reason Archive

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5 Lessons From Matthew Yglesias

By
Trevor Macomber
– January 20, 2012

Yglesias has a perfectly pithy piece in Slate today entitled “5 Lessons From The SOPA/PIPA Fight” that made so tickled my inner logician, I’ve decided to reiterate them (in a slightly truncated manner) here:

  1. “There’s no evidence that better-funded groups systematically win policy fights.”
  2. “That said, it’s extraordinarily difficult to get on the agenda if you don’t have some money to spend.”
  3. “It’s easy to look at some worthy reform measure failing and then say the forces of evil always win, but the fact is that when the forces of evil want to push a terrible reform on the country they usually lose too.”
  4. “Leaders deliberately put issues that unite their caucuses on the agenda. When happenstance causes the agenda to be dominated by something outside the main structure of partisanship, the polarization dynamic breaks down.”
  5. “Members of congress, just like regular people, only have deep commitments to a few priorities. When they suddenly learn that they’ve mis-judged how many of their constituents care about something and which side they’re on, they’re happy to change positions.”
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10 Commandments for Atheists.

By
Trevor Macomber
– November 1, 2011

USA Today pimps Penn Jillette’s new book, God, No!, by reprinting his response to a challenge by Glenn Beck ”to come up with an atheist’s version of The Ten Commandments.” I think it’s a pretty good start, though there are a couple points that I’d hone a little more finely if I had more than five goddamn minutes a day to blog these days.

Whadday’all think (he said as if there was anyone out there actually reading this)?

1. The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.

2. Do not put things or even ideas above other human beings. (Let’s scream at each other about Kindle versus iPad, solar versus nuclear, Republican versus Libertarian, Garth Brooks> versus Sun Ra— but when your house is on fire, I’ll be there to help.)

3. Say what you mean, even when talking to yourself. (What used to be an oath to (G)od is now quite simply respecting yourself.)

4. Put aside some time to rest and think. (If you’re religious, that might be the Sabbath; if you’re a Vegas magician, that’ll be the day with the lowest grosses.)

5. Be there for your family. Love your parents, your partner, and your children. (Love is deeper than honor, and parents matter, but so do spouse and children.)

6. Respect and protect all human life. (Many believe that “Thou shalt not kill” only refers to people in the same tribe. I say it’s all human life.)

7. Keep your promises. (If you can’t be sexually exclusive to your spouse, don’t make that deal.)

8. Don’t steal. (This includes magic tricks and jokes — you know who you are!)

9. Don’t lie. (You know, unless you’re doing magic tricks and it’s part of your job. Does that make it OK for politicians, too?)

10. Don’t waste too much time wishing, hoping, and being envious; it’ll make you bugnutty.

***

On a related note, please enjoy the last word on the original Ten Commandments by the master himself:

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In which I love on Hugh Laurie

By
Trevor Macomber
– September 6, 2011

Quotes, quips, and factoids from the recent NYT profile of one of my all-time favorite actors and six-time winner of the “Actual British Person Most Likely to Be Mistaken for an American Award,” Hugh Laurie:

  • Laurie’s cover album of New Orleans-themed blues, Let Them Talk, drops today — and it’s pretty damn good. (It’s also already number two in England.)
  • Speaking of England, Laurie is actually far better known in his home country for his comic work in the 80s and 90s (specifically, Jeeves and Wooster and A Bit of Fry & Laurie) than he is for House, to the extent that Stephen Fry, his long-time collaborator, ”says he has even been asked, in London, whatever became of Laurie” — even though House was, not too long ago, the most-watched show in the world.
  • Asked if he enjoys his role as House: “I equate happiness with contentment, and contentment with complacency, and complacency with impending disaster.”
  • Discussing the differences between British and American TV: “I think good-looking people seldom make good television,” he said. “And American television studios almost concede before they start: ‘Well, it won’t be good, but at least it’ll be good-looking. We’ll have nice-looking girls in tight shirts with F.B.I. badges and fit-looking guys with lots of hair gel vaulting over things. So at least we’ll have achieved that base standard of entertainment.’” He shook his head. “I think that’s hugely misguided. The glory of American television is Dennis Franz.”
  • Laurie has also written a novel, The Gun Seller, published in 1996, which the profiler describes as “an odd but enjoyable cross between the international intrigue of Robert Ludlum and the mannered comedy of P. G. Wodehouse, leading to prose like ‘there I was, the model in diagram (c) in the chapter headed “Neck-Breaking: The Basics.”‘”
  • “There’s a hierarchy of piano players in New Orleans, and I’m not even ranked…Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have dared…Too nervous, too shy, too pessimistic. But now I’ve had a glimpse of this most wonderful existence, and crikey, it tastes good.”
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Tom Friedman Has a Dream!

