Dan Williams at Conspicuous Cognition wrote Let's Not Bring Back the Gatekeepers over half a year ago, but I missed it.
Put simply: Once established institutions lost the privilege to control the public conversation, they acquired an obligation to participate within it, which, so far, they have mostly failed to do.
It's a pretty good understanding of anti-elite sentiment from someone who only partly shares it.
People behave differently when they believe a task is nearly completed. We give one final push, one final try to get everything over the finish line. If it looks like its all over but the mopping up, we might relax a bit and make sure all is correct, no sloppiness, everything tied up in a bow. But if we believe it might all slip away if we don't capitalise on this chance, we get a little crazy. We take risks, we pare everything down to essentials. Get all the kids to high ground, even if some knees are skinned and tears shed in the process. Push through blizzard that last half hour, even when visibility is ridiculously bad.
If we are tired and have invested a lot of effort on this try we could even get a lot crazy. We play rough, snap at the others, refuse to listen. This where the idea that we will not rise to the occasion, we will revert to the level of our training comes from. We will be temporarily braver, but our independent judgment will be more random.
This is part of the ongoing discussion about gun control. You will see statistics posted that Europe - by which they mean Western Europe - has far fewer gun deaths than the US, and also has stricter gun laws and less gun ownership. It is hoped that you will conclude without questioning that the latter has caused the former. In Europe, it didn't, it was the reverse. Violent crime had already diminished over the centuries, as Steven Pinker documents in The Better Angels of Our Nature. Access to "firearms," including bows and crossbows had been steadily restricted to property owners. This reversed some as gradually less property was required for permission in the 17-1800s, but firing anything in an urban area was likely to be trouble. Only a Lord could do so. After the English Civil War there was real movement to keep the poor from having many weapons. Insurrection was seen as a problem, but so was poaching on the squire's land.
Notice the cultural distinction between hunting for food and hunting for sport, even way back when. You will see this again.
Violent crime continued to go down, but in the 20s and 30s, because of the Bolshevik Revolution and the wide circulation of firearms after WWI, Europe got quite spooked about the poor owning guns, even though there was no crime increase generally. There were, however, separatist movements everywhere. Governments did not want them to have guns.
After WWII Europeans moved to more clearly defined ethnic concentrations. Germans went back to Germany, Slavs went home, minorities staked out concentrated areas. Jews were mostly gone. So within borders, violence went down even further. People told themselves they were sick of war, and guns, and violence - and that was not untrue. Yet it obscured the fact that groups had huddled together more. Separatists wanted their own boundaries as well. There was a fondness for symbolic solutions, as there usually is. The UN would finally rid us of war. Though mass shootings were rarer than in the 20s and 30s, each one shook a nation that now had better communication. The urge to clear out the stragglers by making guns ever-harder to acquire happened in nation after nation.
As city people moved to suburbs, and rural people moved to cities, hunting for food became less and less common. Only the very poor in isolated areas had to do it, and it became more unfashionable, something that only older, uneducated people did. The rich who shot wildfowl for sport became unfashionable for opposite reasons, and their shooting estates were resented.
Thus the only people to want guns were the toffs, the ignorant poor, and the violent separatists. Criminals went to other weapons, mostly knives, from Norway to Italy. Time to clear out the stragglers, and if we get a little crazy getting over that final hump, so be it. Okay, a lot crazy. We're so close, mate.
Yet notice that "crime" in the usual sense was almost none of the problem. That was the excuse. Changing the culture, punishing the unfashionable, hoping to contain the separatists were the real motives. OTOH Americans became rich more quickly, and upward-mobility fashionableness in the US and Canada was accelerated.
In North America hunting for food versus sport was much less clear. More people hunted for food they needed, and even now hunt for food that they use. As a result, more of the population had parents or grandparents who hunted and remain sympathetic to the idea even if they don't hunt themselves. (Poor people still fished for dinner in the 1960s and still enjoy it even now. Trapping and harvesting are less common in all regions.) But there are cultural parallels in the growing unfashionableness - either the wealthy with private preserves (there is a large one even in NH) or the less-educated rural folk. You don't want to be like them, ooh, ick. An argument still made frequently is that it is "gun culture" that is the problem in America. But gun culture has very low crime rates. Drug culture, territory culture, and revenge culture have high crime rates.
Guys love to talk about gear, whatever gear they are using: tools, camping, fishing, woodworking, and guns are no exception. Gun guys love talking about guns. To those overhearing who have convinced themselves that gun culture is what is responsible for school shootings, it seems frightening. My brother has repeatedly said after any shooting "I don't even want to live in a society where someone would want to have that many guns." When the incident is arson, or a bombing, or someone driving a van into a crowd he finds some other way to blame right-wingers. But the main danger you have from gun guys, like any gear guys, is that they are going to bore you to tears if you don't share the interest. However, they more often vote the wrong way and just don't get it that it is their culture that is killing children...
So it's time to clear out the stragglers. The proposed legislation we see over and over is directed at firearms that sound more dangerous, not ones that are. It is for making it hard for you to get bad things, because those are what make you a bad person. If we can just get guns themselves to be hated as much as they should be those Others will become safer, less violent, and America will become a City of a Hill. Like, um, London. Or Paris. Or Belfast.
