Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

"Endings," professional and personal

Philosopher Daniel Kaufman comments, and it's a very interesting read.

The NYT tunnel vision about race comes up against reality

Perhaps someone there should look at the evidence:  "The fact that the five officers charged with Mr. Nichols’s murder are Black complicates the anguish."  That's because in police killings, race is the not the primary variable, but rather class (as with Mr. Nichols:  a high school graduate and unskilled laborer with very little money)--class, plus the pathologies of police culture.

ADDENDUM:  As one reader points out, blacks are three times as likely as whites to be killed in police encoutners.  That is, alas, not surprising given the economic disparities between blacks and whites in America, with its history of apartheid:  "In 2014, about a quarter (26%) of blacks were poor, compared with 10% of whites. The black-white poverty gap has narrowed somewhat since the mid-1970s, when 30% of blacks were living below the poverty line – a proportion nearly four times the share of whites living in poverty (8%)."   The hard empirical question is disentangling the effects of race and class in police violence, a point the murder of Mr. Nichols by black officers drives home.

 

Class, not diversity

Kenan Malik comments at The Observer:

If debates about poverty have become warped by a longstanding view that attributes blame to the individual, debates about inequality have become distorted by a more contemporary trend: the increasing tendency to look at equality in terms of “diversity”. “When you ask them for more equality, what they give you is more diversity,” observes the American academic Walter Benn Michaels. “But a diversified elite is not made any the less elite by its diversity.”

On the neoliberal identity politics of the fake "left" in America

This essay makes a number of good points (although readers will notice echoes of Adolph Reed, the essay overall lacks his more sophisticated theoretical framework); an excerpt:

[Ne]oliberal identity is u]sing one’s identity or personal experience as a justification for a political position. You may hear someone argue, “As a working-class, first-generation American, Southern woman…I say we have to vote no.” What’s implied is that one’s identity is a comprehensive validator of one’s political strategy—that identity is evidence of some intrinsic ideological or strategic legitimacy. Marginalized identity is deployed as a conveyor of a strategic truth that must simply be accepted. Likewise, historically privileged identities are essentialized, flattened, and frequently—for better or worse— dismissed....

The most checked-out books from the New York City public library system

I confess I've heard of none of these books and almost none of these authors  Apart from old rock 'n' roll, I'm a poor consumer of popular culture.  What do readers make of this list?  Are some of these books worth reading?

Why did Bostrom's "apology" for the racist email mention eugenics?

This author offers an hypothesis. (Earlier coverage, including a link to the strange apology.)  I don't agree with all of this analysis, but it's worth a look.

(Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)

Mandatory "diversity" training doesn't seem to work

We've touched on this before, here's the latest debunking of the DEI industrial-complex:

“We have been speaking to employers about this research for more than a decade,” wrote the sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev in 2018, “with the message that diversity training is likely the most expensive, and least effective, diversity program around.” (To be fair, not all of these critiques apply as sharply to voluntary diversity trainings....

Some diversity initiatives might actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them....

In the case of D.E.I., Dr. Dobbin and Dr. Kalev warn that diversity trainings that are mandatADory or that threaten dominant groups’ sense of belonging or make them feel blamed may elicit negative backlash or exacerbate biases.

Many popular contemporary D.E.I. approaches meet these criteria. They often seem geared more toward sparking a revolutionary reunderstanding of race relations than solving organizations’ specific problems. And they often blame white people — or their culture — for harming people of color. For example, the activist Tema Okun’s work cites concepts like objectivity and worship of the written word as characteristics of “white supremacy culture.” Robin DiAngelo’s “white fragility” trainings are designed to make white participants uncomfortable. And microaggression trainings are based on an area of academic literature that claims, without quality evidence, that common utterances like “America is a melting pot” harm the mental health of people of color. Many of these trainings run counter to the views of most Americans — of any color — on race and equality. And they’re generating exactly the sort of backlash that research predicts.

