Brussels Lockdown

Thursday, January 14th, 2016

Nowhere are the shock and change in Europe after the attacks better represented than in Brussels, which went into total lockdown:

I arrived in Brussels on the Eurostar at night to find only homeless people and camouflaged military on the streets. It was as if the Belgian Army were policing an insurgency in some distant, indigent colony, not guarding a city that also happens to serve as the de facto capital of the European Union. I dined in the empty Le Petit Boxeur, which I mention because it was the only restaurant I found open. I walked the spookily deserted streets, visited the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, which announced in a panicky notice on the door that it was closed because of the THREAT LEVEL FOUR, and toured the feared Molenbeek neighborhood, where business seemed to be going on pretty much as usual, with all the cafés open as well as the stores selling North African clothes and exotic fruit and vegetables.

This is exactly what ISIS wants: to shut non-Muslim Europe down, to close the schools and places of culture and have people trembling in their beds, which, to be fair, was what ordinary Belgians were saying. I watched a debate on local TV in which mystified citizens questioned an official on the exact difference between Threat Level Three and Threat Level Four. He had to confess that he had no idea.

After 24 hours, I had had enough and decided to leave. At the station, there were more armed police and soldiers than passengers, and the train to Paris was patrolled by five police officers with automatic weapons, which was understandable, given that this was the line where a heroic intervention by three unarmed Americans, including two servicemen, and a British businessman prevented a terrorist attack last summer.

Posted in Crime, Policy, War | 1 Comment »

It is about sex, not power, after all

Thursday, January 14th, 2016

In the 1975 bestseller Against Our Will, feminist Susan Brownmiller asserted that rape is about power, not sex — only that’s simply not true:

In the ensuing 45 years, there has been no significant empirical research to support her claim. Yet, almost everyone repeats it.

In examining eight years of FBI data on 250,000 rapes and other sexual assaults, one factor stands head-and-shoulders above the others: the age range of the victims. Herein lies the key to unlocking the mystery of the offender’s motivation.

Social science has demonstrated a strong relationship between age and sexual attractiveness. Heterosexual men are sexually attracted to young women, while homosexual men are attracted to young men. The age preference explains why adult film stars, sex workers, exotic dancers as well as glamour models are often young, and why their earnings decline as they age.

Studying the ages of victims, therefore, provides an opportunity to examine sexual motivation. If rapists are primarily motivated by the desire for power and domination, then one would expect them to prefer middle-aged, career women. However, if rapists primarily desire sex, then one would expect them to prefer young women and men. Our research demonstrates that offenders almost always attack the young (see the figure below). The percentage of female victims who are over 50 is close to zero. Similarly, in male prisons, where women are extremely scarce, heterosexual men target the youngest inmates.

Rape Victim Age

Posted in Crime, Policy, Science | 3 Comments »

Donald Trump and the Politics of Disgust

Wednesday, January 13th, 2016

The Trump campaign has stunned bemused pundits by growing in strength with every controversy and outrageous policy proposal, Alexander Hurst notes, and disgust may play a role in his success:

In 2012, a team of academics from Europe and the U.S.—Yoel Inbar, David Pizarro, Ravi Iyer, and Jonathan Haidt—published a paper titled “Disgust Sensitivity, Political Conservatism, and Voting,” looking at the role disgust plays in political orientation. The researchers posited three different types of disgust: interpersonal disgust (i.e., the feeling produced by drinking from the same cup as someone else); core disgust (the response to maggots, vomit, dirty toilets, etc.); and animal-reminder disgust (how we react to corpses, blood, anything that evokes our animal nature).

[...]

Even when controlling for age, education, geography, and religious belief, individuals with higher “disgust sensitivity” were found to be more likely to tolerate wealth inequality, view homosexuality negatively, and place more belief in authoritarian leaders and systems.

Most strikingly, interpersonal disgust was an important predictor of anti-immigrant attitudes.

Political Identification vs. Disgust Sensitivity

Trump, of course, is a well-known, admitted germaphobe. “One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands,” he wrote in The Art of the Deal. “I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.”

Trump even described shaking hands as “barbaric” in an interview with Dateline in 1999, saying, “They have medical reports all the time. Shaking hands, you catch colds, you catch the flu, you catch it, you catch all sorts of things. Who knows what you don’t catch?”

