debitage

The Best Argument for Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:19:30 +0000

I enjoy philosophical debate, so I've spent a lot of time listening to and thinking about arguments for and against Christianity. I've considered questions about metaphysics, and science, and history, and ethics. Some of those arguments (on both sides) are embarrassingly awful, others provoke serious thought. I remain an atheist because none of the pro-Christianity arguments have yet persuaded me, but some are definitely better than others. So what is the best argument for Christianity, in my opinion?

The best argument for Christianity is Mister Rogers. I did some research about the life and work of Fred Rogers for my book, and I was continually impressed by his dedication to improving the world, and by how he saw his work as a ministry, since he was ordained in the Presbyterian church. Thinking about Mister Rogers gives me that feeling of "I want to be part of this" more than any threat of hellfire or calculation of fine-tuning ever has. And Mister Rogers is not alone -- I know (or know of) lots of people whose living example of drawing on their Christian faith to make the world better inspires me.

But there's a catch.

I know a number of people whose work to make the world better is rooted in their Jewish faith, and who inspire me to want to join them and be like them. So the best argument for Christianity is also the best argument for Judaism. And it's the best argument for neopaganism. And the best argument for Buddhism. And Taoism. And Islam. And Hinduism. And yes, the best argument for Christianity is also the best argument for humanism and atheism.

What Atheism Means to Me

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 21:29:51 +0000

There's an important asymmetry in debates between theists and atheists rooted in the many different ways that "god" can be defined. When a theist says "I believe in god," then it's easy to specify what they mean by "god" -- they're defining "god" according to the parameters of their belief. But when an atheist says "I don't believe in god," it's not obvious what they mean by this "god" that they don't believe in.

Most atheists will respond to this challenge by trying to outline a definition of god -- either a specific one that theist proselytizers have tried to argue them into believing in, or a general one meant to encompass the gods of a wide variety of religions. I tend to find this kind of definitional debate unhelpful, and I prefer a more pragmatist way of defining atheism. When I say that I'm an atheist, what I mean is that of the things which I believe exist, I don't find it useful to treat any of them as "god."

Rather than specifying one definition of god that I reject, my approach classifies all god definitions that I've encountered into three groups: nonexistent, nondivine, and nonsense.

The first group is perhaps the most obvious one. Many people define "god" as a being which I do not believe exists in the world. This encompasses the traditional Christian conception of god (a personal, non-physical being that created the world and controls the fate of our souls after death). It also encompasses the gods posited by religions like classical paganism, or people who worship extraterrestrials. Different arguments and evidence may bear on the existence or not of different proposed gods, but so far I am not persuaded that any of the ones I've encountered are more likely than not.

The second group are things which I believe exist, but which I don't find it useful to treat as "god." Take, for example, the sun. The sun clearly exists, and I respect its power and importance, but I don't find it useful to apply the label "god" to the literal ball of nuclear-reacting plasma we orbit, or to engage in practices like worship toward it. (A "sun god" in the sense of a personal being associated with but distinct from the literal star in the sky would fall into group 1). This group also encompasses some of the more abstract conceptions of god held by some progressive theists, such as the idea that "god" just means the force of love in the universe. I believe that love is real (and I have the shirt to prove it), but I find it obscures more than it clarifies for me to attach the label "god" to love.

The third category is for definitions of god that I can't make enough sense of to decide whether I believe the specified entity exists or deserves the label "god." This category is mostly more abstract philosophical conceptions of god, described by expressions like "the ground of being" or "the big bigness," as well as claims that god is by definition un-knowable and mysterious to the human intellect. If I can't understand what you mean by something, I can't believe in it.

All of this is, of course, provisional -- I don't claim to have some general proof that all possible god definitions must fall into one of these categories. Maybe someone will someday show me evidence and arguments that persuade me that a being whose existence I reject now is actually real (group 1), or that a thing I believe in deserves the label "god" (group 2), or that a confusing description of god actually makes enough sense for me to believe in it (group 3). But so far, every proposed definition of god I've encountered has fallen into one of these three categories, and I have no particular reason to be optimistic that that will change, so I call myself an atheist.

(In college, I attended an ecumenical protestant congregation on campus, and one element of most of our services was for someone to do a short talk called "what my faith means to me." It was an interesting way of learning about the many different backgrounds people were coming from and different ways they related to their beliefs. The title of this post is spoofing that part of those church services, since I now don't have a faith.)

On Biology and Pronouns

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 18:52:00 +0000

A common transphobic argument is to accuse trans and nonbinary people of denying biology. Sex is biologically binary, they say, and so people who -- for example -- use pronouns different from those assigned based on their presumed sex at birth are in effect making a factually false claim.

The most common response from pro-trans people is to point out that biological sex is not in fact binary. As a matter of biological fact, this is true -- intersex conditions of various sorts are much more common than most of us realize, and are often undiagnosed (how many of us have actually had our chromosomes tested, instead of just assuming them based on our genitals?). But I think this response somewhat misses the point by accepting the premises of the transphobic argument.

