Some relevant discussion of how bad the feeling of exclusion can be compared to other bad experiences:
"what I saw on playgrounds and in classrooms was nice, normal, popular children hurting vulnerable children by making them feel ugly, inferior, shut out of the world of goodness and normalcy, and doing it routinely for years. At the same time I was learning about the far worse cruelty of groups in the adult world, race-hate and anti-semitism (also deployed to shut people out of “goodness”), lynch mobs made up of “normal” people who seemed to me larger versions of those nice, normal kids, normally looking to discharge their normal aggression on someone.
What the rapist had done was an acknowledged wrong; it would’ve been different if he’d been a normal member of my community—whatever that might’ve been for a runaway teen—but he wasn’t, he was an obviously mentally sick criminal destined for a world of shit. He was bad officially and as such he could terrify me and hurt me physically. But he could never make me feel as worthless and humiliated as my officially nice peers—along with some nice teachers, more or less decent close relatives and child psychiatrists—had made me feel, in many different contexts previous to my unfortunate run-in with him. Nor for that matter could he make me feel as bad as some officially nice men I voluntarily dated long after.
It bears repeating: A physical attack on what I called female life force is a serious thing but so are psychic attacks on an unformed child by essentially the child’s entire community; so are many forms of cruelty. By the time I was raped at age 17 I knew something about it, personally and generally—enough that I was not shocked by the fact of this violent assault. Given what I knew, I could not understand why I had been brought up to see rape as the ultimate evil. And I was sick of hearing that women are destroyed by rape, sick of it. The idea was profoundly offensive to my pride. Yes the experience was terrible, yes it caused me to carry fear in my body that could unexpectedly surface. But it did not come close to destroying me. It hurt me. But not as much as other things. "
I'm younger than him, but that sort of thing still happened to a lesser degree in the 70s. 'Smear the Queer' was a gang-up game of chase and tackle against unpopular kids. Of course, now we do it online.
" 'Smear the Queer' was a gang-up game of chase and tackle against unpopular kids."
In the 90s, despite, retaining the name, I remember it as simply being about chasing and tackling whoever has the football. If you didn't want to be chased and tackled during that game, simply don't pick up the football.
The goal being, well, to retain possession of the football untackled for a considerable amount of time.
Mary did not exclude Chanel Miler. She initially said she was going to write a negative review, but then had second thoughts and didn't do so. She included her thoughts on Miller's book in that post precisely to illustrate how reactions can vary.
For a blog titled 'overcoming bias', I would have expected a bit less of the 'availability heuristics' and 'appeal to authority'.
"excellent 2014 book on how men differ from women" - or one confirming a prejudice, I like and written by a woman, so OK to cite?
"Social exclusion is primarily a female strategy" - I don't think this actually describes the evidence as presented. Should we trust the hugely replication-scarce social psych research, it still only focuses on a very narrow sliver of 'gendered lives'. I'd certainly want some more investigation here than 'it rings true'. Also, could we not find any alternative explanations?
Because of the threat of sexual assault women are much more in need of emotionally and physically safe spaces in same-gender environments - thus the fear of exclusion. And once you have a close relationship in a tight-knit group - all the stress and drama ensues. Look at monasteries, prisons, sports teams, families, etc. Nothing to do with gender - just social organisation.
"This all suggests to me that “cancel culture” can be seen as a straightforward extension of a common relatively-female strategy" - really? was the cancel culture that was the red scare a bunch of men just being women, the apartheid that was South Africa and Southern US a female invention, was the word 'ostracism' (look up the etymology) invented based on female proclivities? Read Kundera's Joke, or anything about the Cultural Revolution - was all of that their version of feminisation of culture?
Let me propose an alternative theory: "every culture is cancel culture". That is almost the definition of culture. Men and women are socialised differently both because of tradition and explicable 'logistics of life' reasons with a bit of biology thrown in.
You don't have to be a feminist (I am) or a conformist to the current moment (I am not) to find this offensive to the very notion of unbiased reason. Surely you can do better.
Your level of skepticism is not founded in reality. The default assumption is not "It must be the environment unless proven otherwise." Decades of behavioral genetics studies have conclusively demonstrated substantial heritabilities (50%) for most psychological traits. The idea that gender differences contain a large biological component is a credible theory by default.