Beyond the aversion to hand-shaking, Trump used to pre-test his dates for AIDS, and reportedly avoids pushing elevator buttons.

The connection between modern xenophobia, disgust sensitivity, and the strength of Trump’s campaign is fairly easy to make. As Inbar, Pizarro, Iyer, and Haidt point out, “Disgust evolved not just to protect individuals form oral contamination by potential foods, but also from the possibility of contamination by contact with unfamiliar individuals or groups.” And after all, Trump’s success has come not from presenting voters with detailed policy proposals, but from connecting with them on a gut level.

If liberals find themselves immune to such appeals, it may be because liberals and conservatives have different physiological reactions to disgusting images and situations. Last year, researchers at Virginia Tech observed liberal and conservative brains under fMRI machines, and found that, “Remarkably, brain responses to a single disgusting stimulus were sufficient to make accurate predictions about an individual subject’s political ideology.” Furthermore, they showed that our emotional responses are tightly intertwined with our belief systems.

Posted in Policy, Science | 1 Comment »

Auditory Digital Aspect of Communication

Monday, January 11th, 2016

Richard Greene markets himself as “The Master of Charisma” and suggests that Trump has virtually every communication quality that he coaches candidates to have — with one glaring exception:

Trump is brilliantly conversational. The best I’ve ever seen in a political campaign, and this is a huge advantage. People listen differently, and more, when a candidate speaks in a conversational tone.

Trump speaks in what I call “Lasered, Compelling Messages.” These are headlines that turn a potentially boring topic (border fences) into a provocative and powerful theme (“We have to build a really big fence . . . and Mexico is going to pay for it!”). Very few politicians have the ability, the confidence, and also the naivete, to do this in the way Donald does.

Trump is phenomenal at communicating The Big Picture. This excites the “Visual” part of all voters’ brains, shows vision, gives voters comfort and is quite rare.

Trump knows how to tell and use stories — relatable, interesting, human, “behind the scenes” stories that almost no one can not listen to, understand or enjoy. Storytelling is THE art of public communicating and The Donald leverages it brilliantly.

Trump, in stark contrast to all but Bernie Sanders and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Ben Carson, brings in the absolutely critical “Authentic Passion.” Emotion is what stirs audiences and “Authenticity” is even more important. Even if every word out of Donald’s mouth is thought to be unrealistic or even crazy, the fact that Donald authentically believes it, and is passionate about it, is like catnip to almost every human being. It is what voters crave from all candidates, yet most candidates — throughout history — have somehow not gotten that memo. Add a dose of this to the Democratic front-runner, especially the “Authenticity” part, and her poll numbers would soar. Guaranteed.

But, despite Donald’s 5 great attributes, it is literally impossible, psychologically and even neurologically, to be taken seriously, by all people, as a major political candidate without one more piece.

It is what we call in Neuro Linguistic Programming, (NLP) the “Auditory Digital” aspect of communication. It is a special sub-part of the “Auditory” mode of the human brain and it is the Albert Einstein, fact, detail, analytical part that is generally appreciated by voters but absolutely essential to the “Auditory Digital Types” (highly educated, professional, scientific, mathematical, legal, financial types who also wanted, really wanted to know what books or newspapers Sarah Palin did in fact read).

[...]

I am not suggesting that Trump go into excruciating detail about his plans. No clever candidate, especially at this point, would ever do that. But by:

a) simply citing a real statistic, the names of obscure world leaders, some studies or books that he has read, here or there, and when relevant

b) giving more specificity on simple things (the exact height and precise building materials of his famous wall, for example)

c) citing historic examples to show that he has an intellectual grasp of history (when, for example, other countries, even centuries ago, might have, indeed, agreed to pay for security infrastructure to keep their people in).

If The Donald did these 3 things, or even any of them well, he would communicate that he does have the all-essential “Auditory Digital” part of his brain and forever change the nagging perception that he is not substantive enough to be President of The United States.

It’s really that simple.

