X Is Used to Represent an Unknown
I read an article called “The X Factor of Economics: People” in the New York Times today that covered an important subject near and dear to my heart: The lack of reliable knowledge of cause-and-effect in economics. It was unintentionally revealing of an important elite bias.
It started out promisingly enough. The author quoted Robert Solow about how the complexity of society makes it so difficult to know even after the fact what effect our titanic stimulus spending has had (“It has run its course over the past year and a half, but it is not an isolated event. One thousand other things were happening that had an effect on employment and real G.D.P.”), and cited Gary Becker about the significance of the lack of controlled experiments in economics to resolve such questions. So far, so good.
But what comes later in the article directly subverts the points that animate the first part of it. The author writes that “A depression seemed possible two years ago, and thanks to the ideas of economists, that didn’t happen.” [Bold added] But, as per the first half of the article, how do we know that a depression didn’t happen because of the ideas of economists? We don’t.
It is extremely hard to maintain awareness of our own ignorance when trying to make real-world decisions. The article ends with a quote by currently-fashionable behavioral economist Dan Ariely:
If you have a simple problem, you can offer a simple solution. But the economy is a hugely complex problem. So we either simplify the problem and offer a solution, or embrace the complexity and do nothing.
But there is an unconsidered alternative that permits us to constantly recognize our ignorance, yet not be paralyzed: The Open Society. This is the whole point (in my view) of the institutions of representative democracy, limited, law-bound government, and free markets.
We all have biases. One that is rampant in the contemporary elite West, and by extension in elite Western journalism, is an excessive belief in the capacity of intellectual elites to have valid expertise that transcends common sense and practical experience concerning the organization of human society.
I find very little to disagree with here, Jim, but there’s a dynamic I think I have to point out. I’ve read a lot from people advocating epistemological modesty lately, and as that’s a subject dear to my heart, I appreciate it. But the tendency is always to say, “We should be modest about our knowledge— therefore, do what my ideology says to do.” Megan McArdle and TAS’s own Peter Suderman do this a lot. They argue— eloquently! convincingly!— that we should have epistemological modesty, but that inevitably means… that we should pursue rote libertarian policies. The leap there is often the problem, not the general existence of unknowns and how they should provoke us to limit knowledge. I mean, for me, epistemological modesty in the realm of health care access, for instance, would compel me to privilege a straightforward system where government pays for everybody’s health care, rather than the bizarre, Swiss cheese system of sort-of-but-not-always employer provided care that our status quo represents. School reform is another area where it seems to me that epistemological modesty cuts clearly against many of the broad strategies preferred by conservative school reformers. But I would say that!
I’m not qualified, really, to talk about macroeconomics. But I do think that there’s a little of this here; it seems, from my perspective, that you’re saying “we can’t know if the stimulus worked, so it’s best to act as though it didn’t.” But that seems to me to take a reasonably unbiased state of mind and proceed in an ideological direction.
But there is an unconsidered alternative that permits us to constantly recognize our ignorance, yet not be paralyzed: The Open Society. This is the whole point (in my view) of the institutions of representative democracy, limited, law-bound government, and free markets.
The Open Society, as you define it, seems to me to be sensible. As it exists in the policy preferences of most conservatives, it seems to me to be paralysis.
— Freddie · Oct 18, 03:16 PM · #
What “practical experience” exists that says a stiumulus effort of some sort was not the appropriate response to the economic crisis?
Mike
— MBunge · Oct 18, 03:18 PM · #
Freddie, this is just Dr. Manzi’s elaboration on the wingnut talking point du semaine.
Evil elites.
The stratification by IQ that Ross and Reihan feared in Grand New Party has come to fruition in the dismal slate of conservative candidates being forced on the GOP by the conservative base (aka the teaparty).
That is why Ross has been desperately searching for some meritocratic values that conservatives can still compete at. IQ Bussing for Redstates
Secular Right: the elitz is in our base/colleges killing our doodz!
HotAir the Teaparty vs the Ruling Class
man, that video sukkz.
i liked Bill Whittle so much better in Evil Dead and Army of Darkness.
— matoko_chan · Oct 18, 04:45 PM · #
that transcends common sense and practical experience concerning the organization of human society.
and hey, Jim, cher ……commonsense != intelligence.
look at what 50 years of memetic selection for commonsense has gotten you….Palin, O’Donnell, Angle, and Paladino.
