I agree more with Josh Hawley on Russia/Ukraine than with other politicians. I also think Hawley is dangerously wrong in most of his views and wish he was not in the Senate.
As you are pointing out, if you automatically disagree with everything someone says, you are using a rock.
I agree that he wants to primarily focus on whether views are well-reasoned (or not stupid), but offensive was definitely in the decision algorithm there - QAnon loses points in this calculus mostly for being full of crazy nonsense and a complete lack of actual reasoning, but also because of associations with offensive views, although in that case it doesn't change the answer because it's overdetermined.
Very well put. I think I can offer a diagnosis for Tyler's strange condition. It seems Cowan has unfortunately fallen prey to respectability disease. Too much time spent in the fancier DC circles, hobnobbing with the rich and powerful while asking for their money, has burdened him with too much to lose by being associated with society's lessers, regardless of the truth value of a particular point. He is, as you put it, now concerned with being in the proper coalition, being seen to agree with the right sorts of people and not the unfashionable sort. He can't full throatedly back freedom* any more because he fears losing the approval of the inner circle. He must mince words about how of course freedom and liberty are important, but we must balance them off against the needs of the state to protect some others mumble mumble and really these people don't want real liberty... He gets to be the token tame libertarian for the mainstream media, so long as he doesn't challenge them or say anything upsetting to the narrative.
Only someone with very few gifts from the ruling class to lose can say things like "Look, I may not agree with these guys on everything, but they are right on here, and everyone else at the party has it wrong." The desire to fit in and continue fitting in, to be in that inner circle, kills objectivity and reason, replacing it with group think. Tyler has fallen victim to his own success.
*It is possible that he can't back it here for the same reasons he has been terrible on COVID overall, because he is a germaphobe and is unable to think clearly on the matter.
I've actually talked to him briefly about Covid once and he is thinking clearly about it, germaphobe thing isn't clouding his judgment there.
Other stuff is harder to judge. In this situation in particular it seems odd to put it this way if it's not genuine, and it matches up with a lot of his other views.
I don't think I quite understand what you mean by that last sentence, "In this situation in particular it seems odd to put it this way if it's not genuine, and it matches up with a lot of his other views."
Do you mean that the currently considered post by Cowan matches his other views? Or that his new views are not genuine? (To clarify my point, I think he is not consciously lying, but rather being led by the elephant in his brain to steer towards the inner circle he wants to be in and avoid saying things or being seen to agree with groups that would be distasteful to them.)
I mean that if the new post doesn't reflect his actual views then he is robustly presenting a consistent not-his-own view across many posts and many years.
Gotcha. Yea, I think Cowan's views have changed over the years, not intentionally but as a result of his role, both as the head of an institute that needs donations and respectability, and as a fairly important person within the academic economic/political policy space, a space that leans increasingly hard away from individual liberty.
I don't believe he is lying, arguing against his actual views. Rather I think he is engaging in subconsciously motivated reasoning. His brain is trying to come up with ideas that are sort of what he used to think but is close enough to the beliefs of the inner circle that he wants to be in to be acceptable. That's why I frame it as "respectability disease," because it is a subtle change of incentives that one is often not aware they are responding to, and probably takes a great deal of mental effort to identify and correct for. "Where you stand depends on where you sit" need not imply conscious efforts to deceive.
Compare Cowan to, say, Bryan Caplan, however. Sure, they sit about 120 feet away from each other, and eat lunch together etc., but Caplan has no problem arguing points without regard to who else holds those views, and what other views those people might hold. It is much easier to imagine Bryan saying "When I find I agree with the majority of respectable people, it makes me a little nervous I am succumbing to social desirability bias" than "When I find I agree with people who believe things other people find offensive, I run." I suspect that difference comes from Caplan having many fewer people to keep happy with him, partially because he seems to care more about truth than keeping people happy with him, but also because he simply hasn't been in the position to contract the disease the way that Cowan has.
