Re: Halloween costumes, I've been puzzled by conservative reactions to stuff like the Yale kerfluffle over the last few years. In particular how intense the reactions are.
You can, and probably should, roll your eyes at some of the stuff that goes on in the name of student "activism". But when I read conservatives writing about this stuff they don't just roll their eyes, they're absolutely apocalyptic about it. They seem to genuinely fear that a few college students being obnoxious pose some kind of existential threat to civilization.
Young people are just awful, but you have to keep in mind that they are just as afraid of you as you are of them. If you don't do something to attract them, like cook in your office or wear heavy cologne, they'll stay away.
they're absolutely apocalyptic about it
Assuming sincerity, maybe projection? Fear of change and a lack of confidence in their own situation turned outward. That would produce overreaction to perceived weaknesses in young people in the US. They can't even write in cursive.
I have a comment awaiting moderation on that CT thread politely mocking Haidt, hopefully in the same gentle style employed by Holbo.
But at Unfogged I feel more comfortable just saying: Jesus, what a dumb son of a bitch. I bet if Holbo spent an hour at it, he could come up with an equally plausible list of underlying attitudes of conservatives and liberals.
As far as something needed in schools, cursive writing is up there with guns to stop the bears from coming in.
But at Unfogged I feel more comfortable just saying: Jesus, what a dumb son of a bitch.
It's interesting to contrast his post with Holbo's post. His post obviously fails to do any intellectual work; it just glances at Holbo's original objection says, "this obviously can't be right" and then moves on.
Holbo's post, by contrast, does a fair amount of work, but in a way which doesn't make it easy to see what's at stake, and which would almost certainly confuse somebody who came to the post cold.
I worry that a casual observer reading both of them, might be tempted to agree with Haidt simply because that takes so much less effort.
I'm willing to trust pf's "what a dumb son of a bitch". I'm not about to read a whole Crooked Timber post.
Haidts job is to come up with reasons why the garbage beliefs of rich conservatives are secretly both normal and morally ok.
I honestly didn't realize that Haidt was part of that affirmative action for racists in university group, my opinion of him has fallen even lower.
I'm not about to read a whole Crooked Timber post.
Probably wise. If you want a short version, here's Holbo in a comment on Haidt's post:
I have a simple question, if it has a simple answer: I take your moral foundations work to be, for you, linked to the-lack-of-diversity work. My point was there's a simple logic problem here. You deny the logic problem. Very well. But do you deny the linkage categorically? You are in no way, shape or form arguing that broad foundations, value-wise, go with healthy diversity, value-wise? It seems to me that in some of your talks - and certainly in The Righteous Mind, you do that.
I take his point* to be that, broadly, not all of the moral foundations lead one to be enamored of broad, diverse societies. So if Haidt thinks that lack-of-diversity is caused by not having a sufficient number of moral foundations at play* there is a tension there, and not acknowledging that may cause Haidt to either mis-diagnose the problem or to lead him towards solutions which might not have the results that he wants . . .
* I think, but am genuinely not sure if this a good summary, which demonstrates my point about Holbo's post.
** to be more precise, to not have enough people, who, collectively, prioritize a wide range of different foundations
8
Once you go unfogged, you can never go slog (through another post at CT)
The grammatical structure of the saying really doesn't work with a past tense verb
Haidts job is to come up with reasons why the garbage beliefs of rich conservatives are secretly both normal and morally ok.
That opinion was expressed in the first thread, and I think it's a perfectly reasonable attention-conservation belief. FWIW, Holbo's response, in defending why he's bother to engage with Haidt, is:
Premise 1: Haidt's Moral Foundation Theory is well-supported.
By the time we gets to the bits of The Righteous Mind I think go right off the rails, Haidt is working within this framework he favors. It's basically a descriptive, psychological theory. Read the Wikipedia article for a summary, if you don't want to bother to read Haidt himself (which would probably be the responsible thing to do.) I don't have a major problem with this first step. I'm not sure I buy this picture of six foundation values, but it makes a certain amount of sense. It's well worth thinking about. Indeed, it's because I think so that I think everything past this point is even worth bothering with. I tend to think that Haidt is either right or exactly wrong about most things he says. (This is not because he's perverse, merely that I tend to accept the categories of his thinking, but not his thinking.) In the exactly wrong cases, I can often negate, invert, or perform some other reverse-engineering of his thoughts and get something that isn't broken any more, by my lights. (Haidt gets a lot of hate, for being a TED-style simplifier, which he is. But he gets a lot right, I think.) Now we get to several such exactly wrong bits. It's going to look and sound like I'm flogging a dead horse, but I think of it as extracting useful bits that were tragically mis-assembled in the original.