By
Tom OHare
– August 10, 2011

And it is incredibly stupid!

Honestly, if you can stomach it, click the link (if you do not have a Times online subscription, please don’t waste one of your 20 free articles — I promise to excerpt enough for you to get the gist). I laughed and laughed and laughed. And then I laughed some more. Friedman begins thusly:

This is a scary economic moment. The response we need is not easy, but it is totally obvious. We need a Grand Bargain between America’s two parties — and we need it right now. Until you read the following news article, we’ll be stuck in a world of hurt.

This paragraph portends bad things for two reasons. One, Friedman is a hack. Two, it signals that he’s about to engage in a creative writing exercise. Gauge my eyes out with a spoon! Egads, what inanity shall unfold?

All sorts of inanity. Remember, THIS IS THE NEWS STORY TOM FRIEDMAN IMAGINES MUST BE WRITTEN IN ORDER FOR THE COUNTRY TO GET BACK ON TRACK!!!!!!

Washington (AP) — It was a news conference the likes of which the White House had never seen. President Obama stood in the East Room, flanked by the House speaker, John Boehner; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell; the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid; and the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi. The president asked Mr. Boehner to speak first.

Friedman used to write hard news before he became such a gigantic buffoon. Maybe it’s all the years he’s spent spouting his trademark buffoonery, but this is a terrible, terrible lede. He might as well have begun, “It was a dark and stormy night and the world was about to change, as an epic and historic news conference broke out at the White House.” What sort of news conference would have Tom Friedman creaming his pants so suddenly?

This kind of news conference:

“My fellow Americans,” the Ohio Republican began. “We have just concluded a meeting with the president, prompted by this moment of extraordinary economic peril. Our party, as you know, is convinced that the main reason for our economic decline is that we have too much debt, that government has grown too big and that taxes and regulations are choking our dynamism. But I have to acknowledge that, over the years, our party has contributed to this debt burden and government spending binge. We are not innocent, and, therefore, we owe the country a strategy for governing and for fixing a problem that we helped to create — instead of just blocking the president. The G.O.P. is better than that and has more to offer the nation. Therefore, we have informed the president that our legislators are ready to reopen negotiations immediately on a ‘Grand Bargain’ to address all these debt issues once and for all and that everything will be on the table from our side — including tax reform that closes loopholes and eliminates wasteful subsidies, and, if need be, tax increases.”

OMG. LOL. This is his idea of “the likes of which were never seen”? Because we had the Grand Bargain bullshit a couple of weeks ago, Boehner got 98% of what he wanted, and the stock market started to tumble. Whatever, Tom Friedman. What else did your fantasyland orange congressman say in this orgiastic revelry you just awoke from?

“…both sides will have to bend if we are going to get the kind of comprehensive budget agreement the country needs. To my Tea Party colleagues, I say: thank you. Your passion helped spur the nation to action, but the country cannot be governed, and our future secured, by bowing solely to the passions of any single group — liberal or conservative. I know that the Tea Party activists are true patriots and they will work with us as well.”

The Tea Party is comprised of a group of know-nothing cynics who just want guns and government handouts. (Hey, fuckheads, howz about me and the rest of da cosmopolitan libruls stop subsidizing your shitty, backwater welfare states? Then we’ll get to talking about cutting social security. K?) They aren’t patriots; they’re crybabies. And they’re crybabies, moreover, who think their tears are proof of their UltraMegaAmerica patriotism. But Tom Friedman, centrist extraordinaire, thinks they’re onto something, thinks that if John Boehner just whispers the right sweet-nothings into their ear that they’ll acknowledge that they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, step aside, and let the grown-ups handle cleaning up the mess they’ve made of our national affairs. What can I say? GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!

Oh. And then there’s Friedman’s fantasyland Obama speech. Let’s take a look at that.

“Speaker Boehner and Senator McConnell, thank you for your commitment to act in our nation’s highest interests. Let me say publicly what I committed to you privately: I have asked Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to revive their deficit commission and to use their recommendations for how to cut spending and raise revenues as the starting point for our negotiations. But it will now be called ‘The National Commission for American Renewal.’ Because in addition to the original Bowles-Simpson members, it will include Senator McConnell, Speaker Boehner, Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi, and its goal will indeed be a comprehensive plan for American renewal.”

Goodie! We’ll rename the Catfood Commission, come up with some even craftier ways to dismember the social safety net, and it will be Very. Very. Serious. And Good. For America. Just not the America Tom Friedman inhabits.