Consider: I propose that we base everyone's pronouns on their blood type. Henceforward, your pronouns will be as follows:
Type O: sho/shom/shor
Type A: shay/shaim/shair
Type B: bo/bom/bor
Type AB: bay/baim/bair
(If you haven't had your blood type tested, we will be happy to infer it from your food preferences, personality, etc.)

Now imagine that, to justify this proposal, I pointed out the biological reality of blood types. Anyone who doesn't want to have their pronouns based on their blood type, I would say, is simply a blood type denialist who needs to be educated on genetics, and who is potentially risking people's lives when they get an improper transfusion.

In the blood type case, I think it's obvious that the merits of this pronoun system don't depend on the biological facts of blood type. Just because blood types have an indisputable genetic basis doesn't mean that our pronouns need to match those genes. After all, we've been getting along just fine without any outward marking of blood type at all.

The same, I would argue, applies to arguments about biological sex and pronouns. The validity of someone's pronouns simply doesn't depend on any facts about biological sex, because there's no reason that pronouns need to correspond to biology. We get to decide on what basis we allocate pronouns, and "what makes the person being referred to feel most comfortable" seems like a better basis than "a doctor's assumption about the person's chromosomes."

Against "Hamilton Electors"

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 22:00:00 +0000

(This draft was written shortly after the 2016 election. I've decided to clean it up and publish it.)

There is a push on right now to encourage members of the electoral college to deny Donald Trump the presidency when they meet next week to officially cast their electoral votes. The effort goes under the name "Hamilton electors," after hip-hop star and Federalist Papers author Alexander Hamilton, who argued that the electoral college should be a responsible deliberative body that can act to prevent the unwashed masses from choosing a dangerous demagogue for president.

I can see the appeal of Hamilton electors from a purely ends-justify-the-means point of view. Trump is a uniquely dangerous threat to our country, and the prospect of four years of a Trump administration is horrifying. But Republican electors are hardly going to be swayed by this kind of argument, so Hamilton elector proponents have been making principled arguments for why it's important for electors to think independently, and why they're justified in voting against the wishes of the general public in their state. However, I don't think these principled arguments stand up, at least in the context of the electoral college as it's currently constituted.

Hamilton electors would make sense in Alexander Hamilton's day. Back then, there was no mass media or public campaigning by presidential candidates. Electors were selected for their ability to weigh up the merits of the various candidates and vote in the best interests of their state. But that's not how we choose electors today.

Consider how the presidential primaries work. Each state is obviously different, but here in Pennsylvania, the Democratic presidential primary was a two-step process. First, my ballot asked me to vote for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. This determined how many votes each candidate would receive from Pennsylvania at the Democratic National Convention.

Second, my ballot asked me to choose which specific people would be the actual delegates who would travel to Philadelphia to participate in the DNC. For each delegate, I could see their name and which candidate they supported. This step of the vote was about more than just who got to put "DNC 2016" on their resume. If that initial ballot was unable to choose a candidate -- because of a contested convention, or a candidate dropping out, or whatever -- those delegates would need to exercise their own judgment in deciding where to shift their vote. So I could pick delegates who I thought would be responsible about their choices in those later rounds, which I (as an ordinary voter) would not have a chance to directly weigh in on. As it happens, I didn't like a couple of the people who were listed as delegates for my candidate, so I ended up casting a mixed ballot at the delegate selection stage.

Contrast the primary process with the actual election in November. There was only one step on my ballot: A list of President/Vice President tickets, of which I was to select one, thereby casting my vote for a slate of electors pledged to that pair of candidates. The ballot gave me no information about who those electors are, much less any opportunity to vote for a mixed ticket. Indeed, when the Hamilton electors effort got going, people found it difficult to locate the names and biographical information about the electors!

In sum, nobody voted for electors on the basis of their individual decision-making skills. We voted for electors as proxies pledged to vote for a particular candidate. And that makes a lot of sense in the current media environment. The candidates campaign directly to the public, and the voters have ample opportunity to make up their minds which candidate they would rather have as president.

When I walked into my polling place, I knew that I very much did not want Donald Trump to be president, and I very much did want Hillary Clinton instead. When I cast my vote, not only was "which candidate do they support" the only piece of information I had on the competing slates of electors, it was also the only piece of information that was relevant to me. I had made up my mind about the candidates for president. The most important thing I wanted from an elector is an assurance that they could be relied on to vote for Clinton, and not Trump, no matter what. Given the choice between an intelligent, fair-minded person open to persuasion from either side, versus a hack who lives only to support Hillary, I'd have chosen the latter as an elector in a heartbeat. As much as I'd like to see Trump denied the presidency, I find it hard to support Hamilton Electors as a general system.

On the Difference Between Liberalism and Leftism

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 21:55:00 +0000

I've seen a lot of talk that attempts to distinguish liberalism from leftism that I think somewhat misses the nature of liberalism. The implied model of politics is usually a one-dimensional continuum from right to left. Liberals are positioned as centrists (having views in between the left and right) and/or reformists (believing leftward change can and should happen incrementally). I would argue, in contrast, the liberalism-illiberalism is a separate axis from left-right. (Of course, substantive ideologies are not a one-dimensional field, but for simplicity's sake ...)