— matoko_chan · Oct 18, 04:54 PM · #
Freddie:
Well, I’m publishing a book in which I make the case first for epistemic humility, and then try to work out some of the political implications of it, at least as I see them.
Mike,
Not much,in my view.
I supported stimulus spending at the time, and still think it was the right decision. But I based it on what I called the Constanza-Hoover Principle: Just do the opposite of whatever Herbert Hoover did.
I actually think this was closer to the motivating principle in that crisis than most people like to admit. In any event, I never imagined that Keynesian economists (or any other kind) had or have some reliable formula to project the GDP and employment impacts of various stimulus spending levels.
Matoko:
I am wingnut, hear me roar!
— Jim Manzi · Oct 18, 04:54 PM · #
Freddie,
IMHO, epistemological modesty argues for trying a lot of options, and closing off as few as possible. It’s true that that solution often favors libertarians. But if you impose a federal solution for health care or education, you may never learn whether, left on its own, a state might profit from a different solution. Of course, I’m largely in the McArdle/Suderman camp, so it’s not surprising that I think that, but that way lies madness, or at least Robin Hanson’s blog.— J Mann · Oct 18, 05:00 PM · #
lawl…..well okthen.
the constitution explicitly provides for the representation of teh stupid— i guess you are their champion.
toujours le preux chevalier.
<3
— matoko_chan · Oct 18, 05:01 PM · #
To elaborate a little bit, if you accept Nassim Taleb’s position that innovation is basically unpredictable, and that we are all monkeys banging on typewriters with varying degrees of efficiency, then epistemological modesty means leaving the monkeys with enough room to bang on the typewriters over time.
I guess the converse is to say “I think Policy A is slightly likely to be better than any other policy. It’s true that if I impose Policy A top-down, there will be less experimentation with other policies, and I won’t get to see as many other policies in practice. However, I think the cost of imposing a set of policies that I think are likely to be worse than Policy A is greater than the possibility that experimentation over time will identify better policies.”
The thing is, the more epistemologically humble you are, the more likely you are to say that the value of diversity/experimentation outweighs the gains from globally implementing the solution you think most likely to be best, at least until you become so epistemomologically humble that you can’t tell whether epistemological humility itself produces any benefits. (I know I’m stealing a base in that we also can’t know the value of letting a thousand flowers bloom, but I think it holds intuitively enough that we need to deal with it.)
— J Mann · Oct 18, 05:26 PM · #
I think it is interesting that just about everyone – including stimulus skeptics – seems to agree that the way to get out of a deep recession is to get consumers spending. But you have a prisoner’s dilemma in which no one wants to spend unless everyone spends. In the classic version of the prisoner’s dilemma, the dilemma evaporates as soon as you allow for the possibility that the prisoners could collaborate. How can consumers collaborate during a recession? By allowing the government that represents them undertake the required spending.
It’s hard to see how to reconcile a belief that consumer spending will end a recession with a belief that stimulus spending could not possibly have the same effect – especially when there is some historical evidence (eg WW II) in support of the notion that stimulus can work.
Does that mean we KNOW the stimulus worked? No, but it does tend to suggest that a temporary increase in government spending was worth a try.
Some will say we would have been oh-so-much better off if consumers rather than an inefficient government could have directed the spending. More flat panel tv production, less education employment and road building: that’s the better prescription?
— Andrew · Oct 18, 06:25 PM · #
The problem is that so much of the government spending is being used to prop up corrupt and dysfunctional institutions, when the kinder and more efficient thing would be to call out the vet and shoot them.
Now Foreclosuregate adds to the utter zombiehood of the bankster empire.
This evergrowing black hole that is sucking in all the wealth of the USA and converting it into bonuses for the oligarchs.
When are even the top 100 perps going to jail? Just the worst of the worst?
— THE · Oct 18, 07:33 PM · #
When are even the top 100 perps going to jail? Just the worst of the worst?
Never, of course, for the very reason you pointed out: this is plutocracy. As long as there is currency, power will reside in currency and not in the people. That’s just the way of things. Absolutely nobody doubts that it was powerful, rich elites who caused this mortgage crisis. In response, serious conservatives everywhere say, “we’ve got to cut back on government spending!”— in other words, punishing the poorest and least powerful who require government to live. The richest fuck the economy up, the poorest are forced to suffer even more for it, and everybody in the paid media cluck their tongues and declare it the way it has to be. Welcome to the terrordome.