The joke is that one reads Pravda to know the truth about what lies one needs to know and echo to thrive in a bad situation. I read Cowen to know the best cover story possible for the disassociations important to signal to get by in respectable society without necessarily or overtly compromising the principle or surrendering the value at issue. It's not necessarily a good story, that isn't always possible, just the least worst.
That is, if you assume the constraint of the guilt by association game being an effective tactic against which one has no good defense, and that any group troublesome to elites will get the treatment, then the best one can do is come up with some story explaining your dissociation from that group ('not smart' is generally useful), while using the occasion to repeat a commitment to one's position on the merits of the underlying dispute.
As pointed out in the comments section, Cowen is pretty inconsistent about deploying these justifications in similar circumstances, but that just clues us in to the real game, because he's a "price taker" in this market for denigration, and he's only as inconsistent as he needs to be to avoid getting lumped with the latest targets.
I could buy that argument. I don't know just how much, however, as I am not sure Cowan has avoided surrendering the value at issue in many cases. That is partially what makes me think it is unintentional mental moves instead of careful esotericism.
I also think that his behavior mirrors that of elitist political party methods in general, denigrating the 'not smart' while pretending to argue for their interests. To me, there is a big difference between saying "I don't agree with these people on much, but here I think they are right, and here's why" and "I might seem to agree with these people on this one point, but they are gross and probably only agree with me coincidentally for the wrong reasons."
Admittedly, I might have a particularly hard outlook on Cowan (and Kling) for their "state capacity libertarianism" business and so be a bit touchy on the matter, but I think Cowan came down with the disease quite some time ago, before he started pushing that idea. He's never been the firebrand type compared to most, but I think there is a lot of social desirability bias in his thinking over the past 10 years or so.
To be clear, I'm not putting Cowan down at all in my comment, and, in my own way, complimenting his dexterity and felicity in such matters, which is an exceptionally rare quality. I've been reading Cowan for going on two decades, and while I am sometimes annoyed by what he says - or, more precisely, made glum by the fact that he must say them in that way of his - my assessment of him is much higher than that yours. I think he is one of the most impressibe minds and formidable intellects of our time, and indeed, as one would expect from a chess prodigy, a genuine grandmaster at the social game that he must play in order to be trusted by rich and powerful people to shepherd and strategically deploy substantial resources in a way that will always fly below the radar of those whose business it is to destroy reputations, and never come back to haunt anyone or get a target painted on their backs by kicking the usual hornets nests. That involves doing what is necessary to never trigger IFF alarms, not just now, but in the foreseeable future when standards for accetability are likely to have moved in ways that are not easy to predict. I think it's important that someone be doing the job he's doing, and I can't think of anyone who could do it better.
I think that is one strong possibility, an optimistic one. I am not so optimistic, in part because I think that the political process you describe works more subconsciously and corrupts. Observationally, there is a point where you can't tell if someone is being super Straussian or just openly saying what they believe. I put a lot of prior likelihood on people saying what they believe while their brains are papering over the inconsistencies between what is convenient to believe and what is probably true. I hold that is one of the great evils of power and politics, the corrupting of our minds and the gradual loss of ourselves as we continuously compromise to fit into those inner circles.
I get this argument and to some extent believe it, but it has more than a whiff of "I'm only joining the mob to steer it in wise directions" when we know that, in reality, that day is never going to come because that's just not how mobs work.
Agreed. I think the fact the mob in question happens to be the mob that is largely in control of polite and powerful society makes it a little more questionable. I think Cowan knows rationally that you can't steer mobs as well, which makes it seem less likely that he is consciously trying it. It might be a rationalization, of the form "People are always going to ask for bad things from government, so we should stop saying they shouldn't ask for them but just try and make sure the government does the things as well as possible." You know no good can come of it, but if you want to be in that seat, your brain will come up with reasons why you can make things better.