Left and right are substantive views. They consist of a set of values and preferences about the proper way to live. Centrism is likewise a substantive view, that holds that the ideal way for people to live is somewhere in between what the left and right call for. Liberalism is not a substantive position, but rather a meta-position on how conflicts between substantive positions should be handled. The essence of liberalism is the belief that we should create a substance-neutral set of rules that apply equally to all substantive views and their adherents. Illiberalism, by contrast, holds that society should overtly favor one substantive view. For example, a liberal defends free speech on the same terms for themselves and their opponents, while an illiberal seeks to suppress speech that advocates wrong ideas while defending their own right to speak the truth.

Liberalism may work by either privatizing or democratizing conflict. A privatized conflict is one in which each person is free to pursue their substantive values in their own life, at the cost of allowing others that same freedom. The classic example is religion -- the European wars between Protestants and Catholics were resolved through the liberal means of allowing each person to practice their own religion, even if their neighbors are sure they are going to hell for it. Democratization occurs when a society as a whole must choose between substantive positions, but that choice is made through a fair and neutral process such as an election.

The danger of an extreme illiberal view is usually said to be dogmatism. In a wholly illiberal society, all dissent from the correct substantive view is suppressed and ruled out-of-bounds. But I think dogmatism is scary only from a liberal point of view. A liberal values dissent and conflict among substantive views for their own sake. But a truly committed illiberal, who is absolutely convinced that their substantive view is correct, has nothing to fear from dogmatism. Indeed, why should people be allowed to spread demonstrably false views that can do nothing but harm society?

The danger of extreme illiberalism that should worry an illiberal is tyranny. Tyranny occurs when one person or group is able to set itself up as the interpreter of the substantive view that prevails. Though some illiberals may wish to deny it, there is always a need for some interpreter or arbiter to make the final decision as to which things are consistent with the substantive truth. The truth is never simply self-evident. This interpreter is able to use illiberalism to pursue their own ends by branding any dissent as a dangerous attack on the truth. Illiberalism can thus become twisted against itself. Some measure of liberalism is necessary to allow dissent against particular interpreters of substantive doctrine, and thus accountability of human interpreters to the very values they purport to be pursuing. We need to be able to say "I think the Party is saying things that aren't actually consistent with Marxist-Leninist thought" or "I think the Bishop is misinterpreting the Bible."

On the other extreme, liberalism is often charged with allowing evil ideologies to arise. A liberal may hope that, say, Nazi views do not prevail in the "marketplace of ideas" or at the ballot box, but there is nothing inherent in the liberal system that would guarantee this. An extreme liberal can't rule any substantive ideology out-of-bounds -- even one that is itself illiberal in content. But just as an extreme illiberal is unconcerned with dogmatism, an extreme liberal is unconcerned with giving the bad guys freedom. From an extreme liberal point of view, if "bad" views prevail within a truly free and fair system, then those bad views are thereby validated as good! Only an illiberal would see a victory by the bad guys as a flaw in a liberal system.

What would concern a true liberal about an extreme liberal system is emptiness, which results from liberalism's inability to recognize power relations. An analysis of power is a core component of a substantive ideology -- who has power, and who should have power. But liberalism is, by its commitment to neutrality between substantive views, unable to recognize any such power relations. That means a liberal system always presumes a level playing field, which substantive views deny exists. Liberal promises of equality are empty when power inequalities allow some people to take advantage of the liberal system more readily than others. For example, free speech is more easily used by those who have more resources and more social respect, while those who lack those things find their theoretical right to free speech useless.

Now, to say that perfect liberalism and perfect illiberalism are both flawed doesn't tell us much about exactly where in between those extremes we should land. But hopefully conceptualizing liberalism as a separate axis from that which distinguishes substantive ideologies at least helps frame the question.

A Proposal for the Future Evolution of English Pronouns and Conjugations

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 17:28:00 +0000

(note: I am not a linguist, although I play one on the Internet)

English has lost most of its conjugations by person for verbs, but has retained some of them for "to be." A few centuries ago, "standard" English had a system with distinctions between persons in the singular, plus a different plural form:

I am           we are
thou art       you are
he/she/it is   they are

Over time, the practice of using the second person plural as a formal mode of address to single people led to "you" becoming the standard second person singular, displacing "thou" -- and as it did so, it brought along its conjugation. That is, we say "you are" to individuals, not "you art." So current "standard" English looks like:

I am           we are
you are        you are
he/she/it is   they are

Of these six forms, four are always used to refer to "persons" in the philosophical sense of conscious beings (not necessarily Homo sapiens) -- the first and second person forms (i.e. you never address a rock, calling it "you," unless you mean to imply that it is somehow a conscious person). (Things are going to get confusing with using both the grammatical and philosophical definitions of the word "person" from here on out, but bear with me.) And of those four always-persons, three now use the conjugation "are."

