Dr. X and my anti-anti-Trumpism

I have, for the most part, stopped reading Dr. X's blog. I have a lot of respect for Dr. X, and he's welcome to comment here if he wishes. But it's just hard for me to read what he has to write. In particular, I'm referring to his frequent criticisms of Trump and his penchant for diagnosing Trump and his supporters.

I find my own reaction strange. I consider myself an opponent of Trump. And to my knowledge, nothing Dr. X says is factually wrong. Neither do I find (most of) what Dr. X's moral judgments against Trump to be wrong. And when I disagree with Dr. X, I still believe his judgments are within the pale of what is reasonable. And frankly, Dr. X does a service by documenting the shenanigans of a group of people who are so dangerous and wrong. Somebody has to do it.

I even concede that Dr. X's extra-clinical diagnoses of Trump and Trump supporters are "within the pale." We all have the duty to discern motivations and character in our politicians and those who enter the public sphere. There's no principled reason for me to criticize a mental health professional for bringing their expertise to the table. Nobody complains when I talk about Trump's place in U.S. History.

To be sure, my concession is grudging. I still think Dr. X too seldom actually demonstrates the bases for his diagnoses. He too seldom (if at all) grapples in any significant way with the conflict between his role as a mental health professional and his willingness to diagnose (or strongly hint that he's diagnosing even if he doesn't use the word "diagnose"). Or if he does grapple with it, he rarely shows how he does so.

Of course, I'm basing my accusations based on a very small number of his posts that I have actually read. But still, I concede the point.

Concessions notwithstanding, I believe I'm quite right to demur about the effectiveness of such diagnoses and, more broadly, about the effectiveness of pointing out "the bad things Trump and his supporters do." It becomes a bludgeon in the culture war. They reaffirm the convictions of a group of people who didn't need convincing. They tend to turn others in any number of ways. How many belong in each group and how bad the effect is, I don't know, beyond anecdote and my own personal feelings.

Speaking of my feelings, I feel defensive whenever I read Dr. X's posts. Not only defensive, but punchy. So much so that I often want to lob a very critical comment. Sometimes I do (and to my recollection, Dr. X has always published my comments, no matter how critical).

That's not Dr. X's fault. My defensiveness is probably some combination of a choice and a feeling that has almost nothing to do with him. I feel the same way about a number of comedians (for example, Seth Myers) or commentators (for example, Rachel Maddow), and that feeling has almost nothing to do with them.

The "almost" in "almost nothing" does a lot of work there. There probably is something personal going on, even though I've never met Dr. X in person, and I've certainly never interacted with Myers or Maddow aside from watching a couple of their shows. There's a certain snide or smug attitude that I have a hard time explaining. Or at least there's something that strikes me as snide as well as a usually but not always defensible belief that snideness and smugness are bad.

Strangely, I don't feel that way about all anti-Trump commentators. Will Truman at Ordinary Times, for example, doesn't elicit that reaction from me. I'm not sure why, exactly. There are probably others, whose names escape me at the moment. I do remember watching a comedian on TV (I forget his name) who gave a very Trump-critical standup routine, and I liked it, without getting in a huff about it.

I'm tempted to say there's something that goes beyond reason here, to say that reason and my sense of right and wrong tell me one thing while my own inclination tells me another.  And yes, Whatever visceral inclinations I have are important and probably more important than reason and right and wrong here.

But that's not the whole story. I do think there's something wrong in the diagnosing and perpetual cataloging of the sins of Donald Trump and his supporters. There seems to me something wrong in snideness and smugness that goes beyond whether it's effective or not. Reason and right and wrong enter the picture in a weird way I have trouble pinning down.

I'm picking on Dr. X here, but again, it's not really about him. He owes me nothing and he owes the blogosphere nothing. I personally prefer he do more posts on mental health issues that go beyond extra-clinical diagnoses. But he can and ought to write pretty much whatever he wants.

He is welcome to comment, but I'll tell him (and anyone else reading) that I'll be busy for the next couple weeks and probably won't have time to respond until  sometime in January.)

Unclear on the concept: Public health vs. personal choice

Eoin Higgins's essay at The Atlantic--unfortunately titled "Not Getting Vaccinated to Own Your Fellow Libs"*--about liberals who are vaccine hesitant [pay walled, probably] raises some real concerns. But seems clueless about some of the stakes.

Speaking of the liberal, but vaccine hesitant, Higgins asks [bold added by me],

Do they remain on the left, even as the politics around the conspiracy theories they embrace lead them out of their ideological comfort zones? Or do they dispense with progressivism in favor of a view of the world that holds that public health is subordinate to personal choice?

Well....if we live in a polity that respects individual rights, then we need to recognize that there is always a tension between public health and personal choice. I also think we need to recognize that sometimes personal choice does indeed trump public health, at least sometimes.

