Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

I didn't get a flu shot this year either, and I didn't catch it. Got a nasty case of norovirus just after New Year's though, knocked me out for about twenty-four hours.

I was mostly interested in the suggestion that vaccines have never really been that effective. But I also think Watts is right that, at this point, it's smarter to keep vaccinating than not. Obviously if select individuals choose not to vaccinate then it won't make a huge difference; but if everyone simultaneously chose to not vaccinate, the consequences would be severe. That won't stave off the next "rolling pandemic" though, as Watts puts it.

 

[Dak]

I was mostly interested in the suggestion that vaccines have never really been that effective. But I also think Watts is right that, at this point, it's smarter to keep vaccinating than not.

From a standpoint of "we aren't sure, so let's err on the side of caution", it makes sense to continue to vaccinate. Plus, again, not all vaccines are created equal. Some probably work much better than others for any number of potential reasons, and getting nuanced on the public policy level is usually a nonstarter (again, for a variety of reasons). Although I haven't done intense research on the subject, reading some actual research on herd immunity and looking the the correlations between vaccinations and disease rates vs wealth/hygiene changes and disease rates leaves me doubting the vaccine success story generally speaking (although maybe not specifically speaking).

While avoiding things like Scarlet Fever or Polio are good because of the extreme risks (blindness, paralysis), avoiding most temporary illness, particularly without lifestyle considerations, is a conceit of our times.

 

[Einherjar86]

While avoiding things like Scarlet Fever or Polio are good because of the extreme risks (blindness, paralysis), avoiding most temporary illness, particularly without lifestyle considerations, is a conceit of our times.

I feel like flu vaccinations (for example) are more important for very young and very old people; but for most people our age, they probably aren't necessary.

And I do agree that lifestyle considerations are important, although I'm sympathetic to people for whom healthy lifestyles aren't an affordable option. That said, I think there's something to be said for doing 30 minutes of cardio and strength workouts four times a week.

 

[Dak]

I feel like flu vaccinations (for example) are more important for very young and very old people; but for most people our age, they probably aren't necessary.

I'm mixed on this. Best I'll admit is they probably don't hurt anyway. Unfortunately the military and medical facilities require them so I'll be getting them regardless. Wah wah.

And I do agree that lifestyle considerations are important, although I'm sympathetic to people for whom healthy lifestyles aren't an affordable option. That said, I think there's something to be said for doing 30 minutes of cardio and strength workouts four times a week.

Yeah, the main issues we have are the people who work hard but eat like shit, and the people who sit all day and eat like shit. Even with exercise most people consume a bunch of shitty food. I don't buy the cost issue because eating healthy is cheaper $ wise, but it is not convenient. Some people are worked to the bone with 2 jobs etc so I get not wanting to meal prep or whatever. But there are still better options than McDs on both counts. I get a little worked up about this stuff but it happens when you keep seeing people under the age of 50 or even 40 with ischemic heart failure.

 

[Dak]

I think Bakker is killing it right now. I have no objections but rather an ovation at this point.

Edit: I should provide a qualifier: Thinking on these things simply isn't available to something like 99.5% of people.

 

[Einherjar86]

Really good stuff. He's been harping on this for a while, but he's definitely honed his ideas and writing style.

Of course it's true that most people don't have the time/energy to consider these ideas (or the time to train themselves to think/read about them), but I don't think the upshot of such work should be personal gains at individual levels. The social value of this kind of writing is only applicable on scales that exceed individual usefulness and livelihood. The idea that philosophical writing resembling Bakker's should speak to the folk-psychological and everyday common-sense ruminations of the average person is one reason for the suspicion toward academic writing. That said, I don't think it needs to be the concern of philosophers to justify their intellectual interests (although it is a concern of academia's communications and public outreach departments).

 

[rms]

What's the bakker stuff in reference too?

You guys up to date on Harris v Klein?

 

[Dak]

What's the bakker stuff in reference too?

You guys up to date on Harris v Klein?

Bakker is kind of going meta on the Thinking Fast vs Thinking Slow issue.

I don't know if I'm "up to date", but if you look up charlatan in the dictionary, it will refer you to the entry on Ezra Klein.

 

[rms]

just from last week, Ezra and harris went 'at it' again. I think disingenuous ass, instead of charlatan

 

[Einherjar86]

What's the bakker stuff in reference too?

Bakker is kind of going meta on the Thinking Fast vs Thinking Slow issue.