— Freddie · Oct 18, 07:41 PM · #
Freddie:
Re: “the bizarre, Swiss cheese system of sort-of-but-not-always employer provided care that our status quo represents.” I’d just note that I’m not at all satisfied with the health care status quo, and, in fact, one of my objections to the PPACA was that it built on the deeply troubled existing system — and probably made it harder, in the long run, to reform.
— Peter Suderman · Oct 18, 08:24 PM · #
True! And thanks.
— Freddie · Oct 18, 08:30 PM · #
“Well, I’m publishing a book in which I make the case first for epistemic humility, and then try to work out some of the political implications of it, at least as I see them.”
I would be very interested in reading such a book. Because I read something like the article above, and quite frankly, I see you advocating a simple solution to a complex problem while stating that you aren’t. That is to say, making the same mistake as the reporter in overlooking your own biases.
I mean, I skew pretty libertarian, but let’s not pretend that libertarian thinking doesn’t have its own biases, and that the worldview presented isn’t a gross simplification of reality. Refraining from action always has unintended negative consequences, and it’s important to realize that.
— James · Oct 18, 09:03 PM · #
“…is an excessive belief in the capacity of intellectual elites to have valid expertise that transcends common sense and practical experience concerning the organization of human society.”
I am very sympathetic to a big chunk of what you are saying. We don’t know what we pretend/think/hope we know and that means we need an open society, where people have a chance experiment and innovate etc, etc, etc…
But your last sentence seems off to me. You agree that it was appropriate to engage in stimulus in the current recession. But that idea is actually counter to common sense. Common sense says that when times are tough you cut back and save (which is the problem). It took intellectual elites to study the issue and come up with the idea of stimulus. Sure we can’t prove that it worked but with the information we have, gathered and developed by intellectual elites, stimulus seemed like the best bet. Figuring out where to place your bets in a complex, uncertain situation is what you are talking about, right? I think in most cases, in complex situations, the wisdom of the crowd is going to be wrong, becasue these situations ARE complexe and require specialized knowledge that the crowd is hugely deffcient in. One of the big problems with our school system is that it is as vulnerable to the wisdom of the crowd as it is to ed school fashions. It seems like very parent, every politician, every school board believes they are qualified to to design curiculum, even though they know nothing about, and have no experience in education.
So maybe you need to explain what you mean by “common sense and practical experience concerning the organization of human society.” When you put like you did at the end of that post, it just sounds like tea party populist-mob nonsense. I’m pretty sure, I hope, you mean something else.
— cw · Oct 18, 10:58 PM · #
The “contemporary elite West,” aided by “elite western journalists,” believes in “intellectual elites?” Bulls eye, dude! I mean, what good are elites who are not biased in favor of other elites? Elites gotta march as one. Elites gonna work it out!
Some would argue (regardless of your view) that the very point of representative democracy is not to avoid elites; it is to install them. Of course, we elites know it takes a lot more than that. We have to practically smother the democracy, much like your closing paragraph, with elites. Only in a kind of carpet-bombing of elite deception can our elites impose on the gullible masses dubious notions— for example that free markets are rife with their own elite players using elite propaganda organs to push the ideas of their elite brain trust, all in the pursuit of risky control-group-free schemes.
Poor cabbagehead democracy doesn’t even realize that we elites maneuver, as you imply, outside of a “limited, legal-bound” process. Democracy thinks we’re actually a part of the process, that in fact it built us into the process through perfectly legal means. You can only imagine how we elites laugh at democracy’s innocence. Next to squandering its innovations, it’s what we love best.
— Gary · Oct 19, 02:11 AM · #
Freddie,
You say, “As long as there is currency, power will reside in currency and not in the people. That’s just the way of things. Absolutely nobody doubts that it was powerful, rich elites who caused this mortgage crisis.”
Didn’t the people, via the Constitution and our representative democracy create our currency? And if by “powerful, rich elites” you mean “politicians” and “special interests” (including financial interests), then I suppose they had a role in the mortgage crisis; although I think there are plenty of very smart folks still trying to figure out just how much blame to pin on who, including the average homeowner who took on too much debt.
cw,
What the heck are you talking about? Conservatives would love to give parents (and the wisdom of the crowd) more control of their kids education. That is what the whole school choice movement is all about, including the homeschooling movement. Plenty of parents with “no experience in education” are doing fine educating their kids — imagine that!