Look: I'm in favor of covid vaccines (and other vaccines). I'm also in favor of government imposed mandates to require people to get those vaccines. But to say, as Higgins seems to, that one cannot be liberal without sometimes questioning whether public health should override personal choice is part of the problem.

I'm using "liberal" where Higgins uses "progressive." If Higgins is likening the current Democratic party coalition to the (subset of) people who were called "progressives" in the early 20th century, then I confess that he's onto something. As a historian, I'm skeptical there was really such a thing as the "progressive movement" in the early 1900s U.S., but there were a number of people who have since been called "progressives" who showed almost no respect for individual rights when it came to public health concerns. Recall Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s statement from Buck v. Bell: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." 

I don't think that's what Higgins intends. Or I hope he doesn't intend it. A more charitable reading is that he's using loaded terminology and unfortunate turns of phrase to critique non-conservative vaccine hesitancy. But he shouldn't be surprised if non-members of the choir don't listen to the sermon.

*I'm critical of that title. The liberals whom Higgins discusses don't seem to intend to "own" liberals the way that non-liberals do. In fact one of his arguments is that those liberals don't see any contradiction and are somehow ignorant that non-liberals are also vaccine hesitant. I strongly suspect Higgins is either misinterpreting his interviewees' lack of public awareness, or is way over-emphasizing the point. But as far as the title goes: I understand authors don't necessarily get to choose the titles that magazines assign to their articles. So we can give Higgins a pass on that.

Covid vaccine (and mask) mandates are political

In case you don't want to read my recent (and long!) blog post None Dare Call It Politics, here's the gist of my argument. Vaccine mandates, and mask mandates, and quarantines, and lock downs--they're all political despite the countless assertions to the contrary you'll hear from some of their proponents.

They're political in two senses.

The first sense is that they've become an important partisan issue. That's unfortunate, but it's true. People who say mandates aren't "political" in that sense are actually saying mandates shouldn't be political. 

The second sense is that mandates are an imposition on others. They're a form of compulsion to convince, cajole, and coerce others to do something they otherwise wouldn't choose to do. The reason mandates are instituted in the first place is that others' decisions not to get vaccinated, not to wear masks, and not to be careful--those decisions affect still others. They're not wholly individual choices. Third parties are affected by others' actions. That fact puts mandates into play.

No, they're not all government-imposed. So to the extent they're not, I suppose they don't meet that definition of "political." But we have a third-party interest affected in an indirect but very important way by the actions of others. That in my view is the essence of "political."

That's all separate from the claim about whether mandates are unfair or whether they're justified. It's possible for something to be "political" and yet worthy of doing. It's possible for some measure to be coercive and yet necessary.

If you ask me, our current mandate regime is probably too mild. The mandates that I've personally seen operate mostly as suggestions or polite requests. Some of them are becoming stricter. I think that's a good thing, on balance, as long as we keep our eyes on the goal of public safety and the effectiveness of the mandates and not on punishment for the sake of punishment.

I'm not rehashing anti-vaccination talking points for the sake of rehashing anti-vaccination talking points. If anything, I'm pointing out a way to strengthen the pro-vaccination, pro-mandate argument. Don't deny what everyone on some level knows. Saying mandates are political (in the second sense) is actually a justification for mandates. They're necessary because they are political.

Mandates are political. Accept it. Own it. Embrace it. Above all, justify it. Demonstrate why they're necessary. Refusing to do so makes your support for mandates seem like a dishonest power grab.

Content of their character: nobody gets an A

[UPDATE, August 13, 2021: I made minor stylistic changes and some content changes.]

You are probably familiar with Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech and in particular this portion: 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

This is one of those enduring, iconic statements. It's also controversial, especially when it's used by people to criticize what today passes for anti-racism. The ways people use that statement and react to people who use it merit criticism. And the statement itself needs to be looked at more critically, too. In the process, nobody gets an A, but some at least get passing marks.

A thought experiment about covid vaccnie hesitancy

I suggest that fear is a reason why some people hesitate to take the covid vaccine. It's not the only reason, and even those who fear may have additional reasons or incentives for hesitating. But in this blog post, I focus on fear. I suggest that those of us who are not vaccine hesitant might be able to understand, or come close to understanding, those who are hesitant.

Compassion for the covid vaccine hesitant

My workplace will soon require all employees to get a covid vaccination, unless they can obtain a medical or religious exemption. The main point that remains unclear is whether declining a vaccine (and not getting an exemption) means a worker will lose their job.

One of my inclinations is to say, "fire the bastards." When I'm feeling more thoughtful, I'm inclined to say the worker should be suspended without pay until the covid crisis is over or until they opt for vaccination.

Either way, my impulse is to be punitive. I accept the logic that says, the fewer people who are vaccinated, the more often the virus will mutate, and the more dangerous it may become, possibly so much as to make the vaccines ineffective altogether. And frankly, vaccine hesitancy, along with resistance to simple and non-invasive public health measures like mask wearing, has fostered untold suffering.People die alone in hospitals. Some survivors (apparently) experience long-term health problems. Many, many of us live in fear.