ADDENDUM:   Professors Dobbin and Kalev discuss their diversity research here.   Amusingly, they note that most management practices are not evidence-based.

(Thanks to Roger Albin for the pointer.)

"Artificial Intelligence [sic] forever inanimate and dumb"

This is funny and probably right (and timely, given yesterday's thread):

The cognitive scientist Gary Marcus has been the most active when it comes to showing that, contrary to some of the claims referenced above, LLMs [Large Language Models] are inherently unreliable and don’t actually exhibit many of the most common features of language and thought, such as systematicity and compositionality, let alone common sense, the understanding of context in conversation, or any of the many other unremarkable “cognitive things” we do on a daily basis. In a recent post with Ernest Davis, Marcus includes an LLM Errors Tracker and outlines some of the more egregious mistakes, including the manifestation of sexist and racist biases, simple errors when carrying out basic logical reasoning or indeed basic maths, in counting up to 4 (good luck claiming that LLMs pass the Turing Test; see here), and of course the fact that LLMs constantly make things up.

"Intelligent design" creationism basically finished

Biologist Jerry Coyne reviews the state of affairs.   My "Texas Taliban" alerts category was created some two decades ago precisely because of the efforts by those folks to wreck biology education in Texas!  (Years ago, a member in good standing even came to visit me in my office!  And see also.)

MLK speech in 1962 on the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation

I'd never heard this one before:

 

Philosopher Nick Bostrom (Oxford) is a creepy person (UPDATED)

That's the only conclusion to be drawn about the racist views he expressed in his mid-20s.   People who aren't creepy racists (or mentally ill) don't express such views in their 20s.  Maybe some folks who aren't really creepy racists say stuff like this in their early teens.   A few observations:

1.  He should not be fired or sanctioned for this speech.

2.  The views he defends, like longtermism, are not false because he is a creepy person.

3.  The creepiness is yet a further reason to be suspicious of longtermism and the arguments for it, since they reveal a severe poverty of empathy and human emotions on the part of one its main proponents--attributes which would seem likely to spill over into "philosophical" reflections about what human beings matter and what has value.  There are plenty of objections to longtermism (see for example), but it is perfectly reasonable for someone who does not have the time to work through all the arguments to view the creepiness of one of longtermism's leading proponents as grounds for serious skepticism.  (Vide.)

 

Plato, Mill and inequality

Political theorist David Lay Williams comments.

"Passed away" vs. "died"

A longtime reader, noting my not infrequent use of "passed away" to note the death of some philosopher, writes:

“Passed away” is a religious euphemism, mostly used by sanctimonious and smarmy people who are trying to say that someone's immortal soul has passed away from our contemptible fallen realm and into the bright realm of harp-strumming above. 

It’s sort of Expiration Lite, or exiting from life without actually going through the messy process of death. It’s a way of denying reality. And that’s why it surprised me so much to see it on your blog, where reality-deniers usually get no mercy.

This was honestly a surprise to me (those who pass away, pass away into oblivion and nothingness!), but it would not be the first time I was tuned out of connotations of ordinary usage.  What do readers think?

Former director of Human Rights Watch denied Fellowship at Harvard's Kennedy School for having "incorrect" views about Israel

The Nation reports.  If there is one arena in which attacks occur systematically on academic freedom and free speech in the U.S., it is for those--from Finkelstein to Salaita--who do not tow the party line on Israel.  What a disgrace.

"Diversity" and "tolerance" turned on their head

Apt remarks by The Guardian's Kenan Malik regarding the academic freedom fiasco at Hamline University:

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of Hamline’s action is the use of the language of diversity to eviscerate the very meaning of diversity. This is an issue not confined to Hamline. Too many people today demand that we respect the diversity of society, but fail to see the diversity of minority communities in those societies. As a result, progressive voices often get dismissed as not being authentic, while the most conservative figures become celebrated as the true embodiment of their communities.