I'm sure he's written about Kahneman in the past, you could probably do a google search and find the posts.

To elaborate just a bit, Bakker's pretty canny when it comes to exposing the weak spots of contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind. His posts are long (slatestarcodex long, sometimes) but worth perusing: https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/

I don't know if I'm "up to date", but if you look up charlatan in the dictionary, it will refer you to the entry on Ezra Klein.

I have to say, I found the recent Vox piece articulate and pretty transparent. He's simply commenting on observations available to anyone, and he cites a lot of the Harris/Murray interview. It may be that he's ignoring some of his own previous comments/positions--I'm not familiar with the history of the argument. For what it's worth, I think Harris gets way more credit than he deserves. Klein picks apart the interview Harris did with Murray, and it's pretty damning. I'm not familiar enough with Klein's history or previous work to argue about his character; but it's unfair to accuse him of charlatanry and excuse Harris.

 

[rms]

I gotta read the latest article from Klein(vox) but his response to those emails between him and Harris is illuminating

thanks for the blog, maybe ill have some time to 'think' again..

 

[Dak]

I have to say, I found the recent Vox piece articulate and pretty transparent. He's simply commenting on observations available to anyone, and he cites a lot of the Harris/Murray interview. It may be that he's ignoring some of his own previous comments/positions--I'm not familiar with the history of the argument. For what it's worth, I think Harris gets way more credit than he deserves. Klein picks apart the interview Harris did with Murray, and it's pretty damning. I'm not familiar enough with Klein's history or previous work to argue about his character; but it's unfair to accuse him of charlatanry and excuse Harris.

My overall impression of Klein is that he misrepresents research and researchers on genetic links, partially because he's afraid of how they could be interpreted, and he approves of no-platforming people like Murray, because simply looking at genetics is racist.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...ace-iq-forbidden-knowledge-podcast-bell-curve

This isn’t “forbidden knowledge.” It’s ancient prejudice.

Then he proceeds to engage in guilt by association, strawmanning, etc. A supposed example of the thinly veiled racism of Murray is illustrated by the following:

MURRAY: Because we now have social policy embedded in employment policy, in academic policy, which is based on the premise that everybody’s equal above the neck, all groups are equal above the neck, whether it’s men and women or whether it’s ethnicities. And when you have that embedded into law, you have a variety of bad things happen.

Interpreting this as racist requires really poor reasoning. If you want to improve future outcomes, you have to accurately understand the present circumstances. You can't get the future you want (more equality, in this case) by pretending it already exists in terms of policy prescription (force people into positions based on race). I see things like affirmative action putting the proverbial cart before the horse and having a variety of negative effects, much like premature deindustrialization, and this is what Murray is referring to.

Klein also curiously tries to put The Bell Curve into a "broader context" with this paragraph, yet fails to explain how this is problematic:

It’s worth noting, too, that The Bell Curve sits in a broader context within Murray’s work. His previous book, Losing Ground, argued that the Great Society’s anti-poverty programs had simply made the poor poorer. “A huge number of well-meaning whites fear that they are closet racists, and this book tells them they are not,” Murray said. “It’s going to make them feel better about things they already think but do not know how to say.”

Did it make them poorer? Is it necessarily racist to be anti-poverty programs? Klein (rightly) assumes his audience already assumes no and yes, respectively.

Klein's own positions and approaches are bad from start to finish.

Edit: Harris has problems with his attributing practically everything bad ever to religion. That's not an issue here.

 

[Dak]

Totally separate thing of interest to Ein:

http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/dancing-chains/

A prediction: China will produce some of the world’s most interesting scholarship on American literature within a generation. A secondary effect of this production will be a boost for the humanities, if from a most unexpected quarter.

I just returned from my third trip to China since 2011 lecturing to English language scholars about American and African American literature. This time, after giving five talks on five different campuses in China over the course of a week and a half, talking with scores of students and scholars with nearly perfect English studying American authors from Melville to Ellison, Poe to Plath, I am convinced that Chinese scholars pose a real challenge to the academic study of our own literature.

Maybe I am overstating the case. But we are in their gaze. And as Wesleyan president Michael Roth noted a few months ago, Chinese students are asking better and more interesting questions than we are about academia and academic subjects. Free from the invisible social constraints of academic norms — the trends and fashions of academic study — young Chinese scholars are writing with wild abandon about Sidney Sheldon, slave narratives, Emily Dickinson, Margaret Mitchell, “Chick Lit,” and Michael Chabon. I met a scholar studying Neil Simon and Toni Morrison, a combination for which I can’t imagine a supportive dissertation committee here.