Currently we're seeing a shift toward greater acceptance in "standard" English of the longsanding custom of using "they" to refer to single persons of indeterminate gender. And singular they, like singular you, brings along its conjugation. We say "they are" about individuals, not "they is" (and "they eat" rather than "they eats," etc.). So the emerging paradigm looks like:

I am           we are
you are        you are
he/she/it is   they are
they are

Singular they looks to become more and more common. More people are coming out as nonbinary (and thus not willing to use the two gendered third person singular pronouns "he" and "she", nor the one non-person pronoun "it"), and singular they seems to be eclipsing neopronouns (such as xe or zie) in this context. We're also seeing more use of singular they in place of "he or she," "he/she," and "he which I'm using to refer to people of all gender because it's easier and since I put this disclaimer in you can't call me sexist." And we're seeing a broadening of the circumstances under which we treat a person's gender as unknown rather than assuming that "he" or "she" applies. So my projection is that singular they will become standard for all persons, leaving he and she as historical relics (like thou). "It is" will be retained for non-persons in the singular.

I am           we are
you are        you are
they are       they are
it is

Now, "are" has become the conjugation for an even larger percentage of persons (in the philosophical sense). The only exceptions are the retention of "am" for first person singular, and the use of "they are" for all third person plurals, whether persons or not (i.e. you'd say "they are" about a group of people as well as about a group of rocks). Expanding to "I are" is fairly straightforward. To distinguish persons and non-persons in the third person plural, we need to make a side-tour into pronouns.

The evolution of "you" left English unable to grammatically distinguish between singular and plural in the second person. The solution in many dialects has been to create a new, pluralized form. Though my eastern PA roots insist that "youse" is more logical, and my Pittsburgher heart yearns for "yinz," the most likely candidate to become standard is "y'all." We can also posit a similar evolution for "they" as singular they becomes more dominant, with the new plural they, "th'all." Building off of this, we can then limit "th'all" to persons, and create a new third-person-plural non-person pronoun out of "it," namely "t'all." And just like you and they brought "are" with them into the singular column, t'all would bring "is" into the plural. The resulting paradigm would then be:

I are          we are
you are        y'all are
they are       th'all are
it is          t'all is

And if "to be" is shifting to distinguish persons from non-persons in conjugation, we could expect the same to happen with the rudimentary conjugation that remains in other verbs.

I run          we run
you run        y'all run
they run       th'all run
it runs        t'all runs

We're already seeing a bit of this in the way that people playfully attribute personhood to non-humans in meme culture. It's common currently to use "he" or "she" as a way of attributing personhood, but it is often followed by a conjugation that lacks the normal third person singular s. We get expressions like "he eat the banana." This could be interpreted as a desire to standardize conjugations according to personhood (in the philosophical sense), not grammatical person and number.

On Allegorical Racism In Speculative Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 03:27:00 +0000

*At least mainstream science fiction, which is largely written by people who have not themselves been victims of the kind of oppression they're allegorizing.

**As Andrew Ti once said, I feel bad for all these non-racist skeletons trapped in racists' bodies.

On Hierarchy in Polyamory as Explained by Grid-Group Cultural Theory

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 23:00:00 +0000

A standard debate in polyamorous communities has to do with the issue of hierarchy in relationships. Many writers on nonmonogamy assert that relationship hierarchies, in which one partner is considered more important or given some form of priority over others, are wrong or harmful. Explicit defenses of hierarchy are less common, but many people clearly continue to practice hierarchical relationships and would defend their own individual arrangements if confronted with anti-hierarchy arguments.

It occurs to me that we might get some insight into the hierarchy debate by turning to
A polycule -- a group of people connected by non-monogamous relationships -- can be analyzed as a social organization in GGCT terms. Looked at in this way, it seems to me that there's a good match between "hierarchy" as discussed by polyamorous people, and Douglas's concept of "grid." Polyamorous hierarchies involve the establishment of a set of rules that create differentiated roles for people within the polycule.

The hierarchy debate in polyamory thus focuses on one dimension of GGCT. But GGCT is a two-dimensional theory, and the other dimension of "group" hangs over these debates, though often without being recognized. Group describes how much the members of the polycule feel that they are part of an entity that is greater than themselves, operating as a collective rather than as individuals. (Note that group is *not* about how "committed" or "deeply in love" or whatever the people involved are. It's about how oriented they are toward the group as an entity, how much they think and act in terms of "us" rather than "you and me.")

Consider what it means to have a non-hierarchical -- i.e. low grid -- relationship. There are two basic poles that people seem to be drawn to in order to prevent the emergence of a hierarchy. One pole is a polycule in which all members are equally deeply invested in being a household. In some ways this is much like a standard monogamous relationship, but with more people. Everyone involved is very deeply invested in each other's lives, with lots of shared assets (such as shared living spaces, shared finances, co-parenting, and customized legal arrangements). Everyone involved has some close relationship with each other person (even if not romantic/sexual). Adding a new partner is a rare occurrence and requires lots of work to get the new person up to speed so that they can be equal to the existing members, while leaving the polycule tends to involve painful schisms. The group itself often has a strong identity, perhaps with its own name (something like "the Maple Street House" or "the McSmithingsteins"). We can, with some license, call this the "polyfidelity" model. And it's a textbook high-group, low-grid organization in GGCT terms -- usually labeled an "Egalitarian" organization. You have close integration of members, a focus on the good of the collectivity, and a sharp insider-outsider divide that allows the insiders to be equal (because you can't have everyone be substantively equal unless you know exactly who are included in "everyone"). There may be informal divisions of labor, but there are no formal distinctions of role.