Culture, when applied consistently across evolutionary timescales become biology. If women are more in need of tight-knit groups, then over time they will develop gender-specific instincts more adaptive to living in tight-knit groups.
People have been 'cancelling' each other for millions of years, the difference today is scale and the reasons for exclusion.
Women are witches, to put it nicely, and they are born that way. Too bad you cannot face the fact that they are.
I've heard my co-workers talk about how difficult it is to manage simple sleepovers with young girls. I've been ostracized both in school and at work. Just like the experiments above describe.
The feminization of our culture has very bad consequences.
I heard a story (from someone who claimed to know) about when Barbara Walters went down to Plains, GA to interview Jimmy Carter's mother.
At the end of the interview the following dialog took place:
Barbara Walters: "Does Jimmy always tell the truth"
Mrs. Carter: "Well, yes, except for the occasional white lie."|
Barbara Walters: "What's an example of a white lie?"
Mrs. Carter: "Well, remember when I told you how happy I was to see you and how good you look?"
I think we are seeing Mrs. Carter moving from Strategy 1 to Strategy 2, even though there aren't any other women around. She goes from from palsy-walsy-yes-dearie to aggressive rejection in one line.
The review you posted also reminds me of one of H. L. Mencken's pithy sayings: "When I see women kissing, I am always reminded of prize fighters touching gloves."
I just started reading this substack, I respect Robin Hanson as a very smart, slightly edge-lordy but generally responsible public intellectual. It's depressing that the comments veer immediately into this ugly territory. I mean, promoting unz.com?
I actually don't think Robin Hanson thinks much different. You may remember how he thought about redistributing sex a few years ago to help incels. And he said in Twitter how he thinks women are "eugenics" for having only sex with attractive men.
Maybe the "vibe shift" since you made this comment makes my years-later reply irrelevant, but this is a pretty weird thing for you to say. Women and men are extremely eugenic in their mate selection. This has been clearly understood since at least Darwin. There's not really any question here, it's an empirical fact that any evolutionary biologist would confirm.
It is hilarious how tightly libs must police the Overton window.
You would have rejected this article as bigotry 5 years ago right after you liked a CIA sponsored tweet about how the unvaccinated should be put into camps.
Exactly what I was thinking. Compare to commenters on Astral Codex Ten. Even when Scott writes about controversial ideas, he mostly gets sensible, thoughtful comments. This blog has way too high a ratio of crazies.
It doesn't make sense to me to one the one hand say, women form cooperative groups less, while on the other hand saying, look how they form cooperating groups to exclude others! How are we meant to reconcile this?
Women apparently do this, more women are in the workforce now, and cancel culture has recently seemed to go wild ~ 2020 on. But why the sudden increase in cancel culture then? Did female participation dramatically increase suddenly at that time (don’t think so), or did they simply cross some critical threshold influence at that time?
Certainly seems plausible that some critical threshold might be needed for an embargo of an individual to work.
Is cancel culture more prevalent in fields with more women in them?
I feel torn about the recent(ly-made-prominent) feminist pushback against the stigmatization of gossip. On one hand, one cannot deny the effectiveness of whisper networks for keeping women safe when confrontation with men could turn violent. And feminist critics are reasonabls to point out that men, especially the "Old Boys' Club," arguably gossip just as much. But at the same time, I feel like the metastasization of this dynamic has been very destructive to the general social fabric, and as an autistic man, my entire life as a bachelor was spent unjustly tormented by prejudicial "normie" girls who would misread my autistic body language and speech patterns as "creepy" and then treat me as though I had assaulted someone, basically ruining my life begore I could ever secure a social foothold in any "normie" community I tried to join. My only relief was meeting a neurodivergent woman who was also an outcast—now my beloved wife of nearly a decade, still going strong. She has similar experiences with female bullying. So I have no idea how to balance the safety utility of gossipy dynamics like you describe in this article against anti-ableist concerns and my own seething personal resentments.
There are no "old boy" networks. That is a myth. Go to San Jose or Palo Alto and visit those big powerful tech firms. None of those guys were getting laid in high school. In a competitive market, who you know is useless without providing a better product or service. I have seen good friends end relationships to save ten percent.