This gets into a whole can of worms that is off-topic. But I think it's important to remember the distinction between an actual mob and the merely metaphorical 'mob' that is in actuality an oligarchy of influence. Some of that influence is mutual in nature, and to the extent one can nudge that fuzzy consensus, there are certain ideas that enjoy a kind of multiplier effect under the current structure of social organization, such that if they are held even slightly higher in esteem and status by these elites then the impact can have a level of significance that is genuinely of a magnitude rising to that between distinguishably different states of civilization.
"For whatever set of views you think is justified, try to stick to the versions of those views held by well-educated, reasonable, analytically-inclined people. You will end up smarter over time, and in better places. Peer effects are strong, including across your ideological partners."
This reads like someone who has no familiarity with, oh say, the American Progressive Era, the rise of a certain analytically-inclined German government, or a certain analytically-inclined peasant who studied physics and mathematic and tried to get various European countries on a more analytical governing model before returning to Russia and succeding.
Peer effects *are* strong. They can lead those analytical thinkers to sterilize rape victims (Buck v Bell), exclude minorities from full citizenship due to phrenology (US occupatin of Germany), calculate the amount of opium to dump onto Chinese markets to undermine their ability of self-rule, calculate the number of Congolese to die per value of natural resorce extracted so your new slaves don't die before you've stolen everything in the entire country, etc etc. These weren't weird one-offs. These were things that people let happen because of peer effects and those smart, analytical thinkers all said it was the right thing to do.
Without psychoanalyzing Cowen, Alexander, or folks who favor rationality in general, I'd submit that much of what passes for "rationality" is a very poor basis for decision-making and could very easily be replaced by a sort of moral "do the least harm" principle.
Let's use the truckers vs. the Canadian government as an example. Cowen is putting his faith in the "rock" of the "smart and reasonableness" of the Canadian government (or if you read differently, his "rock" is actually the stupidity of and antipathy he feels for the Truckers). TheSvi says (I think) accept the Litany (what is true in a particular circumstance) and try not to have Rocks.
I think Cowen's view is irrational for the reasons pointed out, but I think the latter view falls down because strictly speaking, there is no truth in this particular circumstance. All we've got is a conflict between two groups that both appear to be utterly irrational to me.
I think it's rational to get vaccinated, but enforcing a vaccine mandate upon a group of people who are unwilling to do so and for whom the benefits of the vaccine are at this point highly questionable is also... irrational.
What I'm saying is, there's no rational solution to an irrational conflict. There is, however, a pretty simple moral way to pick a side by applying the Coase Theorem. In a conflict, there's always a way the right can be assigned that maximizes social value. What happens if Ottawa drops the mandate? Well, everything is over tomorrow. Sure, some of the whackos might keep protesting, but 95% of folks are going to go home. Some politicos maybe get harmed for trying to exert too much authority, but a gracious back down would resolve things pretty quickly.
On the other hand, a draconian sort of "win" for Ottawa would look like what? Lots of people coerced into doing something they don't want to do. Unemployment, distrust, the feeling of oppression, resentment, and a potentially significant amount of violence. Those are some pretty high costs.
I guess this seems straightforward to me, when I disparage "rational arguments" it's because those I hear in favor of the "smart and reasonable people" tend to be something to the effect of:
1. The slippery slope (if we give the FREEDOM ROCKERS what they want, they might ask for more). This is not a reasonable argument though, when one concedes that the mandate is, itself, pretty irrational. Stop doing the irrational thing, and then deal with the slippery slope if it happens.
2. Those people are so awful/stupid/deplorable/etc so they deserve to be treated badly and its fine for the government to make life miserable for them. Again, this is patently irrational. Bad, stupid deplorable people are still citizens whose rights matter.
> I think it's rational to get vaccinated, but enforcing a vaccine mandate upon a group
> of people who are unwilling to do so and for whom the benefits of the vaccine are
> at this point highly questionable is also... irrational.
I'd say that mandates have helped boost the vaccination rate significantly, which means our single-player health care system isn't wrecked (as much). However, it's pretty clear we're near the point of diminishing returns and governments have been getting ready to roll back measures.
Except the convoy has made it almost impossible to do so without being seen as dictated to by a bunch of people who promised to make life intolerable until their demands are met.
