Huemer's Gun Control-War on Terror Parallel

Philosopher Michael Huemer is on a role on Facebook. Here's the quote in full: 

I’m going to explain some of my views about two issues, views that people often have difficulty understanding or sympathizing with. Leftists have trouble with one issue; rightists have trouble with the other. By explaining my views on both issues, I’m going to make them easier for both sides to understand. If you’re left-wing, start with section I, then continue to II. If you’re right-wing, start with section II, then I.
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I. Terrorism
a. I think most of the government’s policy on terrorism (going to war, torturing terror suspects, etc.) is bad. I don’t know *for sure* that it doesn’t work, but I think (1) it violates rights, (2) we don’t have compelling enough evidence that it works, and (3) there are plausible arguments that it is even counterproductive. (Some people might be motivated to commit terrorism *by* the government’s anti-terror policies.) (4) We're creating the sort of precedents that transform a free country to an unfree one over time. (1)-(4) together make the policy unjustified.
b. This does not show that I don’t care about terrorism, or that I’m unpatriotic, or that I don’t mind people being blown up. And I think that anyone who suggests these things is Behaving Very Badly. Suggestions like that should be immediately dismissed with disdain in a civilized culture.
c. If a politician agrees with me on (a), the most likely explanation is that this politician is persuaded by the same sort of reasons I am. The explanation is not that the politician was paid off by someone, that he’s a Muslim, that he’s unpatriotic, etc. I think you should accept this even if you think I’m mistaken on (a). And I think someone who suggests otherwise is, again, Behaving Very Badly.
d. The threat of terrorism is vastly overblown. In the last 50 years or so, about 3,300 Americans were murdered by terrorists, while about 800,000 were murdered by non-terrorists. We should stop freaking out about a relatively tiny risk.
e. If a new terrorist attack occurs somewhere tomorrow, I will not change my position on (a). It won’t change the relevant evidence, and I don’t form beliefs based on emotion. I also won’t call any politicians dogmatic, unpatriotic, uncaring, or otherwise bad if they, too, stick to their position on (a) after a new terror attack.
f. If Republicans seize on the new terror attack as an opportunity to push through new anti-terror policies that otherwise wouldn’t get passed, I now believe, in advance, that the new terror policies will almost certainly be ill-considered and bad.
g. By the way, I think the media should stop reporting terrorist attacks, since this motivates terrorists to perform such attacks: they want to be covered in the media so they can cause fear. Also, people who are prone to violence to begin with are more likely to think about doing a terror attack, and to perceive it as a thing that people do, as more such attacks are shown and discussed on the news.
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II. Guns
a. I think most gun control policies (restrictions on carrying concealed guns, gun free zones, etc.) are bad. I don’t know *for sure* that they don’t work, but I think (1) they violate rights, (2) we don’t have compelling enough evidence that they work, and (3) there are plausible arguments that they are even counterproductive. (Some people might be deterred from committing crime by the knowledge that ordinary citizens may be armed.) (4) We're creating the sort of precedents that transform a free country to an unfree one over time. (1)-(4) together make the policy unjustified.
b. This does not show that I don’t care about children, or that I don’t mind people being shot. And I think that anyone who suggests these things is Behaving Very Badly. Suggestions like that should be immediately dismissed with disdain in a civilized culture.
c. If a politician agrees with me on (a), the most likely explanation is that this politician is persuaded by the same sort of reasons I am. The explanation is not that the politician was paid off by someone, that he’s callous, that he’s clueless, etc. I think you should accept this even if you think I’m mistaken on (a). And I think someone who suggests otherwise is, again, Behaving Very Badly.
d. The threat of mass shootings is vastly overblown. The U.S. murder rate is about 4.9 per 100,000 population per year. The comparable *mass shooting* death rate is about 0.002. We should stop freaking out about a relatively tiny risk.
e. If a new mass shooting occurs tomorrow, I will not change my position on (a). It won’t change the relevant evidence, and I don’t form beliefs based on emotion. I also won’t call any politicians dogmatic, unpatriotic, uncaring, or otherwise bad if they, too, stick to their guns (pun intended) on (a) after a new shooting.
f. If Democrats seize on the new shooting as an opportunity to push through new anti-gun policies that otherwise wouldn’t get passed, I now believe, in advance, that the new gun policies will almost certainly be ill-considered and bad.
g. I think the media should stop reporting mass shootings, since this motivates shooters to perform such attacks: they want to be covered in the media so they can be famous. Also, people who are prone to violence to begin with are more likely to think about doing a mass shooting, and to perceive it as a thing that people do, as more such attacks are shown and discussed on the news.
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III. How Ideologues React
When I say these things, leftists applaud (I) but indignantly protest or ridicule (II). Rightists applaud (II) but protest (I). If you’re inclined toward one of these reactions, please consider the possibility that you’re just being a goddamned ideologue, and stop it.