Posted in Policy | 3 Comments »

Free Riders

Monday, January 11th, 2016

In two separate sections of The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt notes that conservatives are much more focused on the issue of free riders:

First, he acknowledges, somewhat surprised, that conservatives are more generous to others, but notes that they like to keep control over who benefits from their generosity. They are very quick to help those who are clearly innocent victims, or those who are perceived as having been on the short end of luck, such as bystanders or those in extreme weather conditions. But as the causes of the misfortune become more ambiguous, conservatives back off. In the cases of folks who have caused much of their own misery, conservatives are not only uncaring, but often hostile. Liberals, he finds, tend to make these distinctions far less often. Suffering in itself calls out for compassion, and more subtly, we seldom can see cause and desert as clearly as we think we do.

The Assistant Village Idiot continues with his own thoughts and feelings:

Contemplating that the free rider problem is an enormous issue to conservatives, I realised that it is an enormous issue to me personally as well. It may explain nearly entirely my siding with conservatives generally despite my objections to them on many fronts. To not be a free rider is as powerful and animating force for me as I can identify. My children were clubbed by it, sometimes in word, always by example. One does his bit, however distasteful, and there’s an end to it.

I make distinctions that many conservatives, or at least the noisier ones, do not, revolving around my fury at their declaring some to be free riders who have had little or no control over their situations. It might be technically true that people with Down’s Syndrome are free riders, but I don’t respond to the helpless that way emotionally, and I certainly can’t find Christian justification for it. You may quote “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat” as much as you please, but Jesus didn’t seem to address beggars in that way, nor did Peter and Paul. Yet you can find Christians who draw the circle very widely of who is a free rider and who is not. I find it infuriating.

Yet at some level, I get it. I apply a very high standard to myself on such matters (or did until a few years ago; there are lacunae in the fabric now). I have little sympathy for those who ride free off others — and I have known some quite well. One consequence is that I no longer regard their opinion on any moral issue as having the least weight. If hatred for free riders turns out to be heritable, and a common cause of conservatism, I would put down money that I have plenty of genes that could play out that way.

Posted in Policy | 3 Comments »

A Modest Proposal to Reduce Inequality

Sunday, January 10th, 2016

Glenn Reynolds presents a modest proposal to reduce inequality, abolish the Ivy League:

Because if you’re worried about inequality among Americans, I can think of no single institution that does more to contribute to the problem.

As former Labor secretary Robert Reich recently noted, Ivy League schools are government-subsidized playgrounds for the rich: “Imagine a system of college education supported by high and growing government spending on elite private universities that mainly educate children of the wealthy and upper-middle class, and low and declining government spending on public universities that educate large numbers of children from the working class and the poor.

“You can stop imagining,” Reich wrote. “That’s the American system right now. … Private university endowments are now around $550 billion, centered in a handful of prestigious institutions. Harvard’s endowment is over $32 billion, followed by Yale at $20.8 billion, Stanford at $18.6 billion, and Princeton at $18.2 billion. Each of these endowments increased last year by more than $1 billion, and these universities are actively seeking additional support. Last year, Harvard launched a capital campaign for another $6.5 billion. Because of the charitable tax deduction, the amount of government subsidy to these institutions in the form of tax deductions is about one out of every $3 contributed.”

The result? “The annual government subsidy to Princeton University, for example, is about $54,000 per student, according to an estimate by economist Richard Vedder,” Reich pointed out. “Other elite privates aren’t far behind. Public universities, by contrast, have little or no endowment income. They get almost all their funding from state governments. But these subsidies have been shrinking.”

Nor does all this money go to enhance opportunities for the non-elites. Ivy League admissions are mostly tilted toward the upper-middle class and the wealthy. As Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times, there is “a truth that everyone who’s come up through Ivy League culture knows intuitively — that elite universities are about connecting more than learning, that the social world matters far more than the classroom to undergraduates, and that rather than an escalator elevating the best and brightest from every walk of life, the meritocracy as we know it mostly works to perpetuate the existing upper class.”

Nor does the problem end there. Once you’re out of college, your chances of making it to the top are much, much greater if you’re an Ivy League graduate. Take the Obama administration. A National Journal survey of 250 top decision-makers found that 40% of them were Ivy League graduates. Only a quarter had earned graduate degrees from a public university. In fact, more Obama administration officials had degrees from England’s Oxford University than from any American public university. Worse yet, more than 60 of them — roughly a fourth — had attended a single Ivy League school, Harvard.