 

[rms]

Read the latest vox article today too and that seems like an obvious interpretation of Klein. And he seems to be arguing Murray's point anyways, that prolonged opression has has a negative effect on IQ development generally (as he suggests with the swimming or weight lifting example).

Appropriate framing should be "is there anything worth pursuing with race research," rather than "look at how these guys are re inventing the wheel to subjugate black people this century."

 

[Einherjar86]

My overall impression of Klein is that he misrepresents research and researchers on genetic links, partially because he's afraid of how they could be interpreted, and he approves of no-platforming people like Murray, because simply looking at genetics is racist.

I'm not sure this is the case simply because he admits to having little problem with David Reich's comments (which he mentions in the beginning of the article). I think it's a strawman to say that he believes "looking at genetics is racist."

Interpreting this as racist requires really poor reasoning.

You're assuming a particular approach to the issue and framing it as "reason." There are reasonable approaches that can identify where Murray's interpretations of his data fall victim to a form of automated neglect. I agree with Klein that Murray is probably genuinely opposed to racism and prejudice. In other words, he's not a bigot. I'm assuming that what Klein means is that Murray neglects the variability of interpretations of the data, and that his interpretation is part of a cultural pattern that has been around since the days of slavery.

The major issue with Harris in this situation is that he frames Murray's interpretations as part of a scientific consensus, when in fact they're nothing of the sort. At the very least, the data is legitimate. The main problem lies in Murray's interpretation of it, which neglects far more than it takes into account.

Totally separate thing of interest to Ein:

http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/dancing-chains/

Really interesting, thanks. There's something to be said for looking at another country's literature from a "foreign" perspective.

 

[Dak]

I'm not sure this is the case simply because he admits to having little problem with David Reich's comments (which he mentions in the beginning of the article). I think it's a strawman to say that he believes "looking at genetics is racist."

If you mean he doesn't mind looking at genetics if it comes with the qualifier of "look at another bad thing whitey did", then sure. That's an incredibly narrow view which is quite unscientific. Reich pretends a view from nowhere which is simple face saving. There's no evidence West Africans were debased in terms of IQ by the slave trade.

I don't have any argument, and I know of no credible argument, that the slave trade didn't keep IQs depressed, and I would agree that social and economic practices (slavery, Jim Crow/redlining) continued to act in a way to keep IQs depressed, and as far as I can tell Murray (or Harris) would agree with this. Where a divergence occurs with "acceptable thought" is that leftist prescriptions for improving the situation at best keep things as bad as they were, if not make them worse. This is, for instance, Sowell's position. Given he is a black man who lived pre and post Civil Rights Act on the other side of the divide both racially and economically (and in the South for a time), and who was been trained to look at things from a non-Marxist economic mindset, I trust his perspective over a privileged millennial Jew like Klein with no education except in, essentially, wordsmithing. I highly recommend Sowell's autobiography. I'm frankly amazed he wasn't a Marxist.

You're assuming a particular approach to the issue and framing it as "reason." There are reasonable approaches that can identify where Murray's interpretations of his data fall victim to a form of automated neglect. I agree with Klein that Murray is probably genuinely opposed to racism and prejudice. In other words, he's not a bigot. I'm assuming that what Klein means is that Murray neglects the variability of interpretations of the data, and that his interpretation is part of a cultural pattern that has been around since the days of slavery.

The major issue with Harris in this situation is that he frames Murray's interpretations as part of a scientific consensus, when in fact they're nothing of the sort. At the very least, the data is legitimate. The main problem lies in Murray's interpretation of it, which neglects far more than it takes into account.

Some of Murray's positions may not be consensus, but there is increasingly undeniable evidence about serious genetic differences, which have long been denied and vilified. It is the privilege and the prerogative of experts in fields to offer their informed interpretations of the data. But the fact that the data itself has been castigated is the problem. I heard on more than one occasion in undergrad that there's no significant discernible differences between races other than melanin - or alternately that race itself is a construct and doesn't exist. Well, the first claim is false and the latter elides the issue. Making both of those claims doesn't make one a racist, and offering theories about causality that don't involve apologies doesn't either. Taking racial gaps at face value, that doesn't make East Asian descendants morally superior on an individual level, but they do commit less crime as a group than West African descendants, within the culture and legal system of the US (although West African immigrants don't have the same rates of crime, for different selection reasons which include not only not being exposed to US slavery pressures but also not being exposed to critical theory informed policy). Again, even assuming all of the negative effects that slavery and Jim Crow/redlining/etc had on IQ, that doesn't mean that A. They reduced IQ B. US Leftwing policies would improve IQ C. Acknowledging the difference and disparaging B is racist.