— Arminius · Oct 19, 02:24 AM · #
I am very sympathetic to a big chunk of what you are saying
well im not.
this is just more glibertarian bullshytt.
common sense is the set of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen.— A. Einstein
it IS teabagger populist-mob nonsense, O Dark Lord of the Sith cw.
the truth is unrestrained capitalism is pure survival of the greediest.
Dig Dr. Pournelle.
Unregulated capitalism leads to the sale of human flesh in the market place, and perhaps we would not want that.
Your econo-bullshytt already failed Dr. Manzi. You might be able to jerk out another victory before the demographic timer goes off, but that is it.
its not just the rise of the darkskinned….it is stratification by IQ.
commonsense != intelligence.
Palin and Bush are the end product of 50 years of conservative memetic selection for stupid.
the organization of human society?
For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction. There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?
sil vous plait, where is the “commonsense” hiding in Jefferson’s statement?
— matoko_chan · Oct 19, 02:26 AM · #
this is the ancien war, Dr. Manzi.
the war between Kylon and Pythagoras.
et toi, ma petit choux, ….well….you are on the wrong side.
the side of the villagers with pitchforks and scythes….instead of the mathematikoi and the aukousmatikoi.
— matoko_chan · Oct 19, 03:01 AM · #
matoko, – Roy Zimmerman explains it all.
Vote Republican.
— THE · Oct 19, 03:36 AM · #
Arminus,
School choice is not the same thing as parents and politicians creating curiculum. Parents have a choice between schools run—in the case of charter schools—by people of varying expertise. Hopefully they will make the right choice. But that is not the same thing as people who know nothing about educating children deciding on what happens in the classroom. Which is what happens all the time. No child left behind is a very good example. Because of a misguided attempt to close the education gap between middle class kids and poor kids my daughter gets 15 minuets recess a day. If you know ANTHING about chidren you know how stupid this is.
Re homeschooling: educating one or two of your own children in the home is a much different task than educating a school district of children of every race and economic class.
You comment is just what I am talking about. Educating children is an ideological football for you. You are comfortable extending the precepts of your political ideology into the classroom. Would you tell a doctor what sugical proceedure to use to remove your gall bladder?
— cw · Oct 19, 04:03 AM · #
In any event, I never imagined that Keynesian economists (or any other kind) had or have some reliable formula to project the GDP and employment impacts of various stimulus spending levels.
— Replica Swiss Watch · Oct 19, 06:45 AM · #
Freddie makes a good case for congressional term limits:
“The richest fuck the economy up, the poorest are forced to suffer even more for it, and everybody in the paid media cluck their tongues and declare it the way it has to be.”
— The Reticulator · Oct 19, 11:31 AM · #
Would I tell a doctor what surgical procedure to use? In some circumstances, yes. If he came at me with a rusty hacksaw and the smell of too much alcohol on his breath, I would tell him what to do. A great-grandfather saved his arm from amputation because he refused to follow a doctor’s advice. He could have been wrong, but it was his to decide. It’s better to live in a world where people make as many of their own life choices as possible short of allowing society to destroy itself.
— The Reticulator · Oct 19, 11:38 AM · #
Dr. Manzi just advocates more of the same dead-white-guy economics that brought us the Econopalypse That Ate America’s Jobs.
We already did “common-sense” and dead-white-guy economics. In the age of global economies and the interwebs all that happened was the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the manufacturing jobs emigrated in search of more profit.
Your whole post is the same effing IQ-baiting that has nearly destroyed your party.
Oh, its the “elites” fault.
riiiiiiiiight.
— matoko_chan · Oct 19, 01:06 PM · #
“It’s better to live in a world where people make as many of their own life choices as possible short of allowing society to destroy itself.”
I agree with you. I just think that having too many unqualified people involved in the school system could be a slow motion method for a society to destroy itself.
— cw · Oct 19, 01:34 PM · #
cw,
I’m not sure if we disagree all that much, but it is hard to figure out exactly what you object to. It seems to me that you don’t want “unqualified people involved in the school system” — but how do we decide who is qualified and who isn’t? The ed schools are a joke and churn out ideological goof balls. The “No Child Left Behind” law, which you are I both think was flawed, was at least an attempt by politicians to measure school effectiveness. I think parents and politicians who demand accountability are on the right track (they are wrong to expect miracles).
Anyway, I would recommend Murray’s book “Real Education” for more on what I think Amercia’s school system should look like.
