1) The reddit rumour mill on Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research:Apparently, they have laid off half of the 45 people working there. If you go on the BU website, the team pages are all offline. Anywhere you click "Meet the Team" it gives an error.Some news sources are covering this but they are all... biased and critical of the center altogether... Boston Globe is best so far.Folks are saying Kendi blew through his over $10 million in donations, he is being branded as "exploitative," and apparently they are moving to a "fellowship model"? Apparently Kendi has gone silent and is not responding to anything.Another commenter writes:i’ve been in there a couple of times, they were never actually doing anything worthwhile from what i could tell. usually had a few people sat contemplatively around a whiteboard listing “ways to promote social activism for underprivileged communities” with one measly bullet point that says “social media posts.” felt like he was just scamming the school out of money, shame there’s some very nice people there.
The explanation Henderson gives is incorrect (if another ideology was to cause the deaths of even more people in the near future, would that really result in communism being seen as less acceptable?), but to state the obvious, historically communists were not morally superior to fascists, so it is a bit of a puzzle why a teenage identification with communism is seen (at least in Western countries) as morally better than the equivalent with fascism.
I think it's mostly just a result of the ideologies being viewed differently - because fascism is coded as evil in a way communism isn't, it's more attractive to people who are keen on evil. "When I was 18 I wanted to be seen as evil" requires explanation in a way that "when I was 18 I was ignorant" doesn't. There are some opinions that become fairly reliable indicators that someone expressing them is a wrong un even if the opinions themselves are correct and could without the cultural context surrounding them be uncontroversial. A form of trapped prior/canalisation, perhaps.
And how has fascism become canalised in that way, when communism hasn't? I think the main cause is fairly clear - almost none of the countless victims of communist atrocities were from Western countries.
Every now and then the (Western) internet rediscovers the fact that Hitler isn't viewed with the same level of revulsion in India as he is in the West, and is shocked/amused by it. But really it's no more surprising than a gentle Oxford professor having a bust of Lenin in their downstairs toilet.
On that, I'd be interested to know how Indian views on Hitler have changed in recent years - it might give one indication of the extent to which they are being subsumed into global American culture.
I really like this explanation, thanks for typing it out!
It might be worth mentioning, I don't think communism evokes personal culpability the same way fascism does. We're talking about placing a group mentality against an individualistic one, after all. There might be fewer communist apologies because former communists don't bear personal responsibility for any flaws in the ideology.
On (2), I think the politicians' approach is actually more reasonable / less 'thick' than it might seem. One among many issues with polls is that they don't capture salience: if 60% of the public is in favour of some measure, that tells you nothing about the degree to which they actually think about it when not being explicitly asked. Backing popular but unsalient measures is, essentially, useless for the purpose of getting re-elected.
But if someone bothers to attend their MP's surgery and starts talking about how much they care about X and how essential it is that the MP votes for / against it – that gives you at least one data point on salience! And usually, for issues that are salient for more than a small handful of people, you'll get more than one person. So relying on individual members of the public (for all that it's not very epistemically virtuous) does give politicians at least a weak practical advantage over polls for the purposes of re-election. And there's a case to be made that it offers some *epistemic* advantages: to be sure, this approach will almost certainly mislead politicians about the headline yes/no ratio, but it will give them a better sense of the texture of salience, which is just as important for understanding public opinion.
This is one part of the explanation for why (to give an example) assisted dying is such a split issue in parliament when essentially every poll for the last three decades has shown stupid levels – higher-than-supermajority levels – of support. Most supporters are, like, instinctively in favour but never think about it (unless they have a personal story with a relative or something); those who oppose see it as the first crack in the door towards state-sanctioned killing of undesirables and care, on average, a *lot* more. Even though it's like an 80/20 issue among the population, it's much closer to 50/50 among the subpopulation who actually care about the issue. And there is a genuine case to be made that in relying on contact with individual members of the public, a politician will better understand public opinion than if they just relied on polls, because they'd see this dimension that polls miss.