Continue, Imaginary Obama!

“I, too, have a confession: I’ve done a poor job integrating my nation-building ideas, including health care, into a single vision so people understood where I was going. I also let tactical political considerations — like abandoning the Bowles-Simpson commission — intervene, so Americans lost sight of my priorities. That will not happen again.”

Shorter Imaginary Tom Friedman Obama: “Fuck it, let’s just adopt Paul Ryan’s plan and call it good, eh, America?”

Finally, the imaginary, poorly written “news article” that prompted Tom Friedman’s wet dream (and prompted Tom Friedman’s wife to suggest that they should perhaps start sleeping in different beds) concludes on this triumphant note:

At that point, all five leaders shook hands and retreated into the Oval Office. It was exactly 9:29 a.m. One minute later, the New York Stock Exchange opened. The Dow was up 1,223 points at the open — an all-time record.

Aye, and that’s the rub, isn’t it? “Pretty” speeches aside, the only good thing about this fantasyland “news article” is that the Dow is magically up to 1,233 points one minute after the speeches conclude. Friedman seems to be saying, “IT ONLY TAKES ONE MINUTE TO HEAL THE COUNTRY, PEOPLE! THAT’S ALL IT WOULD TAKE! COUPLA SPEECHES, SOME ‘CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG’ SPIRIT, AND BLAM-O! PROBLEM SOLVED, DOW’S UP A BILLION POINTS, CAN I HAZ BOOK DEAL NOW?”*

This man gets paid by the New York Times and sells millions of copies of books. The only people who deserve what is coming in our inevitable imperial experiment comes crashing to the ground will be people like Tom Friedman, people who helped precipitate it. Alas, I think he’ll be just fine.

 

*(Edited second to last paragraph because I can.)

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More “Reason”

By
Ben Nolan
– July 7, 2011

Freddie deBoer:

It’s a little moment, so I don’t want to fixate on it too much, but I think that this line from Nick Gillespie’s post on the DC Taxicab Commission arrests is deeply telling. Describing a Reason reporter who was (indefensibly) arrested for videotaping the cops at the meeting, Gillespie writes “Reason enlisted noted First Amendent lawyer (and Reason contributor) Robert Corn-Revere to represent Epstein, and his swift action helped to defuse a situation in which the powerful were more than ready to take advantage of the powerless.”

Ah, yes. The powerless. When I think of people who are powerless in Washington DC—a city with a child poverty rate near 30%—I think of employees of one of the most influential and powerful think tanks in the country. (Koch money goes a long way.) In a poor, majority-black city with a long history of drugs, crime, and endemic lack of opportunity, Gillespie looks out and sees that the truly powerless are… libertarians. (That Mr. Epstein had the social and material resources to immediately gain the aid of a noted First Amendment lawyer seems not to have factored into Gillespie’s determination of Epstein’s power or lack thereof.)

Couldn’t be said better. Hats off.

Update: As a libertarian, have you ever wanted someone to tell you how to live? Well you’re in luck! Just mosey on over to Reddit’s libertarian board, and click on the link titled “The Libertarian Daily Life Manifesto.”

A couple things to note: The advice is generally, broadly, Protestant common sense, and almost totally inoffensive. Also, it hasn’t exactly taken off — in 25 minutes it’s gotten all of two upboats. Still…. kindof hilariously dissonant, no?

Update 2: TOM SENT ME THIS LINK AND IS THE GREATEST SENDER OF LINKS IN THE WORLD

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More On Ditchkins Atheism

By
Ben Nolan
– July 7, 2011

This is a good lecture and should be listened to in full, but if you’ll do me a favour and jump forward to 43:47…

 
I think Eagleton could be much more forceful.

On the dude’s first point, what he’s failing to understand is that all we have — what culture is, what defines our happiness and unhappiness — is the clothes. Vulgar atheists on the one hand, and vulgar believers on the other are so keen on talking about what we have no access to by sense or reason — what’s underneath the clothes (metaphysical purposes to being), that they lose sight of the fact that what really matters is the clothes, and the clothes do undeniably exist. They’re things like how we think of each other; how we’ve set up our social relations; how we’ve set up our economy; how we’ve defined fulfillment in this world; how we determined why things are good and bad; etc.