Yet even so, my emotional reaction ("fire the bastards") gives me pause. You see, my reaction is not only instrumental. It's not only focused on obtaining a desired and desirable public health outcome.

My reaction is also fueled by a certain resentment. I might even call it malice and a wish for revenge against the hesitant. Worse, I carry that resentment against the people who belong to certain populations that are stereotypically assumed to be hesitant. It would be inconsiderate to describe this more vicious sentiment in any detail. So I won't. But I will say I find it difficult to separate the rational calculation from the strange combination of tribal identity and instinct for survival that informs my darker thoughts.

How often have people identified a real enemy or real potential for harm and then responded with merciless force far beyond the actual danger? Even if the response is commensurate to the danger, or as commensurate as any response reasonably can be--even in that case, how often have we define the non-compliant as in some ways subhuman? 

There for the grace of god go any of us. The trend seems now to favor mandates. Maybe someday those of us who are not vaccine hesitant will ourselves on the other side of a great and urgent question and have to face consequences for taking an unpopular stand.

Even if that never happens to us, what type of people do we become when we identify enemies? Or more precisely, what type of people are we tempted to become?

It starts with casual jokes about those crazy "anti-vaxxers" and devolves into hatred of entire people presumed to be "anti-vaxxers." It devolves into mobocracy. It escalates into endorsing a public health security state where much, much can be done to almost anyone as long as it's justified for the greater good of public health.

Hyperbole? Maybe. We're at least several steps removed from whatever dystopia I'm imagining. And the situation is so urgent, the mandates and likely penalties for non-compliance are so mild (perhaps too mild), and our civil society is so strong, that my worries are probably mostly theoretical.

And maybe all coercive measures, no matter how reasonable, justified, or instrumental to a greater good--maybe they all must of necessity occasion the stronger and more vile emotions. Maybe the best  of those measures operate in part to check those sentiments. And each of us is nuanced moral agent. Maybe we can check those sentiments and be better than our principles. Maybe we can keep our eyes on the prize, which in this case is taming coronavirus disease.

Reflections on leadership: introduction

A few months ago, I finished a two-year stint on the board of directors for a small, not for profit organization. During the second of those two years, I served as president. Those experiences have given me the chance to reflect on leadership. I'd like to share some of those reflections with you. It would take too long to put all the reflections in one post, so I'll try to do it in the occasional post, as the mood strikes me.

I was originally going to title this series "Lessons in leadership." But I believe these are better described as "reflections" rather than "lessons." Much of what I supposedly learned, I already on some level knew or believed before I "learned" it. More important, my "reflections" are just as often opinions about leadership that are contestable. To call those opinions "lessons" is to make them seem stronger and less assailable than they probably are. A lesson usually connotes "something true that is learned" while my opinions are conclusions that are debatable even when informed by thought and experience.

This post is an introduction to the series. And like all "series" I write (e.g., "advice to DEI trainers"), I'll engage the series when I feel like it and am moved to. So I can't promise how often I'll do it.

Necessary disclosures

Before I go further, I should alert you of a few things.

None dare call it politics

When it comes to addressing Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, public health campaigns fall down on the job. 

I'll focus on one example. It's an article published at the University of Michigan Health website, titled "Who has the right to ask if you're vaccinated?" (url at <https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/wellness-prevention/who-has-a-right-to-ask-if-youre-vaccinated>, accessed May 9, 2021). It sets out to expose what it calls the "false controversy" about "covid passports." Covid passports refer to the idea that businesses and certain government services, such as schools, should have the authority to require their patrons and charges to prove they have have been vaccinated against covid-19. Presumably, one way to facilitate that would be to issue documents, or "passports," that the vaccinated can show to gain entry.

The arguments the article makes seem designed to convince no one. They make a caricature of the objections that people may have about covid passports and about the covid vaccines generally. In doing so, they represent the way that public health campaigns often fail to promote public health.

Advice to my fellow DEI skeptics: reject white nationalism

Those of us who criticize DEI and other activism that passes for "anti-racism" must reject white nationalism. We must be honest about it. If we feel tempted to white nationalism, we must acknowledge to ourselves its appeal and refuse to endorse it. The temptations are ever present, and we mustn't blame others when we choose to give in to those temptations.

Advice for my fellow DEI skeptics: Life is unfair

[UPDATE: On June 19, 2021, I changed the title from "Unsolicited advice for DEI skeptics...." to "Advice for my fellow DEI skeptics...."]

Much about DEI trainings is unfair. Some of it is plain wrong. But life is unfair. Sometimes (not always,but sometimes) we should just accept it.

Why give "unsolicited advice"?