But polyfidelity is not the only model of a low-grid polycule. Another alternative (and the corner from which some of the strongest anti-herarchy rhetoric comes) is what we can loosely label "relationship anarchy." In its purest form, this mode of social organization consists of a loose, open-ended network of relationships that each persist only so long as both parties care to maintain it. It becomes unrealistic to draw any line around the polycule -- does that person you hooked up with three months ago and are Facebook friends with count, since you never officially said it wouldn't happen again even though you have no specific plans to see them in the immediate future? While individuals may be very emotionally invested in each other, there is a resistance to practical commitments such as legal marriage or cohabitation that would inhibit fluid changes to the nature of a relationship. Each person is fundamentally expected to be responsible for their own life and feelings. Here we have a nice illustration of a low-grid, low-group way of life, as outlined by GGCT. This type of organization is labeled Individualism. (And a nice one for any enterprising Douglasian scholar to examine, as descriptions of Individualism in the literature tend to fixate on free markets.)

So in summary so far: If you wish to avoid hierarchy (i.e. grid) in your polyamourous relationships, there are two basic models, either high-group polyfidelity or low-group relationship anarchy. But what about high-grid relationships? Well, here we have both high and low group options too. And I think a failure to distinguish them contributes to the intractability of the hierarchy debate.

Consider first a high-grid, high-group polycule. Because it's high grid, we would see a clear and well-established differentiation of roles, perhaps dividing "primary" partners who live together and share finances, from "secondary" partners seen for less-frequent date nights, and perhaps also "tertiary" friends-with-benefits. And because it's high-group, there is a shared investment in the success of the polycule as a whole. There is a concern for order, clarity, and the management of expectations. "Secondary" and "tertiary" partners respect the authority and greater claims of those above them in the hierarchy. They may not wish a higher position for themselves, or they may get that balance from being "primary" in their own overlapping polycule. (The orderliness of this form of organization alows the differentiation of spheres in which a person can be primary to one partner but secondary to another -- something that would be difficult to arrange in either low grid model.) I think this model is very common in practice, and is what is usually envisioned by defenders of hierarchy. I'll call it "standard polyamory," since it's so common (especially for people who begin to explore nonmonogamy from within an already-established monogamous relationship). Confusingly for our purposes, Douglas and other GGCT scholars call this form of organization -- which is high grid *and high group* -- "Hierarchy."

I wouldn't expect a relationship anarchist to be particularly enamored of standard polyamory. But I also think that most of the harshest denunciations of hierarchy in polyamory are actually envisioning the fourth type of social organization -- one that is high grid and *low* group. GGCT scholars almost universally consider this form of social organization to be dysfunctional and undesirable. Here we see rules made to confine people to specific positions in the polycule -- but with those people not being invested in the legitimacy of the overall system. The rules come across as arbitrary, reinforcing the isolation of their targets and their own lack of control over their circumstances. The people who are most constrained by these rules are, obviously, the ones who suffer most from such an arrangement. The plight of the "unicorn" -- a woman brought in to serve the needs of an existing m-f couple, subject to various restrictions such as not dating others, only sleeping with the other two together, etc -- is iconic here. But even the rule-makers can suffer from a low-group high-grid situation, as they find themselves in the role of suspicious enforcer rather than honest partner. GGCT scholars label this form of life "Fatalism," which evokes the type of mentality that is cultivated by being in such a situation. A fatalist must renounce the ambition to exert control over their own situation, and instead learn to roll with the vagaries of good and bad that come their way.

An important point made by most GGCT scholars is that in an extreme form, each of these four modes of life is liable to become dysfunctional. Inidvidualism becomes callous toward those who lose out in competition, Hierarchy (in the GGCT sense) becomes rigid and insensitive to new information, and Egalitarianism is prone to witch-hunts and schisms. A functional social organization must be able to draw on all four ways of life to at least some degree, even if based clearly in one quadrant. (Yes, even Fatalism -- because the experience of being subject to larger uncontrollable forces is inevitable at some point, and because some randomness in outcomes can keep other modes of organization from calcifying.)

On Politicizing Tragedies

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 01:12:00 +0000

An ISIS-supporting immigrant runs down pedestrians in New York, killing eight. A white man in Texas opens fire in a church, killing 27. And partisans on both sides gleefully point out their opponents' hypocrisy -- they were quick to draw political conclusions from one of these incidents, while warning us not to politicize tragedies after the other. There is certainly hypocrisy enough to go around on both sides of the aisle, but people of good will seem to agree that it would be possible to have a consistent, content-neutral standard for what constitutes politicizing a tragedy. By that standard, you could recognize when your opponents were or were not drawing legitimate political conclusions from a tragedy even when you didn't agree with them. But I'm not so sure.

