At lunch one day Tyler suggested the essence of ideology is which types of people should be admired. I told him it seemed an excellent insight, pregnant with possibility and well worth pursuing. He’s finally
> Also, I think estimates of homosexuality at 10% are ridiculously high. If they were that high a percentage of the population, homosexuals would be a big enough voting block that we wouldn't be having these debates about what rights homosexuals should have.
This argument doesn't seem to hold water when we consider only a generation or three before it was women who had to fight for many rights. It only makes sense that when a group as large as women get to have their grievances addressed by democratic systems that smaller groups might after a generation or three.
None of this is as subjective as you are pretending. The arch of history points to libertarian outcomes that raise up those that produce the most value in the eyes of others.... and diminish over time those that sit ensconced on the left pontificating, rent seeking, and organizing mobs for their own edification.
Most of the teachers will be fired (Khan Academy), and the public employees will be de-unionized...
And if I'm right about these trends.... this will no longer be a valid discussion. We will see there was only one answer.
To be clear: Value is judged exclusively by money / time, which represents how much of your hour / time is worth how much of someone else's hour time.
So, sure people on the left seek to diminish those who create the most value measured in dollars / time, they'll argue against property rights, they'll fight and kick and scream.... but they are cooked.
The sad thing is it took "spending all the money" to force them into submission.
Hostility to gays tends to be because, as a group, they violate moral norms in supporting their families, acquiescing to authority, and recognizing society specific disgust and elevation objects/goals. For more, see Jonathan Haidt, Planet of the Durkheimians (paper, on his website, or more generally, the paper about moral intuitions that liberals don't have.)
Silas, your last point is apparently not true (that 10% of the population can't veto its own subordination). For a recent example, polling suggests 10% of the population supports reproductive human cloning, but there seems to be a global consensus among nations that human reproductive cloning should be banned.
Silas- this discussion was moved to the open forum, where I thought Nick had some good points too... I think you're right about the 10% (though, some people count anyone whose ever had a homosexual encounter, which is just about 50% of all girls between the ages of 17 and 25 at this point... but, I will say that even 1 or 2% of the population should be enough to raise an eyebrow as to evolutionary fitness.
Lara: there are pretty easy answers to the dilemma's you've posed:
1) Hatred of homosexuality exist because ethnic groups without the norms got massively outbred and then annihilated (sp).
2) Women don't have the same desire to seize power because it doesn't make as much a difference to them in terms of access to mates. (Sad, but true.)
Also, I think estimates of homosexuality at 10% are ridiculously high. If they were that high a percentage of the population, homosexuals would be a big enough voting block that we wouldn't be having these debates about what rights homosexuals should have.
OK- I'll give my own status-classification system, which I'm sure is similar to other people's as well and is probably more well laid out elsewhere, but since nobody has referenced anything similar yet...
I can loosely divide people into three categories:1) The Leaders/Decision Makers- This is the smallest and most elite portion of my social heirarchy. These are the people who have decided to make the world and the history they follow. Very few women, for some reason, seem to choose to take this role in society, for taken this role must be-- it cannot be given, no matter how many movies depict crowds of people promoting the unwilling but wise leader... The role is taken, stolen if necessary, and very little gratitude is shown until decades later if ever. Both Brahmins and Vaysias *can* fall into this class. I respect them both to a very high degree. To quote my current hero, neruosugeon Frank Vertosick, "If you want to accomplish anything important, you have to be totally right-- and willing to take the consequences when you are not... Complicating the matter is that these [surgical] decisions often must be made quickly and with incomplete information." Most people just can't hack it.
2) The Proles/Pawns: Almost everyone, everywhere, at any time falls into this class. Sure, I can *like* these people. I can even love and respect them, but we're just not living in the same world.
3)The Travellers/Watchers: The happiest, most enlightened people you will ever meet. Often artists, freelancers, nomads. They understand destiny and don't give a fuck. They're in it for a good time and, in the end, they really don't care what happens or what the world thinks. So be it.
Wow, this is incredibly dumb. You've rediscovered the "insight" that politics is about power. Because you know, it's not like it's the DEFINITION of politics, not at all..
Andy Wood, let's go back a step to attribution of ideas to individuals. It seems experimentally testable to me the degree to which people want a particular idea enacted depending on whether or not it will be attributed to them as their idea, vs. someone elese's (in particular a status rival's) idea. I think useful experiments like this could be done in a microsociological laboratory.
Constant, yes of course the evidential content of essays must have some influence, but the overall phenomena of ideology makes it hard to believe that this is the only, or even the main, process at work.
It makes me nute when people talk about status as if it is an end. The essence of ideology is not who should be admired; it is whose ideas should be implemented in the real world such that they affect people. It's about power, and power, in the civilized world, is usually about allocation. Status is like an incidental variable that is a side effect of power in some contexts, and a means to it in others.
But the phenomena of ideology still demands explanation.
It need not have a single, blanket explanation, particularly one which depicts ideology as loyalty to a group. Would you seriously argue that Frederic Bastiat was a classical liberal merely because he was loyal to a group (whatever group whose status he wanted to raise)? Or that his readers were classical liberals merely because they were loyal to a group and not because they were persuaded by the content of his essays? If so then Bastiat's arguments were merely rationalizations allowing people to shore up the beliefs they had for other reasons.
