Google has some purging to do

[Updated. See end of post.]

You can't be a progressive vanguard with this kind of ideological infighting going on.

So some tech geek at Google got a little fed up, mouthed off, and it's news.¹ [Update: use this link for the full, unedited, unGizmodofied essay. Fucking worthless hacks at Gizmodo--see footnotes]

The poor guy/girl/xyrl is going to burn for xyr heresy; the beast and its devotees demand nothing less.

One piece of advice, if you're going to argue for something politically incorrect at a place where PC is sacred, you better be articulate, charming, funny, and back all that up with a very large collection of rock-solid, peer-reviewed studies from many of the most respected journals.² I imagine this 'manifesto' would have more footnotes than its primary content.

So when you might say "we need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism," all people will hear is "women [are] somehow genetically limited."³

But I heard you. And my inner scientist really wants to dig into that. Plus a lot of the other interesting things you said. I also heard when you said, you "value diversity and inclusion" and aren't "denying that sexism exists."

Unfortunately, nobody else heard those things. As evidenced in the response of Danielle Brown, Google's VP of Diversity, etc. to your "anti-diversity screed":

Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we'll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul.

And in the countless, breathless, raging tweets I won't bother to show here. They've successfully reframed your essay as something else entirely. I'm sorry. I really am.

You nitpicked the approved approach to addressing demographic anomalies, which means you're backwards caveman scum. You've blasphemed, committed social suicide by SJW.

Hope you survive it.

Update: Google Fires Author of Divisive Memo on Gender Differences

2nd update: I've included a link to the PDF containing the unedited essay. Here it is again if you missed it. I knew Gizmodo was scummy--hence my first footnote--but now I'm done. I'm never linking nor trusting Gizmodo or Gawker anything again. I'll leave the one I linked above to remind me what hacks they are.

Also, Google is evil.

3rd update: Slate Star Codex looks into the science behind differences in vocational interest between the sexes.⁴ Scott further notes how sad that this is life now for many industries:

... start treating each other as human beings again. Your co-worker could just be your co-worker, not a potential Nazi to be assaulted or a potential Stalinist who’s going to rat on you.

Read the whole thing.

----------------------------------------------
1. Sorry for the link to Gizmodo.
2. After finding the whole, unedited essay, there are actually several footnotes, dozens of hyperlinks to sources, and a graph. Gizmodo conveniently edited those out to ease reading, I'm sure.
3. Jazz Shaw is a fucking idiot.
4. It would be so wonderful if people accurately represented the essay, which contended biological differences in interest, not ability.

Reactions and Reflections

Lefty bubbles. Insulated warm, fuzzy cocoons. Walled gardens. Epistemic closure beguiled by positive feedback loops. The pleasant echos lulled half a country and its "elite" into a false sense of authority.

And then it all came tumbling down. Crashing. I think it was a surprise for nearly everyone. Good for some, bad for others.

I'm not sure I have much to say given what's already been said. So what follows is a roundup of reactions to the election, a bit of the more poignant commentary, and my thoughts on each. Some of which I don't quite understand, but am trying to. Some of it I agree with wholeheartedly and think needs a bit more sunlight, and then some I disagree with.

When bubbles burst, it's usually a shock to those inside. Their thoughts and behavior during the aftermath can be illuminating.


The Left

I'll start with J. D. Vance at the NYT, who like so many others after the election, acknowledge the bubbles they've been living in:

Failed political prognostication is hardly a grievous sin, but it raises difficult questions about the other bubbles I live in. Few would accuse me of lacking compassion for the Trump voter, but the same can hardly be said for many other coastal elites.

Meanwhile, our country has other groups deserving of compassion. Shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory became clear, a black friend told me that his kid brother had been subjected to racial taunts at school. I wonder now whether I’m empathetic enough to my friend and his family, and I worry whether those who cast their ballots for Mr. Trump have much understanding for why so many fear a Trump presidency. The benefits and prejudices of a life lived within a bubble are hardly limited to urban progressive professionals.

You will see this narrative over and over. "Out of touch," "living in a bubble," "we have some reflecting to do," but also the usually subtle implication that the racists have taken over, and super-racist Nazi America is but a shoe drop away.

How do they know? Because Trump once said he wants to ban Muslim immigration. Trump then walked back that stance. Also something about building a wall. I'll admit Trump is brash and far from eloquent, but wanting tighter, more secure immigration and the occasional verbalization of stereotypes does not a Hitler make. And of course, the only kind of person willing to vote for that kind of a man, is a racist.

But people are scared now apparently. I get that for some, relatively very few, discrimination is a real and ugly thing they have to deal with and I want to help them. But for most in modern America? Call me skeptical, but I'm going to have to ask for proof.

Still, for a lot of people, this election is proof enough for them. From Reddit:

click image to enlarge

"I'm a Muslim living in the States. Trump doesn't scare me as much as his supporters do."

"I'm Jewish and I'm right there with you in fearing his supporters..."

Am I in my own bubble? I've never personally witnessed racial or political violence, or threats thereof. Such reports I see are from the same news sources (mostly) "coastal elites" use. I don't see large-scale racial violence or discrimination happening, or even medium-scale. It's generally the occasional something-bad-happened-to-one-person story. Like police going too far, but even then it's not always so clear.

Are they afraid, like we're living in Europe, or the third world hellholes many leftists fetishize?

I want to say I did some looking around for this fear, but no. Just skimming the various newzy and social sites it became abundantly clear. Trump really is the next Hitler to them. The following images are screenshots I took in the hours following the election results:

There was even a "homophobia" in there! Despite Trump being the first Republican presidential nominee to embrace marriage equality, and prominently supported by Peter Thiel. Fucking come on, the Republicans are, and will continue to get, on board the LGBTQ train--so long as it's compatible with individual and religious liberty.

No matter, frequently fallible Paul Krugman will set things straight:

What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous. ...

There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy.