To see why, we need to have a clear idea of what it means to improperly politicize a tragedy. On the one hand, it seems obvious that it's possible to crassly wield a tragedy for political gain, so there are some political connections that should be ruled out. On the other hand, it also seems obvious that we should be able to examine tragedies in order to come up with strategies -- including ones involving policy changes -- to prevent them from happening again. It seems that improper politicizing of a tragedy then means linking it to political conclusions that are themselves inappropriate -- that is, conclusions that don't really follow from the tragedy. The wrongness of politicizing a tragedy consists in demonstrating that you care more about the political agenda you're attempting to advance than you do about the victims of the tragedy.

Now, here's the rub: you can't determine whether a political conclusion drawn from a tragedy is inappropriate without evaluating the substance of that conclusion. And that evaluation is going to be shaped by your political stance. Liberals see calls for gun control after the Texas shooting as legitimate, and thus not "politicizing," because within a liberal framework, gun control is an entirely sensible solution to what happened. But within a conservative framework, gun control is illegitimate -- both wrong on the face of it, and inappropriate as a solution to the specific incident in Texas. From this point of view, calls for gun control must inevitably seem like inappropriate politicization. There's no way to judge whether saying "the Texas shooting shows the need for gun control" is illegitimate politicization or not, aside from making a judgment as to whether the Texas shooting really does show the need for gun control. Therefore, one's ideological opponents are always going to look like they are illegitimately politicizing tragedies, because they will always be proposing political conclusions that you think are illegitimate. Only the rightness of their proposed solutions could justify linking them to the tragedy, but you already know their proposed solutions are wrong.

A further implication of this way of thinking is that drawing political conclusions from tragedies will have limited effectiveness. Everyone likes to believe that tragedies are clarifying moments, events whose implications are so clear that they break through the walls of ideology and make your conclusions obvious to anyone but the worst partisan hacks. (This is why we imagine we can have an ideology-neutral standard for politicization.) But ideologies are flexible and adaptable. They can easily interpret a wide variety of events in ways that don't disturb their basic premises and political commitments. This is especially true for types of tragedies that occur repeatedly -- such as Islamist vehicle attacks or mass shootings with high-powered weapons. There is no reason to think that this tragedy is going to be the one that somehow finally convinces your opponents to see the error of their ways.

99% of Nazi-punching discourse is posturing

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:27:00 +0000

There has been an outpouring of discussion on the left about the moral justifiability of punching (or otherwise physically assaulting, but punching seems to be the go-to) Nazis ever since Donald Trump won the presidency, and it's seen an unsurprising uptick after the events of Charlottesville. Lots of energy has been poured into the debate on various social media platforms, but the overwhelming majority of it is not serious discussion. It's just posturing to make the participant feel virtuous.

Consider first the anti-punchers. They give us high-minded dissertations on the virtues of non-violence, of not "stooping to their level," of maintaining the moral high ground. But how many of these people would have punched a Nazi if they did think it was justified? I suspect not many. These are not people holding themselves back from Nazi-punching temptation on the basis of moral principle. They're cowards afraid to get involved in a physical fight, who are cloaking it in fancy language to make themselves feel virtuous for not doing something they wouldn't have done anyway. And hey, I'm a coward about physical fights too. But I don't present it as a demonstration of my moral virtue.

And then there's the pro-punchers. They too talk a good game -- about the necessity of responding to inherently violent ideologies, about the privilege inherent in non-violence, and so forth. They share comic book panels of Nazis getting punched, and that one video of someone clobbering Richard Spencer, and Twitter threads about how to punch effectively. But they too are not out there actually punching Nazis. While pro-punching memes rack up hundreds of thousands of shares and likes, I can count on one hand the number of Nazis who have actually gotten punched by a leftist since the election. Hundreds of Nazis came to Charlottesville last weekend. It was a target-rich environment for anyone wanting to punch a Nazi. But how many of them actually got punched? And OK, maybe taking on a heavily-armed mob is too dangerous. But they marched around un-hooded, so people have managed to determine the identity and personal information of many of them. And yet they still went largely un-punched. Nobody walked into Top Dog to clobber Cole White. The big anti-Nazi victory of the last few days was using social media to shame Top Dog into firing Mr. White. So I can only conclude that pro-punching people aren't actually planning to punch any Nazis. They just want to feel tough and fantasize about literally striking a blow for justice. Most pro-punching discourse is a combination of ally theater and social justice masturbation.

So I don't have time for the Nazi-punching arguments on either side. Come back when some non-negligible number of Nazis is actually getting punched, and then I'll care whether it's morally justified.

On Not Falling For The Big Reveal

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 16:44:00 +0000

Last night, the left got played -- hard. Rachel Maddow teased on Twitter that she had Trump's tax returns, and social media went into a frenzy. As it turns out, Maddow had two pages of Trump's 2005 filing, which showed nothing new or particularly scandalous. No funny business. No nefarious ties to Russia. Just a rich dude using the tax code as intended. (I suspect there is nothing terribly scandalous in any of Trump's tax returns. He's continuing to hide them because releasing them would mean his critics "won" and he "lost," which would be a big blow to his ego.)

The big lesson here is, as I've written before, that the more you -- justifiably! -- hate Trump, the more vulnerable you are going to be to clickbait. I could rehearse all of the usual lectures about fact-checking and paying attention to your sources here. But even that, I think, doesn't go far enough. Clickbait can come from any source. Folks on the left generally regard Maddow as a credible, quality source. But even she is, ultimately, in the business of selling your eyeballs to MSNBC's advertisers.

