I enjoyed this! On point 12 about cities, I have two questions:
1) have you visited Sydney? imo it’s similar to London in terms of being expensive but is also pretty great in a bunch of other ways: beautiful nature, great weather etcetera. I think where London beats Sydney is that there’s more ‘happening’ in terms of events, gigs and social scenes, so I guess it depends on your preferences.
2) Is there any data on quality of life in Europe vs USA? I share the same competing considerations as you where on the one hand Americans are significantly richer but I also have this intuition that Europeans have better lives in terms of life satisfaction, social relationships, health and so on.
I visited Sydney when I was five, so I'm not sure I'm in a position to comment, but it does seem like QoL is very high there. On Q2, I might write a post about this, but I haven't done a proper look at the data yet!
I was nodding along sagely to so much of this, thinking how many points were sensible and well put. But of course by the end all I can think about is the one point where you are deeply and concerningly wrong, which is naturally on the subject of Turkish food.
I don't think it's bad, I just think it's overrated! Some cuisines have to be overrated, and I'm afraid I think that Turkish food is a cuisine that is. Which do you think are, if not Turkish?
Fair enough. My view would be that Turkish food is essentially not rated at all outside of London (and Turkey). Having lived in Harringay for many years and since moved on I miss it hugely! I would probably say French is massively overrated but YMMV depending on your group. Maybe Japanese, even though I really like Japanese - I think it just has a certain aura among middle class internationally minded people (which probably covers both you and I).
The point about people being irrationally against medication is so so so true and I just... UGH. A friend of mine is currently developing a drinking problem because of a life crisis and should without a shadow of a doubt be on SSRIs, but her response is, invariably, I don't have depression, I'm having a life crisis. Which, okay maybe, but you still need to sleep and eat and write your PhD. It's like I tell her "take medicine for your medical condition" and she hears "take medicine for your life crisis". And no matter how much I articulate it, I can't seem to get it across.
In reality, someone who isn't pre-disposed to depression/anxiety would have been over the life crisis already, but she will only be willing to hear this when she starts making sense again, i.e. when she's been on meds for a time. I fucking HATE this.
What do you think is the trade-off for having more permissive free speech policies? I assume the usual argument against them is that allowing more polarised speech provokes violence/other crimes, how much do you buy this?
Also eschewing Korean cuisine is a glaring omission from #19 in my opinion!
I'm writing a piece on free speech (and more, to be announced soon), but here's a sneak peak:
"I’ve also been looking at some of the empirical evidence around the laws that exist in Europe, and it doesn’t seem particularly clear to me that prosecuting people for hate speech even has the effect that its advocates believe it to have. One study (https://academic.oup.com/book/60649/chapter-abstract/525790243?redirectedFrom=fulltext) with good causal identification found that when politicians give hateful speeches, hate crimes did not go up. But when they were prosecuted for that hate speech, crime did go up. When it comes to speech, the “cure” may be worse than the disease."
Obviously, this doesn't simply put the matter to rest, but my strong impression is that the empirical case for speech restrictions is extremely weak, and there's stronger evidence that restrictions lead to more violence and/or hate crime.
Interesting counterexample to the "if you make something illegal there will obviously be less of it" view which I've seen knocking around lately. Potentially high political saliency is an important factor.
Interesting, I wonder if there's an effect whereby tabooing something makes it worse a la drug criminalisation or similar - eagerly awaiting the full piece :)
Interesting list! I can't help commenting my own reaction to each of the 20:
1) Spoken like a true rationalist! Still feels that you're using a very low percentage bar for these beliefs.
2) This is my strongest disagree out of all the 20. I guess our crux would be I'm mostly a contractual anti-realist, so I tend to reduce morality to agreements between agents.
3) Completely agree (say, 65% confidence)
4) Completely agree. Also, btw, I love Sei Shonagon. I've read The Pillow Book between 2 and 3 times.
5) Agree, but life is complicated. In my case, as an introverted nerd living in rural NW Spain, social media are the only way I get to interact with smart and interesting people.
6) Completely agree. I am an obsessive book reader (hardly do anything else in my free time). In the last years, you EAs/Rats have steered my reading a lot towards non-fiction, ethics and the social sciences.
7) Politics is the mind killer, but I guess if I was in GB, I'd incline to the LibDems, perhaps?
8) Agree, although I don't see equality as an end in itself, and more as just pandering to our tribal instincts. I feel in Europe we do too much redistribution and it murders innovation and growth in the crib, as well as generating a toxic, state-dependent and entitled culture. Don't know in the UK, but in Spain it is as pervasive as water for fish.
9) Completely agree with all of them. Perhaps I'd emphasize the need to permanently sever repeat reoffenders from normal society.
10) Completely agree
11) Completely agree
12) Dunno, but seems reasonable. As for Europe vs USA, I feel we get cushier lives for the average and mediocre joes, but I doubt it is sustainable in the long run.