If you've read some of my more recent posts, you'll note that I've taken to offering "unsolicited advice" to activists and DEI trainers. Not that anyone has commented on them yet, but I'd like to address one potential objection to those posts:

What standing do I have to give advice to others on these matters?

That objection is legitimate. I know activism and DEI training is hard work. I have in times past dipped my toe in activism, and I'm not doing so now--and what I would do is quite limited. It's easy for someone in the cheap seats, like me, to criticize. It's much, much harder to put yourself out there.

I'll add that the goals of the advocates I criticize are, in broad brush strokes, usually either good or at least within the pale of what is defensible. "Usually" isn't "always," but it's far from never--and "defensible" is better than "shock the conscience bad." And in general, when they advocate for something that I believe is indefensible, it's usually a type of indefensible that focuses on the effects of their efforts, or on the argument that if we take their assumptions to a logical extreme, we come to some very disturbing conclusions. There but for the grace of god go any of us, and I have gone there often.

That said let me suggest that if you are an activist or a DEI trainer, you ought to consider my "unsolicited advice," even if we stipulate (which I won't) that I'm being insincere. If you want to gain the support of me, or people similarly situated to me, you may wish to follow the advice.

It's not just about gaining support, either. It's also about ensuring that we don't become hostile to your project. There is such a thing as spite. It's probably not a good thing, but the temptation to indulge it is evergreen. You might wish to lessen the temptation.

Or you might not. Maybe after considering the above, you'll decide not to heed my advice. Maybe you'll decide there's a critical number of people whose support you can win, or who you can empower, with advocacy that declines my suggestions. Like me, you live in a world of scarcity. You might want to dedicate your resources to those who, in your estimation, are more reachable than I am. At any rate, you have to draw the line somewhere. And it's not fair of me to criticize you for the act of line drawing, even if I disagree about how you draw it. 

Even then, it's good to have a clear sense of what you're doing. And my "unsolicited advice" might very well help you do that, even if you decline to follow any of my suggestions.

A final note about spite. In my opinion, activists play an outsized role when it comes to encouraging people to act out of spite. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, you can help someone choose hell or choose heaven. And too often, I fear activists help people choose hell. But as someone who likes to believe himself a person of good will, I recognize an obligation to reject spite. The person who chooses to act out of spite bears the ultimate responsibility for that choice. And I hope I choose wisely.

The racist bank teller and racial colorblindness

In my recent post on racial colorblindness, I admonished DEI trainers for not at least addressing some people's support for racial colorblindness:

It's called "anticipating the objection before someone else has a chance to raise it." It's not rocket science. It's composition 101.

Well, in that same post, I failed to anticipate objections to something I said. And while it's not a fatal objection, it's an important one, and one I cannot refute completely.

The bank teller example

I argued that one good thing about the idea of racial colorblindness is that it could serve as a guide to personal, daily practice. I used the example of a bank teller who tries to abide by "colorblind" practices:

Unsolicitied advice for DEI trainers: racial colorblindness is not always wrong

One taboo in DEI training sessions and discussions is to invoke racial colorblindness. Racial colorblindness is the idea that people should not be treated differently based on their race or perceived race.

There are good reasons to be cautious about invoking that term. But racial colorblindness has its merits. It represents a defensible aspiration for how we as individuals and as a polity should treat people 

Unsolicited advice for DEI trainers: own your contradictions

[Update, May 24, 2021: I changed the title from "Unsolicited advice for DEI leaders..." to "Unsolicited advice for DEI trainers..."]

DEI trainings (i.e., trainings to promote "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion")advance a number of contradictory assumptions and admonitions. As a result, they present a dishonest and one-way "conversation" that is more effective at closing the minds of their target audience than effecting real change.

The problem is very complicated. But one thing DEI trainers can do is to own those very contradictions, to be open abut those times when what they say conflicts with other things they say.

Example: the prohibition against "white knights" (a.k.a., "white saviors")

I'll choose one example that highlights the contradictions. It's the prohibition against what is known as acting like a "white knight" (also known as a "white savior").

Your opponent might smile at you

I have a blog post in the works that, if I ever finish it, will be critical of workplace DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion] initiatives.

In part, I draw my critique from frustrations stemming from my encounters with adamantly pro-DEI coworkers. They tend to speak the loudest and in the most preachy terms. And because the meetings are now done remotely on everyone's favorite webinar tool, they often place messages in the "chat" feature. And the messages read like, say, comments on a particularly contentious blog thread. The lesson I'm inclined to take from those encounters is that they're promoting diversity (within a narrow range of accepted viewpoints), equity (which means what they want it to mean right now, regardless of what they meant yesterday or what they'll mean tomorrow), and inclusion (by excluding people who might see things differently). My takeaway is that their main strategies are bullying and shaming.