He says he truly didn't understand the country, then in the very next paragraph, half a day after the election, he now claims to know: and its name is backwardness. Jesus Christ; and they wonder why half of America collectively gave them the fucking finger. Arrogant condescending pricks, the whole lot of them.

Might as well get it all out. What insulting buzzwords are America you say?

Way to be civil. Want some grace from the winners? Maybe try not spitting on them.

Trump wasn't my preferred candidate, but the racist labeling only made me want to support him more. Why? It was unfair. If he said the N-word in the last several years, and/or displayed any other overtly racist behavior I would be calling him that myself. But now, in many circles, merely opposing lax immigration is 100% straight-up racist.

But it doesn't even matter. If he's a scumbag then he's a scumbag. What matters is what he'll do as president. What policies he'll bring. What judges he'll appoint. Scumbagerry doesn't translate well into policy, although there are exceptions.

Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and a Republican congress didn't overturn Roe v. Wade. There was some pushback on gay marriage, but look where we are now. We're even legalizing drugs!

After all the hysterics, I feel it's time to Voxplain a thing or two.

Oh my. Vox can't even keep a cool head. People sure aren't taking this well:

So there's the reactions. Fear, sadness, anger, resentment, disgust, combinations of denial and acceptance. But what does it all mean? What brought about this Trump victory?


The Democrats

To paraphrase President Obama, we need to spread the blame around. Hillary's campaign miscalculated. Badly:

“They are saying they did nothing wrong, which is ridiculous,” said one Clinton surrogate. “She was the wrong messenger and everyone misjudged how pissed working class people were.” ...

In interviews with close to a dozen top Clinton allies and former operatives, who did not want to publicly criticize the losing campaign or candidate, many expressed a deep frustration that the party had pinned its hopes on a divisive establishment candidate. ...

The issues were crystal clear as early as January 2015, but the campaign thought it could overcome it.
“Make a virtue of her longevity,” Palmieri advised in an email that month to Podesta, released by WikiLeaks. “Embrace all the Clinton-ness — the forty years in politics, the decades on the national stage...”

A lot of commentators are saying Trump won because Hillary and the Democrats colossally fucked up. All that nastiness you see above, well Trump supporters were experiencing that every time they opened their mouths prior to the election. Not the best persuasive technique. The left in general and Democrats in particular really didn't do much to dissuade that strategy. There's more to it than that--which I'll get to later--but Jonathan Pie nails it:




The Media

Lets not forget the media. For a long time the left and the media would mock the right for complaining about bias. What a time we live in when they openly admit it, and try to justify it. Of course, it was the wrong thing to do. Not because it was unethical, you see, but because it backfired:

From Jim Rutenberg at the NYT:

John King of CNN proclaimed to his huge election night audience that during the previous couple of weeks, “We were not having a reality-based conversation” given the map he had before him, showing Mr. Trump with a clear opportunity to reach the White House.

That was an extraordinary admission; if the news media failed to present a reality-based political scenario, then it failed in performing its most fundamental function. ...

They think something is so wrong that all the fact-checking of Mr. Trump this year, the countless reports of his lies — which he uttered more than Mrs. Clinton did — and the vigorous investigation of his business and personal transgressions, bothered them far less than the perceived national ills Mr. Trump was pointing to and promising to fix.

In their view the government was broken, the economic system was broken, and, we heard so often, the news media was broken, too. Well, something surely is broken.

Ya think? That's the end of the article. The time for coyness has long passed. Why don't you grow a pair and just say what you think is broke. It hit you square in the nose and you still don't say it. Ah but then you might have to risk appearing to agree with those racist cavemen. 

I think I know why. Because the same Jim Rutenberg rationalized away the disparate treatment of Trump, by the media, a mere 3 months ago:

If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.

Whoops! I don't want to say I accidentally helped elect Trump, but I accidentally helped elect Trump.

And even a few days before Rutenberg's August piece, Justin Raimondo writes prophetic:

Any objective observer of the news media’s treatment of Trump can certainly conclude that reporters are taking a side in this election — and they don’t have to be wearing a button that says “I’m with her” for this to be readily apparent. The irony is that the media’s Trump bashing may wind up having the exact opposite of its intended effect.

Polls shows that journalism is one of the least respected professions in the country, and with Trump calling out media organizations for their bias, widespread slanted reporting is bound to reinforce this point — and to backfire. Trump’s campaign is throwing down the gauntlet to the political class. If journalists are seen as the mouthpiece of that class, they may soon find themselves covering Trump’s inauguration.

The schadenfreude never ends. I hope Trump's presidency brings about positive change, and is otherwise uneventful, but the dark twisted part of me is cheering on for more entertainment.


The Trump Voters

If you want to know what was in the minds of the people that voted for Trump, you should ask them, but Matt Flegenheimer and Michael Barbaro at the NYT aren't far off:

The triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality television star with no government experience, was a powerful rejection of the establishment forces that had assembled against him, from the world of business to government, and the consensus they had forged on everything from trade to immigration.

The results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but of President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United States had slipped their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism.

Ah yes, the establishment. The establishment Republicans didn't want him, nor the Democrats, nor Wall Street. I couldn't think of a better endorsement.

Sarah Baker at the Liberty Papers is even more to the point:

5. Listen when they say the jobs have left their areas. That they can’t afford their health insurance premiums or the penalties for not having it. They can’t afford their tax rates. They can’t afford to take their kids to see the doctor, can’t afford to take vacations with their families, live in fear one-paycheck-to-the-next of missing their mortgage payment. Listen when they say they are afraid of losing jobs to overseas and to immigration. Listen when they say they are afraid of terrorism inside the U.S. Listen, and don’t reflexively dismiss their concerns as closet racism.

6. Listen when they say how seriously they take their right to own and bear arms. Don’t reflexively dismiss them as redneck fetishists. Don’t sneer on social media about how they must have some anatomical shortcoming for which to compensate. Listen when they say they will die on the hill of the Second Amendment because they are afraid of an authoritarian leader taking control of the country.

That burning?
That’s irony.

