, and now corporations, is fundamentally hostile to the old orthodoxy (Judeo-Christianity) it has replaced. Furthermore, this orthodoxy is assertive (foreground, rather than background) and will enforce acceptance through compulsion (unlike the old orthodoxy which believed in separating church and state). As the new orthodoxy becomes ever more compulsory through state power, those adhering to the old orthodoxy will resist and, at some point, feel that the government compulsion has become intolerable. They will want out of the compulsory/tyrannical political order altogether.

Why it might succeed: the new orthodoxy is fundamentally self-contradictory. It is at once radically in favor of expanding state power (to achieve “social justice,” to “end racism,” to “enforce gender equality,” to “achieve socialism”), but at the same time radically opposed to the violent means by which state power is enforced (police and military), and radically opposed to the forces of unification that hold a nation together (e.g., patriotism, national symbols, common education). This means that they will expand state power to enforce their orthodoxy, even as they weaken the power of enforcement and the desire of the public to comply.

This is the first time that I am aware of in human history where this paradox has existed. Nationalism, Socialism, and militarism generally go together (as with Hitler, Stalin, and Mao), but they are fundamentally at odds in the new orthodoxy. Tribe-left is hostile to nationalism and militarism, but supportive of socialism.

The first attempt at secession (1861) didn’t succeed because Lincoln was at once wanting to expand state power to end slavery (a correct use of expanded state power to achieve social justice), but also willing to use the ultimate means of enforcement of state power (the military) and the symbols of nationalism (as in the Gettysburg Address) to achieve his goals. Our current tribe-left has no such consistency meaning they could fail where Lincoln succeeded.

Low vs. High Decouplers

I just came across a study showing that people in the hard sciences are "high decouplers"--meaning able to separate unrelated issues from each other--while artistic types and those in the humanities are low decouplers. This could explain why humanists are far more ideological and dogmatic in their ideology than are hard scientists. An ideology is a collection of unrelated positions (e.g., high taxes, abortion rights, pacifism). High decouplers will be able to see the unrelated nature of these issues and approach them one by one. Low decouplers will lack that ability and adopt them as a package.

Applying Conspiracy vs narrative to the climate change debate

It’s generally a bad idea to reject established wisdom on the grounds of conspiracy theory, but it is a good idea to evaluate conventional wisdom by challenging narratives. So, for instance, there are “climate deniers” who claim that climate change is a hoax—a pretext to grab control by a conspiracy of scientists and public officials. I consider this position illegitimate on the grounds that it would require an impossible combination of secrecy among thousands of people. But it is legitimate to challenge the narrative of climate alarmism since it requires no conspiracy, just groupthink (an extremely common psychological tendency). It’s reasonable to read the evidence (as Obama’s energy Czar, Steven Koonin does), to come to the conclusion that although climate change is real, it doesn’t appear to be a threat on the level that many in positions of power would have it be. We shouldn’t dismiss facts (by invoking “conspiracy”) to dismiss climate alarmism, but we should challenge dominant, elite narratives in light of the facts. As far as I can tell, rejecting consensus can be done using conspiracy theory or narrative theory, but the former is generally misguided while the latter is important and necessary since bad narratives that distort or deny facts can take hold for social reasons.

Collectivism vs. Individualism

As usual, the question of "individualism vs. collectivism" presents a false binary. These are terms not used much anymore, but in the early 20th century, it was a common framing (and often used to compare “free but selfish” capitalist countries to “controlled by unselfish” socialist countries). The assumption was we could have individual freedom or a commitment to communal welfare (sacrifice and find meaning in a collective cause “greater than oneself”). This appears to have been a false framing. We can have a political system committed to protecting individual freedom and then, with that freedom, have individuals choose participation in micro communities, such as family, church, and mediating institutions. A great error was assuming that freedom and collectivism were on a scale, rather than complementary, and that a political unit, such as nationalism, would be the “community” in which individuals would sacrifice and find meaning (through coercion). Ultimately, I think we should remain individually free so we can choose community good. Public individualism for private collectivism. A recent study referenced by Brad Wilcox gave support to this view, showing there was a correlation in well-being between individualism on the national level, but collectivism on the personal level. That sounds right.