If the convoy had gone home after a week, they'd have made the point that a lot of people are tired of the mandates and perhaps shortened the mandates by a few weeks. By continuing on, they've almost certainly increased the length of time for the mandates.
But that is the way of such things. The sort of personality that pushes one to take action is almost certainly the sort of personality that prevents one from achieving an effective outcome.
With respect to the the slippery slope logical fallacy, I would only say that assuming that the specific issue of vaccine mandates is more relevant here than creating a framework for pursuing future cultural change seems... optimistic?
If someone threatens to beat me unless I complete what I was already going to do, I would not consider it irrational to worry *far* about the coercive powers of a non-government actor than about the task itself.
Until the mandates are re-introduced in 6 months, possibly for an entirely different vaccine, of course. Try to look further into the future than the next three weeks - apparently the truckers are able to do this.
Re-introducing vaccine mandates for a vaccine that *was* capable of significantly decreasing infection rates would be pretty rational and would likely have widespread public support. As a general rule, individual choice issues tend not to matter as much to Canadians given a universal health care systems without a lot of surge capacity.
No it wouldn't. This is exactly why so much talk of rationality on the internet is unimpressive. It would only be rational if you assume the benefits are higher than the costs including the costs of injuries, which in turn requires the government to have perfect information, perfect analytical ability and a perfectly rational and honesty based approach. But we know none of these things are even close to being true. There are thus no situations in which vaccine mandates are ever rational, considering the Gestalt situation required for government to exercise that sort of rationality.
> One could also say at least Ron Paul has a rock, and thus has predictable thoughts that are roughly consistent and are not corrupted by various political considerations as much as those of his rivals. Whereas the alternatives are much worse than rocks. Or alternatively, that the other candidates all have rocks that say “DO WHAT GETS YOU ELECTED” and you’d prefer an actual analytical thinker but you’ll take “FREEDOM!” over “DO WHAT GETS YOU ELECTED” any day.
I wish this would a) fit on a shirt and b) not require a bunch of context to explain. I am not looking forward to the latest round of congressional elections in my home state.
Tyler's post felt off to me in roughly the same way it did to you.
However, perhaps here is a more charitable reading of his post: People who agree with you for the wrong reasons are not on your side. By supporting them, it is true that you are indirectly supporting a correct position. But more importantly, in the long run and in the bigger picture, you are indirectly supporting a wrong algorithm for coming to conclusions.
Perhaps also he could be saying: If you publicly support Group X in having View Y, onlookers will only remember that you support Group X, and will continue to assume you support Group X in their other views, whatever those may turn out to be. Most people cannot fathom that comments about views aren't simulacrums that are really comments about the groups who hold those views. (Keep in mind that Tyler has been a public intellectual for a long time now...)
I agree with you that letting such considerations determine what you believe to be true is a recipe for disaster. I say, decide what you believe first, and then decide if you have to lie about it second. Allowing those two steps to get mixed up together is one of the most destructive cognitive biases.
In this example I think Tyler and you are writing for different audiences. You are writing for a slice of the population with extremely rare analytical skills. Tyler appears to be writing for the much bigger slice who are trying to decide whether or not they should join the Convoy's (or Ron Paul's) movement. Tyler's (obviously imperfect) heuristic seems to me to be saying, "Ask Zvi!" and do what he says. :)
Whereas I'm sitting here hearing that and going some combination of ARRRGGGHHHH!!!! and "don't make me tap the sign" pointing up at "Think for yourself, shmuck." But if you gotta ask someone...
I agree more with Josh Hawley on Russia/Ukraine than with other politicians. I also think Hawley is dangerously wrong in most of his views and wish he was not in the Senate.
As you are pointing out, if you automatically disagree with everything someone says, you are using a rock.
I don’t think the OP was saying “run” when the people hold offensive views. I think he was saying run when the people hold stupid views.
In other words, people who believe in QAnon have very little credibility because it’s stupid, not because it’s offensive.