7. Listen, as well, to why they didn’t like the other candidate. How they feel about entrenched political dynasties who sell access to make millions, who conspire to rig the economy for their friends in the 1%, and do nothing while the poor and middle class fall further behind.

Is Trump authoritarian? I don't know. I hope not, but he's displayed a mildly alarming tendency to favor an authoritarian style. Will that, if it's his thing, translate into authoritarian policies? Maybe, thankfully he's not a religious zealot, nor a drug warrior, nor a hawkish warmonger. At least he wasn't more often than he was, while campaigning.

He's not a very consistent politician. He's just not a politician. He's a blank slate with a few stains.

Trump might be easily compared to a comic book villain, but that doesn't make his supporters one-dimensional minions. Ken White (Popehat), bless his heart, insultingly explains that Trump supporters aren't racist, they just have a little attention deficit problem:

... attributing a Trump victory to racism and misogyny is a quick, cheap, easy way out. People aren't that simple. Americans didn't conclusively reject racism by electing President Obama, and didn't conclusively embrace it by electing President Trump. Trial lawyers know this: people don't make decisions like computers. People don't tend to weigh all the evidence or consider all the factors or evaluate every counter-argument to every argument. People tend, in small decisions and big ones, to latch on to a few main ideas, come to a conclusion, and then stop considering contrary evidence. A man sees what he wants to see, and disregards the rest. Obama's election didn't mean Americans were free of racism; it meant that Obama effectively communicated big ideas that connected and shut down the other voices whispering in our ears. Certainly some Trump supporters are avowedly racist, but some of them latched on to big ideas and stopped listening to the rest — like his troubling flirtation with evil.

I get what Ken is saying; it's a lot like confirmation bias, and perhaps a little laziness. But for an eloquent lawyer, that paragraph is damning with faint psychological process explanation.

And the "Troubling flirtation with evil!" Did I miss some evil Trump speech or something? Did he say he likes to kill puppies?

I have some disagreements with protectionism, nationalism, strict immigration, and "locker-room talk," but I wouldn't go so far to call them flirtations with evil.

I honestly don't get this Trump-is-evil stuff. Everybody says it, but damn if I can find direct evidence of it. I guess I'm supposed to "latch on to [those] ideas, come to a conclusion, and then stop considering contrary evidence" regarding Trump's evilness.

A loudmouth politically incorrect dirty old man, sure. An evil man, I don't see it. Popehat continues:

Hillary Clinton won an epic, historic struggle to be the worst Presidential candidate ever. Ultimately she won that struggle — and thus lost the Presidency — because she did not persuade. She did not articulate her core ideas effectively enough, and so not enough people latched onto them and disregarded the bad things about her. Trump dallied with racism — hell, Trump nailed racism in the coat closet and walked out smirking — but Clinton still did worse with Latinos, African-Americans, and Asians than Obama did. It may be that she was doomed from the start — too much baggage, too many vulnerabilities. Or it could be that she lacked Obama's power to persuade. She couldn't get them to accept her simple pitch and shut everything else out. Trump could.

It falls to realistic Trump opponents not to crush the people who voted for him, but to persuade them. In this election the GOP showed that it could fight back against demographic change — not just by marshaling high percentages of white voters, but by persuading higher-than-expected percentages of minorities. The Democrats can't respond to that by writing 40% of the country off as irredeemable.

Hubris and Entitlement: The catastrophic polling failures of 2016 reflect the fatal pride of Clinton's team and what I'll call "the establishment."

Americans are stubborn and proud. They'll be persuaded, but they won't be told who to vote for like you'd tell a recalcitrant child to eat his vegetables. The media, childishly obsessed with Donald Trump (and frankly unenthused with Hillary Clinton) promoted a us-versus-them mentality. It was far more class-based than race-based — it was the message "isn't it unbelievable and hilarious that those people support Trump." The message was "of COURSE vote Clinton, you idiot" or "you're pretty dim but at least you can see how to vote on THIS one." Generally people can't be expected to embrace stories that demean them.

There was another way, but hardly anybody took it. There was the way of "let me earn your vote by persuading you why these policies are right," conveyed as part of an effective set of ideas. There were far too few forceful and effective advocates of how free trade makes us richer and freer. There were too few people willing to risk a genuine discussion of the costs of frequent military intervention. Everyone was too busy arguing what immigration policies they didn't support to debate specific policies that they did support.

The anti-Trump message was based too strongly on entitlement — based on who you are, we are entitled to your vote, by right. You can see that in the frothing rage at third-party voters after Clinton's defeat. You'll see it in the ugly backlashes coming at the minority voters who didn't vote "correctly." But voting isn't a matter of entitlement. "Vote for me because the other guy's horrific" is not an effective method to persuade or get out the vote. It's an idea that focuses on the other guy, not you. You've got to deserve victory. Clinton didn't. Clinton stank of entitlement to rule, the media conveyed that message, and that message fatally amplified Clinton's scandals, conveying that Clinton was entitled to follow the rules differently, to act differently, to be treated preferentially.

This is what a lot of Hillary voters don't get. Just because Trump was a terrible candidate, doesn't automatically translate to the alternative being a saint. Especially when accompanied by name-calling, silencing, and plain old bullying. I was an undecided voter right up until the last day. I didn't want to vote for Trump, nor Clinton. But everyday on my GAMING twitter feed, there was some insult lobbed toward Trump supporters, liked and retweeted several times. If they weren't racist, misogynist, homophobic, or xenophobic, then they were called idiots. Who wants to join a bunch of assholes? Keep your circlejerk of political hate.

I wanted to vote for Trump just to stick it to those guys. I ended up voting for Johnson, but it was a difficult decision. Even in a safe state where my vote didn't matter.