The problems with conspiracy theories

1. Vanity: They operate on the false assumption that a cabal of wicked people are oppressing the rest of us, and only the “heroic” conspiracy theorists can see through the illusion. It is self-congratulatory and makes the conspiracy theorist the hero in his own narrative. Although there is absolute good and absolute evil, people are rarely absolutely good or evil. It’s generally not helpful to think in terms of the completely good guys (us) vs. the completely bad guys (them, e.g., the conspirators).

2. Collusion: they require thousands (perhaps millions) of people to cooperate in a lie, without any of them ever leaking their participation in this lie. Real conspiracies unravel quickly as people come clean (e.g., John Dean in Watergate).

3. Facts: Senator Moynihan once pointed out that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. The biggest problem of conspiracy theories is that they deny facts. While it is common for millions of people to come up with a mistaken narrative that ignores or misinterprets facts (e.g., that the New Deal ended the Great Depression), it is extremely unlikely that millions of people would cooperate to lie about facts. Every conspiracy theorist must also rely on “new facts” to debunk the “old facts,” but wouldn’t the new (marginal) facts be at least as problematic as the old (mainstream) facts they are trying to debunk? It’s self-defeating (like trying to put out fire with a flamethrower). So we can disagree about how we interpret the rise and fall of GDP (Tax cuts? Public investment? Charismatic leadership? Expanded trade?), but it’s unwise to disagree with the GDP numbers themselves. Once we do that, we have jumped from the realm of legitimate debate (disagreement of interpretation/narrative) and into the realm of illegitimate conspiracy theorizing.

Humility and Science

I just read this quote from M. Scott peck, which echoes what Karl Popper emphasized a century ago: "Humility is the very basis of the scientific method." Indeed and since humility has, by just about any measure, plummeted in public life, our political discourse has gotten unquestionably less scientific. Sacrificing the education and well-being of millions of students by clinging to a discredited "Close schools to prevent spread of COVID" notion is a case in point. I’m one of those who wrote an angry letter to my local school administrators last March demanding they close our schools, but I've since apologized and admitted my error. Both political tribes fire the charge "anti-science" at each other, but inasmuch as society as a whole and, in particular, ideologues of both tribes, are more given to doubling down than admitting error, then our society has become--at the public level at least--extremely "anti-science."

Three Keys to Civil, Productive Debate

Below are three rules that seem to help discussions of controversial topics remain civil and productive: commonality, charity, and humility.

• 1. Commonality: Identify, emphasize, and leverage whatever it is you agree on. Even if people disagree about means (on how to help the poor or get to heaven), they generally agree about ends. Focus on that agreement.
• 2. Charity: Don’t work to “destroy” or “own” the person you are talking to. Reframe it in terms of a partnership: you are both working together to get at the truth. Give your discussant the benefit of the doubt and assume they are operating in good faith.
• 3. Humility: Be willing to learn and even change your mind. Hopefully, your discussant can learn something from you, but be willing to learn something from them. So important is this third one that it has some sub-steps:

• a. Separate what’s certain from what’s not. There are a few things that we are certain about, but almost everything else is, in the words of Thomas More, “capable of question.”
• b. Only debate what’s uncertain (empirically open). It’s OK to be closed-minded about something we are certain about (e.g., that it’s wrong to torture innocent children), but “fixed, final” truths are few and unempirical. Everything else is open to debate and able to be altered as we become aware of more empirical evidence.
• c. On those uncertain points, make sure to put truth (what’s right) ahead of victory (who’s right)

Two Moral Facts

As I see it, the below are two incontrovertible moral facts:

1. It is wrong to steal

2. We are obligated to help the less fortunate

Sadly, many of us tend to deny one or the other of these moral facts in the name of political ideology. Many in tribe blue, for instance, claim that it’s OK to steal as long as it’s done democratically or by the government, while many in tribe red deny our obligation to help the less fortunate on the grounds that the poor “deserve it” or that there is a “virtue to selfishness” (e.g., Ayn Rand). Far better than denying these two moral facts is to recognize and harmonize them, and this, I think, can only be done in a classical liberal order with voluntary charitable giving.