Posted in Education, Policy | 1 Comment »

Diversity Policies Don’t Help Women or Minorities, and They Make White Men Feel Threatened

Saturday, January 9th, 2016

U.S. companies spend millions annually on diversity programs and policies. Are they working? Not really:

A longitudinal study of over 700 U.S. companies found that implementing diversity training programs has little positive effect and may even decrease representation of black women.

Most people assume that diversity policies make companies fairer for women and minorities, though the data suggest otherwise. Even when there is clear evidence of discrimination at a company, the presence of a diversity policy leads people to discount claims of unfair treatment. In previous research, we’ve found that this is especially true for members of dominant groups and those who tend to believe that the system is generally fair.

All this has a real effect in court. In a 2011 Supreme Court class action case, Walmart successfully used the mere presence of its anti-discrimination policy to defend itself against allegations of gender discrimination. And Walmart isn’t alone: the “diversity defense” often succeeds, making organizations less accountable for discriminatory practices.

There’s another way the rhetoric of diversity can result in inaccurate and counterproductive beliefs. In a recent experiment, we found evidence that it not only makes white men believe that women and minorities are being treated fairly — whether that’s true or not — it also makes them more likely to believe that they themselves are being treated unfairly.

We put young white men through a hiring simulation for an entry-level job at a fictional technology firm. For half of the “applicants,” the firm’s recruitment materials briefly mentioned its pro-diversity values. For the other half, the materials did not mention diversity. In all other ways, the firm was described identically. All of the applicants then underwent a standardized job interview while we videotaped their performance and measured their cardiovascular stress responses.

Compared to white men interviewing at the company that did not mention diversity, white men interviewing for the pro-diversity company expected more unfair treatment and discrimination against whites. They also performed more poorly in the job interview, as judged by independent raters. And their cardiovascular responses during the interview revealed that they were more stressed.

Posted in Business, Policy | No Comments »

Guns And Countries

Friday, January 8th, 2016

While examining Guns And States, Scott Alexander drifts into gun ownership in different countries:

According to MA&H 2007, each absolute percentage point in gun ownership was related to a 2.2 relative percentage point difference in homicide. This part of the study was beyond my ability to check, and I’m not sure why they switched from absolute to relative percents there, but suppose we take it seriously.

America has a gun ownership rate of 32%, so if we somehow decreased that to zero, we would naively expect about a 70% decrease in homicides. Unfortunately, only 67% of American homicides involve guns, so we’re back to pretending that eliminating guns will not only have zero substitution effect but also magically prevent non-gun homicides. This shows the dangers of extrapolating a figure determined by small local differences all the way to the edge of the graph.

Maybe we can be more modest? Canada has a gun ownership rate of aboot 26%, so…

…wait a second. I thought we’ve been told that the US has a gun ownership rate seven zillion times that of any other country in the world, and that is why we are so completely unique in our level of gun crime? And now they’re telling us that Canada has 26% compared to our 32%? What?

Don’t trust me too much here, because I’ve never seen anyone else analyze this and it seems like the sort of thing there should be loads of analyses of if it’s true, but I think the difference is between percent of households with guns vs. guns per capita. US and Canada don’t differ very much in percent of households with guns, but America has about four times as many guns per capita. Why? I have no idea, but the obvious implication is that Canadians mostly stop at one gun, whereas Americans with guns buy lots and lots of them. In retrospect this makes sense; I am looking at gun enthusiast bulletin boards, and they’re advising other gun enthusiasts that six guns is really the bare minimum it’s possible to get by with (see also “How many guns can you have before it’s okay to call your collection an ‘arsenal’?”, which I have to admit is not a question that I as a boring coastal liberal have ever considered). So if the guy asking that question decides he needs 100 guns before he gets his arsenal merit badge, that’s a lot more guns per capita without increasing percent household gun ownership. This should actually be another argument that guns are not a major factor in differentiating US vs. Canadian murder rates, since unless you’re going on a mass shooting (WHICH IS REALLY RARE) you wouldn’t expect more murders from any gun in a household beyond the first. That means that the small difference between US and Canadian household percent gun ownership rates (32% vs. 26%) would have to drive the large difference between US and Canadian murder rates (1.4 vs. 3.8), which just isn’t believable.