I agree that he wants to primarily focus on whether views are well-reasoned (or not stupid), but offensive was definitely in the decision algorithm there - QAnon loses points in this calculus mostly for being full of crazy nonsense and a complete lack of actual reasoning, but also because of associations with offensive views, although in that case it doesn't change the answer because it's overdetermined.
Offensive seems to be 2 steps removed from any actual call to action.
1. X holding/advocating offensive views is evidence that X regurgitates, rather than digests (analyzes), information
2. Regurgitation doesn't count as support for an idea
Therefore, X is irrelevant for determining truth.
Then, separately, analysis is a better Idea Soldier than regurgitation. So, if advocates aren't using analysis, it does not exist.
Or maybe it does, but it's too complicated to share - see above point about advocates with offensive views being unlikely to have secret analysis
Very well put. I think I can offer a diagnosis for Tyler's strange condition. It seems Cowan has unfortunately fallen prey to respectability disease. Too much time spent in the fancier DC circles, hobnobbing with the rich and powerful while asking for their money, has burdened him with too much to lose by being associated with society's lessers, regardless of the truth value of a particular point. He is, as you put it, now concerned with being in the proper coalition, being seen to agree with the right sorts of people and not the unfashionable sort. He can't full throatedly back freedom* any more because he fears losing the approval of the inner circle. He must mince words about how of course freedom and liberty are important, but we must balance them off against the needs of the state to protect some others mumble mumble and really these people don't want real liberty... He gets to be the token tame libertarian for the mainstream media, so long as he doesn't challenge them or say anything upsetting to the narrative.
Only someone with very few gifts from the ruling class to lose can say things like "Look, I may not agree with these guys on everything, but they are right on here, and everyone else at the party has it wrong." The desire to fit in and continue fitting in, to be in that inner circle, kills objectivity and reason, replacing it with group think. Tyler has fallen victim to his own success.
*It is possible that he can't back it here for the same reasons he has been terrible on COVID overall, because he is a germaphobe and is unable to think clearly on the matter.
I've actually talked to him briefly about Covid once and he is thinking clearly about it, germaphobe thing isn't clouding his judgment there.
Other stuff is harder to judge. In this situation in particular it seems odd to put it this way if it's not genuine, and it matches up with a lot of his other views.
I don't think I quite understand what you mean by that last sentence, "In this situation in particular it seems odd to put it this way if it's not genuine, and it matches up with a lot of his other views."
Do you mean that the currently considered post by Cowan matches his other views? Or that his new views are not genuine? (To clarify my point, I think he is not consciously lying, but rather being led by the elephant in his brain to steer towards the inner circle he wants to be in and avoid saying things or being seen to agree with groups that would be distasteful to them.)
I mean that if the new post doesn't reflect his actual views then he is robustly presenting a consistent not-his-own view across many posts and many years.
Gotcha. Yea, I think Cowan's views have changed over the years, not intentionally but as a result of his role, both as the head of an institute that needs donations and respectability, and as a fairly important person within the academic economic/political policy space, a space that leans increasingly hard away from individual liberty.
I don't believe he is lying, arguing against his actual views. Rather I think he is engaging in subconsciously motivated reasoning. His brain is trying to come up with ideas that are sort of what he used to think but is close enough to the beliefs of the inner circle that he wants to be in to be acceptable. That's why I frame it as "respectability disease," because it is a subtle change of incentives that one is often not aware they are responding to, and probably takes a great deal of mental effort to identify and correct for. "Where you stand depends on where you sit" need not imply conscious efforts to deceive.
Compare Cowan to, say, Bryan Caplan, however. Sure, they sit about 120 feet away from each other, and eat lunch together etc., but Caplan has no problem arguing points without regard to who else holds those views, and what other views those people might hold. It is much easier to imagine Bryan saying "When I find I agree with the majority of respectable people, it makes me a little nervous I am succumbing to social desirability bias" than "When I find I agree with people who believe things other people find offensive, I run." I suspect that difference comes from Caplan having many fewer people to keep happy with him, partially because he seems to care more about truth than keeping people happy with him, but also because he simply hasn't been in the position to contract the disease the way that Cowan has.