That's online culture. It's also "big meeting with a lot of people culture" and "workplace culture where some (like me) are timid about speaking up and others aren't." I should also point out that while I have maybe 100 or so coworkers at my specific unit, we're divided into subunits. That means that even though we know each other by site and name, we don't always work with each other, and it's common to go years without much interpersonal interaction.

But then recently I was involved in a community building event at my workplace. Well, not at my workplace. It was still virtual over everyone's favorite webinar tool. But it was with coworkers and loosely sponsored as a socializing event by my employer. There weren't a lot of us--maybe 10 or 15?--and it was a mostly unstructured game. By "unstructured," I mean that even though there were rules to the game and even though we were grouped in teams and even though there were winners and losers and we all tried to win--despite all that, no one actually cared too much about winning and we let some of the rules slide when people (like me) forgot them occasionally.

And some of the people who most aggravate me (in the DEI) context were there. And for the most part, DEI didn't enter the discussion. I do recall one comment made by somebody that, if you squint right, had more than a trace amount of DEI'ish snark. But otherwise, no. We had a good time. 

And I saw a different side of some of my coworkers, with some of whom I had had only minimal interaction. They were having fun and socializing. The contentious DEI issues weren't at the forefront. They were in the background, of course. But they didn't dominate, for that brief hour.

What does it mean to "support" something

In my last post, I talked about police reforms I might support. In the post before that, I chided anti-racist activists for not broadening their appeal. I used police reform as an example:

Perhaps if activists widened their argument, if they built a bigger tent, maybe more of us would join in, at least on some issues and in some circumstances.

The question is, what counts as "joining in"? Or put another way, what does it mean--what might it mean--to say I "support" something like police reform?

Talk is cheap. I can say I support X, but if I don't really do anything to advance X, saying I support it doesn't matter much. I can imagine circumstances where it might matter more than others. But simply uttering something doesn't usually do much by itself. It's not nothing, but it's not much. That's especially true when I do it pseudonymously.

So, when I say I "support" police reform--or anything else--I should consider what I could do and what I would do to support it.

What I probably won't do

• March in a protest or demonstration.
• Phone banking.
• Canvass voters at their homes. 
• Pass leaflets to induce people to do some sort of action.
  
• Place a slogan-sign in my window (or on my lawn, if I had one). 
• Sign a statement when that statement has at least one point I disagree with. In other words, any open statement I have ever seen.
  

What I might do

• Write a blog post
• Write a letter to my congressperson, alderman, mayor, senator, etc.
• Donate a modest sum to a cause I support
• Sign a petition or statement, or place a sign in my window, expressing my support for  substantive cause. An example would be to show my support for or opposition to a bill or ordinance that the legislature.
  

Disclosures

Disclosure: I'm much more likely not to do the things I say I "probably won't do" than I am to do the things I say I "might do." You can chalk that off to the aphorism that it's easier to do nothing than to do something. 

Another disclosure: I've had plenty of opportunity to do the things I've said I "might do" and I've almost never done them. For example, last August (or so), my alderman announced that he would support some arrangement where the federal government would send soldiers into Big City to keep order after the then latest round of riots. I thought about writing a letter explaining to him why I thought it was a bad idea to do that (hint: it's not because I think riots are good). But I didn't. 

Yet another disclosure: I fully realize that writing a blog post does almost nothing. It is basically the equivalent of talk, which I said above is "cheap." In my case it's doubly cheap because I blog under a pseudonym and evade (I hope) professional consequences for speaking my  mind. (At the same time, I always aspire to keep aware that I may be doxxed at any point, so I try--despite repeated failures--to ensure that what I say is civil and well-reasoned.) Even so, A series of blog posts, especially those in conversation with others, can at least plant the seeds of discussion. Weak tea, yes. But tea, nonetheless.

A final disclosure: I have done many of the things (e.g., read this post at Ordinary-Times) under the section of things "I probably won't do." I've gotten a taste for what those entail. I may explain in a later post, but for now I'll say those tactics tend to be blunt instruments, almost never necessary, and usually ineffective in the short term.

Send off

If talk is cheap, then speculating on what I might do isn't much dearer. I suppose the key is to act. I realize that. I certainly should have acted when my alderman said what he said, even if it had been only a lonely letter.

Police reform: what I'd support and what I probably won't

I gestured in my last post to the topic of police reform. Here, I'll list what types of reform I would support and what types I (probably) won't support.

What I'd support

• Mandatory body cameras for police.
• Automatic federal (and state, and local) review of all killings by police.
• Curtailing, or possibly eliminating, qualified immunity for police officers.
• Forbidding police unions to bargain collectively with their employers and otherwise deinstitutinalizing police unions.
• Re-calibrating funding so that police departments have much less incentive to invest in quasi-militarized units and quasi-military equipment.
• Implementing "good enough" discipline against bad police officers when criminal prosecution is unlikely to be successful, even in cases where, in an ideal world, the officer would be prosecuted.
  