We might say "partisan" instead of "ideologue"

Bryan Caplan comments:

Nice symmetry, though it's worth pointing out that the collateral damage of the War on Terror is many times larger than the collateral damage of gun control.

Econtalk on Ideology Vs. Partisans

One takeaway I got from this econtalk was not to confuse ideologues with partisans. Most people are partisans because upon closer analysis, they don't hold anything close to a competent ideology. Instead, they're engrossed in tribal warfare. They love to signal their allegiance to their tribe with belief badges. They not only fail at intellectual empathy with the other side, even trying is borderline treacherous to their side (why would you want to intellectually empathize with Socialists or Nazis?) Their worldview is a fantasy game of good vs. evil, not the logical working out a web of interrelated beliefs.

This is made even more clear by reflecting on what the red and blue tribe's beliefs even have to do with each other. Why should the pro-choice position be correlated with the high tax position? Smarter partisans will hold a few contrarian belief cards in their back pocket, just to prove they're not partisans. But logically unrelated beliefs should have absolutely no predictive power over one another. And yet if I know you think we need to build a wall on the Mexican boarder, that highly predicts that you also don't support more gun control. That's partisanship, not ideology.

Meta-analysis on Gender Interests

A meta-analysis on effect of gender on interests:

Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d 0.93) on the Things–People dimension. Men showed stronger Realistic (d 0.84) and Investigative (d 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d 0.35), Social (d 0.68), and Conventional (d 0.33) interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d 1.11), science (d 0.36), and mathematics (d 0.34) interests. Average effect sizes varied across interest inventories, ranging from 0.08 to 0.79

The present study suggests that interests may play a critical role in gendered occupational choices and gender disparity in the STEM fields

 There is a huge disparity between what they're saying in science, and what can be said in public.

Heumer on Emotional Decision Making

Michael Huemer's Facebook should be a blog.

Most recently, he wrote a post that moved my Bayesian needle his way.

Two general questions I was just wondering about:
1. At what time do we typically form the most reliable judgments: when we reflect calmly, or when we are maximally emotional? Are there cases where we are more reliable when most emotional?
2. When do governments typically make the wisest policy choices: when the public is calm, or when they are filled with panic, outrage, or other intense emotions?

Here are two cases you might want to take into account in thinking about the answer:
a. When should we expect a wise, effective, and properly measured response to the threat of terrorism to be devised? On what theory is the answer "Right after a major terrorist attack"?
b. When should we expect wise, effective, and properly measured gun policy to be devised? On what theory is the answer "Right after a mass shooting of children"?
After answering those questions, here's another one to reflect on:
3. On what view, or for what set of goals, is the best time for making major policy decisions the time when the public is filled with terror, outrage, grief, or other intense emotions?

Brilliant. 

Conservative allegences

1. Everything is Racism

Liberals have become the party that goes around calling people racist all the time, and I don't think most Americans want to be a part of that. Although I think it's politically suicide to become that kind of leftist, we might want to consider whether or not they're correct.

My view of conservatives is that they're extremely loyal people. When moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt measures the moral foundations of political parties, he finds that conservatives care more about loyalty, sanctity, and authority. Liberals care more about care and fairness. So the question is, what are conservatives loyal to? Their race?

I think national loyalty and party loyalty are well established. "American First" is the explicit slogan of the right. And conservative hypocrisy feeds liberal comedy shows like The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight.

When a Republican wants infrastructure spending it's alright, when a liberal does it its socialism.