Here, liberal “anti-racism” meets rightwing anti-Muslim bigotry. For bigots, all Muslims are reactionary and their values incompatible with those of liberal societies. For too many liberals, opposing bigotry means accepting reactionary ideas as authentically Muslim; that to be Muslim is to find the Danish cartoons offensive and the depiction of Muhammed “harmful”. Both bigots and liberals erase the richness and variety of Muslim communities.

The Hamline controversy shows how the concepts of diversity and tolerance have become turned on their head. Diversity used to mean the creation of a space for dissent and disagreement and tolerance the willingness to live with things that one might find offensive or distasteful. Now, diversity too often describes a space in which dissent and disagreement have to be expunged in the name of “respect” and tolerance requires one to refrain from saying or doing things that might be deemed offensive. It is time we re-grasped both diversity and tolerance in their original sense.

Yet more triumphs of AI!

Philosopher Ned Hall (Harvard) writes:  "I just thought you’d get a kick out of the attached transcription of a 'chat' I had with GPT3 (a propos of this). I’d say it’s pretty far from passing the Turing test…."  See for yourself:  Download Ned Hall ChatGPT attempting to solve a logic puzzle

Carl Schurz against American imperialism, 1899...

...in a convocation address at the University of Chicago (which John Finnis could benefit from reading); an excerpt:

If we [adopt a colonial system], we shall transform the government of the people, for the people, and by the people, for which Abraham Lincoln lived, into a government of one part of the people, the strong, over another part, the weak. Such an abandonment of a fundamental principle as a permanent policy may at first seem to bear only upon more or less distant dependencies, but it can hardly fail in its ultimate effects to disturb the rule of the same principle in the conduct of democratic government at home. And I warn the American people that a democracy cannot so deny its faith as to the vital conditions of its being--it cannot long play the king over subject populations without creating within itself ways of thinking and habits of action most dangerous to its own vitality. . . .

[W]e are told that our industries are gasping for breath; that we are suffering from over production; that our products must have new outlets, and that we need colonies and dependencies the world over to give us more markets. More markets? Certainly. But do we, civilized beings, indulge in the absurd and barbarous notion that we must own the countries with which we wish to trade? . . .

"But we must civilize those poor people!" Are we not ingenious and charitable enough to do much for their civilization without subjugating and ruling them by criminal aggression?

(For more on Schurz's remarkable life and career, the Wikipedia entry is not bad.)

(Thanks to Sameer Khan for the pointer.)

Fantasies about AI

This seems a good antidote to the silly fantasies (or nightmares) about AI that animate some benighted folks in Oxford--and it comes from a leading AI researcher (who is, alas, a bit of a philosophical muddle on other topics).  An excerpt:

When you work so close to A.I., you see a lot of limitations. That’s the problem. From a distance, it looks like, oh, my God! Up close, I see all the flaws. Whenever there’s a lot of patterns, a lot of data, A.I. is very good at processing that — certain things like the game of Go or chess. But humans have this tendency to believe that if A.I. can do something smart like translation or chess, then it must be really good at all the easy stuff too. The truth is, what’s easy for machines can be hard for humans and vice versa. You’d be surprised how A.I. struggles with basic common sense. It’s crazy....

I’m a big fan of GPT-3, but at the same time I feel that some people make it bigger than it is. Some people say that maybe the Turing test² has already been passed. I disagree because, yeah, maybe it looks as though it may have been passed based on one best performance of GPT-3. But if you look at the average performance, it’s so far from robust human intelligence. We should look at the average case. Because when you pick one best performance, that’s actually human intelligence doing the hard work of selection. The other thing is, although the advancements are exciting in many ways, there are so many things it cannot do well. But people do make that hasty generalization: Because it can do something sometimes really well, then maybe A.G.I.³  is around the corner. There’s no reason to believe so.

3 Artificial general intelligence, which is like the kind of flexible intelligence we humans have, and which a machine would need to be able to learn intellectual tasks at the level of human beings.

"Wilderness therapy"?