Really interesting, thanks. There's something to be said for looking at another country's literature from a "foreign" perspective.

Np (but no real need to put quotation marks). I imagine anyone outside the Western tradition with some intelligence about them will have radically different takes, which will probably prove insightful. Tocqueville to an extreme. I wonder how long it will take those critiques to filter into US academia?

 

[Einherjar86]

If you mean he doesn't mind looking at genetics if it comes with the qualifier of "look at another bad thing whitey did", then sure. That's an incredibly narrow view which is quite unscientific. Reich pretends a view from nowhere which is simple face saving. There's no evidence West Africans were debased in terms of IQ by the slave trade.

I don't have any argument, and I know of no credible argument, that the slave trade didn't keep IQs depressed, and I would agree that social and economic practices (slavery, Jim Crow/redlining) continued to act in a way to keep IQs depressed, and as far as I can tell Murray (or Harris) would agree with this. Where a divergence occurs with "acceptable thought" is that leftist prescriptions for improving the situation at best keep things as bad as they were, if not make them worse. This is, for instance, Sowell's position. Given he is a black man who lived pre and post Civil Rights Act on the other side of the divide both racially and economically (and in the South for a time), and who was been trained to look at things from a non-Marxist economic mindset, I trust his perspective over a privileged millennial Jew like Klein with no education except in, essentially, wordsmithing. I highly recommend Sowell's autobiography. I'm frankly amazed he wasn't a Marxist.

Some of Murray's positions may not be consensus, but there is increasingly undeniable evidence about serious genetic differences, which have long been denied and vilified. It is the privilege and the prerogative of experts in fields to offer their informed interpretations of the data. But the fact that the data itself has been castigated is the problem. I heard on more than one occasion in undergrad that there's no significant discernible differences between races other than melanin - or alternately that race itself is a construct and doesn't exist. Well, the first claim is false and the latter elides the issue. Making both of those claims doesn't make one a racist, and offering theories about causality that don't involve apologies doesn't either. Taking racial gaps at face value, that doesn't make East Asian descendants morally superior on an individual level, but they do commit less crime as a group than West African descendants, within the culture and legal system of the US (although West African immigrants don't have the same rates of crime, for different selection reasons which include not only not being exposed to US slavery pressures but also not being exposed to critical theory informed policy). Again, even assuming all of the negative effects that slavery and Jim Crow/redlining/etc had on IQ, that doesn't mean that A. They reduced IQ B. US Leftwing policies would improve IQ C. Acknowledging the difference and disparaging B is racist.

As far as I know, accusations against Murray within academia and the media stem not from his attention to genetics or to the data of variation among races, but to his interpretations for how these differences might impact social policy. Even in this, I wouldn't say (and Klein isn't saying) that Murray himself is a bigot. He simply doesn't acknowledge that his positions mirror those of pre-20thc race science.

It's obvious that he's not saying that superior genetic intelligence would equal moral superiority. That's not the point. The point is that the very same positions Murray holds have been used in the past to justify the moral superiority of particular races. I believe you've suggested that if the situation were true (i.e. that certain races are in fact genetically less intelligent) then it would be justification for more developed and targeted social programs in order to assist such people. The problem is that this is precisely what hasn't happened in the past when theories of racial superiority were prevalent; rather, those in power have appealed to such theories as an excuse to leave the "less intelligent" races to their own devices.

Np (but no real need to put quotation marks). I imagine anyone outside the Western tradition with some intelligence about them will have radically different takes, which will probably prove insightful. Tocqueville to an extreme. I wonder how long it will take those critiques to filter into US academia?

I'm not sure.

I'm also not sure I entirely agree with the author's claim that Chinese academics are asking more interesting questions. For starters, that's the author's opinion; and furthermore, some of the examples he gives sound familiar to me. I'm not trying to say that Chinese academics aren't doing good work on American literature, and I'm sure their nationality/geography affords them a unique perspective. But the combinations of literary theory and American texts in particular look pretty standard (I'd bet that most people who have read Ellison's Invisible Man have thought about the relationship of the orphan to the African American tradition). The idea of modern Americans as "Native Americans" in the scenario of an alien invasion is also something that science fiction scholars have suggested; i.e. not that most Americans would think of themselves as such--part of the point is that they wouldn't think of themselves as such. But of course, he's interacting with Asian students and I'm not, so I can't really claim expertise here.