— Arminius · Oct 19, 02:04 PM · #
Ariminus,
Respectfully, your comment is what I’m talking about when I say that people think they have knowledge of this field when they don’t. Ed schools, in general, are not a joke. Some are bad, some are good, but 99% of the time your kid is going to better off with a teacher who has been through ed school than some well meaning but uneducated dude off the street. And 99% of our teachers come out of some ed school somewhere. Besides traiing teachers, ed schools do research. And Dr. Manzi says, it not usually as rigorous as it could be (one reason it that it’s hard to experiment on kids) but the research still incrimentally increases our knowledge about how children learn. Again, you are better off going with this reseach, even though it’s not as rigorous as it could be, than you are going on popular instinct, predjudice, and “common sense.”
And as for No Child Left Behind, I agree that it’s goals are noble, and that it’s nice that politicians are concerned about the education of poor kids, but it’s based on all kinds of misconceptions and ignorance covering all aspects of our school system. The pressure it exerts has forced schools and teachers to adopt all kinds of less than ideal practices so that their kids can pass the reading and math tests.
And as far as accountability goes, very few schools have been able to make any progress on closing the achivement gap between poor and middle class kids, which is the whole point of NCLB, becasue it is impossible for most schools to make up for the social, economic, and cultural factors poor kids live under. So we are holding schools “accountable” for an impossible job. Which is a very good example of what happens when people without any expertise at all meddle with the details of how a profession does its job.
— cw · Oct 19, 02:33 PM · #
Another problem is that, due to a legal technicality, we can’t reliably put people in jail for being bad people, or even because we think that they probably committed some crime, only if the government can prove to a reasonable degree of certainty that they actually committed a crime. This isn’t very satisfying, but it’s a pretty consistent fact of life.
So some people will go to jail, but more will skate by on the technicality that their stupid decisions were costly, but probably not illegal.
— J Mann · Oct 19, 03:06 PM · #
Barry Ritholz explains it well, I think:
Foreclosure Process Rife with Fraud
— THE · Oct 19, 05:47 PM · #
cw,
Respectfully, I don’t think you know what you are talking about. Give me a smart college grad who knows his math versus an ed school grad who was taught how to teach math any day of the week. There are all sorts of studies that show programs like “Teach for America” are just as effective as training teachers as traditional ed schools, as long as you are dealing with smart young men and women who know their subject matter.
As for holding schools accountable, are you suggesting that it is impossible to teach poor kids? Great, let’s all save money then and forget about compulsory public schooling. If not, let’s continue to insist on accountability, within a framework that takes into account the different factors that impact the intellectual abilities of kids (including their IQs).
As for putting people in jail, I suggest we start with everyone in Congress who resisted audits of Fannie and Freddie.
— Arminius · Oct 19, 06:31 PM · #
Professor L Randall Wray argues:
This is the biggest scandal in human history
— THE · Oct 19, 07:03 PM · #
The biggest scandal in human history?
— J Mann · Oct 19, 08:26 PM · #
James Galbraith made the same point at the CEP Convention.
At the Root of the Crisis We Find the Largest Financial Swindle in World History.
— THE · Oct 19, 08:41 PM · #
Arminius,
I don’t have much more time to go over this, but the stuff about teaching is just conservative propoganda (or at best dogma). Teaching is a talent. A few “smart college grads who knows [their] math” will have the talent and be able to figure out the rest and choose to use it, at least for a few years. A few will have the talent but not be intersted in using it. The rest, the vast majority, will not have the talent and if they want to be teachers they will have to actually learn how to teach.
For instance, how do you engage the kids without distracting them from what they are learning? What’s the differnce between immediate maemory, working memory, and long term memory and how to you insure that the infromation is moved from one to the next? What is the most effective way to organize you kids desks? How do ensure that everyone answers questions (and thus stays engaged) without embarassing kids? How do you teach your special ed kids and still keep the rest of the class in control? Etc, etc, etc….
When I was a student teacher I knew the math but was shaky on the teaching techniques. I remember standing in front of the class and looking out and seeing all the bored, confused kids. They liked me so they didn’t act up, but they didn’t learn much math. If they hadn’t liked me they would have acted up and there would have been that issue on top of math.
Anyway, you would know this if you had any experience in the classroom. The weird thing to me is that you obviously haven’t any experience yet feel confident to make a bunch of sweeping statements about teaching. You have this fake knowledge that I assume you picked up from conservative babblers. And you are not at all alone. Almost everyone seem to think they know how to teach and run a school district.