What I probably won't support

• Less aggressive enforcement of traffic safety.
  
• Radical de-funding of the police.
• Abolishing the police.

Some explanations

I have reasons for what I support, and I won't review them here. I would like to say this, though. I realize every single thing I support comes at a cost or with tradeoffs. Body cameras, for example, are probably a net good. But they will inevitably justify some egregious police behavior, perhaps even behavior that would otherwise be disciplined.

 

The items I don't support are, for the most part, vaguer than the ones I do.

 

The exception is the point about traffic safety enforcement. Some proposals have been made to end, curtail, or revise the way routine traffic safety stops are done. (An example here (accessed May 12, 2021, Washington Post paywall applies): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/16/remove-police-traffic-stops/.) I'm open to some ideas for different approaches, and I certainly recognize that "routine traffic safety stops" can and will be an invitation to harass minorities. But....traffic safety is important. At least in the city where I live, drivers are a danger to pedestrians, and in my opinion, every run stop sign or near-miss against a pedestrian is a broken window that invites more irresponsible driving. I might be open to changing my mind on this issue, but it's a real problem.

 

Finally, this list isn't comprehensive or final, and I'm not an expert.

Unsolicited advice for activists: What you say and what others hear

Anti-racists face a communication challenge. It's the same challenge everyone faces when trying to persuade people of their cause. Here it is:

What you say can be heard differently by those to whom you say it. The "different hearing" is sometimes willful and deliberate and sometimes innocent and hapless. Very often (usually, in my opinion), the mishearing is some complicated combination of the two, along with deeper currents in thought processes about which one is usually only partly aware.

Example: Travon Free's speech at the Oscars (& me)

Take, for example, this YouTube clip [at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-8_nIH0HU>, accessed May 1, 2021]. It represents the speeches by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe after they won an Oscar for best short film: 

Unclear on the concept: Washington Post and anecdotes about the AstraZeneca Vaccine

You may have heard that some European countries have postponed the use of what is called the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 amid fears that it might lead to blood clots. (For what it's worth, that vaccine hasn't yet been approved for use in the U.S.)

This Washington Post article [paywall, probably] argues that such fears are unfounded. Public health officials state that there is no proven link between taking that vaccine and the onset of blood clots. They also state that what evidence there is seems to back them up.

The only evidence for the supposed blood clot/AstraZeneca link is "anecdotes." Some people who have taken the vaccine have had blood clots. And the public health officials claim that the incidence of clotting is actually somewhat lower among AstraZeneca takers than what we might expect among the general population.

Fine. I buy the argument and accept it. (And for what it's worth, I'm terrified of blood clots. They can kill you. And the main way to treat and manage them is to take blood thinners, which have a narrow therapeutic range and come with their own complications, such as nosebleeds that are difficult to stop. As a epistaxiphobe, that terrifies me, too. I have also heard, though I'm not sure how well-established this point is, that Covid-19 itself can lead to blood clots.)

Unfortunately, the same article relies includes these two paragraphs, one after the other and without a hint of self-aware irony:

Evans [Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine], who is 77, said he has received two doses of the vaccine and did not experience any serious adverse effects.

The current concerns surrounding the vaccine are an example of “anecdotes being turned into data, which is not what epidemiologists deal with,” he said.

Anecdotes are not what epidemiologists deal with....unless they're relating their own personal experience with the vaccine.

I don't really mean any of this as a criticism of Mr. Evans. The reporter probably asked him, "have you taken the vaccine and experienced any adverse effects." He probably honestly said, "no," and then went on to explain that anecdotes aren't data.

I also don't mean this article's use of anecdotes to combat other anecdotes disprove the article's argument.

I do suggest two things, though. The first is that this is sloppy reporting, or sloppy editing. The Washington Post article seems clueless about the irony here. It uses an anecdote to refute other anecdotes, all the while insisting that we shouldn't rely on anecdotes.

Second, it's quite possible that anecdotes are indeed "data." Almost by definition, anecdotes are not systematic data. They're not collected and related in a controlled process, with a control group. But they are one piece of real, lived experience. We shouldn't build public health policy on anecdotes, at least not as a general rule. But they might clue us in to something. Early studies and comparisons with general populations might simply be wrong. And that one nugget of information we dismiss as "anecdote" today might prove tomorrow to have signaled something.

The capitol riot and the spirit of 1776

The riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was emblematic of the spirit of 1776 and that's a bad thing.

As I've tried to argue elsewhere, the American Revolution, so called, was essentially an expression of mob violence. You don't like the Stamp Act? Tar and feather the stamp collectors. You don't like people who stand by their oath to support the King (the same oath you took just a few short years ago)? Burn their property and chase them out to Canada. You don't like Catholics? Rail against the Quebec Act as the abolition of "the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies." You don't want to respect the boundaries of American Indian nations, or "merciless Indian savages" as the Declaration called them? Defy the compromise of 1763 and settle on their lands anyway.