Before I ramble further, I really want to quote at length from John Michael Greer at Archdruid Report, hardly a Trump supporter, who wrote this a week before the election:

The talking heads insisted that handing over tax dollars to various corporate welfare queens would bring jobs back to American communities; the corporations in question pocketed the tax dollars and walked away. The talking heads insisted that if working class people went to college at their own expense and got retrained in new skills, that would bring jobs back to American communities; the academic industry profited mightily but the jobs never showed up, leaving tens of millions of people buried so deeply under student loan debt that most of them will never recover financially. The talking heads insisted that this or that or the other political candidate would bring jobs back to American communities by pursuing exactly the same policies that got rid of the jobs in the first place—essentially the same claim that the Clinton campaign is making now—and we know how that turned out. ...

We’ve got the news articles insisting, in tones by turns glowing and shrill, that things have never been better in the United States and anyone who says otherwise is just plain wrong; we’ve got the economic pronouncements predicated on continuing growth at a time when the only things growing in the US economy are its total debt load and the number of people who are permanently unemployed; we’ve got the overblown displays of military might and technological prowess, reminiscent of nothing so much as the macho posturing of balding middle-aged former athletes who are trying to pretend that they haven’t lost it; we’ve got the tame intellectuals comfortably situated in the more affluent suburban districts around Boston, New York, Washington, and San Francisco, looking forward to their next vacation in whatever the currently fashionable spot might happen to be, babbling on the internet about the good life under predatory cybercapitalism.

Meanwhile millions of Americans trudge through a bleak round of layoffs, wage cuts, part-time jobs at minimal pay, and system-wide dysfunction. The crisis hasn’t hit yet, but those members of the political class who think that the people who used to be rock-solid American patriots will turn out en masse to keep today’s apparatchiks secure in their comfortable lifestyles have, as the saying goes, another think coming. ...

Thus the grassroots movement that propelled Trump ... might best be understood as the last gasp of the American dream.

Maybe it's true people are voting for memberberries. Things were nice for them back in the day. Now everything seems to be going to shit. And it is for them. It is for me. Health insurance prices go way up every year. Roads and bridges are falling apart, jobs haven't really come back, there doesn't appear to be an end to terrorism or the war against it. And now the American dream that nearly every adult prior to 2008 could reasonably expect, is absurdly out of reach for millions. Even if you're college educated. Stick to a tiny apartment, ramen noodles, and in 40 years you too could own your own small house! Or retire. Pick one.

So some guy comes up to you and says, "I feel you. I will bring the jobs back. I will make America great again." And then this lady you know, but aren't so sure about says, "What's he talking about, America is already great. Don't be a racist."

The election was in the bag. Only fringe racists supported Trump. Who cares about some email thing, you racist!


The Future

I have to admit, I am a little bit glad to see the hubris explode in their faces. And now I feel icky. That's another thing. The level of vitriol and hate toward the opposition is worse than during the Bush years, worse than either Obama election. 

Greer hits on this as well, and after the election writes:

I’d like to suggest, furthermore, that the fixation on personalities—or, again, malicious parodies of personalities—has played a huge role in making politics in the United States so savage, so divisive, and so intractably deadlocked on so many of the things that matter just now. The issues I mentioned a few paragraphs back—US foreign policy toward a resurgent Russia, on the one hand, and US economic policy regarding the offshoring of jobs and the importation of foreign workers—are not only important, they’re issues about which reasonable disagreement is possible. What’s more, they’re issues on which negotiation, compromise, and the working out of a mutually satisfactory modus vivendi between competing interests are also possible, at least in theory.

In practice? Not while each side is insisting at the top of its lungs that the other side is led by a monster of depravity and supported only by people who hate everything good in the world. I’d like to suggest that it’s exactly this replacement of reasoned politics with a pretty close equivalent of the Two Minutes Hate from Orwell’s 1984 that’s among the most important forces keeping this country from solving any of its problems or doing anything to brace itself for the looming crises ahead. ...

I’m not sure how many people have noticed, though, that the election of Donald Trump was not merely a rebuke to the liberal left; it was also a defeat for the religious right. It’s worth recalling that the evangelical wing of the Republican Party had its own favorites in the race for the GOP nomination, and Trump was emphatically not one of them. It has not been a propitious autumn for the movements of left and right whose stock in trade is trying to force their own notion of virtue down the throats of the American people—and maybe, just maybe, that points to the way ahead.

It’s time to consider, I suggest, a renewal of the traditions of American federalism: a systematic devolution of power from the overinflated federal government to the states, and from the states to the people. It’s time for people in Massachusetts to accept that they’re never going to be able to force people in Oklahoma to conform to their notions of moral goodness, and for the people of Oklahoma to accept the same thing about the people of Massachusetts; furthermore, it’s time for government at all levels to give up trying to impose cultural uniformity on the lively diversity of our republic’s many nations, and settle for their proper role of ensuring equal protection under the laws, and those other benefits that governments, by their nature, are best suited to provide for their citizens.

It's hard for me to disagree with Greer. The "coastal elite," the liberal bubbles, all the people who don't understand flyover country--you've seen them, you know many of them have difficulty accepting political loss. When you've sufficiently defined your opponents as bigoted, then summarily dismiss them (as civility demands), your brain interprets losing to such people as totally unacceptable, virtually unconscionable, as if the Joker killed Batman, as if the world is suddenly just wrong. "This wasn't supposed to happen!"


There's a good chance they won't understand. A good chance they won't listen. A good chance they will crawl back into their bubbles and ignore and/or dismiss us. Decentralizing the federal government might well be a good idea for both sides, but power is addicting. And I doubt the "coastal elite" will willingly trade in their heroin for some weed.

Besides, it's back to business as usual, according to Kos:

If Trump wants to pass a new Voting Rights Act, or renominate Merrick Garland, then we can work with him. Anything else, he can go fuck himself. Infrastructure spending? Let him get the votes from his own caucus. Anything else he might propose, even if we might agree with it? Let him get the votes from his own caucus while we hurl metaphorical molotov cocktails from the sideline.

They broke it, they own it.

Soon the president will no longer be black; it'll be okay to oppose him guys. Remember when we used the nuclear option to overcome vote hurdles and filibusters? Remember when we used executive orders to bypass congress? Well, times change and it's not cool anymore.