I continue to be troubled by the polling Grim revealed in A Britina looks at Texas Manhood. It's not good polling, as the "reader's context" inserts, but the fact that Platner's numbers improved, especially among 18-29 y/o's after they had been told of his sexual scandals is concerning. I commented twice at Grim's, where the tentative thinking is that Democrats are thrashing around trying to find their own Trump in order to attract some of that masculine energy. It could be.
As it keeps coming back into my brain these last few days, I have another possible explanation. The more criticism of him comes out, and the worse it is, the more some people will conclude "they must must be so worried about him that they are making stuff up. That's how the system works, dude." They are anti-Bayesian, in a way: the more evidence comes forward, the less they believe it. If the Trumpists hate him so much, the more they must be just be exaggerating the meaning of a stupid tattoo he got as a kid, and trying to portray regular arguments with his ex-wife and his girlfriends as something dangerous. He's just a regular guy like me, and they fear that.
We saw that from the other side. I can recall telling people in 2016 "There's plenty to complain about with Trump that's true. Why do they feel compelled to make stuff up?" His opponents kept escalating, many of them believing the claims, with a reasoning "His followers are insane! They support him even when we have revealed that he poisoned the entire Commonwealth of Virginia! I mean, what does it take?" But his supporters weren't entirely innocent in that. They very quickly moved to disbelieving all of it reflexively. Foxhole friends are what all candidates want. Anyone can believe you when you're innocent. Only the true believers will stick with you when you are clearly guilty. We are seeing that with Karmelo Anthony now.
Maybe I just expected better from the people of Maine. The evidence against Platner is solid and abundant, but the more it adds up, the more people are convinced that Susan Collins, of all people, is a dangerous Trumpist, and every true Mainer has to rally 'round her opponent.
From Razib's interview with Leonidas Romanos-Davranoglou about Maniots, Greeks, Albanians and their deep ancestry this fascinating bit rolled past, that several Indo-European descendant cultures have the motif of the hero returning and being recognised only when he draws his bow. The story of Odysseus we know, but they also mentioned also Arjuna in the Mahabharata in India. Heck it's only 3000 miles as the crow flies. I wish they had mentioned the others specifically. There was no known contact until later, strongly suggesting that both cultures drew the story from the steppe.
I'll have more on this interview just because it is interesting
Another great example of how to reply when folks are hyperventilating about how unsuitable the lyrics to rap or heavy metal songs are for teenagers these days. They han't heard na-thin' yit. Like most traditional songs, it comes from there or there, with roots all the way back to there, but it is Scots dialect, a Germanic language unrelated to Gaelic. It is close enough to English that you should be able to work it out. If something seems opaque, say it aloud and see if that helps.
As I was walkin’ all alane
I heard twa corbies makkin a mane;
Tha tain unto the other ane say-o,
“Where sall we gang and dine the day-o,
Where sall we gang and dine the day?”
“It’s in ahint yon auld fail dyke
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there-o
But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair-o,
Hawk and his hound and his lady fair.”
“His hawk is tae the huntin gane,
His hound tae bring the wildfowl hame;
His lady’s ta’en another mate-o
Sae we mun mak our dinner sweet-o,
Sae we mun mak our dinner sweet.”
“It’s ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane
And I’ll pike oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair-o
We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare-o,
Theek our nest when it grows bare.”
“There’s mony a ane for him maks mane
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
And o’er his bones when they lay bare-o
The wind sall blaw for evermair-o,
The wind sall blow for evermair.”
Behold the duck, it does not cluck
A cluck it lacks
It quacks
It is specially fond of a puddle or pond
When it dines or sups
It bottoms ups
Thinking about gender stereotypes and behavior because of the previous post, I thought of the analogy of anadromous fish, who move from sea water to freshwater in order to breed, and wondered if that could apply to male-female mating behavior. As with the gamma bias, men exaggerate both some masculine qualities and some feminine ones in order to look acceptable to women, and women do the same in return. This runs deeper than agreeing to go camping while also looking fetching versus men engaging in dangerous displays while also being available for discussions about "where our relationship is going." Anything to do with courtship tends to have layers within layers.
I think I'll put this analogy about fish to the female substackers I read, who would do a better job with it than I would.
I had not heard of these until today, though the concepts of the first ones are familiar to me.
Alpha bias - exaggerating differences between males and females based on stereotypes rather than data
Beta bias - minimising differences between males and females based on stereotyples
Androcentrism is usually discussed with these as a package. This is using males as the test subjects and assuming that the results apply equally to females without checking whether that is, in fact, true.
The concepts seem solid and understandable enough, but I find it amusing that the example taken for alpha bias is Freud's psychoanalytic framework, which is wrong on entirely other grounds, and the example for beta bias is Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development which is also wrong for reasons unrelated to gender. The male-female misunderstandings of both do highlight the other problems and cause them to jump off the page, though.