…okay, sorry, where were we? Canada has a gun ownership rate of about 26%, so if America were to get its gun ownership as low as Canada, that would be -6 absolute percentage points = a 13% relative decrease in murder rate = the murder rate going from 3.8 to 3.3 = a 0.5 point decrease in the murder rate. That’s pretty close to the difference between our 2.1 US-sans-culture-of-violence estimate and the 1.4 Canadian rate – so maybe beyond the cultures of violence, the rest of the US/Canada difference really is due to guns?

(I’m not sure whether I should be subtracting 13% from 2.1 rather than 3.8 here)

In Germany, 9% of households own firearms (wait, really? European gun control is less strict than I thought!) Using MA&H’s equation, we predict that if the US had the same gun ownership rate as Germany, its murder rate would drop 50%, eg from 3.8 to 1.9. Adjust out the culture of violence, and we’re actually pretty close to real Germany’s murder rate of 0.8.

How much would gun control actually cut US gun ownership? That obviously depends on the gun control, but a lot of people talk about Australia’s gun buyback program as a model to be emulated. These people say it decreased gun ownership from 7% of people to 5% of people (why is this number so much lower than Canada and Germany? I think because it’s people rather than households – if a gun owner is married to a non-gun-owner, they count as one gun-owner and one non-owner, as opposed to a single gun-owning household. The Australian household number seems to be 19% or so). So the gun buyback program in Australia decreased gun ownership by (relative) 30% or so. If a similar program decreased gun ownership in America by (relative) 30%, it would decrease it by (absolute) 10% and decrease the homicide rate by (absolute) 22%. Since there are about 13000 homicides in the US per year, that would save about 3000 lives – or avert about one 9/11 worth of deaths per year.

(note that our murder rate would still be 3.0, compared to Germany’s 0.8 and Canada’s 1.4. Seriously, I’m telling you, the murder rate difference is not primarily driven by guns!)

Is that worth it? That obviously depends on how much you like being able to have guns. But let me try to put this number into perspective in a couple of different ways:

Last time anyone checked, which was 1995, about 618,000 people died young (ie before age 65) in the US per year. Suppose that the vast majority of homicides are of people below 65. That means that instituting gun control would decrease the number of premature deaths to about 615,000 – in other words, by about half a percentage point. I’m having to borrow this data from the UK, but if it carries over, the average person my age (early 30s) has a 1/1850 chance of death each year. Gun control would decrease that to about 1/1860. I’m very very unsure about the exact numbers, but it seems like the magnitude is very low.

On the other hand, lives are very valuable. In fact, the statistical value of a human life in the First World – ie the value that groups use to decide whether various life-saving interventions are worth it or not – is $7.4 million. That means that gun control would “save” $22 billion dollars a year. Americans buy about 20 million guns per year (really)! If we were to tax guns to cover the “externality” of gun homicides preventable by Australia-level gun control, we would have to slap a $1000 tax on each gun sold. While I have no doubt that some people, probably including our arsenal collector above, would be willing to pay that, my guess is that most people would not. This suggests that most people probably do not enjoy guns enough to justify keeping them around despite their costs.

Or if all gun enthusiasts wanted to band together for some grand Coasian bargain to buy off the potential victims of gun violence, each would have to contribute $220/year to the group effort – not totally impossible, but also not something I can really see happening.

Posted in Crime, Policy | No Comments »

Guns And States

Thursday, January 7th, 2016

The entire effect Vox highlights in their graph of gun ownership vs. gun deaths is due to gun suicides, but they are using it to imply conclusions about gun homicides, Scott Alexander notes:

Gun Ownership vs. Gun Deaths

Gun Ownership vs. Gun Suicides

Gun Ownership vs. Gun Homicides

The relationship between gun ownership and homicide is weak and negative, he notes, while the relationship between gun ownership and suicide is strong and positive.