The real defense against anti-Trump clickbait is to give up on the myth of the Big Reveal. What made Maddow's promise so sensational was the hope that Trump's taxes would be the Big Reveal, the piece of information that finally confirmed what we all suspected, and made it incontrovertible to our opponents. Trump's perfidy would be laid out in black and white, and we could feel satisfied at being vindicated, while the floor fell out from under his supporters. It's the hope of the
The Big Reveal makes a good dramatic climax to a movie. But real life doesn't work that way. Remember the Billy Bush tape? We all thought that was going to be the Big Reveal that took Trump down. In reality, it dinged him a few points in the polls for a couple weeks, then he bounced back. The Big Reveal only works if we're all living in the same world. But we're not. Liberals and conservatives are working from such different starting premises, such different sets of basic values and basic frameworks about how the world works, that no one piece of information can make everything change.

That doesn't mean that the situation is hopeless, or that getting more information (including the rest of Trump's tax returns) is useless. But it does mean we can't hope for one big piece of information to suddenly change everything. What will change things is the long, slow process of shifting people's basic value systems and worldviews. Once we set aside the false hope of the Big Reveal, we won't be as easily taken in by clickbaiters dangling it in front of us.

On Steaks and the Difference Between Trump and Bush

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 02:03:00 +0000

Donald Trump is in the news again for . It's the kind of thing that would be shameful if applied to anyone we didn't already hate.

Some people have pointed out that it's not just urban liberal foodies who like their steaks raw -- bloody steak is also the official Real Red-Blooded American Man way of cooking. So how can it be that Trump, champion of the rural working class, can get away with well-done steaks?

I think the answer can be seen when we contrast Trump's style with George W. Bush's. Bush made a great effort to portray himself as one of the people, a regular Joe, the guy you want to have a beer with. He came from Texas (the most American of the states), spoke with a drawl, and spent his vacations clearing brush on his ranch. And he portrayed John Kerry as just the opposite cultural type -- a windsurfing, swiss-cheese-chessesteak eating coastal elite. And it seemed to work! Gallons of ink were spilled by left-leaning commentators analyzing Bush's affected populism.

Then along comes Trump. Trump set himself up as the champion of the white rural working class -- but he never made any pretense of being one of them. Where Bush presented himself as a brush-clearing, drawling, reg'lar guy Texan, Trump flaunted his wealth and spoke with a yuge Brooklyn accent while hanging out in his gold-encrusted New York penthouse. There's a certain weird authenticity to the way Trump doesn't seem to care if he looks like one of the people he represents.

I don't think Trump's taste for well-done steak is an act. I assume that really is how he likes it. (And I can sympathize -- before I became a vegetarian, I preferred my meat well-done too.) But it shouldn't be a surprise that good old bloody-steak-eating heartlanders wouldn't be turned off by Trump's culinary tastes, since he's never claimed that his personal lifestyle is normal.

On Those Trump Voters Who Believe in the Bowling Green Massacre

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 21:06:00 +0000

I've seen a bunch of people breathlessly sharing the results of a recent survey, which showed that
Imagine a poll in which people were asked whether the recent police shooting of LaShawn Dyer justified efforts toward criminal justice reform. LaShawn Dyer was not in fact shot by the police -- I made him up just now. But most liberals who are sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement don't remember the full list of outrageous police shootings off the top of their head. So when put on the spot to answer a question about the nonexistent Mr. Dyer, they would go through a similar process to the Trump voter in the previous paragraph. They would answer yes about the specific case of LaShawn Dyer because they know there is a more general phenomenon of unjustified police shootings of black people, and they want to endorse the need for criminal justice reform.

Just because someone reports a false belief on a survey, doesn't mean that they hold that false belief. They may just be coming up with an answer to satisfy the inquiries of the pollster and keep from looking stupid, working on the assumption that the question contains meaningful and relevant information and is not a blatant attempt to trick them. This is a well-known phenomenon among psychologists, known as the issue of . Trump slammed Obama for issuing too many executive orders, but now
Or, think of it this way: when was the last time you were convinced by a hypocrisy argument coming from the other side of the political aisle? For most of us, it's probably been a while. And I can hear you saying: "I would totally accept a valid hypocrisy argument if one were presented to me! It's just that my opponents, in addition to being hypocrites themselves, also seem to only make terrible hypocrisy arguments that are based on spurious claims and unfair comparisons. What a bunch of nincompoops!" . But here's the thing. You detest Trump, right? Me too -- it seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction to the volcano of awfulness that has been spewing from our new president and those he surrounds himself with. But you have to remember that this makes you -- and me -- very vulnerable to what psychologists call motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is when you believe what you want to be true, and what conforms to your preexisting worldview, instead of what the evidence shows. The more you dislike Trump, the more easily you will believe any bad thing about him that comes along. And you will be especially inclined to believe it if it nicely fits one of the specific storylines you have about why Trump is terrible (he's a racist, he's incompetent, he's a Russian puppet, etc).