When a Republican president signs a bunch of executive orders in the first 100 days it's fine, when a liberal does it it's tyranny

When a Republican blows up the debt it's whatevs, when a liberal does it it's one more step toward the demise of the United States of America.

But wait, the last Democrat was black, so we can tell the same story about the white president and the black president. When our white president wanted X it was fine, but when our black president wanted X it was terrible. So that's the narrative that a lot of liberals have gone with. But they're not sufficiently disengangling national loyalty and party loyalty with race loyalty.

And that's where these accusations of white nationalism frustrate me. Why throw white in there, pure nationalism explains pretty all that needs to be explained. Why do you have to call people racist too? Especially since racism is such a vile accusation. People are fine with being biased toward their country or their party, They're often explicit about it, but if they're biased toward their race that's a special kind of evil. I don't think grownups should go around calling each other those kinds of names without some kind of burden of proof.

2. Separating Race from Nation and Party

It's not easy to find proper controls for nationalism and party loyalty to try to discover how much is really race loyalty. The United States is a country of primarily white people, and blacks are underrepresented in the Republican tribe too.

But isn't black underrepresentation among the red tribe evidence of racism? Not really. Blacks are strongly underrepresented in

Runners (3%). Bikers (6%). Furries (2%). Wall Street senior management (2%). Occupy Wall Street protesters (unknown but low, one source says 1.6% but likely an underestimate). BDSM (unknown but low) Tea Party members (1%). American Buddhists (~2%). Bird watchers (4%). Environmentalists (various but universally low). Wikipedia contributors (unknown but low). Atheists (2%). Vegetarian activists (maybe 1-5%). Yoga enthusiasts (unknown but low). College baseball players (5%). Swimmers (2%). Fanfiction readers (2%). Unitarian Universalists (1%).

-List taken from SlateStarCodex (read it)

And then occupations like dentists, surgeons, business owners, and car salesmen are underrepresented among Democrats. Does that mean it must be discrimination?

Personality seems to be the main factor triggering all these correlations. So I don't think it's enough to say, "black people don't vote Republican so you must be racist. Har har har."

I think there is a group that properly disentangles race from these other forms of loyalty. And it's pictured here:

Conservatives seem to like this group of people. They're southern, conservative, God-fearing, Christians. But they're black, where did all the racism go?

Racism's back, oh wait a sec,

Conservative racism went away again. Oh, wait, I feel another one coming

There's the racism again.

What's going on? Well, when you make other races more American, Christian, and conservative, the right seems to embrace ethnic diversity. 

They don't like China, but they love Hawaii.

They don't like Mexico, but they love Puerto Rico (when you inform them that Puerto Rico is an American territory). 

They don't like Barack Obama, but they love black church people.

When you actually control for these other differences, conservatives don't seem to care all that much about race. If I were a liberal who has been keeping racism at the tip of my tongue whenever I talk politics, I would feel ashamed. I mean, who calls other people such a vicious name with such a low burden of proof?

3 Great Podcasts

The stars aligned and brought me three awesome guests to three great podcasts last week

Bryan Caplan on the Rationally Speaking Podcast: Julia gave Bryan one of the best interviews I've heard. She was very challenging, and really tried to break his theory. Bryan replied brilliantly.

Steven Pinker on the Ezra Klein Show: Ezra Klein is so much better in speaking than writing. It's not like his writing is bad, it's just so slanted toward liberalism. When he speaks he's much more thoughtful. His approach is much more detached, and every bit as articulate. 

Steven Pinker of course is delightful. He's one of my favorite intellectuals to listen to. The vocabulary he uses to capture ideas is one of his greatest advantages.

Jordan Peterson joined Russ Roberts on Econtalk: They get into Jordan's book 12 rules for life, and talk about the bible a little more than I would expect.

Should Whites Pay Reparations?

1. Ezra's Thesis 

Ezra Klein on the compound interest of slavery

it's relatively easy for people to think in terms of the compound interest that's accrued to the income stolen from African Americans. But the power of compound interest doesn't just apply to money. It also applies to education and families and neighborhoods and self-respect. And this is where Coates' piece is so devastating. America didn't just plunder what African-Americans earned, or what they had saved. By far the hardest part of the piece to read was this account of what slavery did to black families:

It's as simple and clear as a child's math problem. The people who benefited most from American racism weren't the white men who stole the penny. It's the people who held onto the penny while it doubled and doubled and doubled and doubled.