As far as the clothes go, we’re in or at least approaching a crisis state because we’ve forgotten how to engage the problem of how we ought to dress our emperor (how we ought to define our own purposes as a larger community) in a critical way — that’s right, we do have the capacity, through consensus-oriented critical public discourse, to, up to a point, define for ourselves how our emperor is dressed. But at this point we’re going on critically mute/deaf habit, and the longer we let ourselves just go on habit, the more we lose our coherence with one another and the world. In other words, we’re stuck with the ugly-assed clothes the emperor’s been wearing, even as they go out of style. (Have I tortured this metaphor enough?)

Mr. Psychology is totally right to say that Eagleton’s is not an argument that’s going to easily win over either side of the warring vulgarians. But it doesn’t need to be easy, because we’ve got Oscar Wilde on our side…

It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is quite unpractical, and goes against human nature. This is perfectly true. It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature. This is why it is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it. For what is a practical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will change.

I’ve probably quoted that before. Almost definitely, actually. I think it might be my favourite passage ever from anything. You can count on my quoting it again.

 
Update: If you’re into what Eagleton’s saying, you might want to check out this piece, which he wrote a couple years ago for the LRB. Sample:

There are always topics on which otherwise scrupulous minds will cave in with scarcely a struggle to the grossest prejudice. For a lot of academic psychologists, it is Jacques Lacan; for Oxbridge philosophers it is Heidegger; for former citizens of the Soviet bloc it is the writings of Marx; for militant rationalists it is religion.

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Metcalf and the Libertarians, Ctd., AND Considering the Thought Experiment As Method (wonkish)

By
Ben Nolan
– June 25, 2011

The Metcalf himself (pictured at right in a Tokyo club about to fight O-Ren Ishii’s private army, the Crazy 88 — O-Ren being a fervent libertarian) takes up the “factual errors” meme I addressed earlier this week in a new, artillery barrage counterstrike of a post.

Read it. It’s tremendously entertaining, and not conciliatory in the slightest.

Examples:

About Brad DeLong who caught that Metcalf mis-sourced a cutting line Keynes had written about Hayek (though that he had written it about Hayek is not disputed):

Delong is right in saying Keynes wrote Hayek telling him he admired Road (“a grand book”), but since Delong’s primary interest is in pampering his own self-image as the scourge of a lazy world, he leaves his reader with a false, or at least, incomplete impression.

Metcalf goes on to point out that with proper context the “grand book” comment is revealed as rather clearly patronizing considering Keynes thought its economics only functioned in an ideal set of circumstances and were of little practical use.

In other words, “POW!”

To Julian Sanchez:

I’m tempted to let the essay speak for itself, but let me add: Why, if Nozick did not want to game his example, did he choose Wilt? After all, if Sanchez is correct, isn’t the point made just as well with, say, a happy-go-lucky doofus who rides a wave of Internet exuberance and cashes out big, all while adding to the world precisely zero utility

Delicious. That said, I did appreciate Sanchez’ introduction of the term “epistemic closure” to the popular blog-cabulary a couple years back.

Metcalf also responds to the claim made by many that he doesn’t “get” thought experiments using an elaborate (by the standards of your average thousand word article) counterfactual. Toss Slate a click and read it. In the mean time, I thought I might more directly take up the problem of thought experiments as a social theoretic method… 

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Because Your Undying Love Doesn’t Pay the Bills, and We’ve Developed One Hell of a Coke Habit

By
Tom OHare
– June 23, 2011

Those of you who are regular visitors to this blog (Hi, Mom!) know that last week, in a move that will go down in Internet history, we rejected $20 in advertising from a creepy online education mill. It was legendary, it was epic, and it showcased the majesty of our ideals in action. Apparently, so majestic is our Internet Ethic, that at least one anonymous commenter felt that it merited its own reward. Here I quote one HPG:

Please add a PayPal “Donate” button to your blog. I don’t have very much money right now, but I would like to contribute $5 in support of your attentiveness, integrity, and eloquence plus $1 for Ben’s tasty icing.

Email me when you get it set up and I will follow through.

While we haven’t yet emailed the good madam, we very much intend to. $5 is $5, and Ben deserves an extra loony for good measure (He’s Canadian: that’s what they call dollars up there). And anyway, we’ve reached the point where we feel like, “Hey. If someone wants to give us free money because they like what we’re doing, more power to them!” So here’s the deal:

We’ve added a PayPal button. It’s over there in the sidebar, beneath the search function. If you want to donate, that’s the way to do it. If we ever somehow make back the money we’ve invested in this little website and wind up with extra, we promise to spend the rest on the finest Bolivian marching powder we can get our hands on.

Sincerely,

The Management

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More Fun With Libertarians

By
Ben Nolan
– June 22, 2011

To the more sober libertarians out there: the guy below is an extreme case, but not that extreme. Get into any argument with libertarians on the Internet and guys like him will find you. Please please please, rein them the fuck in. You’re the only ones who can do it, and they’re doing more harm to your ideology than any Marxist or liberal ever could (my main motivation for posting it).

