You’re Invited!
Lorenzo & Helen’s March Chatham House Zoom chat
Apologies for sending this out on Saturday 29th rather than Sunday 30th as advertised, but I forgot that March 30th is “clocks forward” in the UK, which means that the Chatham House Zoom call I advertised as being at 10 am GMT is actually 11 am BST (which is, of course, confusing as Hell).
I’m afraid you’ll have to work out what that means in your time zone—I’m incapable of doing so, for reasons explained here.
Below the fold, paid subscribers will have access to the Zoom link for the livestream. If you wish to join us, there’s still a 20 per cent discount on a paid subscription available.
In Wednesday’s piece, I focussed on Lorenzo’s two economics essays, genderwoo, and research from FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) on the covid lab-leak. However, those are things that were simply at top of mind when I was writing. Lorenzo—as is his wont—has come up with a more comprehensive list of the extent to which experts (mainly academics, but also many senior bureaucrats and think-tankers) have absolutely soiled themselves.
Independently of that, we both read
’s tremendous piece on how to go about admitting when you’re wrong. We’re both a bit annoyed we didn’t see this earlier. It’s well worth thinking about in the context of dealing with what is now widespread contempt for clever people generally and academic experts in particular.Nigel is an Anglican vicar, so he uses a religious framework drawing on the Christian virtue of humility, but he deploys it as originally conceived of in late antiquity, that is, as mens humilis. “Mens” means “mind” in Latin. When Romans (both pagan and Christian) talked about this stuff, their concern was explicitly with clever people who’d got high on their own supply. Humilitas (the better-known Latin term) came later, and obviously applies more generally than the original phrase. If you’re not religious, park your irreligiousness for a bit and read what he’s written with an open mind.
So far, I have alluded to the role of intellectual virtue in handling historical controversy. I have spoken of my own sense of obligation to expose my viscerally unionist convictions to the arguments of Scottish secessionists, just in case those contained truths I should learn—that is, I gestured toward the virtue of docility. I have alluded to the duty to be open to the whole truth about the past, not just the convenient parts—that is, the duty to exercise the virtue of honesty. I have spoken of the duty of avoiding moral or political bias—that is, the duty to exercise the virtue of justice-as-fairness.
And I have mentioned the virtue of humility in remembering our creaturely limitation by time and place as we judge the behaviour of our ancestors. One of the most shocking revelations of my experience of the history culture war during the past six years is how many university professors of history display a lack of intellectual virtue.
Meanwhile, here’s Lorenzo’s thoughts on—and laundry list of—expert loopiness in recent times.
Lorenzo on Delusion as Moral Signal
The thirteenth essay in the Worshipping the Future series (which will recommence shortly) was entitled In the absence of reality-testing, bullshit wins. My thesis is simple: if there are not sufficiently binding reality-tests, what is persuasive wins out over what is true.
In particular, what establishes someone’s moralised in-group status wins out over what is true. What grants moralised in-group status has powerful appeal, so is likely to be persuasive. As the essay says:
If, however, such [reality] tests are weak or absent, that means the costs of error are low. If the costs of error are low, then the efficient level of self-deception, the level of self-deception that enables us to be more persuasive and more able to moralise and rationalise our self-interest, is going to be high.
This is not an idle point. Let’s consider some of the ideas recently popular among the “better educated”:
That a person with a penis can be a woman.
That there is no problem having someone who has gone through male puberty competing in women’s sports. (Why, pray tell, is there a category of “women’s sports” in the first place?)
That the surgical and hormonal mutilation and sterilisation of minors for gender non-conforming behaviour represents care and compassion.
That only fools do not believe in evolution but humans are blank slates.
That there are no differences in cognitive patterns between men and women.
That moralising racial differences is outrageous if you put whites on top but morally laudable if you put whites on the bottom.
That it is outrageous to preference men but morally laudable to preference women.
That if you criticise men, it’s feminism; but if you criticise women, it’s misogyny.
That words are violence but silence is also violence.
That Russiagate was accurate reporting (and was absolutely not QAnon for the college-educated).
That the lab-leak hypothesis was a racist conspiracy theory (when there was systematic suppression of the evidence for a lab leak).
That the Hunter Biden laptop was likely a Russian misinformation op.
That there was no issue with President Biden’s cognitive capacity (“sharp as a tack,” yes really).
That defunding the police would have no effect on homicide rates.
That a disease whose risks were overwhelmingly concentrated among the metabolically compromised demanded general lockdowns and closed schools.
That there was no such thing as natural immunity from having caught Covid. (What are vaccines designed to replicate again?)
“My body, my choice” except it was fine to make compulsory a new medical intervention if you call it vaccines (when we don’t make actual vaccines compulsory, as historical experience shows that backfires).
That migration is such that marginal benefits exceed marginal costs for everyone in society.
That requiring a photo ID for voting is outrageous voter suppression but it is absolutely fine to demand proof of vaccination (or rather “vaccination”) to go about the ordinary business of life.
That Jews are not indigenous to Israel, so can be treated as settler-colonialists, even if they are refugees from Muslim countries. But Arabs are indigenous to Palestine, despite arriving centuries later.
That it was perfectly fine—indeed defending democracy—to knock Donald Trump off the ballot for something he had neither been charged with nor convicted of (so legally outrageous that SCOTUS squished that 9-0).
Progressive politics has essentially become about inserting the professional-managerial class into every possible resource flow with as much control over discourse as possible—like pressuring social media companies to do end-runs around the First Amendment—while playing favour-divide-and-dominate identity politics and treating dissent as morally and cognitively illegitimate.
The combination of massive increases in bureaucratisation; university “training” with weak or absent feedbacks from the consequences of such training; a burgeoning advocacy/non-profit sector; and use of public funds in the US and in the EU to support astroturfed activism, has created a large, parasitic, insulated-from-feedbacks sector.
You can make an argument that we now have the most delusional leadership class in history: one that affirms things not only without evidence but against the evidence. How so? Because rationalising away inconvenient facts has become a marker signal of being one of the Very Serious People, one of the Smart and Good. This is something that works far better than it should because so many highly educated—or at least credentialed—people are insulated from the consequences of their policy choices.
In the absence of reality-testing, bullshit wins. Hence the spectacular levels of bullshit adopted and spouted by Very Serious People.
No wonder “culture war” politics—which is mostly class war politics: the professional-managerial class versus the working class, with de-banking as an instrument of industrial policy having driven the tech-bros from the former to the latter—has overwhelmed sound fiscal, economic, and other policy across so much of the West.
 | A guest post by
|