… there are a lot more places and social contexts than just Silicon Valley, dude. Many places, thanks to the aforementioned Old Boys’ Clubs, are quite “anticompetitive markets” indeed, rife with nepotism and incompetence. If we’re just going to drop the names of places and imply they’re emblematic of the whole universe, I’ll retort with “go to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and visit one of those big powerful plantation-owner fraternities”.
I am not sure how many people work on plantations. Perhaps I am incorrect, but less than 2% of Americans are employed in agriculture, without almost none of those as farm hands, but perhaps Alabama is an agricultural powerhouse I am unaware of.
Personally, I worked in finance for the first ten years of my career, and it was textbook meritocracy. A smart kid from India, China or Ghana can get ahead as well as rich white guy by being more intelligent and harder working. Immigrants have been out-competing so-called elites for over two hundred years now. The only exceptions are government-related contracts. Those are still dirty. More diversity regimes usually work to create contracts with the appropriate group identity, not to obtain a better deal for the taxpayer, or god forbid, give random people a chance.
Defense contracting is small, but still a multiple of agriculture. But I will give it to you, Alabama might be that big exception. Perhaps they are all tilling the land as agriculture workers. It would explain why their average incomes are so low (usually Alabama and Mississippi to see who is the poorest state in the union).
Outside of third world America, there are no old boys networks. There are competency networks. These are good. That is the difference between rich countries and poor ones. The economically illiterate foolishly discuss "resources." Economists know better. Wealth comes from human capital and strong institutions. Both lead to competitive markets where the lazy and inefficient get ravaged. Outside of government, it is rare to find uncompetitive industries.
It’s more of a big timber plantation and labor colony for cheap car manufacturing these days (still a lot of agruculture too, but that’s reliant on illegal Mexican migrant labor like everywhere else in the country; and yes, also obscene amounts of federal military contracting); but when I refer to planters, I mean the aristocratic families which did own plantations (and probably do still own the land, whatever its current use) and who still rule the state, it’s just that now they have their wealth spread around in all sorts of financial directions, basically coasting on the initial wealth their ancestors stole from the slaves they owned and then passed down the generations as it grew itself via investments and interest.
Likewise in many other Southern states. There’s also a similar situation in many frontier Western states, where big-ranch landholders (often offshoots of Southern slaveocrat dynasties, or else descendants of “entrepreneurial” Southern whites who aspired to the planters’ example) and extractive-industry types rule the roost.
And any familiarity at all with the economic state of small- to medium-sized towns in the US will show you that they are often dominated by families of “small-business tyrants” via the Chamber of Commerce—consistently documented to be one of the most diehard demographics of Trump’s supporters, as it happens, which should underline how much this kind of thing has real-world consequences.
There is so much political economy, history, and sociology you seem to either be ignoring or never knew in the first place. Which is fine, we all have to start somewhere, but some epistemic humility is in order in that case. Your experience of (so-called) meritocracy (leaving aside the question of what even counts as “merit,” who determines it, and why) is neither universal nor even representative of large swathes of economic and political life both today and in the past.
"though it must also have other causes. (What?)"--> certain individuals not being able to come to terms with their own awfulness and inadequacy,going to great lengths to play a blame game of "why its not their fault and in fact everyone else is wrong" and "its so unfair that they excluded me for being an insufferable shitbird"😆which is very typical narcissistic behaviour but we cant talk about that now can we?
Alas, this rings true. When trolls on the internet shout "Repeal the 19th amendment!" they're of course not addressing the root problem, but they're not wrong either.
Leo, do you think that introducing the idea (even in a light-hearted way) of taking away half the population's voting rights is productive for the conversation? It seems to me that when commentators say crazy or extreme things, it contributes toward discrediting the post, the poster, and the whole line of inquiry.
The question of men's and women's evolutionary psychology is legitimate and interesting, and even people who disagree about it violently should be able to talk about it. But when people start talking about repealing the 19th amendment... I mean come on.
Yes, I do. There are inherent contradictions in the modern conception of democracy, and it is always useful to point them out regardless of offense. If we wish to understand society, it is not at all useful to mark off big portions of the conceptual option space as barred to entry behind signs that read 'crazy' or 'extreme'.