(Obviously, though, the politicians here open themselves up to getting Goodhart-ed.)
The salience point is a good one, but I would still guess that there are better ways for MPs to figure out which issues are salient than having conversations with constituents. It doesn't seem quite right to say that polling doesn't capture salience - that's true of most opinion polling but 'most important issue' polling is a pretty good way to figure out what the most salient issues are, and I suspect many of the methods other than talking to constituents would produce reliably better results.
I do think there's probably some value gain from talking to citizens (I wouldn't go so far as to say it would usually actively mislead politicians on issue salience), so perhaps I was overly dismissive in my insinuation that it's a bit thick to rely on as a method of gauging public opinion.
The whole series of Re:Brand is amazing. Did you see the one with the BNP guy? Alas, YouTube rewards daily political polarisation rather than actual journalism. (I ignore the recent videos but do still enjoy the football podcast though).
Imo you completely missed the point of henderson’s tweet, inadvertently confirming what he said - that a lefty youth isn’t something anyone - like yourself - feels compelled to apologize for. “ I flirted with far-left politics in my teens, and don’t really think I have much to apologise for”
If you had been a Brownshirt enthusiast I bet you’d feel a little more pressure - internally or otherwise - to repudiate your youthful enthusiasm. Now to the actual point: this makes little sense based on the track record of communism vs fascism. Both ended up murdering millions, but somehow communism gets a pass. Power of “good intentions” I guess, our culture’s moral get out of jail free card.
I think this, from another commenter, captures it well: "I think it's mostly just a result of the ideologies being viewed differently - because fascism is coded as evil in a way communism isn't, it's more attractive to people who are keen on evil. "When I was 18 I wanted to be seen as evil" requires explanation in a way that "when I was 18 I was ignorant" doesn't. There are some opinions that become fairly reliable indicators that someone expressing them is a wrong un even if the opinions themselves are correct and could without the cultural context surrounding them be uncontroversial. A form of trapped prior/canalisation, perhaps." I don't think the track record of each ideology is the right way to think about this question.
Well the track record prompts the question why one is coded as evil and the other isn’t. I believe that was the original point. I think it’s a question worth asking. I offered my own hypothesis as to why that might be. You’re of course free to ask a different question. I happen to believe that it’s a dead end to dismiss any ideology as evil. It’s just not interesting. After all, each and every evil dictator believed he was doing good, as he defined good. In the case of Stalin, since he didn’t (somehow) get coded as evil as Hitler, it’s easier to see. Those millions he killed might be seen as collateral damage for his industrialization project. Support for Hitler may have similar justifications, but we’re not allowed to talk about them, because evil.
At the very least, I think it would be useful to write a long explanation about what went wrong in my thinking and why I would be unlikely to veer back into far-right politics, racism, and/or conspiratorial thinking. It seems much more serious than being either far-left or a hardcore libertarian.
But you feel no such need to explain away your lefty views, which imo could be just as intellectually barren as your casual linking of far right thinking, racism and conspiracists. you just ad hominem-ed a whole swath of humanity without even deigning to deal with any substance. It’s so black and white zero sum. As a reader, it’s not very interesting to read someone who just hand waves away every idea they think is not correct. At least tell us why. Muh racism doesn’t do it.
It looks like you think being far-right is far worse than being far-left. For me is the other way around.
That's because I think communist crimes are far worse than what nazis did and they happened to more people in more societies over a far greater period of time. Far-left crimes are also still happening and will probably continue for a long time while fascism is not a credible threat (despite media hysteria) since 1945. Notably far left crimes were not committed only by marxist regimes but also by guerillas and terrorists.
This is the point our dear author misses because it’s just so very very obvious to him. Why? Because an aura of romanticism and do-goodery still clings to communism, despite the historical record. But I also disagree with you. Fascism is far from dead. Our current system of corporate-government collusion - which the WEFers would like to make global - resembles fascism far more than communism, although they both have in common faith in centralized control.