The joke is that one reads Pravda to know the truth about what lies one needs to know and echo to thrive in a bad situation. I read Cowen to know the best cover story possible for the disassociations important to signal to get by in respectable society without necessarily or overtly compromising the principle or surrendering the value at issue. It's not necessarily a good story, that isn't always possible, just the least worst.
That is, if you assume the constraint of the guilt by association game being an effective tactic against which one has no good defense, and that any group troublesome to elites will get the treatment, then the best one can do is come up with some story explaining your dissociation from that group ('not smart' is generally useful), while using the occasion to repeat a commitment to one's position on the merits of the underlying dispute.
As pointed out in the comments section, Cowen is pretty inconsistent about deploying these justifications in similar circumstances, but that just clues us in to the real game, because he's a "price taker" in this market for denigration, and he's only as inconsistent as he needs to be to avoid getting lumped with the latest targets.
I could buy that argument. I don't know just how much, however, as I am not sure Cowan has avoided surrendering the value at issue in many cases. That is partially what makes me think it is unintentional mental moves instead of careful esotericism.
I also think that his behavior mirrors that of elitist political party methods in general, denigrating the 'not smart' while pretending to argue for their interests. To me, there is a big difference between saying "I don't agree with these people on much, but here I think they are right, and here's why" and "I might seem to agree with these people on this one point, but they are gross and probably only agree with me coincidentally for the wrong reasons."
Admittedly, I might have a particularly hard outlook on Cowan (and Kling) for their "state capacity libertarianism" business and so be a bit touchy on the matter, but I think Cowan came down with the disease quite some time ago, before he started pushing that idea. He's never been the firebrand type compared to most, but I think there is a lot of social desirability bias in his thinking over the past 10 years or so.
To be clear, I'm not putting Cowan down at all in my comment, and, in my own way, complimenting his dexterity and felicity in such matters, which is an exceptionally rare quality. I've been reading Cowan for going on two decades, and while I am sometimes annoyed by what he says - or, more precisely, made glum by the fact that he must say them in that way of his - my assessment of him is much higher than that yours. I think he is one of the most impressibe minds and formidable intellects of our time, and indeed, as one would expect from a chess prodigy, a genuine grandmaster at the social game that he must play in order to be trusted by rich and powerful people to shepherd and strategically deploy substantial resources in a way that will always fly below the radar of those whose business it is to destroy reputations, and never come back to haunt anyone or get a target painted on their backs by kicking the usual hornets nests. That involves doing what is necessary to never trigger IFF alarms, not just now, but in the foreseeable future when standards for accetability are likely to have moved in ways that are not easy to predict. I think it's important that someone be doing the job he's doing, and I can't think of anyone who could do it better.
Yeah, he's great. The reason I respond to things he or Scott says is because they are worthy of it.
I think that is one strong possibility, an optimistic one. I am not so optimistic, in part because I think that the political process you describe works more subconsciously and corrupts. Observationally, there is a point where you can't tell if someone is being super Straussian or just openly saying what they believe. I put a lot of prior likelihood on people saying what they believe while their brains are papering over the inconsistencies between what is convenient to believe and what is probably true. I hold that is one of the great evils of power and politics, the corrupting of our minds and the gradual loss of ourselves as we continuously compromise to fit into those inner circles.
I get this argument and to some extent believe it, but it has more than a whiff of "I'm only joining the mob to steer it in wise directions" when we know that, in reality, that day is never going to come because that's just not how mobs work.
Agreed. I think the fact the mob in question happens to be the mob that is largely in control of polite and powerful society makes it a little more questionable. I think Cowan knows rationally that you can't steer mobs as well, which makes it seem less likely that he is consciously trying it. It might be a rationalization, of the form "People are always going to ask for bad things from government, so we should stop saying they shouldn't ask for them but just try and make sure the government does the things as well as possible." You know no good can come of it, but if you want to be in that seat, your brain will come up with reasons why you can make things better.