In your own case, for instance, note the deep ideological assumptions behind using a phrase like "take away". Repealing an amendment wouldn't be taking away a right unless we had already agreed that something other than the amendment itself granted that right. Without the second amendment would we have the right to own firearms? Is there such a thing as a God-given right to own guns or own land or own slaves that can be unfairly taken away? Repealing an amendment would be saying "oops that wasn't a right, it was a mistake".
OK, if you define “rights” as god-given, then laws neither grant nor take away rights. But they do grant or take away legal capacities, and taking away a person’s capacity to vote is a big deal. I think a position is “extreme” if it’s significantly outside the Overton window. I don’t think it should be taboo to entertain extreme ideas. But introducing them into a public conversation may derail that conversation. Introducing them in support of one side in a debate will, pragmatically speaking, tend to discredit that side by associating it with extreme ideas, especially when they are shocking, distasteful, or deeply threatening to other participants in the conversation. If most other proponents of that side do not themselves accept the “extreme” idea that you are introducing in support of that side, introducing it seems irresponsible: it undermines the whole conversation.
In this context, what I see is Hanson initiating a conversation about current research into the evolutionary psychology of women and men, which many people reject and (rightly or wrongly) don’t want to talk about at all. You are introducing the idea that this research implies that women should lose their capacity to vote in elections – not endorsing that idea, but suggesting we should consider that idea. But when other people in other contexts claim that Hanson’s ideas imply taking the vote away from women (which I really doubt he supports, but if true would be a pretty conclusive argument against him for most of us), you have contributed to making that claim more persuasive. From your own perspective, don’t the costs of your comment outweigh the benefits?
Maybe you don’t accept the premise that this is a “debate” about the value of evolutionary psychology; maybe we should treat comments sections as more of a free-wheeling conversation, just spit-balling ideas, see what sticks. Even so, talking about repealing the 19th amendment has the effect of pushing people out of the conversation. In terms of its interpersonal effect, it’s a little like shouting swears. You have every right to do that, obviously! But it’s irresponsible.
"Without the second amendment would we have the right to own firearms? Is there such a thing as a God-given right to own guns ... that can be unfairly taken away?"
I'm not sure if you were using an example or asking a question, but if the latter, the answer is yes, there is. Not just as stated in the Declaration of Independence, but reaffirmed several times by the Supreme Court, most notably in US v. Cruikshank (92 US 542; (1875)), where it ruled that both freedom of assembly and the right to keep and bear arms "existed long before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. It was not, therefore, a right granted to the people by the Constitution... Neither is it in any manner dependant upon that instrument for its existence."
With all possible respect and charity, this is like asking someone for evidence of the existence of God and watching them pull out a Bible and start reading from it.
The seeming similarity to cancel culture could be explained if there was a parallel to whatever *reasons* women are supposedly [evolutionarily or not] motivated to this set of strategies. I don't see the explanation above but there are hints that "competition" there means (to both men and women) fighting for parts of a fixed pie. Maybe part of it is that women need to avoid seeming hurtful, or need to avoid risks of retaliation more. The fixed pie could mean a non-expanding economy? Retaliation-avoidance because modern communication has fewer filters for unfair accusations, or fewer ways to make money by being fair?
Sounds like you finally watched Mean Girls (from 2004) & thought "Surely I can find a way to link this plot to something I don't like & blame women for it. AHA...Me Too & cancel culture...perfect!"
By coincidence, Slate recently published an interview with Mary Gaitskill, which led me to this:
https://marygaitskill.substack.com/p/writing-about-rape
Some relevant discussion of how bad the feeling of exclusion can be compared to other bad experiences:
"what I saw on playgrounds and in classrooms was nice, normal, popular children hurting vulnerable children by making them feel ugly, inferior, shut out of the world of goodness and normalcy, and doing it routinely for years. At the same time I was learning about the far worse cruelty of groups in the adult world, race-hate and anti-semitism (also deployed to shut people out of “goodness”), lynch mobs made up of “normal” people who seemed to me larger versions of those nice, normal kids, normally looking to discharge their normal aggression on someone.