Trusting the Experts?

Does it make you a conspiratorial fringe figure if you reject the consensus of elite opinion? Many of the experts themselves believe so, hence the (thus far successful) move to silence opinions outside the mainstream on, for instance, the efficacy of lockdowns. Is it too cliché to point out that the consensus of experts was against Galileo and Copernicus? Or that the political and academic elites were the most zealous witch-hunters in 1690s Massachusetts? Or that the “best and the brightest” of the 1960s got us into Vietnam? Or that most elite institution backed the war in Iraq (those who denied that there were WMD could have been called “anti-science” on the same grounds that anti-lockdowners are called “anti-science” today). I’m afraid that always trusting the experts (however we want to define that), is a bad life strategy. The experts can be and often are wrong. They are at least as given to groupthink and social conformity as are the rest of us. Critical thinking, including a proper understanding of science, remains crucial in the 21st century and when one must choose between the science or the scientists, choose the science. The science, incidentally, shows that lockdowns are largely ineffective—will we recognize this with time the same way we now recognize the errors in Salem, Vietnam, and Iraq? It’s important to keep that in mind when experts tell us, for instance, there is no soul or that abortion is a human right—are these opinions the result of expert findings or elite conformity? Since both impulses are at work, a healthy skepticism of experts is in order.

Action bias and the presidency

An intrinsic cognitive flaw is action bias: humans tend to view action more favorably than inaction, even if the inaction would be preferable. This is likely the biggest bias in presidential rankings. Historians and the public give greater veneration, in general, to the presidents who “did something” even if it turned out to have negative overall consequences. The presidents who preside over the most violent deaths tend to get the highest scores from historians (Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt), while those who avoided foreign wars (e.g., Adams, Coolidge, Eisenhower, Clinton) are generally dismissed as “do nothings.” From a classical liberal point of view, this is backward. Given the inherent tendency for tyranny among governments, inaction is almost always preferable to action, and yet our presidential rankings system rewards the opposite. As long as presidents are seeking historical greatness (inevitable) and we define greatness in terms of action, we will likely continue to get unnecessary wars and other illiberal policies from our executives.

Peak University?

There are many surface reasons for the possible collapse of universities in the near future (ideological capture, lack of viewpoint diversity, rising tuition costs, etc.), but there may be a deeper reason that relates to the post-industrial revolution. In the agricultural age when nearly everyone lived in small towns, credentials were not required since people generally knew those they did business with (the doctor didn’t need a license because people had come to trust him as able and competent on a personal level). The industrial age changed all this. As people moved to cities and their interpersonal networks multiplied, they needed information signals beyond those they could get from personal interaction. They needed credentials, particularly college degrees. The question is, will these credentials still be necessary in the information age? As newer sources of information on human capital become available (web-based tests, aggregated reviews, brain scans), will licensing or even college degrees serve a function? There is a mania to graduate from colleges to signal ability and disposition to potential employers (and, at elite colleges, to signal prestige to the world—I watched the interesting Netflix documentary on this the other day), but if the information age can supply more accurate and less costly indicators of competence, we may see this mania subside and universities collapse for want of use.

"Science"-- a much-abused term

We constantly hear the refrain “follow the science” or “trust the science.” The word “science” has become totemic and “anti-science” is invoked as a casual epithet these days much as “anti-Christian” was in the Middle Ages. To know when to label something “science” or “anti-science,” we must know exactly what science is. Science, by definition, is a method (not a conclusion or body of knowledge) consisting of three elements: 1) scientists, 2) developing hypotheses, and 3) testing them. We need all three elements for something to be “scientific.” If a group of scientists say something (e.g., “go to an anti-abortion rally”) that doesn’t necessarily make it science. If a bunch of scientists develop a model/hypothesis (“luminiferous ether carries light waves”), that doesn’t necessarily make it science. Much of what people call “science” today is mistaking one element of the three for science itself. The Imperial College Covid-19 model was not “science” because it had not been tested (and now that we have submitted its predictions to empirical testing, it has been falsified), and the claim by scientists that we should attend certain political protests was not science—just the non-scientific political opinion of certain practicing scientists.