2. Cowen's Criticism

It's easy for liberals to fall in love with this kind of argument, and neglect to put it under critical scrutiny. Luckily there are people like Tyler Cowen, who points out that any white American who has a single ancestor who at least for a while, had zero or near-zero net wealth would be except from this analysis.

Also, while it is at least controversial whether slavery was a profitable institution, even if it was it wasn't like the gains to whites were mirror images of the losses to slaves.

One last point by Tyler is that empirically, it doesn't seem like slavery-heavy regions have had especially impressive per capita incomes.

Tyler Cowen focus's in on the wealth aspect, but Ezra Klein also said it applies to education, families, neighborhoods, and self respect. This seems like kind of a floaty, wishy-washy, argument that a better writer than logician would make. I would like to hear the details of how exactly self-respect is supposed to compound interest.

With things like education where every new generation must start from scratch (every baby is a new brain to fill), it's hard to see how it compounds. Maybe parents have more to teach their children, but that explanation omits the exponential factor of compound interest. Maybe your parents teach you 5 lessons that they've learned over their lifetime, you add 2 things, and now you have 7 to teach your children. But that's not like compound interest at all. That's just addition.

Empirically, is there really much reason to believe children are taking what their parents taught them and adding to it? I'm skeptical

3. SlateStar's Criticism

SlateStar also resists Ezra's idea that slavery is like compound interest. He says we should look at whether formerly slave-owning societies are richer than formerly non-slave-owning societies. And that much of the reason wealth persists over generation isn't the inherited money, but the inherited genes. He says,

we would need to randomly select a bunch of people, give them a lot of wealth, and follow them for a couple of generations to see whether their descendants compounded that advantage or regressed back to their genetically programmed level. 

He cites studies that look at exactly this. One is an interesting natural experiment where Georgia lotteried away large fertile farms in the 1800s, and a couple generations down the line were no better off because of it.

And then we have studies of modern day lottery winners, and it doesn't seem like their grandkids are better off either.

I should note that both Slatestar's links are broken. The post is from 2014 after all. I would like to re-discover these studies.

4. More to say

It's all well and good to say, 'if you had taken $1 white slave owners gained and put it in a bank account it would be worth a zillion dollars today.' But that didn't happen. So I don't think it's okay to act like whites all inherited some great fortune from their great great great great grandparents, when most of them clearly didn't.

Normal people are repulsed by the idea of inherited debt, and I think it keeps this reparations thing from gaining any sort of traction. Even if we look at a single generation: if your dad owes my dad $100 but then dies before he pays up, you don't owe me anything. But some liberals want to go back to distant generations to assess which debts are inherited to which groups of people.

This is strange to me. It seems like closer proximity ancestors are much closer to who I am and what I'm responsible for than ancestors I've never even met. We also have a whole lot more information, and allows us to be more precise about who owes who what.

For some reason they only want to go back to slavery, and never pre-slavery. Because before slavery we had to import slaves, and we know that frequently the modern off-spring of slaves have much higher wealth as a result of their ancestors being imported from, say, Congo.

Suppose you were waiting to be born, and an angel offered you to be born in one of two lives. One where your great great great great great grandfather was imported to America as a slave, or one where he remained in West Africa? From a purely selfish standpoint, which one would you choose? It shouldn't be a hard decision.

I say, "some reason", but it's not a mystery. The argument I give above is disgusting, especially to liberals. To think that slavery could have benefited the great great great grandchildren of it's victims! I guess you're just going to have to decide how you're willing to stray from your comfort zone when thinking about these kinds of things.

So looking at the whole matter again, what I find so intellectually disingenuous is the insistence of inherited debt only for these two groups of people (whites, blacks, and sometimes natives), and only for this one thing that happened (slavery / taking of native land). There are a million other ways to cut up human diversity and a million other time frames, but none of them are mentioned. I think it's because liberals sacralize these victim groups in particular.