This gets into a whole can of worms that is off-topic. But I think it's important to remember the distinction between an actual mob and the merely metaphorical 'mob' that is in actuality an oligarchy of influence. Some of that influence is mutual in nature, and to the extent one can nudge that fuzzy consensus, there are certain ideas that enjoy a kind of multiplier effect under the current structure of social organization, such that if they are held even slightly higher in esteem and status by these elites then the impact can have a level of significance that is genuinely of a magnitude rising to that between distinguishably different states of civilization.
"For whatever set of views you think is justified, try to stick to the versions of those views held by well-educated, reasonable, analytically-inclined people. You will end up smarter over time, and in better places. Peer effects are strong, including across your ideological partners."
This reads like someone who has no familiarity with, oh say, the American Progressive Era, the rise of a certain analytically-inclined German government, or a certain analytically-inclined peasant who studied physics and mathematic and tried to get various European countries on a more analytical governing model before returning to Russia and succeding.
Peer effects *are* strong. They can lead those analytical thinkers to sterilize rape victims (Buck v Bell), exclude minorities from full citizenship due to phrenology (US occupatin of Germany), calculate the amount of opium to dump onto Chinese markets to undermine their ability of self-rule, calculate the number of Congolese to die per value of natural resorce extracted so your new slaves don't die before you've stolen everything in the entire country, etc etc. These weren't weird one-offs. These were things that people let happen because of peer effects and those smart, analytical thinkers all said it was the right thing to do.
Without psychoanalyzing Cowen, Alexander, or folks who favor rationality in general, I'd submit that much of what passes for "rationality" is a very poor basis for decision-making and could very easily be replaced by a sort of moral "do the least harm" principle.
Let's use the truckers vs. the Canadian government as an example. Cowen is putting his faith in the "rock" of the "smart and reasonableness" of the Canadian government (or if you read differently, his "rock" is actually the stupidity of and antipathy he feels for the Truckers). TheSvi says (I think) accept the Litany (what is true in a particular circumstance) and try not to have Rocks.
I think Cowen's view is irrational for the reasons pointed out, but I think the latter view falls down because strictly speaking, there is no truth in this particular circumstance. All we've got is a conflict between two groups that both appear to be utterly irrational to me.
I think it's rational to get vaccinated, but enforcing a vaccine mandate upon a group of people who are unwilling to do so and for whom the benefits of the vaccine are at this point highly questionable is also... irrational.
What I'm saying is, there's no rational solution to an irrational conflict. There is, however, a pretty simple moral way to pick a side by applying the Coase Theorem. In a conflict, there's always a way the right can be assigned that maximizes social value. What happens if Ottawa drops the mandate? Well, everything is over tomorrow. Sure, some of the whackos might keep protesting, but 95% of folks are going to go home. Some politicos maybe get harmed for trying to exert too much authority, but a gracious back down would resolve things pretty quickly.
On the other hand, a draconian sort of "win" for Ottawa would look like what? Lots of people coerced into doing something they don't want to do. Unemployment, distrust, the feeling of oppression, resentment, and a potentially significant amount of violence. Those are some pretty high costs.
I guess this seems straightforward to me, when I disparage "rational arguments" it's because those I hear in favor of the "smart and reasonable people" tend to be something to the effect of:
1. The slippery slope (if we give the FREEDOM ROCKERS what they want, they might ask for more). This is not a reasonable argument though, when one concedes that the mandate is, itself, pretty irrational. Stop doing the irrational thing, and then deal with the slippery slope if it happens.
2. Those people are so awful/stupid/deplorable/etc so they deserve to be treated badly and its fine for the government to make life miserable for them. Again, this is patently irrational. Bad, stupid deplorable people are still citizens whose rights matter.
> I think it's rational to get vaccinated, but enforcing a vaccine mandate upon a group
> of people who are unwilling to do so and for whom the benefits of the vaccine are
> at this point highly questionable is also... irrational.