— cw · Oct 19, 10:25 PM · #
cw,
For a guy who believes in experts and intellectual elites, you seem blissfully ignorant of the considerable academic work that has been done showing that there is no correlation between formal teaching credentials and classroom results. You could start with Professor Hanushek and Google around for more:
http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/content.asp?contentId=60
Do you think the good Professor is a “conservative babbler”? I could provide more fun links, but be careful the next time you assume your fellow American Scene commenter can’t read a regression study.
Anyway, we do agree that teaching is a talent and not everyone who is good at math will be a good teacher. I would also agree that folks who know their subject can pick up some good techniques on the job and even in the occassional class or two. But a Masters in Education? Please.
— Arminius · Oct 20, 12:15 AM · #
Recieved knowledge + google = expert.
— cw · Oct 20, 01:24 AM · #
Received knowledge + Google = any number of arguments here, and that’s fine. Right? Google, for better or worse, is just another place to receive knowledge. (And, I’d submit, a better one than the Bible, which Arminius ultimately relies on.)
My qualm is when such received knowledge launches the kind of comment Arminuis/Jeff deposited— in a stinking loaf— near the end of the “Futbol Americano” post.
Among my many shortcomings is an inexcusably pitiful ability to link, so here’s an old-fashioned copy’n‘paste:
“Anyway, do you think that an America populated by over 50% minorities, specifically black and Hispanic minorities would have given us the internet/web/blogs for you to both be posting your nonsense here? Quick, name all the wonderful contributions (besides food) that Hispanics have made to American culture? Heck, name all the wonderful contributions to world culture from all of Latin America? [Off the top of my head I would say Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, the economist Hernando de Soto, and maybe Shakira — just kidding about her).
Hispanic out-of-wedlock births are over 50% (you already know blacks are over 70%). Hispanic gangs and violence are a growing problem and educational achievement, just as for blacks, significantly lags whites. Do you think this heralds exciting new vistas for an ennobling American culture?”
Never mind the irony that a commenter who typically laments the damaged harvests of government intervention turns around and touts the origins of the internet; the rest is bigoted swill.
Regrettably, by calling him what he is— a bigoted brewer— I’m handing him exactly what he hopes to provoke: an accusation of racism which he will somehow interpret as hysteria.
The larger— although, yes, obviously still molehill- issue is not what Arminius thinks of what I think of his comments. Who gives a damn? Nobody should. The larger issue is the way some contributors here accommodate his observations simply because he lends them a veneer of civility.
It’s simpering/inconsistent of Manzi and several others to react as scolds to the provocations of Chet and _chan, while making friendly discourse with the duo of Sailer-Jeff/Arminius. Seriously, it is. If it hasn’t sunk in how creepy the attitudes of the latter pair are, read the above passage again. Any backpedalling attempt by Arminius to characterize the post as tongue-in-cheek because of the weak Shakira joke would be obviously superficial and disingenuous. Sailer’s remarks may rarely descend to this kind of bald racism, but they come awfully close, whatever claim of detached observation he bizarrely claims.
If American Scene contributors are willing to cheer Sailer’s great questions when Sailer is operating in the outwardly analytical/sensible mode or engage Arminius Jeff’s comments when he steers clear of his faith-trumps-intellect/race inferiority complex entries, it would be appropriate to see them chastised about their baser prejudices, especially when those are as evident as they are in the quote above.
At least _chan structures her irritating screeds in easily-spotted weird verse. The whites-are-smarter-than-blacks contingent leaves its remarks in less assuming form, and yes, it’s typically polite. But so what? When read in full, their views suffer from unmistakably unsavory foundations. At some point, no civility is warranted in return. So, cw, if you must have a talk with Arminius, dispense with the preface of “respectfully.” It’s undeserved. And Manzi, if you’re gonna spurn Chet for antagonism, don’t forget that the swell Christians who call you “Mr. Manzi” are often guilty of worse.
— Tony · Oct 20, 04:19 AM · #
Tony,
Since we are already far afield of Jim’s original topic, I don’t feel too bad about hijacking this thread with the following questions to you:
1) What am I brewing?
2) What are my “baser prejudices”?
3) What are the “unsavory foundations” my views “suffer” from?
And let’s leave Sailer out of this — he shines like a supernova and I’m more like the light reflected off of the moon.
— Arminius · Oct 20, 02:26 PM · #
The hijack was underway about two dozen comments ago, so no, don’t beat yourself up about aiding and abetting.