What the rapist had done was an acknowledged wrong; it would’ve been different if he’d been a normal member of my community—whatever that might’ve been for a runaway teen—but he wasn’t, he was an obviously mentally sick criminal destined for a world of shit. He was bad officially and as such he could terrify me and hurt me physically. But he could never make me feel as worthless and humiliated as my officially nice peers—along with some nice teachers, more or less decent close relatives and child psychiatrists—had made me feel, in many different contexts previous to my unfortunate run-in with him. Nor for that matter could he make me feel as bad as some officially nice men I voluntarily dated long after.
It bears repeating: A physical attack on what I called female life force is a serious thing but so are psychic attacks on an unformed child by essentially the child’s entire community; so are many forms of cruelty. By the time I was raped at age 17 I knew something about it, personally and generally—enough that I was not shocked by the fact of this violent assault. Given what I knew, I could not understand why I had been brought up to see rape as the ultimate evil. And I was sick of hearing that women are destroyed by rape, sick of it. The idea was profoundly offensive to my pride. Yes the experience was terrible, yes it caused me to carry fear in my body that could unexpectedly surface. But it did not come close to destroying me. It hurt me. But not as much as other things. "
Thanks for sharing this post. The comments on Robin Hanson's substack are mostly pretty disturbing.
Yeah, seems to be a Safe Space for incels...Sad.
ha ha. That explains a lot.
Gaitskill's substack post got put behind a subscribers-only wall, but she wrote along the same lines here:
https://genedseminars.umb.edu/engl273-2/spg09/documents/HarpersMagazine-1994-03-0001592.pdf
Gerry Anderson describes how his schoolmates would dance around him, shouting, "Jew boy, Jew boy!" https://www.gerryanderson.com/documentary/
I'm younger than him, but that sort of thing still happened to a lesser degree in the 70s. 'Smear the Queer' was a gang-up game of chase and tackle against unpopular kids. Of course, now we do it online.
" 'Smear the Queer' was a gang-up game of chase and tackle against unpopular kids."
In the 90s, despite, retaining the name, I remember it as simply being about chasing and tackling whoever has the football. If you didn't want to be chased and tackled during that game, simply don't pick up the football.
The goal being, well, to retain possession of the football untackled for a considerable amount of time.
I recall that as well
A great quote from one of the most intelligent writers in the English-speaking world!
Mary did not exclude Chanel Miler. She initially said she was going to write a negative review, but then had second thoughts and didn't do so. She included her thoughts on Miller's book in that post precisely to illustrate how reactions can vary.
For a blog titled 'overcoming bias', I would have expected a bit less of the 'availability heuristics' and 'appeal to authority'.
"excellent 2014 book on how men differ from women" - or one confirming a prejudice, I like and written by a woman, so OK to cite?
"Social exclusion is primarily a female strategy" - I don't think this actually describes the evidence as presented. Should we trust the hugely replication-scarce social psych research, it still only focuses on a very narrow sliver of 'gendered lives'. I'd certainly want some more investigation here than 'it rings true'. Also, could we not find any alternative explanations?
Because of the threat of sexual assault women are much more in need of emotionally and physically safe spaces in same-gender environments - thus the fear of exclusion. And once you have a close relationship in a tight-knit group - all the stress and drama ensues. Look at monasteries, prisons, sports teams, families, etc. Nothing to do with gender - just social organisation.
"This all suggests to me that “cancel culture” can be seen as a straightforward extension of a common relatively-female strategy" - really? was the cancel culture that was the red scare a bunch of men just being women, the apartheid that was South Africa and Southern US a female invention, was the word 'ostracism' (look up the etymology) invented based on female proclivities? Read Kundera's Joke, or anything about the Cultural Revolution - was all of that their version of feminisation of culture?
Let me propose an alternative theory: "every culture is cancel culture". That is almost the definition of culture. Men and women are socialised differently both because of tradition and explicable 'logistics of life' reasons with a bit of biology thrown in.
You don't have to be a feminist (I am) or a conformist to the current moment (I am not) to find this offensive to the very notion of unbiased reason. Surely you can do better.
Your level of skepticism is not founded in reality. The default assumption is not "It must be the environment unless proven otherwise." Decades of behavioral genetics studies have conclusively demonstrated substantial heritabilities (50%) for most psychological traits. The idea that gender differences contain a large biological component is a credible theory by default.