The Vox piece also emphasizes that the US has by far the highest number of privately owned guns in the world, but this is not the most important factor in explaining America’s higher homicide rate, or even close to the most important factor:

1. The United States’ homicide rate of 3.8 is clearly higher than that of eg France (1.0), Germany (0.8), Australia (1.1), or Canada (1.4). However, as per the FBI, only 11,208 of our 16,121 murders were committed with firearms, eg 69%. By my calculations, that means our nonfirearm murder rate is 1.2. In other words, our non-firearm homicide rate alone is higher than France, Germany, and Australia’s total homicide rate. Nor does this mean that if we banned all guns we would go down to 1.2 – there is likely a substitution effect where some murderers are intent on murdering and would prefer to use convenient firearms but will switch to other methods if they have to. 1.2 should be considered an absolute lower bound. And it is still higher than the countries we want to compare ourselves to.

2. There are many US states that combine very high firearm ownership with very low murder rates. The highest gun-ownership state in the nation is Wyoming, where 59.7% of households have a gun (really!). But Wyoming has a murder rate of only 1.4 – the same as right across the border in more gun-controlled Canada, and only about a third of that of the nation as a whole. It seems likely that the same factors giving Canada a low murder rate give Wyoming a low murder rate, and that the factors differentiating the rest of America from Wyoming are the same factors that differentiate the rest of America from Canada (and Germany, and France…). But this does not include lower gun ownership.

3. There are many US states that combine very low firearm ownership with very high murder rates. The highest murder rate in the country is that of Washington, DC, which has a murder rate of 21.8, more than twenty times that of most European countries. But DC also has the strictest gun bans and the lowest gun ownership rate in the country, with gun ownership numbers less than in many European states! It seems likely that the factors making DC so deadly are part of the story of why America as a whole is so deadly, but these cannot include high gun ownership.

The traditional answer for America’s high homicide rate is that America has a “culture of violence”:

America has several cultures of violence. There’s the Southern culture of violence that gave us the Hatfield-McCoy feud. And there’s are the various minority cultures of violence that gave us the word “diss” and approximately 100% of rap lyrics. This provides a testable theory: if we compare American non-Southern whites to European countries mostly made up of non-Southern whites, we’ll find similar murder rates. But first, some scatter plots:

This is murder rate by state, correlated with perceived Southernness of that state as per 538’s poll. I’ve removed DC as an outlier on all of the following.

Southernness vs. Murder Rate

And this is murder rate by state correlated with percent black population:

PBlack vs. Murder

This would seem to support the “culture of violence” theory.

Posted in Crime, Policy | 5 Comments »

Ivan Jurevic on Cologne

Thursday, January 7th, 2016

Ivan Jurevic is a bodybuilder, martial artist, and actor in Germany, where he witnessed — well, more than witnessed — the recent events in Cologne:

Running his own security agency, Mr. Jurevic was working the door of an exclusive New Year’s Eve party charging some €300 a head for entry when young women starting coming to him for protection having been attacked outside the cathedral and the railway station. In the viral video that has been viewed millions of times, Mr. Jurevic said:

“As I started to work that evening, I thought it would be a nice evening with some well to do people… suddenly between nine and ten o’clock it started outside the hotel, a stabbing occured. One person was in critical condition… and then the whole thing escalated”.

Referring to the extraordinary scenes seen in Germany in September as migrant trains arriving were greeted by cheering crowds, Mr. Jurevic said: “These people that we welcomed just three months ago with teddy bears and water bottles on the Munich railway station started shooting [fireworks] at the police who had come equipped with helmets onto the [Cathedral] platform… seasoned police officers then told me they had never seen anything like it in their entire life.

“They called it, and I quote, ‘a civil war like situation’ And there was no press coverage of this whatsoever!

“Throughout the evening again and again women came to me and asked if they could just stand next to me so I could look after them. I still didn’t quite know what that was all about. They told me they were chased by these guys”.

The men who had chased the girls then attempted to attack again, but martial arts expert Jurevic was ready: “These guys that chased them, then they really tried to attack me. I’ll have to be honest, I beat them all up.

“I’ve never witnessed something like this, I always thought this stuff would be some sort of right wing propaganda. But it was real!”.