To answer your questions:
1. Nothing. It was an embarrassing effort on my part to add rhetorical flourish— you know, connecting a brewer back to his swill? . . oh crap, never mind. . . just replace “bigoted brewer” with “bigot.”
2. Okay, again, not a wonderful choice of words. Instead of “baser prejudices,” change it to “racist horseshit,” and for an example of said horseshit, simply refer to the passage I quoted by you.
3. Once more, regrettable phrasing. I know, I know, an “unsavory” foundation? What the hell is that? Let’s just go with “unsavory views,” although that’s not quite right, either. To call your own words about the alleged poverty of Latino culture and feral/violent impulses of black culture unsavory is a significant understatement. (Anyway, if you were really concerned about the problems of violence and absentee child-rearing, your beef would be with the entire male population, not just racial groups within it.)
I’m glad to simplify further and leave out any awkward references to unsavory prejudices, baser footings, frothy brews, etc. and just go with the term, “creepy.” The last sentence of your last reply qualifies entirely.
(I give these recent posts until suppertime before they are removed.)
— Tony · Oct 20, 03:40 PM · #
Tony,
Thanks for the answers!
It’s nice to read about your prejudices and your willful ignorance of racial group differences, but I like the fact that you seem to enjoy mixing it up with a guy like me.
By the way, just for cw, I found another “conservative babbler” that I think he’ll enjoy. This is Martin Kozloff, who is a professor of education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington:
“A master’s degree in most subfields in education (especially reading — or what they like to call “literacy” — early childhood education, teaching and elementary education) adds little or nothing to students’ knowledge or practical skills.
Indeed, a master’s degree in most education subfields further stamps in the “progressive,” “child-centered,” “constructivist,” “developmentally appropriate,” postmodernist, pseudo-liberationist baloney that infects the undergraduate curriculum, and which leaves graduating ed students unprepared to provide their own students with coherent, logically sequenced instruction.
Undergrad students enter ed schools and eventually graduate from master’s programs still 1. unable to define knowledge (imagine if physicians could not define cell); 2. unable to identify, define and show exactly how to teach the different kinds of knowledge (e.g., facts, concepts, rule, routines); 3. unable to explain how learning is a simple and straightforward process of inductive reasoning (and not a mysterious process of “discovery” and “meaning making” that can only be “facilitated” by teachers who are more like artistes than skilled technicians); and 4. unable to determine whether teaching materials (e.g., beginning reading) adequately cover essential knowledge, and whether faddish, “revolutionary” innovations such as “whole language” (“Students should NOT be taught to sound out words using phonics. They should GUESS what words say using pictures on the page and the shape of words”) have solid empirical support and will not make children illiterate.
And if you ask graduating master’s students who have managed to escape indoctrination (because they are fortunately endowed with a wide streak of skepticism), they will tell you that they learned nothing new. Yes, many teachers with master’s degrees in education are more skilled teachers. But this is not because they got a master’s degree. They went for a master’s degree because they are intelligent, were already skilled teachers (self-taught), and had the gumption to go back to school.”
By the way, this is getting really off topic, but does anyone around here ever stop by Mencius Moldbug’s blog? Now that is a place that will really put some hair on your chest and I guarantee “creepy” is the least of the adjectives you’ll be thinking of when you get done with Mencius.
— Arminius · Oct 20, 04:09 PM · #
1. Who said anything about master’s degrees? The vast majority of students that go to ed schools to qulify for a teacher’s liscense.
2. THe more you go on the more I see that you are not serious about understanding education but instead massaging your ideology muscle. You are just repeating conservative dogma that you picked up somewhere. You want to use google profitably, go find studies (and make sure you actually read the whole thing) that contradict your strongly held beliefs and then think about them honestly.
3. I can’t waste anymore time on this.
— cw · Oct 20, 05:18 PM · #
there is no threadjack tony.
belief in the capacity of intellectual elites to have valid expertise that transcends common sense and practical experience concerning the organization of human society.
this is simply the basic dichotomy between the left and the right.
I would offer that “commonsense” is simply not a jeffersonian meritocratic talent (like intelligence) or virtue (like honesty or honor) for a reason…..
We did it your way for 8 years, Dr. Manzi.
We got the Econopalypse that Ate Americas Jobs and a republican president so gobsmackingly stupid that he didnt understand that when muslims are empowered to vote democratically…they WILL vote for Islam.