Culture, when applied consistently across evolutionary timescales become biology. If women are more in need of tight-knit groups, then over time they will develop gender-specific instincts more adaptive to living in tight-knit groups.
People have been 'cancelling' each other for millions of years, the difference today is scale and the reasons for exclusion.
Women are witches, to put it nicely, and they are born that way. Too bad you cannot face the fact that they are.
I've heard my co-workers talk about how difficult it is to manage simple sleepovers with young girls. I've been ostracized both in school and at work. Just like the experiments above describe.
The feminization of our culture has very bad consequences.
Spot on
I heard a story (from someone who claimed to know) about when Barbara Walters went down to Plains, GA to interview Jimmy Carter's mother.
At the end of the interview the following dialog took place:
Barbara Walters: "Does Jimmy always tell the truth"
Mrs. Carter: "Well, yes, except for the occasional white lie."|
Barbara Walters: "What's an example of a white lie?"
Mrs. Carter: "Well, remember when I told you how happy I was to see you and how good you look?"
I think we are seeing Mrs. Carter moving from Strategy 1 to Strategy 2, even though there aren't any other women around. She goes from from palsy-walsy-yes-dearie to aggressive rejection in one line.
The review you posted also reminds me of one of H. L. Mencken's pithy sayings: "When I see women kissing, I am always reminded of prize fighters touching gloves."
I just started reading this substack, I respect Robin Hanson as a very smart, slightly edge-lordy but generally responsible public intellectual. It's depressing that the comments veer immediately into this ugly territory. I mean, promoting unz.com?
I actually don't think Robin Hanson thinks much different. You may remember how he thought about redistributing sex a few years ago to help incels. And he said in Twitter how he thinks women are "eugenics" for having only sex with attractive men.
Maybe the "vibe shift" since you made this comment makes my years-later reply irrelevant, but this is a pretty weird thing for you to say. Women and men are extremely eugenic in their mate selection. This has been clearly understood since at least Darwin. There's not really any question here, it's an empirical fact that any evolutionary biologist would confirm.
It is hilarious how tightly libs must police the Overton window.
You would have rejected this article as bigotry 5 years ago right after you liked a CIA sponsored tweet about how the unvaccinated should be put into camps.
Exactly what I was thinking. Compare to commenters on Astral Codex Ten. Even when Scott writes about controversial ideas, he mostly gets sensible, thoughtful comments. This blog has way too high a ratio of crazies.
Scott stopped writing about controversial ideas. Your definition of controversial is outdated.
It doesn't make sense to me to one the one hand say, women form cooperative groups less, while on the other hand saying, look how they form cooperating groups to exclude others! How are we meant to reconcile this?
Social inclusion is inherently built on exclusion. To include a certain group, you must exclude others.
As noted in the article, it says women form groups and typically abuse an outsider.
One point addresses how often women form cooperative groups, the other addresses what they do with them. They're logically independent.
Women apparently do this, more women are in the workforce now, and cancel culture has recently seemed to go wild ~ 2020 on. But why the sudden increase in cancel culture then? Did female participation dramatically increase suddenly at that time (don’t think so), or did they simply cross some critical threshold influence at that time?
Certainly seems plausible that some critical threshold might be needed for an embargo of an individual to work.
Is cancel culture more prevalent in fields with more women in them?
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/
No, that's not it. https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/wokism#women-and-wokism
I feel torn about the recent(ly-made-prominent) feminist pushback against the stigmatization of gossip. On one hand, one cannot deny the effectiveness of whisper networks for keeping women safe when confrontation with men could turn violent. And feminist critics are reasonabls to point out that men, especially the "Old Boys' Club," arguably gossip just as much. But at the same time, I feel like the metastasization of this dynamic has been very destructive to the general social fabric, and as an autistic man, my entire life as a bachelor was spent unjustly tormented by prejudicial "normie" girls who would misread my autistic body language and speech patterns as "creepy" and then treat me as though I had assaulted someone, basically ruining my life begore I could ever secure a social foothold in any "normie" community I tried to join. My only relief was meeting a neurodivergent woman who was also an outcast—now my beloved wife of nearly a decade, still going strong. She has similar experiences with female bullying. So I have no idea how to balance the safety utility of gossipy dynamics like you describe in this article against anti-ableist concerns and my own seething personal resentments.