I'd say that mandates have helped boost the vaccination rate significantly, which means our single-player health care system isn't wrecked (as much). However, it's pretty clear we're near the point of diminishing returns and governments have been getting ready to roll back measures.
Except the convoy has made it almost impossible to do so without being seen as dictated to by a bunch of people who promised to make life intolerable until their demands are met.
If the convoy had gone home after a week, they'd have made the point that a lot of people are tired of the mandates and perhaps shortened the mandates by a few weeks. By continuing on, they've almost certainly increased the length of time for the mandates.
But that is the way of such things. The sort of personality that pushes one to take action is almost certainly the sort of personality that prevents one from achieving an effective outcome.
Respectfully, these are the exact the logical fallacies I pointed out in my prior post.
With respect to the the slippery slope logical fallacy, I would only say that assuming that the specific issue of vaccine mandates is more relevant here than creating a framework for pursuing future cultural change seems... optimistic?
If someone threatens to beat me unless I complete what I was already going to do, I would not consider it irrational to worry *far* about the coercive powers of a non-government actor than about the task itself.
Until the mandates are re-introduced in 6 months, possibly for an entirely different vaccine, of course. Try to look further into the future than the next three weeks - apparently the truckers are able to do this.
Re-introducing vaccine mandates for a vaccine that *was* capable of significantly decreasing infection rates would be pretty rational and would likely have widespread public support. As a general rule, individual choice issues tend not to matter as much to Canadians given a universal health care systems without a lot of surge capacity.
No it wouldn't. This is exactly why so much talk of rationality on the internet is unimpressive. It would only be rational if you assume the benefits are higher than the costs including the costs of injuries, which in turn requires the government to have perfect information, perfect analytical ability and a perfectly rational and honesty based approach. But we know none of these things are even close to being true. There are thus no situations in which vaccine mandates are ever rational, considering the Gestalt situation required for government to exercise that sort of rationality.
> One could also say at least Ron Paul has a rock, and thus has predictable thoughts that are roughly consistent and are not corrupted by various political considerations as much as those of his rivals. Whereas the alternatives are much worse than rocks. Or alternatively, that the other candidates all have rocks that say “DO WHAT GETS YOU ELECTED” and you’d prefer an actual analytical thinker but you’ll take “FREEDOM!” over “DO WHAT GETS YOU ELECTED” any day.
I wish this would a) fit on a shirt and b) not require a bunch of context to explain. I am not looking forward to the latest round of congressional elections in my home state.
Tyler's post felt off to me in roughly the same way it did to you.
However, perhaps here is a more charitable reading of his post: People who agree with you for the wrong reasons are not on your side. By supporting them, it is true that you are indirectly supporting a correct position. But more importantly, in the long run and in the bigger picture, you are indirectly supporting a wrong algorithm for coming to conclusions.
Perhaps also he could be saying: If you publicly support Group X in having View Y, onlookers will only remember that you support Group X, and will continue to assume you support Group X in their other views, whatever those may turn out to be. Most people cannot fathom that comments about views aren't simulacrums that are really comments about the groups who hold those views. (Keep in mind that Tyler has been a public intellectual for a long time now...)
I agree with you that letting such considerations determine what you believe to be true is a recipe for disaster. I say, decide what you believe first, and then decide if you have to lie about it second. Allowing those two steps to get mixed up together is one of the most destructive cognitive biases.
In this example I think Tyler and you are writing for different audiences. You are writing for a slice of the population with extremely rare analytical skills. Tyler appears to be writing for the much bigger slice who are trying to decide whether or not they should join the Convoy's (or Ron Paul's) movement. Tyler's (obviously imperfect) heuristic seems to me to be saying, "Ask Zvi!" and do what he says. :)
Whereas I'm sitting here hearing that and going some combination of ARRRGGGHHHH!!!! and "don't make me tap the sign" pointing up at "Think for yourself, shmuck." But if you gotta ask someone...