A dear and old friend of my wife's is seeking information about this kind of "therapy" (for teens), about which I know nothing (indeed, I'd never heard of it), but I imagine the varied and intelligent readers of this blog may know something.  Any insights welcome.   You can post comments here anonymously or also email me at bleiter-at-uchicago-dot-edu, and I can forward your comments, anonymized or not as you prefer.  All confidential.  (Here's an example of one well-known program, but I gather there are many others out there!)  Thanks for any insight readers can share!

The University of California strike ended just before Xmas

Here's a recap of what transpired.

Republicans and Covid deaths

This is really stark evidence of the pathological dysfunction of this benighted country, in which one of the two major political parties is openly hostile to de minimis public health measures (recall that Americans died of Covid at a rate two to three times that [or more] of other normal countries):

[B]y far the single group of adults most likely to be unvaccinated is Republicans: 37 percent of Republicans are still unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, compared with 9 percent of Democrats. Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Donald Trump in 2020. (The other is Georgia.)

We know that unvaccinated Americans are more likely to be Republican, that Republicans in positions of power led the movement against COVID vaccination, and that hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated Americans have died preventable deaths from the disease. The Republican Party is unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of many of its own supporters, a phenomenon that may be without precedent in the history of both American democracy and virology....

We know that as of April 2022, about 318,000 people had died from COVID because they were unvaccinated, according to research from Brown University. And the close association between Republican vaccine hesitancy and higher death rates has been documented. One study estimated that by the fall of 2021, vaccine uptake accounted for 10 percent of the total difference between Republican and Democratic deaths. But that estimate has changed—and even likely grown—over time....

The UK is falling apart, an ongoing saga

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 20--AS THE COMMENTS SADLY CONFIRM, THE SITUATION IS INDEED GRIM

I guess this is the legacy of Tory rule:

Countless harrowing incidents have called attention to the ambulance problem in Britain, including that of an elderly man whose family covered him with a tarp as he waited seven hours after falling outdoors, and a 17-year-old soccer player who waited for four hours lying on a rainy field after suffering a neck injury....

Ambulance services across the country, almost all of which are part of the National Health Service and managed by an area’s local health trust, have described a rising number of deaths linked to long waits. One English ambulance service noted that the number for its crews had risen from just one in 2020 to at least 37 in 2022.

Curious to hear from UK readers whether this grim picture is accurate.  Waiting hours for emergency help is pretty horrifying.

A. Philip Randolph, a documentary

A propos last week's post:  I happened upon this very good documentary about Randolph, which taught me several things I did not know (including that Randolph, unlike Du Bois, opposed WWI--pretty embarrassing for Du Bois!):

 

The point of education according to Democrats in America

On Twitter, the Secretary of Education in the Biden Administration wrote this:

Every student should have access to an education that aligns with industry demands and evolves to meet the demands of tomorrow’s global workforce.

Remember that this is a Democrat speaking, thus confirming, once again, that the Democrats are simply the party of the prudent (rather than insane) wing of the ruling class in America.   Humboldt where are you when we need you?  Not in the Biden Administration obviously!

A. Philip Randolph's speech at the March on Washington for "Jobs and Freedom" in 1963

MLK's speech is better-known, but I happened upon this recording (below) of the march's organizer, the great labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph.  He really had a majestic speaking voice.   And while de jure racism has been defeated by his efforts, and King's, and many others, the economic issues remain little changed:

 

Harvard's new President

"Diversity" is the theme of most of the coverage, since President Gay is black.  She is also a child of immigrants from Haiti (recall); her father was an engineer; she graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, the elite prep school, and Stanford University, earning her Ph.D. at Harvard.  What really struck me, and would concern me were I a faculty member at Harvard, was this:

“The idea of the ivory tower, that is the past, not the future, of academia,” she said. “We don’t exist outside of society, but as part of it, and that means that Harvard has a duty to lean in and engage and be in service to the world.”