Iraq is 99% muslim. A-stan is 99.6% muslim.
Democracy, as i understand, is the consent of the governed.
This would have been obvious to an intelligent person.
commonsense IS NOT EQUAL TO intelligence.
— matoko_chan · Oct 20, 10:18 PM · #
cw…..at least you understand this…..don’t you?
this is simple teabaggerese.
“common sense and practical experience concerning the organization of human society.”
this the same old bullshytt, social conservatism and “commonsense”.
the “free market” is already free.
the bankstahs are back…the dow is at 1100, a 70% gain over march 2009’s low.
they have already figured out how to make money when the unemployment rate is 17.1 %.
Dr. Manzi……dont offer up the same crapology that nearly destroyed this country.
Hayek was wrong. Hume was wrong. Burke was wrong.
admit it.
— matoko_chan · Oct 21, 01:10 PM · #
matoko_chan,
The only movie I got to see this year at the Chicago Internation Film Festival was a Japanese film called “Sword of Desperation”. I think there is much to admire in the samuri code of honor:
http://www.torisashi.com/
By the way, when folks like Bush and Natan Sharansky throw around the word democracy, I think don’t mean mob rule; rather they are thinking of something more akin to republican government that respects at least some forms of individual liberty separate and apart from the State (or the mob).
— Arminius · Oct 21, 03:57 PM · #
Arminius, they mean JUDEOCHRISTIAN democracy. that is the only kind we have. it the consent of the governed of a majority christian nation.
Be honest— we are living in Jesusland until the demographic timer goes off.
there are 200 million christians, and 100 million of the rest of us.
America is a protestant nation.
— matoko_chan · Oct 21, 05:34 PM · #
> intellectual elites to have valid expertise that transcends common sense and practical experience concerning the organization of human society.
Intellectual elites (like you) know facts — yes facts — that are hard-won through rigorous, systematic analysis, and that are not available via the vehicles of “common sense and practical experience,” a.k.a. casual observation.
You know, for instance, that foreign aid does not constitute 10% of the U.S. budget.
You know that the Arctic has not been ice-free for three million years.
You know that the risks of death in a traffic accident exceed those of a terrorist attack by several orders of magnitude.
So yes, I would definitely trust your decisions more than somebody (most people) who don’t know those things — even though I find your reasoning based on that knowledge to be imperfect.
Given the huge (infinite) predominance of wrong answers compared to the small number of right answers, theirs are pretty much guaranteed to be wrong.
This is not complicated and you — an expert in these issues — know it perfectly well: expertise is necessary but not sufficient.
But then, only godlike wisdom and omniscience is sufficient
— Steve Roth · Oct 21, 10:46 PM · #
Steve Roth:
You cite a set of facts that we can use as reliable knowledge:
I agree (assuming I fact-checked these). But note that the post specifically describes the paucity of reliable, useful and non-obvious knowledge of cause-and-effect predictive rules in economics.
— Jim Manzi · Oct 22, 07:53 AM · #
merde.
how about just removing the OBVIOUS failmemes from the ruleset? no…..you go back to babbling about ‘commonsense’ and the socon social compact. White Patriarchy social cohesion is dead and stinking. you cant go back. get a new paradigm.
Perhaps you could reduce the set of cause-and-effect predictive rules by the ones that DIDN’T WORK….like deregulation.
— matoko_chan · Oct 22, 01:37 PM · #
you seem to have no pruning algorithms, Dr. Manzi.
you just wave your hands and call it voodoo.
— matoko_chan · Oct 22, 01:40 PM · #
> the post specifically describes the paucity of reliable, useful and non-obvious knowledge of cause-and-effect predictive rules in economics.
Good point.
But we do have a mass of econometric data demonstrating correlation — and perhaps more importantly, lack of same. While lack of correlation does not prove lack of causation, it is awfully damned convincing — especially when that lack of correlation is demonstrated via dozens or hundreds of analyses using many different long-term data sets analyzed using many different methods. Enough of that, and you’ve pretty much got a “fact on the ground.”
Experts know, for instance, that in prosperous economies over the last three to ten decades, there is no correlation between government size and long-term economic growth. (If anything, the correlation is the reverse.)
I can’t cite survey data, but I think you’ll agree that the huge mass of casual observers aren’t aware of this fact. I think we should put more trust in the experts that are.
— Steve Roth · Oct 23, 03:01 PM · #