13) This comes marginally into my area of expertise (degree in History). I'd say when historians were ideologically liberal, they stuck -maybe too much- to great man theory, and when they mostly changed their framework, they threw this away too much. Agree.
14) Completely agree
15) Completely agree - probably my strongest. Should be above 65%
16) Agree, but why do you think some people overrate this? I mean, if it's just the particular measuring metric, yeah, but not otherwise.
17) Agree with half, strongly disagree with the other half. Utilitarianism strikes me as uninteresting and too focused on a starting axiom I disagree with, but I'd still value it is a good heuristic for rulers.
18) Completely agree
19) Completely agree, but Japanese can be painfully bland at times
20) I haven't read it yet! But I'll take your word for it.
Thanks for this! On 2, why doesn't moral uncertainty get you to the place where you think that eating animals is probably not a good idea, even if you think contractual anti-realism is more probable than most other normative views?
Likely, because while I accept the general argument that one should be somewhat uncertain about one's beliefs (gotta read the MacAskill book on this next year), I likely do not take it as far as you, and feel really convinced by all the arguments about moral anti-realism (i.e., I've never encountered any minimally persuasive counterargument, and I arrived at anti-realism against my will; my a priori inclinations were for something like strong Kantian realism when I started thinking about ethics). My current moral parliament would be something like 85% contractualist anti-realism, 13% virtue ethics and 1% each for deontology and utilitarianism
That seems extremely confident to me about issues that are very hard to be clear on, and I also think that even a 1% credence in utilitarianism probably should make you think that it's wrong to eat animals (I'm sceptical of using moral parliament majorities as a way to escape this), but fair enough!
I think it’s epistemically reckless to let a tiny credence in utilitarianism dominate, because that effectively smuggles utilitarianism in through the back door. I’m open to suggestions for strong arguments for moral realism, but all the ones I’ve encountered rely on intuitions I don’t share and are extremely non-parsimonious, requiring belief in atemporal, acausal, non-spatial entities, which makes them hard to distinguish from religious claims (about which I’m also extremely confident against). Some so-called realists are actually constructivists (ideal-observer theories, Kantian constructivism, Rawlsian reflective equilibrium), but to me that just feels like contractarianism with fancy airs, and it doesn’t generate the kind of stance-independent moral facts that would justify giving tiny credences disproportionate weight.
I enjoyed this! On point 12 about cities, I have two questions:
1) have you visited Sydney? imo it’s similar to London in terms of being expensive but is also pretty great in a bunch of other ways: beautiful nature, great weather etcetera. I think where London beats Sydney is that there’s more ‘happening’ in terms of events, gigs and social scenes, so I guess it depends on your preferences.
2) Is there any data on quality of life in Europe vs USA? I share the same competing considerations as you where on the one hand Americans are significantly richer but I also have this intuition that Europeans have better lives in terms of life satisfaction, social relationships, health and so on.
I visited Sydney when I was five, so I'm not sure I'm in a position to comment, but it does seem like QoL is very high there. On Q2, I might write a post about this, but I haven't done a proper look at the data yet!
I was nodding along sagely to so much of this, thinking how many points were sensible and well put. But of course by the end all I can think about is the one point where you are deeply and concerningly wrong, which is naturally on the subject of Turkish food.
I don't think it's bad, I just think it's overrated! Some cuisines have to be overrated, and I'm afraid I think that Turkish food is a cuisine that is. Which do you think are, if not Turkish?
Fair enough. My view would be that Turkish food is essentially not rated at all outside of London (and Turkey). Having lived in Harringay for many years and since moved on I miss it hugely! I would probably say French is massively overrated but YMMV depending on your group. Maybe Japanese, even though I really like Japanese - I think it just has a certain aura among middle class internationally minded people (which probably covers both you and I).
The point about people being irrationally against medication is so so so true and I just... UGH. A friend of mine is currently developing a drinking problem because of a life crisis and should without a shadow of a doubt be on SSRIs, but her response is, invariably, I don't have depression, I'm having a life crisis. Which, okay maybe, but you still need to sleep and eat and write your PhD. It's like I tell her "take medicine for your medical condition" and she hears "take medicine for your life crisis". And no matter how much I articulate it, I can't seem to get it across.
In reality, someone who isn't pre-disposed to depression/anxiety would have been over the life crisis already, but she will only be willing to hear this when she starts making sense again, i.e. when she's been on meds for a time. I fucking HATE this.
As ever, your articles are an absolute joy to read.
Thank you, that means a lot!
What do you think is the trade-off for having more permissive free speech policies? I assume the usual argument against them is that allowing more polarised speech provokes violence/other crimes, how much do you buy this?
Also eschewing Korean cuisine is a glaring omission from #19 in my opinion!