The explanation Henderson gives is incorrect (if another ideology was to cause the deaths of even more people in the near future, would that really result in communism being seen as less acceptable?), but to state the obvious, historically communists were not morally superior to fascists, so it is a bit of a puzzle why a teenage identification with communism is seen (at least in Western countries) as morally better than the equivalent with fascism.
I think it's mostly just a result of the ideologies being viewed differently - because fascism is coded as evil in a way communism isn't, it's more attractive to people who are keen on evil. "When I was 18 I wanted to be seen as evil" requires explanation in a way that "when I was 18 I was ignorant" doesn't. There are some opinions that become fairly reliable indicators that someone expressing them is a wrong un even if the opinions themselves are correct and could without the cultural context surrounding them be uncontroversial. A form of trapped prior/canalisation, perhaps.
And how has fascism become canalised in that way, when communism hasn't? I think the main cause is fairly clear - almost none of the countless victims of communist atrocities were from Western countries.
Every now and then the (Western) internet rediscovers the fact that Hitler isn't viewed with the same level of revulsion in India as he is in the West, and is shocked/amused by it. But really it's no more surprising than a gentle Oxford professor having a bust of Lenin in their downstairs toilet.
On that, I'd be interested to know how Indian views on Hitler have changed in recent years - it might give one indication of the extent to which they are being subsumed into global American culture.
I really like this explanation, thanks for typing it out!
It might be worth mentioning, I don't think communism evokes personal culpability the same way fascism does. We're talking about placing a group mentality against an individualistic one, after all. There might be fewer communist apologies because former communists don't bear personal responsibility for any flaws in the ideology.
On (2), I think the politicians' approach is actually more reasonable / less 'thick' than it might seem. One among many issues with polls is that they don't capture salience: if 60% of the public is in favour of some measure, that tells you nothing about the degree to which they actually think about it when not being explicitly asked. Backing popular but unsalient measures is, essentially, useless for the purpose of getting re-elected.
But if someone bothers to attend their MP's surgery and starts talking about how much they care about X and how essential it is that the MP votes for / against it – that gives you at least one data point on salience! And usually, for issues that are salient for more than a small handful of people, you'll get more than one person. So relying on individual members of the public (for all that it's not very epistemically virtuous) does give politicians at least a weak practical advantage over polls for the purposes of re-election. And there's a case to be made that it offers some *epistemic* advantages: to be sure, this approach will almost certainly mislead politicians about the headline yes/no ratio, but it will give them a better sense of the texture of salience, which is just as important for understanding public opinion.
This is one part of the explanation for why (to give an example) assisted dying is such a split issue in parliament when essentially every poll for the last three decades has shown stupid levels – higher-than-supermajority levels – of support. Most supporters are, like, instinctively in favour but never think about it (unless they have a personal story with a relative or something); those who oppose see it as the first crack in the door towards state-sanctioned killing of undesirables and care, on average, a *lot* more. Even though it's like an 80/20 issue among the population, it's much closer to 50/50 among the subpopulation who actually care about the issue. And there is a genuine case to be made that in relying on contact with individual members of the public, a politician will better understand public opinion than if they just relied on polls, because they'd see this dimension that polls miss.
(Obviously, though, the politicians here open themselves up to getting Goodhart-ed.)
The salience point is a good one, but I would still guess that there are better ways for MPs to figure out which issues are salient than having conversations with constituents. It doesn't seem quite right to say that polling doesn't capture salience - that's true of most opinion polling but 'most important issue' polling is a pretty good way to figure out what the most salient issues are, and I suspect many of the methods other than talking to constituents would produce reliably better results.
I do think there's probably some value gain from talking to citizens (I wouldn't go so far as to say it would usually actively mislead politicians on issue salience), so perhaps I was overly dismissive in my insinuation that it's a bit thick to rely on as a method of gauging public opinion.