Explaining the small number of arrests made by German police that night, Mr. Jurevic said he witnessed migrant criminals being rounded up but then released hours later, as there were no available police vans to take them away, and all the cells in the city has already been filled. As the migrants were released, he witnessed them turn around and shout “fuck the police”.

A number of women have described what happened, too.

Posted in Crime, Policy, War | 2 Comments »

Every Book T. Greer Read in 2015

Tuesday, January 5th, 2016

T. Greer lists every book he read in 2015 and spells out which one was the best — Cao Xueqin’s The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, vol I: The Golden Days, trans. David Hawkes (New York: Penguin Books, 1974).

I’ve been meaning to get into the Chinese classics, so that’ll go on The List.

What really caught my attention though was that Tyler Cowen cited T. Greer’s list! Nice to see that!

Posted in Media, Policy | 2 Comments »

Herd Mentality

Monday, January 4th, 2016

Our human herd mentality horrifies Emma Williams:

As a lifelong supporter of social justice, the new wave of “social justice warriors” and their denunciation of healthy debate has come as a horrifying shock to me. Until recently, I believed that the fight for equality would herald a new age of empathy, diversity and understanding. Instead, many of my previously liberal allies have been taken over by the cult of victimhood and a collective fear of rejection. Like teenagers, they constantly check in with each other to affirm whether what they think is acceptable — and who can blame them? The consequences of dissent are excommunication from the tribe.

Posted in Policy | 2 Comments »

Are Americans losing faith in democracy?

Sunday, January 3rd, 2016

Are Americans losing faith in democracy? Yes:

  1. Americans trust their political institutions less.
  2. Young Americans are giving up on politics.
  3. Most millennials don’t think it’s essential to live in a democracy.
  4. A growing number of young Americans think democracy is a bad way to run the country.
  5. More Americans want the Pentagon to take over.
  6. Support for illiberal alternatives to democracy is growing especially fast among wealthy Americans.
  7. Public opinion is shifting away from democracy in many countries around the globe.

Posted in Policy | 3 Comments »

Japan Pushes Traditional Ethics

Sunday, January 3rd, 2016

Japanese conservatives are pushing traditional ethics in schools:

The 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education and prewar ethics education are the bases for the new guidelines, which publishers are now incorporating into textbooks. The books will be used in new ethics classes to be taught in elementary and middle school starting in 2018 after a period of public comment and government approval.

1890 Imperial Rescript on Education

Mr. Abe’s initiative is welcomed by many Japanese who see a link between the Western emphasis on personal freedom and a moral decay they say is afflicting the country’s youth, as seen in rising cases of bullying, juvenile delinquency and classroom disorder.

Black Marks for Japan's Schools

“Teachers and students have become equals, resulting in loss of authority in the classroom,” said Shigeki Kaizuka, professor at Musashino University and a leading advocate of ethics education. “The classroom has been reduced to a jungle, creating room for bullying.”

Posted in Education, Policy | 2 Comments »

Elite Cosmopolitanism

Thursday, December 31st, 2015

It is normal for elites to be cosmopolitan, Anomaly UK notes, as he cites a tweet addressed to Donald Trump from one Anand Giridharadas:

I’m at a Muslim wedding in a Christian church in NYC, and everyone is dancing to salsa.

America already is great.

Elites in the past though did not impose their exotica on the common people:

George IV built the Royal Pavilion, but he did not import thousands of Indians from Madras to live in Brighton. Christian VII of Denmark commissioned translations of Persian histories, but did not expect his subjects to go to mosques.

Today’s elites, unlike those of any previous era, do not even see themselves as elite. They think that everyone is equal, that everybody else should be like them, and assume without hesitation that everyone else could be like them. That produces a disconnection with reality that could become the stuff of legend. The peasants have no bread? Let them eat cake! Flyover people don’t want Syrian refugees? Let them dance salsa with them! The apocryphal French princess was probably less out-of-touch.

[...]

The culture of the rural town or the inner city is not an elite culture and cannot be an elite culture, because it is not possible to drive those that do not fit out of it. In those bottom cultures, it is necessary to manage to live alongside those that the elite would exclude, and that involves a range of behaviours to avoid outsiders in ones activities and to reinforce one’s own status as an acceptable insider who should not be avoided in turn.

Posted in Policy | 2 Comments »

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