I didn't get past the first paragraph. We still make them read Durkheim, but not Levy-Bruhl. Standards have sunk!
I always mix up Jonathan H aidt and Jonathan Ch ait. I don't love Ch ait, but it's still unfair to him.
I always mix up Jonathan H aidt and Jonathan Ch ait. I don't love Ch ait, but it's still unfair to him.
Understandable. They both work the same "If only those self-righteous liberals would be more understanding of the poor maligned conservatives" beat. Chait just does it without the pseudoscientific veneer.
16 seems dramatically unfair to Chait (who admittedly has said some dumb stuff). The top 3 articles on his site right now are "Ranking the Trump-Administration Appointees, From Bad to Monstrous," "Obamacare Repeal Is Failing Because It Was Based on a Lie" and "The True Purpose of Trumpism: A culture war sold through the rhetoric of jobs and security." Not seeing much "poor maligned conservatives."
Chait hates anyone who disagrees with him more than 10% on everything. So he's worth reading on Trump, and worthless on anyone to his left.
17: I was basing 16 on Chait's "It's political correctness gone mad, I tell you!" schtick that he's been working for the last 3 or 4 years. Maybe now that Trump's been elected he's found better things to do.
Skinning stoats on public access TV?
I think, but am genuinely not sure if this a good summary, which demonstrates my point about Holbo's post.
I think it's a reasonable thing to say, but not quite what Holbo was saying. But I do pretty thoroughly agree with Holbo.
As I understand Holbo, he's saying (1) Haidt has this six-factor structure of morality, and it's not self-evidently ridiculous. And I kind of agree with both of them on that. Whether it's innate or whatever, I have no idea, but as a way to describe morality, it seems reasonable to me.
(2) Haidt claims that conservatives value purity/sanctity/disgust as a moral foundation much more highly than liberals do, and that liberal morality is meaningfully impoverished because of this. Holbo thinks, and I agree with him, that Haidt is wrong about this, because the specific things he asks about when he's trying to determine if a subject cares about purity/sanctity are things liberals systematically don't care about. But they care about other things in terms of purity/sanctity/disgust, that Haidt doesn't ask about.
(3) PC culture is a good description of what liberals think of morally important in terms of purity/disgust. Racist jokes aren't wrong just because they're harmful -- one white guy telling another white guy a racist joke when they're alone and no one's feelings are being hurt is wrong because it's disgusting. And even where there are direct harm arguments, purity/disgust is a big part of the PC cultural effort. Holbo says this, and I agree.
(4) Haidt claims that the absence of conservatives from the humanities in academia is an intellectual problem because conservatives have this richer, more broadly based morality, and liberal morality is narrower. It's not so much the specific conservative beliefs, but that conservatives are morally normal human beings, and liberals are just weird, so a uniformly liberal field is going to be intellectually weak. Holbo says this is Haidt's justification for worrying about conservative representation in academia, but Haidt seems to be backing off it now.
(5) Holbo, finally, argues that the very PC culture (expressions of racism or racial insensitivity are too disgusting to be allowable in the public sphere) that Haidt complains about as driving conservatives out of academia, is proof that liberals have, by Haidt's standards, just as rich a morality as conservatives, and so it doesn't matter whether conservatives are or aren't driven out, because academia doesn't need them.
I think Holbo is, unsurprisingly, being kind of silly and too clever by half, but I think he's also making perfect sense in a way that Haidt doesn't, and I don't think Haidt can counter the argument effectively.
Other than by just denying that his reasons for worrying about conservative representation in academia have anything to do with their purportedly richer morality.
I think it's a reasonable thing to say, but not quite what Holbo was saying. But I do pretty thoroughly agree with Holbo.
I agree with everything that you're saying, and that's a good summary. I was deliberately trying to simplify and leave out Holbo's reductio ad absurdum because I thought that was the point at which things started to get twisty. For example, Haidt's response was to challenge the idea that Holbo captured, "Haidt's justification for worrying about conservative representation in academia" by referencing the Mill quote. If that's not true, then the absurdity that Holbo is drawing out in (5) no longer has a target.