Harvard certainly has played a major role in sustaining class hierarchy in America, although that is perhaps not what she means.  But universities have no "dut[ies] to lean in and engage and be in service to the world":  they have duties to produce knowledge and share it with students.  That is their only service, their raison d'etre.   I conclude with an anecdote I've shared before: 

Boston University School of Public Health suspending its Twitter accounts

They give a thoughtful explanation for why they are doing so here.  Curious to hear from readers about what they are thinking about Twitter, now that the absurd and venal Elon Musk is at the helm.  To be clear, if someone wants to defend the rectitude and moral character of Mr. Musk, please take that to Twitter.  This is for readers who find Musk an appalling personage with a venal political agenda:   how does that affect your thinking about the use of Twitter?   Do take a look at the BUSPH statement before commenting please.

(Thanks to Dr. David Ozonoff for the pointer.)

The FTX/crypto fiasco

For those wondering what exactly Sam Bankman-Fried did wrong, the civil complaint  released today is pretty informative.  (Of course, the allegations  will have to be proved, but it at least explains clearly the alleged wrongdoing.)

UPDATE:  The risk of posting on the run is that things get mixed up.  As David Wallace pointed out to me, I did not post the criminal indictment yesterday (as I originally wrote), but rather the civil complaint, which is highly informative.  Here is the indictment as well.  Note that it charges criminal conspiracy with others "known and unknown" which makes it seem likely more criminal indictments will be coming.

Price-fixing in rental markets in the U.S.?

A philosophy graduate student calls my attention to this expose, and to the fact that at least one law firm is investigating legal remedies.  Obviously rental markets are hugely important to PhD students.  I invite comments from readers more knowledgeable about these matters.

"Cathod Ray Zone," a webzine of arts and letters

Here (a propos this).

Larry Temkin takes on "Effective [sic] Altruism"

I learned of this new book only recently, but it sounds quite interesting.

The EU continues policing Google

They will now require Google to remove inaccurate information from search results.  Google will not go out of business as a result, although opponents of such moves always invoke doomsday scenarios to scare off meaningful regulation in the U.S.

According to a 2007 study, 41% of Black first-year students at Ivy League universities are immigrants or children of immigrants...

...rather than descendants of slaves.   I would guess the figure is higher now.  This is a clear indication of the extent to which the remedial purposes of affirmative action have been undermined in the era of "diversity," an era that is itself about to end.

"Flopping" in football (soccer) is wrong!

Philosopher David Papineau explains in the pages of the NYT.

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

Kanye West and Hitler

To the extent I even noticed Mr. West previously, he struck me as a talentless, ignorant buffoon, like many successful purveyors of "popular" music.   His recent forays into anti-semitism and Nazi sympathizing have put this absurd person back into the news.  One of the better commentaries on this grotesque  display comes from John Ganz; an excerpt:

While all these far-right goonies play constant games, equivocate, make bad faith disavowals, or employ euphemisms, Kanye doesn’t have the time, inclination, or ability to do all that. He just says the underlying truth of this kind of politics: he likes the Nazis! Yes, he pretty much said this verbatim, “I like the Nazis.” It was too much even for [Alex] Jones.

The "for-profit" hospice industry sounds like bad news

This is a rather depressing report, but it's worth reading fora nyone who is confronting end-of-life decisions for someone.

Otto Neurath on "scientific management"

This was an aspect of his work with which I was unfamiliar.  Comments from those more knowledgeable about the accuracy of this account welcome.

Law schools and USNews.com rankings

Readers will have heard about the revolt (which now seems to be petering out) against the awful USNews.com law school rankings (which involve inexplicable weightings of a dozen different variables, many involving self-reported data of dubious reliability).  For those interested, I've been covering it on my law school blog:   here, here, here, and here.

Were you wondering about the sexual behaviors and orientations of Cambridge University undergraduates?

I wasn't either, but this was still amusing (including the fact that philosophy students had the most sexual partners of any major).