The supporters of the Revolution voiced some very good ideals, and sometimes acted on them. The changeover to popular democracy it helped usher in was probably, on balance, a good thing. Most important, I believe and have believed for a long time that the Revolution initiated the process which eventually led to the abolition of slavery in North America. 

That said, let us not forget the essence of the Revolution. Its proponents used violence to overthrow a government that they called tyrannical but that was only a dim and incomplete instance of "tyranny." The Revolutionists' idols were some cant about taxation and representation or freedom or some such. The idols of the capitol rioters were basically the same, perhaps with a touch of hero worship of the former president. Ideals were the currency of the violence, and the real goal of struggle was power, or perhaps some visceral embrace of violence for the sake of violence.

The rationalist community & me

You may have heard of the "rationalist community." To the (very imperfect) extent I understand what it is, it's a group of people who profess to observe reasoned inquiry. That inquiry requires being aware of one's own biases, owning up to and being honest about the "epistemic status" (i.e., degree of certainty) of what they know, and using statistical probabilities in an approach known as "Bayesian analysis" to resolve questions. My apologies to any member of that community who might be reading, for I'm sure I've misrepresented them.

My experiences with the community are in the e-world. 

Myth/fact lists don't work

I've long believed that presenting a list of "myths" that you debunk with "facts" is recipe for, shall we say, less effective advocacy. I won't say "myth/fact lists" are completely ineffective. They probably teach some people some things and probably change some minds along some margin. But they usually, in my experience, do a poor job at it.

I propose three reasons for that. 

The first is that the "facts" used to refute the "myths" are themselves often not "facts" in the sense of something that can be verified or falsified. They are usually interpretations based on verifiable/falsifiable facts. The interpretations themselves might be plausible and defensible. But it's usually contestable.

The second is that the "myth" usually contains some truth. That's one reason for its survival as a "myth." Myth/fact lists err, when they do, by framing the myth in a way that obfuscates--or denies--the truth behind it.

The third reason is that the person who believes a "myth" usually does so for reasons the myth buster usually doesn't acknowledge. The myth usually reflects an underlying concern that in itself is either legitimate, or sincerely felt. The facts/interpretations used to bust the myth usually don't touch this underlying concern.

The three reasons can be summed up in larger "meta-reason": myth/fact lists are a way of talking down to those you are trying to convince of something. You may say that ignorance is no excuse for ignorance, and that it's your responsibility to educate people and not coddle them in their errors. In response, I say, "good luck with that." If you really want to convince someone of something, or enlighten them about something, you assume a certain burden of doing so effectively (As an aside, if you're using "educate" or "enlighten" as transitive verbs, that's a sign you're possibly talking down to someone.)

I hedge my bets. I say "usually" a lot in this blog post. Many, maybe most, myth/fact lists make good points. There's often at least one myth that is clearly untrue and debunked by the facts. Just beware that myth/fact lists might not do the work you think they do.

About that New York Times piece on Slate Star Codex

My small corner of the blogosphere is aflutter about the recent New York Times piece, by Cade Metz, about Slate Star Codex, Scott Alexander's former blog. Those of you familiar with that blog and the controversy know that last summer, Alexander shut down his blog because he feared the Times was going to dox him (that is, reveal his true identity) in a story about the Alexander's ability to successfully predict the covid-19 crisis. Alexander later re-posted his blog online for public viewing--it had been offline for only about a month or so, if I recall--and a month or so ago, he created a new blog, Astral Star Codex.

I agree with almost all the criticisms I've read of the Times article. E.g, Scott Aaronson, Cathy Young, Alan Jacobs. It was shoddy reporting. It made arguments by innuendo and association. You can read those critics I just linked to for more details. One thing I'll add that I haven't yet seen other commentators say is this. Metz seems to suggest that Alexander's taking his blog offline was some sort of nefarious action, perhaps akin to a criminal preparing to skip town before they're served with a subpoena. (See what I did there: Metz said none of that, but I teased out something nefarious, Metz-style, from what actually was said.) Metz does mention, later in the article, that Alexander re-posted his blog. But the mention is so far away that we're left with a sense of  "Alexander tried to escape responsibility for his actions."

That said, I don't believe, as Alan Jacobs seems to, that this necessarily represents a decline in journalistic standards. True, if the New York Times or if Mr. Metz observed higher standards--if they showed their work and stuck to demonstrable facts--the piece would have been better. But I think even the most conscientious journalist, working for the most conscientious news organization, will distort anything by writing about it. The journalist needn't be a liar and the news organization needn't be vindictive for that to happen. It will get things wrong because the reportage is at least one step removed from that which it is reporting. That's the definition of reporting. Even a putatively sympathetic account of Slate Star Codex will probably portray it in a misleading light. (I'm also not saying Metz is a liar or that the Times is vindictive, though I do suggest their behavior with that article is not up to snuff.)