FWIW -- My summary was drawing more heavily on this section of Holbo's post
Premise 3 - something something plurality something pluralism something diversity?
I think Haidt's own thinking, past this point, gets loosely associative. (Usually I find he is tighter than this!) He runs thoughts together such that I can't find or formulate any canonical statement of his argument. He thinks (social) diversity is good, and he tends to equate that with healthy (political?) pluralism, which he tends to run together with exhibiting a larger (psychological) plurality of values. So conservatives turn out to be more pluralistic and, inherently, diverse by nature. There's a fallacy of composition looming: getting a critical mass of 'plural-valued' individuals might catalyze pluralism at the social level! (Anyone who has read Plato's Republic should be aware these micro-macro arguments-by-analogy oft go astray.)
...
Well, anyway, one symptom of this confusion is that Haidt seems to be asking for healthy (diverse) Durkheimian social values, for stability's sake, and also healthy (pluralist) Millian political culture. But Durkheimian societies are not automatically ideal in Millian terms. Rather, there is an inherent tension. Haidt sees this but thinks he has somehow emerged on the other side, the wiser for having seen both sides. (One of those T.S. Eliot "and know the place for the first time" kind of trips.) It seems to me he is, rather, falling flat, right out of the gate.
18 is correct on Chait. He's written a lot of good stuff on Trump lately.
I feel like all the contrarian publications like Slate, etc, have fallen in line and started to churn out more respectable pieces in our new national hellscape.
I find Holbo's posts quite readable. He has an engaging (to me!) style.
Oh, I enjoyed it, that's why I sent it in. I read it over breakfast quite happily. But I also found it twisty and difficult to summarize.
Life is too short for CT, much less political philosophy, but I think
emerged on the other side, the wiser for having seen both sides
is a real thing to consider. I think my own liberal-in-name-only background does let me see more. I was much less surprised by Trump than most people here, for instance, and so was Moby (I hope I don't misrepresent his background). Whether that makes a case for concrete academic policies is a different question I'm reluctant to take a stand on.
Not because I was never anything but liberal but because I spent too much time on studying polling to discount the polling.
*Less* surprised. I remember you taking Trump seriously when almost no-one else was. Concretely, then, everyone should use SAS.
8, 12 What? The posts at CT are still often very good, it's the comment threads you want to stay away from.
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I am watching the Bernie-Cruz debate, and I want to punch the screen. Cruz was so sleazy when he's telling his stories of personal family illnesses made me shiver with revulsion. Puke.
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33: I don't think I was. I think I'm just less susceptible to the post-election feeling that I need to read the fifteen hundred pages of trying to understand Trump voters are like without using the word "shithead."
I guess I could go back and read my own comments and see how surprised I was. But I never do that.
You should also not take stock tips from me.
I only take stock tips from shoeshine boys.
Looks like we're heading for a weak dollar. Fuck. I get paid in a currency pegged to it and I travel a lot.
I went through a whole Bayesian process of updating my priors about the probabilities of shitheads.
41: Maybe. But maybe not as I think the Fed will raise the interest rates as a way of telling Trump to stop being such a fuck. That should counter some of Trump's weak dollar policy.
Also, that was probably too close to stock tips.
I think Holbo is, unsurprisingly, being kind of silly and too clever by half, but I think he's also making perfect sense in a way that Haidt doesn't, and I don't think Haidt can counter the argument effectively.
Sometimes I say to John Holbo, I say, "honey, you're totally right, but this is kind of silly and is too clever by half." He is usually right, however. And clever! Haidt is full of shit, by contrast.
Does he every tell you what the dollar will be worth in July 2017? Because I could use that more than a clear understanding of what Haidt thinks.
More important, does he shine your shoes?
I have never really been anything other than a liberal and was less surprised by Trump than most, mainly because I remembered how many shitheads there are in America. The scars from Bush never healed.
I thought the richer shitheads would fear the financial instability.
Cruz was so sleazy when he's telling his stories of personal family illnesses made me shiver with revulsion.
He brings discredit to his home and native land, and encourages the belief that "Canada is just as bad!"
I really appreciate LB's summary in 21.
I'm finally catching up on the Warren thing. It's obvious that the GOP intends to run the Senate as a plantation the way they do the House. These are going to be a long 4 years.