The "sociology" of literary studies

Reader Scott Newstok called my attention to this very interesting LRB review essay of John Guillory's latest attempt to look at the history and organization of literary studies as a field.  A brief excerpt:

For Guillory, the pivotal development in the whole story was the arrival of ‘criticism’ as the dominant approach in the 1920s and 1930s, whether in the form of I.A. Richards’s ‘practical criticism’ in the UK or the New Critics’ ‘close reading’ in the US. This is when, in his view, literary studies became a discipline. But the attempt to turn criticism into a regulated and self-replicating profession generated all kinds of tensions, and Guillory urges that many of the issues agitating the field in recent decades are best seen as a working out of these tensions. For example, ‘criticism’ never quite shook off the aspiration to be in some way the criticism of society, not just literature, saddling the activity with exaggerated ambitions still evident today. At the same time, the logic of professionalism required a form of specialisation, a process carried further in the pressures towards intradisciplinary specialisation, which for the past 150 years has tended to take the form of expertise in the literature of a particular period. Even where the most ambitious conception of the discipline retains some overarching claim to underwrite the criticism of society, the cross-grained pressures of professionalisation demand ever greater subdivision: not to specialise is to risk one’s professional status by reverting to being an ‘amateur’.

A similar story might be told about academic philosophy in America one suspects, with the pivotal moment being the logical positivist invasion and takeover of America after WWII.  Thought on Guillory's analysis (or Collini's review) from those more knowledgeable about literary studies welcome (as well as thoughts about the relevance to philosophy).

 

"Salt of the Earth," a blacklisted 1954 movie, makes perfect Thanksgiving day entertainment...

...for those observing the American holiday today (originally posted in 2018):

Based on an actual strike by Mexican-American workers against a zinc mining company, it is set in New Mexico, and uses actual mineworkers and their families in most of the main roles (including the male lead, Juan Chacon--his wife was played by a professional actress, however).   The movie is strongly pro-union, unsurprisingly, but much more  surprisingly, it has a strong pro-feminist twist, that wouldn't have been surprising in 1975, say, but is remarkable for 1954 (I won't spoil that part, you'll have to watch it).  The main writers and directors were blacklisted for refusing to cooperate with the fascist McCarthy Committee, but like other communist sympathizers at the time, they were, in ethical sensibility, well ahead of their time.  (At the end, the movie reveals which actors were "professionals" and which locals--there are several surprises.)

UPDATE:  Readers who enjoy the film may also find this website interesting.

American exceptionalism?

Here's a chart, make of it what you will:

Country	Homicide rate per 100,000	Covid deaths per 100,000	Per capita GDP	GINI coefficient (higher=more inequality)	Military expenditures per capita (2019)
United States	4.96	326.90	$69,287	41.50	$2,224
United Kingdom	1.20	312.41	$47,334	35.10	$  720
Ireland	0.87	164.87	$99,152	30.60	$  228
Australia	0.89	62.77	$59,934	34.30	$1,028
Singapore	0.16	29.04	$72,794	36.00	$1,932
Brazil	27.38	324.10	$  7,518	48.90	$  128
Germany	0.95	188.34	$50,801	31.70	$  590
Switzerland	0.59	163.03	$93,457	33.10	$  603
Chile	4.40	325.20	$16,502	44.90	$  273
Israel	1.49	136.44	$51,430	38.60	$2,402

Is it "effective" altruism to give money to Republicans?

SBF did, as well as to conservative Democrats.

Did Bankman-Fried and his parents need $121 million worth of property in the Bahamas?

I do wonder how his friends in the "Effective [sic] Altruism" movement thought about choices like these.

Why billionaires love "Effective [sic] Altruism"...

...at The New Republic.

(Thanks to Richard Marshall for the pointer.)

The ten "most regretted" college majors

Some deserving ones on the list, some surprising ones; this is by percentage of those who majored in a subject who would now have picked a different one:

1.  Journalism (87%)

2.  Sociology (72%)

3.  Liberal arts/general studies (72%) [not sure how this is defined]

4.  Communications (64%)

5.  Education (61%)

6.  Marketing management & research (60%)

7.  Medical/clinical assisting (58%)

8.  Political science/government (56%)

9.  Biology (52%)

9.  English language & literature (52%)

Curious what readers make of this list. 