There are no "old boy" networks. That is a myth. Go to San Jose or Palo Alto and visit those big powerful tech firms. None of those guys were getting laid in high school. In a competitive market, who you know is useless without providing a better product or service. I have seen good friends end relationships to save ten percent.
… there are a lot more places and social contexts than just Silicon Valley, dude. Many places, thanks to the aforementioned Old Boys’ Clubs, are quite “anticompetitive markets” indeed, rife with nepotism and incompetence. If we’re just going to drop the names of places and imply they’re emblematic of the whole universe, I’ll retort with “go to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and visit one of those big powerful plantation-owner fraternities”.
I am not sure how many people work on plantations. Perhaps I am incorrect, but less than 2% of Americans are employed in agriculture, without almost none of those as farm hands, but perhaps Alabama is an agricultural powerhouse I am unaware of.
Personally, I worked in finance for the first ten years of my career, and it was textbook meritocracy. A smart kid from India, China or Ghana can get ahead as well as rich white guy by being more intelligent and harder working. Immigrants have been out-competing so-called elites for over two hundred years now. The only exceptions are government-related contracts. Those are still dirty. More diversity regimes usually work to create contracts with the appropriate group identity, not to obtain a better deal for the taxpayer, or god forbid, give random people a chance.
Defense contracting is small, but still a multiple of agriculture. But I will give it to you, Alabama might be that big exception. Perhaps they are all tilling the land as agriculture workers. It would explain why their average incomes are so low (usually Alabama and Mississippi to see who is the poorest state in the union).
Outside of third world America, there are no old boys networks. There are competency networks. These are good. That is the difference between rich countries and poor ones. The economically illiterate foolishly discuss "resources." Economists know better. Wealth comes from human capital and strong institutions. Both lead to competitive markets where the lazy and inefficient get ravaged. Outside of government, it is rare to find uncompetitive industries.
It’s more of a big timber plantation and labor colony for cheap car manufacturing these days (still a lot of agruculture too, but that’s reliant on illegal Mexican migrant labor like everywhere else in the country; and yes, also obscene amounts of federal military contracting); but when I refer to planters, I mean the aristocratic families which did own plantations (and probably do still own the land, whatever its current use) and who still rule the state, it’s just that now they have their wealth spread around in all sorts of financial directions, basically coasting on the initial wealth their ancestors stole from the slaves they owned and then passed down the generations as it grew itself via investments and interest.
Likewise in many other Southern states. There’s also a similar situation in many frontier Western states, where big-ranch landholders (often offshoots of Southern slaveocrat dynasties, or else descendants of “entrepreneurial” Southern whites who aspired to the planters’ example) and extractive-industry types rule the roost.
And any familiarity at all with the economic state of small- to medium-sized towns in the US will show you that they are often dominated by families of “small-business tyrants” via the Chamber of Commerce—consistently documented to be one of the most diehard demographics of Trump’s supporters, as it happens, which should underline how much this kind of thing has real-world consequences.
There is so much political economy, history, and sociology you seem to either be ignoring or never knew in the first place. Which is fine, we all have to start somewhere, but some epistemic humility is in order in that case. Your experience of (so-called) meritocracy (leaving aside the question of what even counts as “merit,” who determines it, and why) is neither universal nor even representative of large swathes of economic and political life both today and in the past.
The comments here are great examples of the dynamics described.
"though it must also have other causes. (What?)"--> certain individuals not being able to come to terms with their own awfulness and inadequacy,going to great lengths to play a blame game of "why its not their fault and in fact everyone else is wrong" and "its so unfair that they excluded me for being an insufferable shitbird"😆which is very typical narcissistic behaviour but we cant talk about that now can we?
Alas, this rings true. When trolls on the internet shout "Repeal the 19th amendment!" they're of course not addressing the root problem, but they're not wrong either.
Leo, do you think that introducing the idea (even in a light-hearted way) of taking away half the population's voting rights is productive for the conversation? It seems to me that when commentators say crazy or extreme things, it contributes toward discrediting the post, the poster, and the whole line of inquiry.
The question of men's and women's evolutionary psychology is legitimate and interesting, and even people who disagree about it violently should be able to talk about it. But when people start talking about repealing the 19th amendment... I mean come on.
Yes, I do. There are inherent contradictions in the modern conception of democracy, and it is always useful to point them out regardless of offense. If we wish to understand society, it is not at all useful to mark off big portions of the conceptual option space as barred to entry behind signs that read 'crazy' or 'extreme'.
In your own case, for instance, note the deep ideological assumptions behind using a phrase like "take away". Repealing an amendment wouldn't be taking away a right unless we had already agreed that something other than the amendment itself granted that right. Without the second amendment would we have the right to own firearms? Is there such a thing as a God-given right to own guns or own land or own slaves that can be unfairly taken away? Repealing an amendment would be saying "oops that wasn't a right, it was a mistake".
OK, if you define “rights” as god-given, then laws neither grant nor take away rights. But they do grant or take away legal capacities, and taking away a person’s capacity to vote is a big deal. I think a position is “extreme” if it’s significantly outside the Overton window. I don’t think it should be taboo to entertain extreme ideas. But introducing them into a public conversation may derail that conversation. Introducing them in support of one side in a debate will, pragmatically speaking, tend to discredit that side by associating it with extreme ideas, especially when they are shocking, distasteful, or deeply threatening to other participants in the conversation. If most other proponents of that side do not themselves accept the “extreme” idea that you are introducing in support of that side, introducing it seems irresponsible: it undermines the whole conversation.
In this context, what I see is Hanson initiating a conversation about current research into the evolutionary psychology of women and men, which many people reject and (rightly or wrongly) don’t want to talk about at all. You are introducing the idea that this research implies that women should lose their capacity to vote in elections – not endorsing that idea, but suggesting we should consider that idea. But when other people in other contexts claim that Hanson’s ideas imply taking the vote away from women (which I really doubt he supports, but if true would be a pretty conclusive argument against him for most of us), you have contributed to making that claim more persuasive. From your own perspective, don’t the costs of your comment outweigh the benefits?
Maybe you don’t accept the premise that this is a “debate” about the value of evolutionary psychology; maybe we should treat comments sections as more of a free-wheeling conversation, just spit-balling ideas, see what sticks. Even so, talking about repealing the 19th amendment has the effect of pushing people out of the conversation. In terms of its interpersonal effect, it’s a little like shouting swears. You have every right to do that, obviously! But it’s irresponsible.
"Without the second amendment would we have the right to own firearms? Is there such a thing as a God-given right to own guns ... that can be unfairly taken away?"
I'm not sure if you were using an example or asking a question, but if the latter, the answer is yes, there is. Not just as stated in the Declaration of Independence, but reaffirmed several times by the Supreme Court, most notably in US v. Cruikshank (92 US 542; (1875)), where it ruled that both freedom of assembly and the right to keep and bear arms "existed long before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. It was not, therefore, a right granted to the people by the Constitution... Neither is it in any manner dependant upon that instrument for its existence."
With all possible respect and charity, this is like asking someone for evidence of the existence of God and watching them pull out a Bible and start reading from it.
The seeming similarity to cancel culture could be explained if there was a parallel to whatever *reasons* women are supposedly [evolutionarily or not] motivated to this set of strategies. I don't see the explanation above but there are hints that "competition" there means (to both men and women) fighting for parts of a fixed pie. Maybe part of it is that women need to avoid seeming hurtful, or need to avoid risks of retaliation more. The fixed pie could mean a non-expanding economy? Retaliation-avoidance because modern communication has fewer filters for unfair accusations, or fewer ways to make money by being fair?
OKIncel lol. Watch out for those female KOODIES. Eve is responsible for ALL your and the world's problems, we get it.
There really wouldn’t be too much argument with this view if you asked middle school girls where “mean girls” reign supreme. Puberty?
Good excerpts, compelling case. This is why my best female friends are autistic women. They don't compete for (or care less about) social status.
Wow, I just discovered this, a year later. Excellent! It confirms everything I always knew instinctively.
Sounds like you finally watched Mean Girls (from 2004) & thought "Surely I can find a way to link this plot to something I don't like & blame women for it. AHA...Me Too & cancel culture...perfect!"