Seriously guys, it's NOT COOL:

via Instapundit

We will witness their withdrawal symptoms shortly. It won't be pretty, but it's necessary.

Thought leaders, cool kids, signalling, & the beast

I don't want to talk about this, nor feel obligated to. Yet it nags at my soul. The feeling is like that Somebody is Wrong on the Internet phenomenon only exponentially worse; it's like a cultural/meta-tribal mass signalling ritual gone wrong sort of thing.

It happens everyday. It becomes really pronounced when something big and bad happens. I should note that it's only painfully obvious when you, yourself, aren't instinctively compelled to mimic or repeat what are increasingly the culturally sanctioned memes. When you are on the outside looking in.

I'm talking about the verbalization or other use of such memes.

There's the pleasant and harmless variety:

• "Please" and "Thank you"
• "Good morning/afternoon/evening"
• "Have a nice day" 

There's the questionably sincere and/or thoughtless variety:

• "My thoughts and prayers are with you."
• "Bless you"
• "I'm sorry for your loss"

There's the ignorant political variety (these tend to be thematic and narrative-based):

• "America's guns/assault weapons/culture of violence is the problem."
• "Muslims/immigrants are the problem"
• "Democrats hate the wealthy"
• "Republicans are bigots"
• "Liberals are pussies"
• "Conservatives are idiots"
• "Libertarians are selfish"

Not to forget the image variety, often found on facebook, twitter, instagram, etc, showcasing how normal/awesome/fun that person is.

These aren't all bad. A good many are probably good. We are social animals (most of us) after all, and I think all of us engage in some kinds of social signalling rather frequently. A lot of it is unthinking instinctive stuff we learned in order to smooth out our interactions within the cultural landscape.

Some of it is status/reputation building/maintenance (hereafter referred to as "status-bullshit"). Some of the status-bullshit really bothers me. I'm not sure why. It comes across as phony, even unnaturally forced at times. (I even find myself questioning why phonyism bothers me as much as it does. I have some theories, but don't want to get too far off track.) But even most status-bullshit is harmless.

The big issue I have is with this fuzzy, trickle-down, meme-based, in-group status signalling. It's like fashion, only it's pseudo-intellectual and all ego. You signal your peers: you are with the cool kids, therefore you are not of the uncool; you are better. If this sounds like high school bullshit, that's because it is; status-bullshit is high school bullshit, which is collective animal behavior. We are stupid social animals who really have to hurt our brains to not be, and rarely does it pay off.


Create a Meme, Master the Universe

For a long time I assumed most people weren't particularly influenced by "thought leaders." For a long time I thought that Mr. Famous News Editor had virtually zero impact on anybody's choices. It was all at the margins--only a few on the fence might be swayed. Well, I now think that I was both right and wrong at the same time. I still think a "thought leader" has virtually zero impact on any one person. But now I believe many "thought leaders" have a significant impact on a large number of people over time.

The key parts: many and over time. I used the term 'fashion' earlier, and for lack of energy I'll use it again, in a shitty analogy:

Think of fashion being the direction of a raging river. The masses are that river. They follow the fashion. In a perfect natural world, the raging river forges its own direction as allowed by the environment--that is, the masses choose the fashion where possible. While a few drops might escape now and then, the vast majority of the water follows along, reinforcing the fashion.

But what could one idealistic droplet do to change the course of the river? Practically nothing. What can many idealistic droplets do over a long period of time? Well, they can slowly direct a few more, and a few more, and a few more in another direction. Carve out some trenches here, fill in some sand there, and after a while, you've got more water going in your desired direction than in the old.

Forgive allusions to social engineering, since I know that's a bad word and the idea muddies the water (I don't like easy puns, but wrote it--almost memetically--before I caught it) doesn't help discussion.

That, I think, is what is going on. I won't and probably can't prove the who/what/when/where/why behind the intellectual culture shift--the broad, laymen & academic alike, kind of intellectual culture. But I think the sheer likelihood of information having a not insignificant effect on culture is too much and too obvious to deny. The only slightly controversial claim I make, is that it tends to go in more or less a certain direction, as opposed to any other direction if all else being equal.

Most right-of-center bloggers will say "Duh, what the hell do you think we've been pointing out for the last 15 years?" or "Welcome to the culture wars Captain Obvious McBornyesterday." I'm sorry if this sounds too much like me praising the awesomeness and practicality of the wheel, but I'm going somewhere and attempting to spit out the nuance on it I have in my head.

It's more than political, more innocent than "culture war" implies, and I think ultimately, more dangerous. I mean innocent and dangerous in the way a child with a gun is both of those things.


The Joneses

What the hell is it, where is it going, and why, you ask? While there probably is some relatively small-time colluding, bias, and other activist "journalism" being perpetrated, I seriously doubt there exists a large Illuminati style mass-media conspiracy to manipulate the public.

What I think is happening is a lot of status-bullshit stuck in a positive feedback loop, equipped with a megaphone. There is an intelligence to it, and a sort of purposeful direction. But probably not the way you think. I mean there's an intelligence guiding the general direction the way a superorganism does things, on purpose. Like an ant colony, or even coral. Many argue that the human species, or at least modern society is a superorganism, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a subgroup in a subgroup driving a species where individualism, disagreement, and critical thought are things that really matter.

I'm talking about pretty much anyone who works in the media industry. Directly or indirectly, those in the industry are exposed to the masses. That's their job. No exposure equals no job. Because of this, they want to appear sophisticated--who wouldn't want to appear sophisticated in front of the masses? Sophistication means many things, but it typically means intelligence, education, respectable fashion, and holding ideas that aren't widely considered to be bad.

With feedback loops it's easy to shrug it off as a chicken or egg thing and not think about it. My problem with chicken and egg thinking regarding social issues is that it tends to imply revolutions or massive shocks to the system to "reboot" things, and overturn the chicken and egg cycle. I'm not sure that's necessary. In any case, putting on airs to appear sophisticated is probably something we're all guilty of, especially in the presence of a lot of people. Most of us will study and rehearse before public speaking, put on a suit/dress or something "respectable," and avoid spouting our more unpopular opinions. We signal our inness with the cool kids, consciously or not. We call people who don't do this, "crazy." Bam, reinforcement.