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  As Professor Mayer points out in the comments, this is based on a survey of “job seekers,” so not at all a representative sample of colleges graduates.  

The threat to academic freedom in teaching and research from the "woke" thought police, an ongoing saga

A biologist at Williams College recounts her experience:

We each have our own woke tipping point—the moment you realize that social justice is no longer what we thought it was, but has instead morphed into an ugly authoritarianism. For me that moment came in 2018, during an invited speaker talk, when the religious scholar Reza Aslan stated that “we need to write on a stone what can and cannot be discussed in colleges.” Students gave this a standing ovation.  Having been born under dictatorship in Brazil, I was alarmed....

Let’s start with teaching. I need to emphasize that this is not hypothetical. The censorious, fearful climate is already affecting the content of what we teach.

One of the most fundamental rules of biology from plants to humans is that the sexes are defined by the size of their gametes—that is, their reproductive cells. Large gametes occur in females; small gametes in males. In humans, an egg is 10 million times bigger than a sperm. There is zero overlap. It is a full binary. 

But in some biology 101 classes, teachers are telling students that sexes—not gender, sex—are on a continuum. At least one college I know teaches with the “gender unicorn” and informs students that it is bigoted to think that humans come in two distinct and discrete sexes. 

The "glories" of Empire

A useful reminder:

Elkins’s catalog of British interrogation methods is extensive and horrifying: inserting needles under fingernails (Malaya); stuffing oil-soaked sand into a man’s mouth (Palestine); inserting “gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin, sticks, and hot eggs up men’s rectums and into women’s vaginas” (Kenya); pouring large quantities of water up someone’s nose (Palestine); applying electric shocks from car batteries (Kenya); tightening iron rings around a person’s head (Cyprus); subjecting prisoners to intense noise (Northern Ireland); and applying a lighted cigarette to the testicles (Palestine).

Thank God for civilization!

"Effective [sic] Altruists" treat girls like "meat" just like guys who don't posture so much

I think that's a fair summary of this:

EA circles...are widely incestous where people mix their work life (in EA cause areas), their often polyamorous love life and social life in one amalgomous mix without strict separations. This is the default status quo. This means that if you’re a reasonably attractive woman entering an EA community, you get a ton of sexual requests to join polycules, often from poly and partnered men. Some of these men control funding for projects and enjoy high status in EA communities and that means there are real downsides to refusing their sexual advances and pressure to say yes, especially if your career is in an EA cause area or is funded by them.....

From experience it appears that, a ‘no’ once said is not enough for many men in EA. Having to keep replenishing that ‘no’ becomes annoying very fast, and becomes harder to give informed consent when socializing in the presence of alcohol/psychedelics. It puts your safety at risk. From experience, EA as a community, has very little respect for monogamy and many men, often competing with each other, will persuade you to join polyamory using LessWrong style jedi mindtricks while they stand to benefit from the erosion of your boundaries. (Edit: I have personally experienced this more than three times in less than one year of attending EA events and that is far too many times. )

Why did the Democrats do relatively well: the Michigan experience

A longtime reader in Michigan shared these interesting observations: 

Democratic (both in the party affiliation and strict senses) politicians did particularly well in Michigan.

1. All state-wide offices (Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State) went to the Democratic candidates.
2. Democrats have a (narrow) majority in the State House and State Senate.  This is the first time that Democrats control the Legislature and the Governor’s office in ~4 decades. 
3. A couple of Congressional districts thought to be toss-ups or Republican leaning went Democratic.  This includes the historically conservative Grand Rapids area. 
4. Two major voter-initiated proposals to modify the State Constitution passed easily.  The nationally prominent one is modification of the constitution to preserve abortion access.  The other is likely just as important.  Rational voting access is now protected by the state constitution.  This step was taken to prevent our presently Republican dominated legislature from enacting more voting restrictions. 

How did this happen?  Three major factors: