Society Is Fixed, Biology Is Mutable

Thursday, September 11th, 2014

While sitting through a lecture on ADHD, Scott Alexander realized that he rejected a popular premise:

There’s this stereotype that the Left believes that human characteristics are socially determined, and therefore mutable. And social problems are easy to fix, through things like education and social services and public awareness campaigns and “calling people out”, and so we have a responsiblity to fix them, thus radically improving society and making life better for everyone.

But the Right (by now I guess the far right) believes human characteristics are biologically determined, and biology is fixed. Therefore we shouldn’t bother trying to improve things, and any attempt is just utopianism or “immanentizing the eschaton” or a shady justification for tyranny and busybodyness.

And I think I reject this whole premise.

See, my terrible lecture on ADHD suggested several reasons for the increasing prevalence of the disease. Of these I remember two: the spiritual desert of modern adolescence, and insufficient iron in the diet. And I remember thinking “Man, I hope it’s the iron one, because that seems a lot easier to fix.”

Society is really hard to change. We figured drug use was “just” a social problem, and it’s obvious how to solve social problems, so we gave kids nice little lessons in school about how you should Just Say No. There were advertisements in sports and video games about how Winners Don’t Do Drugs. And just in case that didn’t work, the cherry on the social engineering sundae was putting all the drug users in jail, where they would have a lot of time to think about what they’d done and be so moved by the prospect of further punishment that they would come clean.

And that is why, even to this day, nobody uses drugs.

On the other hand, biology is gratifyingly easy to change. Sometimes it’s just giving people more iron supplements.

Comments

  1. Toddy Cat says:

    Scott Alexander has this interesting tendency; he says things that at first sound stupid; then, when you think about it a little more, they make sense. But then when you think about it even more, you realize that you were right the first time. This is one of them.

  2. Spandrell says:

    He can start to try to change hypergamy with iron supplements. Maybe he’ll get a real girlfriend.

  3. Alrenous says:

    Toddy Cat:

    In this case, equivocation on ‘biology.’ Changing biology would mean not getting ADHD despite iron deficiency.

    Similarly, progressives have repeatedly proven it’s not that difficult for certain people to alter society, and the alterations have far fewer constraints than traditionalists would have guessed. E.g. gay marriage and marital rape. On the flip side, I don’t think socially-acceptable public nudity is possible.

  4. James James says:

    “In this case, equivocation on ‘biology.’ Changing biology would mean not getting ADHD despite iron deficiency.”

    Yes, but this will be possible.

  5. Toddy Cat says:

    “Yes, but this will be possible.”

    Maybe someday, but I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about, although, to be honest, I’m not sure exactly what he’s talking about, and, given that Alexander seems to think that vitamins are some sort of genetic engineering, I’m not sure he does either.

  6. Aretae says:

    Toddy Cat:

    The way I said it was that Scott has rediscovered Hayek’s dictum: “It is the curious task of economics to demonstrate how little we understand about what we imagine we can design.”

    Solving problems that are purely biological — and specifically nutritional — is so, so much easier than designing solutions to problems that arise from the social context.

    Also, note that he works as a psychiatrist, and has intimate familiarity with the impacts of vitamins and minerals on human cognition.

    If all you did was read the title, it would seem stupid. What he actually said, which was only loosely related to the title, is profound, and though mostly old news, the fact that Hayek said it in the middle of last century doesn’t mean anyone understands it.

  7. Toddy Cat says:

    I read the whole thing, and I’m sorry, I still think that it’s an attempt at glibness and counter-intuitiveness, and I don’t find it profound at all. Scott Alexander is always doing this. Besides, the idea that solving biological problems is generally easier than solving social problems isn’t true, but I suppose that’s not a deal breaker for some people.

  8. Aretae says:

    Well, the idea that solving social problems is basically impossible doesn’t seem to be false from where I sit. Whereas, we’ve had a lot of success solving biological problems: lead, malnutrition, etc.

    Are you using the words differently than Scott is?

  9. Toddy Cat says:

    I’m not sure about me, but it does seem that Alexander is using the words differently than most people do when they talk about society and biology. Most people wouldn’t consider taking an iron supplement as an example of “mutable biology”. When someone on the Right says that biology is fixed, by “biology” they don’t mean lack of iron or protein or lead exposure or something, and Scott knows it.

    It’s the same reason I had problems with Moldbug calling the United States “A Communist Country”, and then coming up with his own, highly idiosyncratic definition of “Communism”. Alexander is using a definition of biology as anything that pertains to the human body. OK, fair enough, but that’s not how most people who talk about biology in a political context use it.

  10. Space Nookie says:

    I’m pretty sure one of the themes of Brave New World is the use of “biology” to transform human beings into bio-robots that love their servitude.

  11. Alex J. says:

    I think when Moldbug talks about America being a communist country, at least half of what he is saying is “Consider my idiosyncratic definition of communism.”

    Maybe Alexander doesn’t intend this, but if people can be persuaded that mutable biology is important, they’re one step closer to acknowledging the importance of genetic biology.

  12. Toddy Cat says:

    If that’s the case, I owe Alexander an apology, but I’ve got to say that I doubt it. It kind of reminds me of all those people back in 2005 who argued that our strategy in Iraq only looked stupid, that it was actually part of some deeper plan. No such luck, at least until the Surge. Yeah, Alexander might be a closet reactionary, but to me, he just looks like a typical Social Justice lefty, who has a better than usual understanding of his opponents’ case and occasional misgivings about his own side.

  13. Barnabas says:

    I think Alexander has been good for NRxn. There is a real tendency to attack a caricature of liberalism and Alexander makes a good foil. He argues fairly and doesn’t just point and sputter. I have found his motte and bailey concept very useful.

  14. Alrenous says:

    When Moldbug says AIACC he means Communism and realpolitik are kissing cousins while what-hobbits-think-Democracy-is lives on the other side of town. If we’re lumping, communism wins. Of course it’s not Slavic communism; that would never fly in the Anglosphere. It’s probably as close as we can realistically get to communism, though.

    Alexander is good at naming things I already know about. Alexander is very, very bad at coming up with true things I don’t already know about. (“Oh, confirmation bias.” Then why would I agree with him more when he’s closer to his actual trained expertise?)

    I can’t even honestly give him points for not pointing-and-sputtering, since he replaces it with Sophistry. That’s a wash.

  15. James James says:

    “I think when Moldbug talks about America being a communist country, at least half of what he is saying is ‘Consider my idiosyncratic definition of communism.’”

    Yes, AIACC is a koan.

  16. Toddy Cat says:

    “It’s probably as close as we can realistically get to communism”

    I have a sickening feeling we’re going to get a lot closer.

  17. Barnabas says:

    It looks very likely that we get South American style communism along with a Hugo Chavez type populist leftist dictator in my lifetime.

Leave a Reply