I do know more than a couple academics/teachers who have gone to China for work. The job market situation is definitely different over there.

 

[Einherjar86]

A good piece on falsfiability and observability, and how these aren't foolproof checks on scientific theory:

https://aeon.co/essays/a-fetish-for-falsification-and-observation-holds-back-science

Unlike Pauli, Einstein was not afraid of suggesting unobservable things. In 1905, the same year he published his theory of special relativity, he proposed the existence of the photon, the particle of light, to an unbelieving world. (He was not proven right about photons for nearly 20 years.) Mach’s ideas also inspired a vital movement in philosophy a generation later, known as logical positivism – broadly speaking, the idea that the only meaningful statements about the world were ones that could be directly verified through observation. Positivism originated in Vienna and elsewhere in the 1920s, and the brilliant ideas of the positivists played a major role in shaping philosophy from that time to the present day.

But what makes something ‘observable’? Are things that can be seen only with specialised implements observable? Some of the positivists said the answer was no, only the unvarnished data of our senses would suffice – so things seen in microscopes were therefore not truly real. But in that case, ‘we cannot observe physical things through opera glasses, or even through ordinary spectacles, and one begins to wonder about the status of what we see through an ordinary windowpane,’ the philosopher Grover Maxwell wrote in 1962.

Furthermore, Maxwell pointed out that the definition of what was ‘unobservable in principle’ depends on our best scientific theories and full understanding of the world, and so moves over time. Before the invention of the telescope, for example, the idea of an instrument that could make distant objects appear closer seemed impossible; consequently, a planet too faint to be seen with the naked eye, such as Neptune, would have been deemed ‘unobservable in principle’. Yet Neptune is undoubtedly there – and we’ve not only seen it, we sent Voyager 2 there in 1989. Similarly, what we consider unobservable in principle today might become observable in the future with the advent of new physical theories and observational technologies. ‘It is theory, and thus science itself, which tells us what is or is not … observable,’ Maxwell wrote. ‘There are no a priori or philosophical criteria for separating the observable from the unobservable.’

 

[Einherjar86]

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/...ing-depressed-wages?__twitter_impression=true

New evidence is showing that employers have more market power than economists had ever suspected. Two papers -- the first by José Azar, Ioana Marinescu, and Marshall Steinbaum, the second by Efraim Benmelech, Nittai Bergman, and Hyunseob Kim -- find that in areas where there are fewer employers in an industry, workers in that industry earn lower wages. The two papers use very different data sources, look at different time periods and different geographical units, and use different statistical methodologies. But their findings are completely consistent.

Together with the evidence on minimum wage, this new evidence suggests that the competitive supply-and-demand model of labor markets is fundamentally broken. If employers have the power to set wages, then not just minimum wage, but other labor market policies -- for example, union-friendly laws -- can be expected to help workers a lot more than popular introductory economics textbooks now predict.

 

[Dak]

I don't understand how Smith is claiming that fewer employers = lower wages breaks supply/demand modeling. That relationship seems to be precisely what you would expect.

Separate, from Bakker:

This was the revelation I had in 1999, attempting to reconcile fundamental ontology and neuroscience for the final chapter of my dissertation. I felt the selfsame exhaustion, the nagging sense that it was all just a venal game, a discursive ingroup ruse. I turned my back on philosophy, began writing fiction, not realizing I was far from alone in my defection. When I returned, ‘correlation’ had replaced ‘presence’ as the new ‘ontologically problematic presupposition.’ At long last, I thought, Continental philosophy had recognized that intentionality—meaning—was the problem. But rather than turn to cognitive science to “search for the origin of thinking outside of consciousness and will,” the Speculative Realists I encountered (with the exception of thinkers like David Roden) embraced traditional vocabularies. Their break with traditional Kantian philosophy, I realized, did not amount to a break with traditional intentional philosophy. Far from calling attention to the problem, ‘correlation’ merely focused intellectual animus toward an effigy, an institutional emblem, stranding the 21st century Speculative Realists in the very interpretative mire they used to impugn 20th century Continental philosophy

Goddamn, that's some commitment to his ideals. I'm skeptical about plenty of things in psychology, and the half-life of anything I produce is going to be like 5 years or something anyway, but I'm still going to finish the thing regardless.