Our kids, our students, our peers see this. They learn, they mimic what appears to be "success." This is human nature. This is all fine; except when it's not. I would call this a potential shortcoming innate to humans and most social animals. Everybody is keeping up with the Joneses, but what happens when the Joneses drive off a cliff? A lot of people will be fucked. Thankfully, we're not literally mind-controlled drones and are fairly diverse, but sometimes the herd-like stuff is scary.


Aliens

So what specifically are you talking about, you ask? Like I said, it's kind of fuzzy. To me, right now, at least it seems kind of fuzzy. It may seem like I'm dancing around something without pointing out what I'm really talking about, and that's partly because I'm not quite 100% sure on what it is. I agree, that's lazy and weaselly, so I'll attempt to get specific.

Let's take Fox News and Drudge Report for example. I feel so refreshed naming such specific shit. You're welcome. These two organizations are both media giants in their own ways. They have a lot of influence, not so much as telling people what decisions to make (although that is probably something), but influence in what actually makes the news and what people are talking to each other about. You may have heard a lot about "gatekeeping" with respect to news organizations. Well that's a thing, it by necessity exists, and for good or ill it shapes conversations around the world and in other newsrooms. They have a butterfly effect, merely by putting text on a screen or words through television speakers. Let's pretend they made something up, really bad, very scandalous about President Obama. Drudge says one thing and Fox says something similar. Totally made up. Well, fake or not we are going to be talking about it for days at least. The White House will probably make some kind of a statement denying things, other news orgs will have to at least discuss it. People around the world will be talking about it. Ideas are exchanged, information repeated, billions of times. That shit has an effect.

That was nothing. That was small time shit. Let's say there's a new thing that happened. One few people have even thought about. Aliens sent a package to Lima, Peru, detailing methods to make the best coffee mugs in the galaxy. First contact, and it's about coffee mugs. Before the leaders of the world can put out statements, editors and columnists are already working on their articles and how their take on things is what really matters here:

• Peru's curious alien relationship and why the international community should permanently establish a headquarters in Lima and take the lead in coffee mug design. -Washington Post

• Quality mugs bode well for a peaceful coexistence, but what about the Coffee Mugs Union of North America and the EU's Artisans de Tasses à Café? -New York Times

• The Top 10 Reasons Alien Coffee Mugs are Really Signs of Invasion. -Buzzfeed

• Why Peru Should Disseminate All Coffee Mug Designs Freely Over the Internet, and What That Means for the Future of Open Source. -TechCrunch

One or two of something along those lines will in large part be the discussion. Sure, we'd talk about how cool/scary/weird first contact is and all that, but we'd also be talking about fucking unions, open source, or prepping for a global invasion. And coffee mugs.

"Are you pro-coffee mug? Yeah, I used to think that too, but now with everything going on, and you know things have changed, man. I've learned that, over the years, I've really come to understand the other side, and never really thought about it until recently. It just kinda seems like the right thing to do. Oh crap, gotta go. Game of Thrones is on, whooo!"

"#NoCoffeeNoProblems"

"#MugsRthugs"

"Senator Smith was found disheveled in his home today with an arsenal of Peruvian coffee mugs. He is scheduled to give a statement later today; sources expect him to announce his resignation."


Sharing is Caring

Perhaps my made up examples got out of hand. I don't watch tv, and haven't read newspapers in a long while, so a bunch of it I honestly can't point to. Still, a lot seeps through to the internet. Well, now the internet is usually the first stop for meme-sharing. I don't socialize very much at all, so yeah, I think that's why it's both super easy for me to pick up on this, but also fuzzy to see how it spreads.

On twitter for example, one of the few social things I engage in--and I use it mostly to follow gaming news--I seem to end up staring at what often turns into a hyper-liberal clique. WTF does gaming have to do with politics? Very little.

I casually paid attention to the Gamergate thing. My impression was that gamers were more often than not, indifferent to feminist critiques of games and against bullshit journalism. Today, I find my gaming-specific twitter feed to be mostly comprised of gaming news with a good dose of lefty mantras. After something like the terrorist attack in Orlando, the politics come out in force. Lately it's been dressed up as "not about politics, just common sense," which of course inevitably calls for something rabidly partisan. I'm not telling them to shut up, I'm not saying stop talking politics, I'm not even complaining about my oddly political gaming news feed. I'm just saying this is what it looks like.

In my mind, much of the twitter politics is virtue signalling. What do I mean by virtue signalling? Well, on twitter you cannot really go into detail, nor explain any opinion beyond the equivalent of monkeys throwing poo at each other. So twitter is not for debating. It is not for engaging people and changing minds. It is not there to better understand one another. It is there to share bite-sized info and memes.

If you aren't very knowledgeable, but really, really want to shout your tidbits of political genius at your enemies, then twitter is the place for you. If you aren't one for confrontation, and still want to share your political genius, my friend, twitter is the place for you as well. My liberal game developers and various other gaming personalities I follow usually don't follow anyone not liberal. In my feed, there are two kinds of political opinions: the ones on the left, and the ones not spoken. So what good is it to share a political opinion (which by definition is at least a little divisive) with people who all agree with you? To remind them that they are like them. "Yo peeps, almost didn't get to my phone in time to tweet that I am, in fact, still a progressive, in the wake of this horrible tragedy." "We still cool?"

I don't think they are consciously thinking "hey, I need to keep saying stuff like this to appear thoughtful and cool," I think it's mostly unthinking. Maybe they spent a few minutes or even a few days thinking about some of their political beliefs years ago, then they just retweet Mr. Super Popular Liberal's political tweet, or repeat some old lefty meme. Whether they agree with what they tweet and retweet is one thing, but it has the added benefit of signalling to others in their circle that they are with the cool kids. People signal back. "Hey man, saw your tweet. Totes agree, I hate coffee mugs too."