Gamma bias is a newer idea and suggests that both alpha and beta biases can both be operative at once: societies and even individuals can overemphasise gender stereotypes in some domains and downplay them in others. This seems likely, and a step up from the usual internet oversimpolifications. I thought of CS Lewis praising Joy Davidman for her masculine qualities and she retorting immediately whether he would be pleased to have her praise him for his feminine ones. He was man enough to report this to his audience.
Delta bias is also from 2020 and is a further refinement of gamma, of celebrating gender atypical behavior. The discussion at the link is interesting, and a more subtle way of looking at things
Delta bias can be illustrated in terms of the three male archetypes as defined by (M. Seager et al., 2014). Each of these archetypes can be shown in contemporary public media and political discourse to be simultaneously celebrated if exhibited by females but denigrated if exhibited by men.
That is, when females display stereotypical male behavior it is lauded, but when males display it, it is condemned. It is thus not the behavior which we approve of or disapprove of, but which sex is displaying it. Once one has grasped it, the tendency is to say "Well of course," but a second reflection reveals that we don't acknowledge that often. It is obvious enough to notice, but not dramatic enough to shout from the rooftops.
Quick observation on Punks and Hippies.
An oversimplification, but worth considering. Relatedly, look at how many Heavy Metal artists turned out to be golden retrievers at heart while the folkies were Dobermans. As I have written in other contexts, why would wolves hide in wolves' clothing?
Thinking outside the box is overrated, I have claimed. I would refine that to saying that many people who claim to be outside the box and have others claim that, are just in a less-common box, usually smaller. They are just disruptive jerks, sarcastic and condescending.
Real thinking outside the box is more valuable. I should not have dismissed the concept on the basis of the people who claim to have the quality. The entertainment industry includes both. The posers have some value in that domain, because they take other people's innovations that are really out there and start making them more cliched with their imitative nature. But someplace early in that cultural journey from incomprehensible to trite, there is a sweet spot that is both refreshingly new and understandable.
Students don't learn what we teach them. I have repeated this many times to conservatives who complain what kids these days are being taught in school. It's not the curriculum, it's the culture.
I have a friend who mentions every other time we get together that if people were given more and better science education they wouldn't believe so much crap. It sounds inviting, but there is ample contradictory evidence. This APA study shows that students still believe psychology myths immediately after completing introductory psych courses, even when those beliefs were actively corrected by the professors. To be fair, anti-myth advocacy did seem to help a little, at least in the short term. What students learn in class does not seem to be the primary driver of their opinions. Opinions come from social networks.
I think the arrow of causality goes in the other direction. People who believe that experiments, logic,m and evidence can bring us closer to the truth will enter fields that adhere to that. Not foolproof by any means, but a tendency.
BTW I did not download the whole study so I am not sure what myth is being referenced some entries above. Most of them I can tell, but some are ambiguous - many psychology professors believe in priming and implicit bias, for example, and those are myths - while others on the list don't give enough information. It is interesting that females are more likely to believe the myths and keep believing them. I choose to think this supports my theory of opinions having large social components.
The Myth of Assimilation at Aporia. We assert many things in America which are not true.
To begin with, the story rests on a quiet omission: a very large share of European immigrants didn’t assimilate at all. They went home.
Between roughly 1850 and 1920, return migration was a defining feature of transatlantic mobility. The return rate of European immigrants during this period was 25–40%. In some decades it reached 60–75% (Bandiera et al., 2013). Italians are the canonical case: between 1890 and 1920, more than half returned to Italy (Klein, 1983). This return migration was negatively selected — the poorer and less successful immigrants were the most likely to leave (Abramitzky et al., 2019). What we now remember as “successful assimilation” is partly explained by survivorship bias. America did not lift entire populations into the middle class. It retained those who were already capable of doing well and quietly shed the rest.
Maternal Mortality by Lyman Stone. No other country measures this the same way we do. Also...
Here, you can see that mortality rates are extremely similar across groups, with perhaps two notable exceptions: women under 21, and women over 40. This tells us that most of the effect we saw above of lower mortality for pregnant women was a product of the age difference between pregnant and nonpregnant women— but not all of it!
Free Will is Undefeated A lot has been written. Rob Henderson adds to it with some things I had not considered before.
Stuart Doyle offers a useful analogy that challenges this claim. Suppose we ask whether an apple is red. The determinist looks closer. He realizes the apple is nothing but atoms. Because no individual atom is red, he concludes the apple can’t really be red. The error is obvious. Color exists at the scale of the apple, not at the scale of an atom.
We have evolved to consciously hold multiple choices in our minds and pick one. Why would this happen if choice were not real?
The Hidden Crimes of Parolees. Advocacy groups will tell you that they are re-incarcerated for "merely technical" violations like missing an appointment. City Journal shows how this is not so. The numbers are being jiggered.
Data Republican describes the specific organisations and tactics of the interrelated protest groups.
And...quelle surprise, Open Society Foundation provided $5M of the $20M funding foundation across the network. Delaney Hall was suddenly called off - an informative story in itself - when Scott Bessent declared that funding foundations would be held liable if their grant recipients were violent.