The whole series of Re:Brand is amazing. Did you see the one with the BNP guy? Alas, YouTube rewards daily political polarisation rather than actual journalism. (I ignore the recent videos but do still enjoy the football podcast though).
Yeah, I think I've seen all of them except for the 'Eddie Kidd rides again' episode. I think they're all very compelling.
> 18) Niplav’s ‘pickup reports’. Perhaps satirical? Who knows!
Not satirical! No¹ one² in³ their⁴ right⁵ mind⁶…uhhhh…
¹: http://niplav.site/data#Daygame
²: niplav.site/data/daygame_approaches.csv
³: http://niplav.site/daygame_cost_benefit
⁴: niplav.site/data/daygame_sessions.csv
⁵: http://niplav.site/notes_on_pickup.html
⁶: http://niplav.site/flags.html
Imo you completely missed the point of henderson’s tweet, inadvertently confirming what he said - that a lefty youth isn’t something anyone - like yourself - feels compelled to apologize for. “ I flirted with far-left politics in my teens, and don’t really think I have much to apologise for”
If you had been a Brownshirt enthusiast I bet you’d feel a little more pressure - internally or otherwise - to repudiate your youthful enthusiasm. Now to the actual point: this makes little sense based on the track record of communism vs fascism. Both ended up murdering millions, but somehow communism gets a pass. Power of “good intentions” I guess, our culture’s moral get out of jail free card.
I think this, from another commenter, captures it well: "I think it's mostly just a result of the ideologies being viewed differently - because fascism is coded as evil in a way communism isn't, it's more attractive to people who are keen on evil. "When I was 18 I wanted to be seen as evil" requires explanation in a way that "when I was 18 I was ignorant" doesn't. There are some opinions that become fairly reliable indicators that someone expressing them is a wrong un even if the opinions themselves are correct and could without the cultural context surrounding them be uncontroversial. A form of trapped prior/canalisation, perhaps." I don't think the track record of each ideology is the right way to think about this question.
Well the track record prompts the question why one is coded as evil and the other isn’t. I believe that was the original point. I think it’s a question worth asking. I offered my own hypothesis as to why that might be. You’re of course free to ask a different question. I happen to believe that it’s a dead end to dismiss any ideology as evil. It’s just not interesting. After all, each and every evil dictator believed he was doing good, as he defined good. In the case of Stalin, since he didn’t (somehow) get coded as evil as Hitler, it’s easier to see. Those millions he killed might be seen as collateral damage for his industrialization project. Support for Hitler may have similar justifications, but we’re not allowed to talk about them, because evil.
Would you have much to apologise for if you had flirted with far-right politics in your teens?
At the very least, I think it would be useful to write a long explanation about what went wrong in my thinking and why I would be unlikely to veer back into far-right politics, racism, and/or conspiratorial thinking. It seems much more serious than being either far-left or a hardcore libertarian.
But you feel no such need to explain away your lefty views, which imo could be just as intellectually barren as your casual linking of far right thinking, racism and conspiracists. you just ad hominem-ed a whole swath of humanity without even deigning to deal with any substance. It’s so black and white zero sum. As a reader, it’s not very interesting to read someone who just hand waves away every idea they think is not correct. At least tell us why. Muh racism doesn’t do it.
It looks like you think being far-right is far worse than being far-left. For me is the other way around.
That's because I think communist crimes are far worse than what nazis did and they happened to more people in more societies over a far greater period of time. Far-left crimes are also still happening and will probably continue for a long time while fascism is not a credible threat (despite media hysteria) since 1945. Notably far left crimes were not committed only by marxist regimes but also by guerillas and terrorists.
This is the point our dear author misses because it’s just so very very obvious to him. Why? Because an aura of romanticism and do-goodery still clings to communism, despite the historical record. But I also disagree with you. Fascism is far from dead. Our current system of corporate-government collusion - which the WEFers would like to make global - resembles fascism far more than communism, although they both have in common faith in centralized control.
There’s more overlap than you might expect: https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps/slatestarcodex