The gaming industry is part of the media industry. The old media industry is and was largely comprised of left-leaning people. These people interact with one another frequently. Networking is a powerful thing. Would you want to alienate yourself with most of your potentially lucrative network? If you're human and not dumb and want to keep working, you won't start sharing your pro-coffee mug opinions all over the internet. You want to stay all chummy with your liberal friends. Sooner or later, you're surrounded by apparently like-minded people all singing the same tune. Kumbaya.


A Big Fat Phony!

Go ahead and regurgitate Noam Chomsky, or Thomas Sowell, retweet that celebrity who just wants some common sense. Don't spend the hours it takes to actually study the intricacies of politics, or why the Democrats voted against subsidized coffee mugs, or why Republicans voted to increase Peruvian tariffs. It's far easier to appear smart and assume your political rivals are evil.

It's not just politics. Like I said, it's more, it's innocent, and it's dangerous. I watched the Warcraft movie the other day. I loved it. As a fan of the games and the lore, it was heaven for 2 hours. The movie doesn't suck. It's got some pretty neat stuff in it. I'm obviously biased here, as a fantasy genre fan and Warcraft fan, I am in double jeopardy territory. But if I can give my worst, but still honest, critical opinion of the film, leaving no flaw unpunished. I would still rate it on par with, if not above, most blockbusters in recent memory. It felt a little bit rushed and a little bit jumbled at times. But I felt very entertained both times I saw it, satisfied with the story, satisfied with the acting, very satisfied with the scenery and CGI. It was a solid, competent movie. The international box office earnings show that.

But the American critics have a stick up their ass and few of them can find any love for it. I know, opinions, especially on artwork, are matters of taste. Maybe many of them genuinely didn't like it. But damn they were excessively harsh, and I can't take them seriously anymore. Maybe they thought it was supposed to be a one-and-done story, beginning, middle, end. But that's not really what it is. It's an introduction to Warcraft. An introduction to the world, the saga, the characters. It's a story within a story. The marketing here was bad, sure, but I thought it was fairly obvious the movie was an intro to something bigger.

A big dumb action video game movie it is not, and yet that's how critics and many noncritics treat it. What I'm trying to get at here is that the movie did somewhat poorly in the U.S. on opening weekend, and several of the gaming tweeters and youtubers I follow gave lukewarm reviews at best. Anecdotes are worthless I know, but that shit bothered me. These were guys and girls who were in the same fandom as I, yet they could barely crack a smile when discussing the movie. And what really bothered me the most, was that here they were, goofballs suddenly putting on their glasses, getting all hyper analytical, and upping their vocabulary just to piss on a movie that was made for them. They said they liked it as a fan, and would give it a 9/10, but if they were "to be objective about it" they'd "rate it a 4.5/10." Okay smart guy, even though you really liked Transformers 3, thanks for taking the cue from all your smart friends and giving us an objective rating.

Seriously, go see Warcraft. If you like fantasy, magic, stunning visuals, or something different from typical Hollywood, you will probably enjoy it.

Most of you probably don't care about Warcraft, so thanks for putting up with my barely-related anecdote. The interesting thing about it is the disparity between the international markets and the U.S., and between the foreign critics and the American. It's so big, that there obviously is something going on. We watched the same movie. We just happened to feel differently about it, because America.
 
It's not just movies that reveal these odd disparities with the wider Western world. It's politics--and I mean that in like, the nonobvious stuff, but politics you think we'd more closely agree with. Like abortion, immigration, even taxation. I'm too tired to get into it here, but it's like how America as a whole is further to the right than most of Europe. Yet on many issues we are further left. Even in the Democratic party, they are further left than many European leftist parties on various issues. Republicans are further left than many rightist parties, and some leftist parties on certain issues in Europe. Generally speaking, the Republican platform is rather centrist compared to European rightist parties. Some of that is situational--political stances forged by global pressures, but some of it is still philosophy. We do not neatly fit in a political philosophy to the right of Europe.

So what's with these odd differences? You think I'm going to say it's a culture thing? Or do you think I'm going to say it's a phony/status-bullshit thing? It's both. I think what is happening, to a certain extent, is that we're in our own little (maybe big) bubble. And it's exacerbated by the media status-bullshit feedback loop.

Ace of Spades talked about the bias inherent in media and academic institutions a lot. Wish I could find some of his more salient posts, but they are buried deep in his archives and my searching skills aren't that great. But he has chipped away at the chicken or egg thing, explaining why such institutions are like that. The gist of it is pretty damn plausible, if not very likely: Academics and journalists are self selected. It takes a certain kind of person to want and succeed in those positions. While there are no apparent political quotas, it's easier in life to get along, to sync with your network and colleagues. At some point in the past, the political and cultural leanings of a critical mass of the academics and journalists on some level synced. It probably wasn't hard. Roughly half the country belongs to either one major party or the other. I mean, just by random chance roughly half of an industry will lean one way, and it won't be perfectly symmetrical.

Throw in some time, memesharing, mimicking success, and you have a feedback loop. Soon it's not roughly symmetrical, it's wildly asymmetrical. It's important to remember, it's not about politics, even if it started out that way (perhaps it didn't). It's about appearing sophisticated. Keeping up appearances, gelling with your network, colleagues, peers, those you look up to, and those you want to impress. While there maybe tens of thousands of different companies, schools, and people all with their own goals, they collectively become this superorganism thanks to this feedback loop. And it sort of pushes them, and directs all of us one way.

But the academy and media hold a special place in our culture. And it's a really powerful place.


The Anti-Climax

It's should be perfectly okay to disagree, and publicly without jeopardizing your professional or social life. Just not with me. Because I will screenshot your pro-coffee mug opinion and share it with your employer, and shame you all over cyberspace. Nah, I'm not that rude. I, myself used to be pro-coffee mug, but I changed my position when it was fashionable to; you know, right before the President did (we've all changed positions, I'm making fun of myself here).