I'm writing a piece on free speech (and more, to be announced soon), but here's a sneak peak:
"I’ve also been looking at some of the empirical evidence around the laws that exist in Europe, and it doesn’t seem particularly clear to me that prosecuting people for hate speech even has the effect that its advocates believe it to have. One study (https://academic.oup.com/book/60649/chapter-abstract/525790243?redirectedFrom=fulltext) with good causal identification found that when politicians give hateful speeches, hate crimes did not go up. But when they were prosecuted for that hate speech, crime did go up. When it comes to speech, the “cure” may be worse than the disease."
Obviously, this doesn't simply put the matter to rest, but my strong impression is that the empirical case for speech restrictions is extremely weak, and there's stronger evidence that restrictions lead to more violence and/or hate crime.
Interesting counterexample to the "if you make something illegal there will obviously be less of it" view which I've seen knocking around lately. Potentially high political saliency is an important factor.
Interesting, I wonder if there's an effect whereby tabooing something makes it worse a la drug criminalisation or similar - eagerly awaiting the full piece :)
Interesting list! I can't help commenting my own reaction to each of the 20:
1) Spoken like a true rationalist! Still feels that you're using a very low percentage bar for these beliefs.
2) This is my strongest disagree out of all the 20. I guess our crux would be I'm mostly a contractual anti-realist, so I tend to reduce morality to agreements between agents.
3) Completely agree (say, 65% confidence)
4) Completely agree. Also, btw, I love Sei Shonagon. I've read The Pillow Book between 2 and 3 times.
5) Agree, but life is complicated. In my case, as an introverted nerd living in rural NW Spain, social media are the only way I get to interact with smart and interesting people.
6) Completely agree. I am an obsessive book reader (hardly do anything else in my free time). In the last years, you EAs/Rats have steered my reading a lot towards non-fiction, ethics and the social sciences.
7) Politics is the mind killer, but I guess if I was in GB, I'd incline to the LibDems, perhaps?
8) Agree, although I don't see equality as an end in itself, and more as just pandering to our tribal instincts. I feel in Europe we do too much redistribution and it murders innovation and growth in the crib, as well as generating a toxic, state-dependent and entitled culture. Don't know in the UK, but in Spain it is as pervasive as water for fish.
9) Completely agree with all of them. Perhaps I'd emphasize the need to permanently sever repeat reoffenders from normal society.
10) Completely agree
11) Completely agree
12) Dunno, but seems reasonable. As for Europe vs USA, I feel we get cushier lives for the average and mediocre joes, but I doubt it is sustainable in the long run.
13) This comes marginally into my area of expertise (degree in History). I'd say when historians were ideologically liberal, they stuck -maybe too much- to great man theory, and when they mostly changed their framework, they threw this away too much. Agree.
14) Completely agree
15) Completely agree - probably my strongest. Should be above 65%
16) Agree, but why do you think some people overrate this? I mean, if it's just the particular measuring metric, yeah, but not otherwise.
17) Agree with half, strongly disagree with the other half. Utilitarianism strikes me as uninteresting and too focused on a starting axiom I disagree with, but I'd still value it is a good heuristic for rulers.
18) Completely agree
19) Completely agree, but Japanese can be painfully bland at times
20) I haven't read it yet! But I'll take your word for it.
Thanks for this! On 2, why doesn't moral uncertainty get you to the place where you think that eating animals is probably not a good idea, even if you think contractual anti-realism is more probable than most other normative views?
Likely, because while I accept the general argument that one should be somewhat uncertain about one's beliefs (gotta read the MacAskill book on this next year), I likely do not take it as far as you, and feel really convinced by all the arguments about moral anti-realism (i.e., I've never encountered any minimally persuasive counterargument, and I arrived at anti-realism against my will; my a priori inclinations were for something like strong Kantian realism when I started thinking about ethics). My current moral parliament would be something like 85% contractualist anti-realism, 13% virtue ethics and 1% each for deontology and utilitarianism
That seems extremely confident to me about issues that are very hard to be clear on, and I also think that even a 1% credence in utilitarianism probably should make you think that it's wrong to eat animals (I'm sceptical of using moral parliament majorities as a way to escape this), but fair enough!
I think it’s epistemically reckless to let a tiny credence in utilitarianism dominate, because that effectively smuggles utilitarianism in through the back door. I’m open to suggestions for strong arguments for moral realism, but all the ones I’ve encountered rely on intuitions I don’t share and are extremely non-parsimonious, requiring belief in atemporal, acausal, non-spatial entities, which makes them hard to distinguish from religious claims (about which I’m also extremely confident against). Some so-called realists are actually constructivists (ideal-observer theories, Kantian constructivism, Rawlsian reflective equilibrium), but to me that just feels like contractarianism with fancy airs, and it doesn’t generate the kind of stance-independent moral facts that would justify giving tiny credences disproportionate weight.