Motivated reasoning isn't a conservative thing or a liberal thing, it's a human thing. It's just the way our brains work. And patting yourself on the back about how you're rational and concerned about the truth, unlike all those other people who use motivated reasoning, will only make you *more* vulnerable to motivated reasoning. Recognizing that you're vulnerable to motivated reasoning does not mean that Trump isn't actually terrible. But remember that there are lots of people out there who stand to make a buck off of your motivated reasoning. The get clicks, and line their pockets with ad dollars, if they can feed you things that you want to believe.

What you -- and I -- need to do is to remind ourselves to be careful and humble about our psychological biases. If something seems outrageous, carefully check that it's true. If something perfectly illustrates exactly what's wrong with Trump, carefully check that it's true. Do this even if you don't intend to spread the information around -- headlines you've skimmed have a way of worming their way into your memory. Then, if it all checks out, go ahead and share it. I promise you, Trump will do enough actual awful things that you won't need the fake garbage.

Four years is a long time, and you're going to mess up. I guarantee I'll end up sharing something outrageous and fake over the course of the Trump presidency. Hopefully someone else will quickly point out your (and my) mistake. And when that happens, here's what to do: thank the person for the correction. Then breathe a sigh of relief that the item was false. (After all, you don't want Trump to do terrible stuff, right? You're not so hungry for ammuntion to use against him and to justify your worldview that you are hoping he does awful stuff, are you?) Then do what you can to undo the spread of bad information.

What you shouldn't do is say something like "well, the fact that it was so believable really shows how bad Trump is!" It doesn't show that at all. The fact that it was believable shows how bad *you think* Trump is. And maybe he is that bad. (I mean, he is. He's awful.) I get the desire to save face, and to look at the big picture. But your propensity to fall for motivated reasoning doesn't prove his actual badness. Your gullibility is not evidence of anything. Apologize, correct, and put your focus on the actual bad stuff.

PETA, Detroit, and the problem with "Go Vegan"

noreply@blogger.com (Stentor) — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 19:06:00 +0000

PETA is in the news again for offering to pay the water bills of 10 households in Detroit who have been threatened with shutoff -- on the condition that they go vegan for a month. It's the latest awful campaign in a string of awful campaigns from a vile organization that makes me embarrassed to be vegan. They're exploiting a real human tragedy as a publicity stunt. If PETA really wants to do something connected to the Detroit water crisis, why not say "we're paying these 10 families' water bills, plus giving them some groceries, because vegans care about everyone, human and animal." Just drop the coercive condition, and you've got a campaign that makes vegans look big-hearted rather than seeing people's tragedy as just a means to further an agenda.

But without reducing the opprobrium rightly directed at PETA in particular, I'd like to suggest that this campaign reveals a problem with the approach of the vegan/animal rights movement more generally. At the core of this and so many other campaigns by a wide variety of organizations is the admonition for individuals to "go vegan." The central mechanism of social change sought by vegan activism is the individual choice to give up use of animal products.

By making "go vegan" the center of the movement's strategy, modern veganism has turned animal rights into a matter of personal sin and purity. Eating meat is framed as an individual failing, and giving it up as an individual virtue. This fits neatly into a neoliberal world in which everything is a matter of personal choice and effort. Everyone should just pull themselves up by their faux-leather bootstraps. Despite vegans' typical lefty, feminist, pro-LGBT, etc. leanings, much vegan activism does not qualify as progressive (even the non-PETA stuff that isn't directly exploiting other forms of marginalization to advance veganism).

(I use the terms "sin" and "purity" deliberately. "Go vegan" activism follows in great detail the cultural template created by evangelical protestantism. Even though vegans are disproportionately likely to be non-Christians, their tactics imitate those of the Chick-tract-wavers. And typical "go vegan" appeals suffer from the same flaws as standard Christian evangelism. Read everything that Slacktivist (a devout liberal Christian) has to say about

But food is not simply a matter of choice. Food habits are shaped by deeply entrenched social structures, from cultural norms to land use planning to farm subsidies to trade policy to technology regulations. Change these, and individual eating habits will follow. And it's these larger structures of the food system, not the personal sins of individual meat-eaters, that drive the scale of animal (and human) suffering that vegans want to end. And it's changing these social structures that should be at the heart of vegan activism.

When mainstream vegan activists recognize the structural issues, they typically do so in a way that assimilates them into the "go vegan" individualistic paradigm. So certain people are granted a sort of indulgence or special dispensation, forgiving them for not going vegan (or granting them extra merit points if they do it) because structural forces make it especially hard for them. But the central focus remains on admonishing those who can make the personal choice to go vegan to do so.

The personal eating habits of poor Detroit households are not what is primarily responsible for animal exploitation in the USA. Indeed, their eating habits are as much an effect of the system as the environmental degradation that PETA claims to be worried about. The choice by a few such households to go vegan (made at much greater cost than a similar choice made by the typical middle-class PETA member) is not going to have much sway over the larger system.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with an individual deciding to "go vegan." I'm not intending to start consuming animal products, and all else equal it's a positive step when someone "goes vegan." The problem occurs when "go vegan" is the central, or only, message being pushed by vegan activists.