I guess my biggest concern is not that we're being pushed in a certain direction, or that by and large, the media and academy are all culturally and politically monotone (those things still really suck), but that it has a chilling effect. What's really insidious, is that the chilling effect only feeds the monster, which makes the chilling worse.... feedback loop. Now I'm venturing eerily close to advocating revolution, or a shock to the system, but I don't think that's necessary. Not yet. Because this beast isn't controlled by some sinister Illuminati, it's got a mind of its own, and one day it will go where the "thought leaders" don't want it to. It may not be good for us either, but when it happens it will shake things up.

You may have got the impression that I think this is a liberal beast heading us in a leftward direction. I think that's only partially true. It just happens to be a left-leaning beast, that happens to be heading us in what appears to be a leftward direction. But it could've easily been a right-leaning beast heading us in a rightward direction. It may yet still. But it's a beast, and it's controlling our direction. That's the part I don't like. That's what is dangerous.

Humans tend to do bad things. Groups of humans tend to do worse things. Superorganisms however, are amoral, and we've given this thing the keys to our future.

Image credit: JeffChangArt

Now is where I fail at creativity and fully embody weaksauce, advocating unoriginal shit that probably won't work. Solutions are hard. But if we can perhaps dig a trench here, fill in some sand there, maybe one day, we can change a thing or two.

• Stop the unthinking memes. Maybe once in a while, think about something before repeating the standard phrase. Come up with something sincere, thoughtful. Maybe you won't come up with anything, but at least you thought about it.
• Respectfully disagree. Diversity in thought is interesting. It leads to innovation. Conflict sometimes, but can we not be civil? 
• Support someone's right to do something you really despise. Coffee mugs aren't so bad, even alien-inspired Peruvian ones.
• Read, and try to understand the other side, whatever it is. Maybe come up with your own "side."
• Assume, at least sometimes, your rivals aren't evil or stupid. 

I'm not talking about stuff like flat-earthers, Nazis, or total racists. But stuff that is perhaps on the other side of the mainstream, and perhaps a tad outside of the mainstream. Some of that crazy stuff at least makes for good reading.

Tyler Cowen, you're talking out of your ass

Read this:

3. There are the libertarians, who hate martial culture on the international scene, but who wish to allow it or maybe even encourage it (personally, not through the government) at home, through the medium of guns.  They are inconsistent, and they should consider being more pro-gun control than is currently the case.  But I don’t expect them to budge: they will see this issue only through the lens of liberty, rather than through the lens of culture as well.  They end up getting a lot of the gun liberties they wish to keep, but losing the broader cultural battle and somehow are perpetually surprised by this mix of outcomes.

Okay. There are so many assumptions and loaded concepts here and in the rest of his blog post, that if he unpacked it so as to minimize the risk of significantly different inputs--and therefore outcomes--from his many different readers, it would be dozens of pages long, if not more. Such is the semiotic nightmare of politics, but it should be avoided, even, I daresay, in extemporaneous and pithy blog posts.

This image sort of works. Can't find who to credit however.

Cowen is generalizing of course, but still, it's god damn lazy to throw around the term "culture" and "martial culture" only to mix it in with broad categories of political philosophies and movements and end up with 2+2=everybody's stupid.

Maybe it's not the point. Maybe there is enough truthiness to his argument to where it has value when considering future foreign and domestic policy. I mean, it rings true, kind of, but only because you or I agree with the implied stereotypes and our input into those loaded words and phrases closely resembles Cowen's meaning.

But what the fuck is "martial culture"? What the fuck is "martial culture on the international scene"? What the fuck is "the lens of culture"?

I identify with libertarians and consider myself to be one. But I could be wrong. It could be that most competently self-labeled libertarians would not label me such. I'm no anarchist. I'm not even really much of a minarchist if you want to quibble over the size of the state, or semantics, but I do favor a push in that direction... much smaller government and fewer, less cumbersome regulations. But that doesn't mean I don't want a powerful military. Or an "active foreign policy" whatever the fuck that means. Maybe that makes me a cardinal sinner of inconsistency. I'll see you in hell, pro-gay marriage, anti-drug war progressive nannystaters.

When I read words I try to avoid applying the simplest most idiotic meanings to and assumptions behind them. So when I read "active foreign policy" I think, well it could mean having diplomats all over the world, engaging with various other foreign officials, for whatever purpose, peaceful or otherwise.

When I read "active foreign policy" I don't think "GEORGE BUSH JINGOISTIC NEOCON INTERVENTIONIST IRAQ WAR FOR OIL JACKBOOTED RACIST IMPERIALISTIC FASCIST" nor do I read "martial culture" as "YEAH LETS BLOW SHIT UP! SEND OUR ENEMIES TO THE STONE AGE! TANKS AND FIGHTER JETS AND MACHINE GUNS WHOO 'MURICA!"

And then the politics are all wrong. Day-to-day politics doesn't mean anything, other than partisan hackery for the most part. Conservatives are winning Cowen says, because Obama wants to get all interventiony on Libya and Syria's asses. Obama must be a conservative and conservatives must like what Obama's doing overseas then, right? No that makes no sense. So lets ramp the complexity up to infinity by throwing in martial culture bullshit and tie it into relevant news by implying guns=martial culture.

For libertarians, Cowen is asserting that we can't have our cake and eat it too. With guns, comes jingoistic international militaristic adventurism (maybe imperialistic too?), or "martial culture" for short. Guns must be pretty powerful, so much so that they're indivisibly part and parcel of "martial culture" and perhaps only that culture. Can't get rid of one with out getting rid of the other. Which is utter crap.

Broadly or narrowly defined, culture is not a rigid, unmalleable artifact of humanity. Want proof? Try defining "American culture". Have fun and good luck. Even if Cowen is right, we can still have our cake and eat it too, even if that means we have to culturally appropriate and/or excise a few things.

I can look through the blurry cultural lens while still clinging to my guns and liberty. It's not hard; you should try it sometime Mr. Cowen.