> Also, I think estimates of homosexuality at 10% are ridiculously high. If they were that high a percentage of the population, homosexuals would be a big enough voting block that we wouldn't be having these debates about what rights homosexuals should have.
This argument doesn't seem to hold water when we consider only a generation or three before it was women who had to fight for many rights. It only makes sense that when a group as large as women get to have their grievances addressed by democratic systems that smaller groups might after a generation or three.
None of this is as subjective as you are pretending. The arch of history points to libertarian outcomes that raise up those that produce the most value in the eyes of others.... and diminish over time those that sit ensconced on the left pontificating, rent seeking, and organizing mobs for their own edification.
Most of the teachers will be fired (Khan Academy), and the public employees will be de-unionized...
And if I'm right about these trends.... this will no longer be a valid discussion. We will see there was only one answer.
To be clear: Value is judged exclusively by money / time, which represents how much of your hour / time is worth how much of someone else's hour time.
So, sure people on the left seek to diminish those who create the most value measured in dollars / time, they'll argue against property rights, they'll fight and kick and scream.... but they are cooked.
The sad thing is it took "spending all the money" to force them into submission.
Hostility to gays tends to be because, as a group, they violate moral norms in supporting their families, acquiescing to authority, and recognizing society specific disgust and elevation objects/goals. For more, see Jonathan Haidt, Planet of the Durkheimians (paper, on his website, or more generally, the paper about moral intuitions that liberals don't have.)
Now can one of you experts remind me again why America tolerates two girls kissing and spurns two boys kissing?You know, while you're talking.
When did they decide that ten-year-olds don't have sex drives?
Silas, your last point is apparently not true (that 10% of the population can't veto its own subordination). For a recent example, polling suggests 10% of the population supports reproductive human cloning, but there seems to be a global consensus among nations that human reproductive cloning should be banned.
I thought politics was the art of the possible.
Silas- this discussion was moved to the open forum, where I thought Nick had some good points too... I think you're right about the 10% (though, some people count anyone whose ever had a homosexual encounter, which is just about 50% of all girls between the ages of 17 and 25 at this point... but, I will say that even 1 or 2% of the population should be enough to raise an eyebrow as to evolutionary fitness.
Lara: there are pretty easy answers to the dilemma's you've posed:
1) Hatred of homosexuality exist because ethnic groups without the norms got massively outbred and then annihilated (sp).
2) Women don't have the same desire to seize power because it doesn't make as much a difference to them in terms of access to mates. (Sad, but true.)
Also, I think estimates of homosexuality at 10% are ridiculously high. If they were that high a percentage of the population, homosexuals would be a big enough voting block that we wouldn't be having these debates about what rights homosexuals should have.
All arguments must first accept the objective existence of moral archetypes/terminal values.
OK- I'll give my own status-classification system, which I'm sure is similar to other people's as well and is probably more well laid out elsewhere, but since nobody has referenced anything similar yet...
I can loosely divide people into three categories:1) The Leaders/Decision Makers- This is the smallest and most elite portion of my social heirarchy. These are the people who have decided to make the world and the history they follow. Very few women, for some reason, seem to choose to take this role in society, for taken this role must be-- it cannot be given, no matter how many movies depict crowds of people promoting the unwilling but wise leader... The role is taken, stolen if necessary, and very little gratitude is shown until decades later if ever. Both Brahmins and Vaysias *can* fall into this class. I respect them both to a very high degree. To quote my current hero, neruosugeon Frank Vertosick, "If you want to accomplish anything important, you have to be totally right-- and willing to take the consequences when you are not... Complicating the matter is that these [surgical] decisions often must be made quickly and with incomplete information." Most people just can't hack it.
2) The Proles/Pawns: Almost everyone, everywhere, at any time falls into this class. Sure, I can *like* these people. I can even love and respect them, but we're just not living in the same world.
3)The Travellers/Watchers: The happiest, most enlightened people you will ever meet. Often artists, freelancers, nomads. They understand destiny and don't give a fuck. They're in it for a good time and, in the end, they really don't care what happens or what the world thinks. So be it.
Wow, this is incredibly dumb. You've rediscovered the "insight" that politics is about power. Because you know, it's not like it's the DEFINITION of politics, not at all..
Andy Wood, let's go back a step to attribution of ideas to individuals. It seems experimentally testable to me the degree to which people want a particular idea enacted depending on whether or not it will be attributed to them as their idea, vs. someone elese's (in particular a status rival's) idea. I think useful experiments like this could be done in a microsociological laboratory.
Constant, yes of course the evidential content of essays must have some influence, but the overall phenomena of ideology makes it hard to believe that this is the only, or even the main, process at work.
It makes me nute when people talk about status as if it is an end. The essence of ideology is not who should be admired; it is whose ideas should be implemented in the real world such that they affect people. It's about power, and power, in the civilized world, is usually about allocation. Status is like an incidental variable that is a side effect of power in some contexts, and a means to it in others.
But the phenomena of ideology still demands explanation.
It need not have a single, blanket explanation, particularly one which depicts ideology as loyalty to a group. Would you seriously argue that Frederic Bastiat was a classical liberal merely because he was loyal to a group (whatever group whose status he wanted to raise)? Or that his readers were classical liberals merely because they were loyal to a group and not because they were persuaded by the content of his essays? If so then Bastiat's arguments were merely rationalizations allowing people to shore up the beliefs they had for other reasons.