I was a fan of Slate Star Codex and I'm a fan of Astral Star Codex. I'm glad Alexander has returned to the blogosphere.

 

 

The perils of impeachment

[Note: I originally posted this at Ordinary-Times a couple weeks ago. I have edited this version from that one, and my most extensive edits concern my point about the electoral college. I'll state this, too. I wrote this post after the House had voted for articles of impeachment, but before the Senate took up the articles. So some of what I say here is dated by those developments.]

If you support impeaching Donald Trump now that he's out of office, you should account for certain hazards 

 

Crocodile tears and the mad rush

The covid vaccine will possibly be made available to me sooner than to other people who probably need it more

That's thanks to my job. Although the details of the vaccine rollout are still sketchy, it seems that my state ranks employment at a university one step ahead of the general public when it comes to getting the vaccine.

I don't believe I should be given any special priority. 

Withdrawal and engagement

Sometimes it's hard to find the proper balance between withdrawal and engagement. It's possible to do too much of one and not enough of the other.

I'm giving up Ordinary Times for Lent

I need to take a break from Ordinary Times, at least for a little while.

A while ago, I wrote a post saying that I'm considering "withdrawing for moral health." I didn't really withdraw. Part of what I meant, though I didn't say it, was that I was going to disengage from the Ordinary Times blog. If you paid attention (or care), I didn't really withdraw. I have since then written a few blog posts and continued to comment there.

The main problem is that I choose to be someone I don't like when I participate there. I take things personally that aren't meant personally. Well, sometimes they're meant personally, but they don't have to be taken personally. I adopt a posture where I choose to dislike certain commenters personally, even though I have never met them in person. Sometimes I find I'm prepared to angrily disagree with what someone says even before I read their comment. Sometimes even when it turns out I agree with what they're saying. In too many of those cases, I change my mind to disagree with that which I had previously agreed--all because I don't like the person who uttered it.

It's not just the people I don't like, either. I choose to be defensive even when people's disagreements are ones I'm willing to accept, that is, when I'm not very invested in the point at issue, or when the disagreement is reasonable, or when I've anticipated the disagreement, or when I (supposedly) steeled myself for the probability someone would raise it. Even if someone agrees with me, I'll sometimes choose to be defensive.

I don't say any of this as a criticism of Ordinary Times or as a criticism of the commentariat there. Even though some of my gripes against some of the commenters there are, in my opinion, legitimate, I have no legitimate prerogative to treat some of the people there as I do.

In fact, it's not really about Ordinary Times at all. OT just happens to be the online community in which I participate the most often and the most deeply. There's something about internet engagement that seems dangerous or tempting in a way that I'm no longer equipped (if I ever was) to weather, and OT is there site where I most often encounter that "something."

I say "dangerous or tempting" warily. There's something about the frequent "internet is bad" or "social media is ruining us" mantras that make me uneasy. It's not so much that I disagree. Rather, it seems too simplistic. I have a hard time getting a handle on all the pathologies the internet and social media supposedly cause or make worse, and I have a hard time getting a handle on how the internet and social media do that. I also suspect the relevant "pathologies" have a non-technological, or extra-technological, component that persists regardless of whether or in what ways I, or anyone, withdraws.

I'm not fully confident I'll be successful in my temporary withdrawal from OT. It's tempting to wend my way on over there, "just to see what they're writing," or "just to comment on that one post," or "just to float this idea in a blog post over there."

Another danger is that I'll find a new site and recommit the same errors I did at OT. So in theory--assuming I follow through--a concomitant decision will be to engage less fully in comment culture elsewhere.

And yet another danger: Removing oneself from temptation is not virtue. It can actually be vicious. Maybe it creates complacency, or a cowardice informed by not wanting to face challenges. It can indicate a closing into oneself. There are probably other ways it's vicious.

I will try to write more often here, though. One big disadvantage in doing so is that I'll be writing more for myself and less for an audience. I think my writing at OT is better than my writing here. At OT, I usually do several, several drafts. I cut many of my darlings. And I strive to anticipate and address objections I know others will have. When I write here, it's more off-the-cuff.

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 5, 2021: I realize that Lent doesn't begin for about a week, but nonetheless, I'm starting it now.

Missing the obvious

If you try reading about Borderline Personality Disorder or Bipolar Disorder, or both, it won't take long before you encounter people explaining that people often confuse the two disorders. The explanations for why usually make sense. Some of the behaviors, for example, are superficially similar, especially when observed by people who are not mental health professionals or who are not well-versed in those disorders.

Those are good explanations, but rarely--actually, never, in my (very anecdotal) experience--do the explainers state what to me is one obvious reason for the confusion.

Both disorders begin with a "B" and both are commonly abbreviated as "BPD."