Also, Cruz was bragging about how we have more C-sections in the U.S. as well as MRIs. In general an in the aggregate higher rates of c-sections are thought to reflect worse care/outcomes. Proving his point with with facts that support the opposite conclusion. Bah.
Also, Cruz was bragging about how we have more C-sections in the U.S. as well as MRIs. In general an in the aggregate higher rates of c-sections are thought to reflect worse care/outcomes. Proving his point with with facts that support the opposite conclusion. Bah.
In general all the republican arguments about why US health care is "best" have Ben slippery and had very little to do with logic. The have, it appears, been effective with the republican base.
Slander of Ben unintended. I blame my phone.
Careful with the slander. Ben'll cut you.
If impugning him is wrong, this blog will never be right.
Is our children of c-sections defeating Gauls?
The constitution is quite clear: only natural-born citizens can become president. C-section children are ineligible.
Make unsterilized surgery great again.
Donald was from his mother's womb untimely ripped!
He's in his 290th trimester. Too late for a legal abortion anywhere in the country.
OT: Émancé, France has a population of feral wallabies. I want everyone to know this.
Wallabies are all over England and have been for years. They can jump over fences.
It really makes those cartoons where the cat tries to catch the mouse and but accidentally attacks a kangaroo come to life. I wonder if there are also skunks trying to assault cats?
That story gives me the sads about the poor bloody yak, dying alone in the middle of nowhere.
If 63 is off-topic, I don't want to be on it.
67: I'll bet we could pressure heebie into putting up an open thread for animal stories and videos. Selah and I are certainly following the local premature baby hippo's progress closely.
Get back to me when you have feral hippos in the Ohio.
Another few winters as warm as this one and we might!
I think the secret would be migratory hippos. They could go south for the winter.
Jesus fuck, same thing here. I'm kind of surprised there aren't crocodiles in the rivers already.
I'm about to get on a plane to DC because this whole year is being written by Zola and that city, of all places, is where they're holding the big annual writing-and-literature conference that's less strictly academic than the other big annual literature conference. In theory I'm going there to "pitch" the novel I just finished to anyone who owns a printing press, which would be harrowing enough even if the whole thing weren't taking place in the shadow of Lincoln's giant weeping statue.
I figure I'll join whatever White House protests happen to be going on, and go to the National Gallery to see the Rembrandts before they're privatized, but is there anything else I ought to do? (I've ruled out dressing in black and smashing ATMs, since that has made life pretty annoying for people in Berkeley this week.)
You could go see the Spirit of St. Louis. May as well remember of time when the white nationalists at least had some style.
Good luck with the novel! What's it about?
Good luck, and let us know if you get a bite.
Thank you! What's it about... okay, this is good practice for talking it up. It was supposed to be commercial, so it's a historical novel about British Romantic poets and associates in Italy; but I didn't want it to read like a biopic, so the point of departure is that the main character, who historically died of TB in Rome, doesn't. So it ends up all too close to Owen Wilson's novel in The Royal Tenenbaums ("what this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't?"); or maybe in the spirit of ajay's Nixoniad, blank-verse pastiche and all, with more excruciating English manners.
I don't know if it's a "major-press book" or "small-press book" (as industry types say) or a no-press book as many efforts are; but my train to the airport briefly had a flying egret as guard of honor, which seems auspicious.
the point of departure is that the main character, who historically died of TB in Rome, doesn't.
This is Keats, right?
That sounds like great fun, lourdes. I look forward to reading it!
A non-flying egret would be distinctly sinister. Have you read Dan Simmons's Hyperion books? He also features your non-dead Romantic (if I'm thinking of the right one). Sounds interesting, anyway. And congratulations for finishing it, press or no-press.
It was supposed to be commercial,
Uh huh …
so it's a historical novel about British Romantic poets and associates in Italy
Uh huhhhh.
(Don't mind me; I have no idea what's commercial and what isn't.)
It's commercial if and only if anybody has sex with or gets eaten by a dinosaur or vampire.
83: Well, I know what's commercial! He survives TB and goes back to England and there meets an extremely witty older woman novelist (who also didn't die) and they fall in love.
80: that's the one.
81: thanks!
82: yes, I do know about that one: wanting to resurrect him seems like a widely shared impulse.
83: I know, but you should have heard the other ideas.