Progressing Towards Equality

When asked to define their ideology, progressives often say that they believe in “moving forward towards greater equality” (hence the “progress” in the label). The problem is that there are two concepts here and they might contradict one another. Notice, for instance, that the USA has become more economically unequal since the 1960s—Progressives talk about aligning with trends to be “on the right side of history,” but what do they do with this trend towards inequality? If we want to make our moral stance “aligning with trends” that’s one thing, but if we want to make it “greater equality,” that’s another thing entirely. Society can and does become more unequal so if we tie our morality to fads (if it's a trend it must be good), we can, by their own criterion, find ourselves opposing what is objectively good.

The New Orthodoxy

For the first two hundred years of American history, Judeo-Christianity was orthodoxy—the background ethos of society—but in the past generation a new woke orthodoxy has displaced it, particularly among elites. Most Christians are troubled by this, not only because it means their views are now becoming marginalized, but also because those who advance the new orthodoxy don’t seem to be able to make a distinction (as most Christians could) between accepting/teaching the orthodoxy and compelling others to accept it (e.g., through state sponsorship, censorship, condition of employment, etc.). Whereas few Christian employers would have fired non-Christians, woke employers are firing non-woke employees quite routinely. Most Americans would have opposed requiring federal (or even corporate) employees to undergo Christian training, and yet they are routinely required to undergo woke critical race training. Samuel P. Huntington talked of a cultural “clash of civilizations” among the peoples of the world, but he didn’t anticipate that it would play out domestically. This is happening as the old cultural orthodoxy finds itself being replaced in all of the elite sites of power by a new cultural orthodoxy. This seems a key to understanding the high degree of polarization and violence in America today.

The basis of classical liberalism

The simplest justification for classical liberalism is: 1) We are free and 2) restriction is wrong. 1. We are Free: Humans are free beings unique in their capacity to choose and control their own destiny independent of material forces, such as instinct. This makes them morally responsible for choices in ways that nothing else living or unliving is. 2. Restriction is wrong: it’s immoral for people to restrict the freedom of others. Antebellum slavery was wrong because it restricted the freedom of an entire class of people (African Americans), forcing them, against their will, to work for another (with or without recompense is irrelevant here: I can serve someone freely without recompense or work for someone freely with recompense). Notice that we can’t prove either of these propositions—they are axiomatic atomic facts that are the beginning point, rather than ending point, of political reasoning. Since most people accept these two points (since most people accept that slavery is wrong—slavery would be OK if either proposition was not correct) then the key for politics is getting people to accept the implications of this view, i.e., to keep sight of the basic facts of politics and then use this as the rational basis for political decision making. There is near universal agreement that these two facts are correct, therefore nearly everyone is philosophically a classical liberal, they just lose sight of this in moments of emotion or the distorted thinking caused by partisan tribalism. The illiberalism of our time is a failure to reconnect with self-evident fundamentals as we get caught up in social media-fueled frenzies of anger and tribalism.

Illiberalism in 21st century America

Throughout the 20th century we had one political tribe (left) committed to social liberalism—free speech, due process, judging people as individuals and not part of racial groups—and another (right) committed to economic liberalism—free markets, private property, contracts. While it would have been preferable to have two tribes committed to both, having at least one tribe committed to both parts of liberalism meant that there was always a check/pushback against illiberalism of any form (the right would push back on economic illiberalism, the left against social illiberalism). The tragedy of 21st century American politics is that both tribes have surrendered their commitment to their half of liberalism. With the move to big government conservatism and economic nationalism, tribe right is now as fiscally illiberal as tribe left and with the move to cancel culture and wokism, tribe left is now as socially illiberal as tribe right. The productive institutional checks on liberalism appear to be gone and this doesn’t bode well for the future.