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Forcing people to do and give stuff they do not want to do and give is neither cooperative nor a social action. It’s anti-social. Socialists are just plum dumb; they think rape, theft, and murder are social cooperative actions.

You actually think that kind of bullshit is going to convince anyone to like you, let alone your paper-thin ideology?

Do you think it’s “ideology” that the Earth revolves around the Sun? Add to the list that you don’t know the difference between ideology and scientific empirical data methodology.

I think it’s ideological to think that your ideology’s claims are as sure as the claim that the earth revolves around the Sun.

There’s only two possible ways economic goods can move from person and place to differing person and place in the realm of scientific empirical human action, voluntarily through trade or involuntarily through violence. You think that’s an ideological claim, not an epistemological empirical scientific method demonstrable claim? Do you think “people want what they don’t want, people don’t want what they do want”?

It’s certainly empirically disprovable. Third way: Inheritance. And as far as money goes, fourth way: Willing submission to a system of taxation.

Inheritance is voluntary. It is fundamentally no different to give your offspring $1,000,000 than to give a hungry homeless person $1.

If it was voluntarily willing forthcoming, taxation wouldn’t be necessary. You should have no objection to paying taxes being optional then. Or must you close your eyes and pretend it is impossible that some people might not want to be taxed at all or taxed beyond a certain extent? This is why socialists are impervious to scientific empirical data.

Is it not rape if two men vote to have sex with one woman who votes no? Socialists are so deluded that they think gang rape is voluntary willing submission.

It’s voluntary, but it’s neither trade nor violence.

If we’re talking consent: You didn’t consent to being born into a situation of privilege either, just as those on the other end of the socio-economic ladder didn’t consent to not having the early childhood support necessary to generate the cognitive development necessary for them to be competitive as adults. Your construction of the consenting individual is abstract artifice and not actually reflective of human life.

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Some Factual Errors in the Latest “Reason” Attack on the Slate Attack on Libertarianism

By
Ben Nolan
– June 22, 2011

Matt Welch over at “Reason” aggregates the supposed factual errors identified by his libertarian friends in the Metcalf critique of libertarianism I posted about two days ago. Worth taking a look, no?

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Will Wilkinson, in The Economist, on Metcalf’s claim that Ludvig von Mises and F.A. Hayek were “in with the nutters and the shills,” because “between them, Von Hayek and Von Mises never seem to have held a single academic appointment that didn’t involve a corporate sponsor”:

This attempt to marginalise two great thinkers is as lazy as it is dishonest. A little light googling is enough to establish the basic facts, but it seems Mr Metcalf could not be bothered.

[much evidence cited] [...]

If only a levee separated polite discourse from the sort of ax-grinding indifference to fairness and truth Mr Metcalf displays in his essay.

Note that the “much evidence cited” saccade in Welch’s quote of Wilkinson conveniently lets readers fail to notice that Wilkinson offers no conclusive evidence at all, and even writes sentences like the following:

My understanding is that after Mises fled Nazifying Europe and resettled in America, he was offered a number of academic posts in the interior of the country, but preferred to stay in New York City, where his visiting post at NYU was funded by several businessmen.

This is after he notes:

Mises left Vienna for Geneva in 1934 to accept an academic appointment at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, which was offered to him by William Reppard, the Institute’s co-founder

Which conspicuously fails to actually address the question it claims to of who funded his academic appointment. My “light googling” (to borrow Wilkinson’s words) didn’t turn anything up, and, yes, it’s Metcalf’s responsibility to justify the statement now that it’s been challenged, but this isn’t counterevidence yet.

Turning to Hayek:

As for Hayek, his post at the London School of Economics, from which he famously debated Keynes and cemented his reputation in the world of “polite discourse”, did not involve corporate sponsorship, as far as I know.

As far as you know? Did it, or didn’t it? Will: You promised me disproof from “light googling.” So far I’m getting nothing.

Again: Metcalf — clear this up for us, buddy.

And this pattern goes on. In his final engagement with Mises and Hayek’s academic appointments, no actual disproof is offered of the claim that Hayek’s position at the School of Social Thought was corporate funded:

In any case, if the LSE or the University of Chicago’s Committee for Social Thought survived, like art museums and symphony orchestras, by the good graces of wealthy benefactors

Sounds to me like equivocation if not a straight up granting of Metcalf’s point in this case. Where are “the facts,” Will? Tell me.

***

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