I figure if the conference strikes out I can commission a review from Lizardbreath about how it shares the flaws of its genre and is also independently not good.
Can't believe a fucking colossal fuckup of a misunderstanding may cause me to miss seeing Fitzcarraldo I'm the big screen.
The one with Keats being eaten by/having sex with a vampire has already been written, so just as well.
Don't know that Tim Powers has written any dino-related books though, so that could be clear.
I now want to buy a Tim Powers dinosaur novel.
87: Bummer! Since you're the big screen, you won't be able to see the movie as it's projected onto you!
Slammed in the ass by my carefully reconstructed timeline of historical characters' travels in 19th century England, plus dinosaurs.
Were you led to believe that the cineplex would have been dragged over the mountains prior to your arrival?
You've got me: the title is, of course, Pounded in the Butt by Billionaire Hyperion Rex.
Barry, infuriating fuckup, I'm sorry!
82: he pops up in "The Difference Engine" as well, as a screenplay writer. And come on, nosflow, the Romantics definitely have popular appeal. There's any number of novels about them.
I figure if the conference strikes out I can commission a review from Lizardbreath about how it shares the flaws of its genre and is also independently not good.
This remains the finest line I have ever read in a book review.
Best of luck with the novel, lk. Though I can't help feeling it would be better if it had involved an insane dinosaur dragging the resurrected Keats through the South American jungle.
What makes you think it doesn't, ajay?
Also someone pitching their novel by saying it's "in the spirit of the Nixoniad" is deeply flattering.
101: well, lk sounds like he was having difficulty pitching it, and I can't believe "Raptor Fitzcarraldo and the Eve of St. Zombie" would remain in slush piles for more than eight or nine seconds.
101: It's a Dunning-Kruger thing: lk is smart, so he underestimates the objective excellence of his work.
"This author is not nearly as incompetent as he seems to think"
/LB
"in the spirit of the Nixoniad" is deeply flattering.
I feel like you're misunderstanding the popular opinion of Nixon.
74. There is a very nice show of Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs at the Philips collection, not a free museum, $12. If you have any interest in early flight, the old planes upstairs at the Air and Space museum are fantastic.
The fossil hall that has the Burgess Shale is unfortunately closed until 2019. Small but pleasant collection of south Asian bronzes, a few excellent Chinese paintings and ceramics also, not sure if they have any of those paintings hung now. You could meet locals for a drink, schedules permitting.
What kind of food do you like, there are a few exceptional places. Lots of good Ethiopian food in Silver Spring, Chinese in Rockville, and a new uighur place that I haven't tried yet in Cleveland Park.
On topic because this is what "purity" means to working conservatives: Bouie is usually pretty good, but I especially like this one.
If by some fluke you run into a food writer/short story writer from Pittsburgh, she's a very good friend of mine who more or less created ex nihilo a food writing MFA at a local U. So you should totally introduce yourself as my imaginary friend.
Jokes aside, she's published and fairly well-connected. I can't imagine how you'd run into her, but anything's possible.
I don't think I've been in the St. Louis airport since ~15 years ago when I was snowed in overnight on my way back to writer school in Iowa and bought myself a bunch of beer and rode around the moving sidewalks till taken by oblivion.
Thanks for the tip on the Philips, lw, it looks very fine. In theory my drinking hours will also be conference-schmoozing hours, but who knows who I won't meet, perhaps JRoth's friend. If "flexible on dinosaurs" is the discriminant between minor and major authors perhaps I will learn by week's end which I am.
But, hell, tonight would probably be the night to meet up as it's the one evening when there's sure to be no conference business. I should have planned this better, but let me know, lw or others, if you happen to have a free hour on no notice. I'm staying near the Washington Convention Center.
Hmm. I have steak thawed to cook for dinner, I could either meet for a quick drink midway somewhere, probably cleveland park for me if there is any group forming.
Or invite just you but not a group to dinner with me and my gf, about a 40 min metro ride, I live walking distance to the red line. This because I have quickly preparable food handy for one guest but not a crowd. email linked for further coordinating, others interested in meeting out should sound off here quickly I guess.
Congratulations on finishing your novel, lk!
Really looking forward to reading some Keats/tyrannosaurus shipfic.
Thanks much, jms.
When I got on the metro at the airport literally the first thing I saw was a dude reading Dan Simmons's Hyperion.