26 Jul 2019

Potpourri

Potpourri 24 Comments

==> When I interviewed Karl Smith for my podcast, I looked at his stuff and was pleasantly surprised to see Karl praising Art Laffer. I obviously don’t agree with him on everything, but I like Karl for his willingness to take unpopular opinions.

==> I thought this was an interesting take on the trans-bikini-wax controversy.

==> An interview with Campbell Harvey, the academic whose 1980s dissertation established the inverted yield curve’s apparent ability to “predict” a recession.

24 Responses to “Potpourri”

  1. Transformer says:

    It it just me or is this bit from the linked to article on the proposed use of gender-neutral pronouns totally illogical ?

    ‘;The first, which morally justifies same-sex marriage, presumes that biological sex and binary gender differences are real, that they matter, and that they can’t just be erased at will. The second, which Manjoo and many transgender activists embrace and espouse, presumes the opposite — that those differences can and should be immediately dissolved. To affirm the truth of both positions is to embrace incoherence.’

    • Transformer says:

      I mean I suppose that to be sympathetic to transgenderism probably implies that one wouldn’t support the ‘gender differences are real, that they matter, and that they can’t just be erased at will’ position (but many people who oppose gay marriage probably would!). And the second view that gender ‘differences can and should be immediately dissolved’ (apart from the fact that this is an extreme view that i can’t believe many people hold) would not actually (as far as I can see) preclude support for gay marriage.

      • Harold says:

        You are correct and the whole target is a straw man. Biological sex exists and there is zero chance of us abandoning the concept. That does not preclude treating people who identify differently from the their labels the same as everyone else.

        It is a form of moral panic. If we start using plural pronouns for individuals the system will collapse.

    • Georgie Tirebiter says:

      It is you: definitely you.

  2. Mark says:

    Regarding the gender language shift, I think it relates to an observation I’ve had. That it used to be that for homo-, trans-, or bisexuals that the individuals are “born that way,” even to the point of looking for a genetic factor to the sexual orientation. And those were specific identities. The more conservative types were those saying things like “homosexuality is a choice.”

    Now it seems that it’s all about choice–you can be as fluid as you want to be, encompassing any range of sexuality, any combination of gender or lack thereof. You can swing one way for a time, and then change it up.

    Both the “born this way” and the “your choice” perspectives still seem to be true somehow in the current spirit of the age. But I don’t see how they are compatible. And I suspect that the culture’s perspectives will continue to morph into more incoherence..

    • Tel says:

      I find that modern politics makes a whole lot more sense … even in the context of apparently nonsensical contradictory beliefs … after you have read and understood this quote:

      http://libertytree.ca/quotes/Theodore.Dalrymple.Quote.B722

    • Harold says:

      “But I don’t see how they are compatible”
      They are totally compatible.

      Homosexuals say they do not choose to be so, it is just how they are. Trans people say they do not choose to be so, it is just how they are.

      Most people seem to be in the happy position that they identify as the same gender that society identifies them as. This has come to be called cis-gendered by some, but we could just call it normal in the sense that it applies to most people. These people do not feel they have any choice in the matter.

      Most people are also in the happy position of finding the other sex attractive. This is a happy position because it is the one that is most approved of by society. They also say they don’t have any choice in the matter.

      So most people have no conflict between what gender society says they are and how they should behave regarding sexual partners.

      Some people identify as the same gender that society allocates them, but instead of finding the other sex attractive, they find their own sex attractive. We call these homosexuals. They claim that who they fancy is not a matter of choice. There are quite a lot of these people. Being homosexual has been a very uncomfortable thing to be, as society has strongly condemned this behaviour. Things are getting better for homosexuals, as society has become more accepting.

      A smaller number of people do not identify as the same gender that society identifies them as. We call these trans people. They claim it is not a matter of choice how they feel. So does everyone else. All cis people as far as I know do not believe that they could feel to be the opposite sex if they wanted.

      Being trans is a very uncomfortable position to be in. It places you in conflict either with your own sense of identity or with society at large. For this reason people do not generally say they identify as the other gender if they in fact do not. What would be the point?

      Many people tell them that they are simply wrong about how they feel. They may feel a man, but they are in fact a woman with delusions. Whether they are actually the opposite gender in the wrong body or deluded, it feels exactly the same to them.

      Some people claim to identify as attack helicopters, but they are lying. They have got mixed up between making shit up and and having a sense of identity.

      Many trans people more or less permanently have one identity. By and large they do not flip-flop back and forth.

      Gender fluid people prefer to remain flexible about their gender identity rather than committing to a single gender. According to official statistics, the proportion of the UK population who define as non-binary when given a
      choice between male, female and another option is 0.4% They do not feel comfortable with either a totally male or female identity.

      It is very difficult, I believe, for us to understand what we mean by identifying in this way. A man identified as a cat. As a child, he had been often tied to a tree in his yard, and somewhat understandably became angry with his parents. He fixated on the family cat, Tiffany, and came to believe he was a cat. He hunted and ate small prey raw. He was treated for delusions by ECT and drugs. He tried to kill himself when a zoo tiger was sold to an Asian zoo. While the man was able to function in society, his belief that he was a cat was unshakable. We wonder how such a thing is possible and what it really means ti believe you are a cat, when you can see you are human.

      Some people feel that they have an arm or a leg that does not belong to them. Called body integrity identity disorder (BIID). It is associated with structural brain anomalies. Despite extensive psychological work they are unshakable in this belief. Sometimes the limb is surgically removed, as amputation is considered to be a better outcome than living with the alien limb. Nonetheless, we consider these people to have a psychiatric disorder which would be better treated by changing the belief than through removing the limb, if that were possible. we wonder how anyone can have a sense of identity that does not include one of their own limbs, and why this should matter so much to them. Their experiences are so different from our own we have trouble empathising.

      What is the difference between these deluded people and a trans person? We know that most people do identify as male or female, so there is nothing intrinsically wrong with either. Very, very few people identify as cats or feel their limbs are alien. Many people will feel a bit fluid. If gender is asked in terms of frequency of feeling like a man, a women, both or neither then there is evidence that more than a third of everyone may experience gender in a way that defies completely binary categories. So being trans is within the normal human experience.

      The much rarer, bit similar BIID may be caused by brain anomolies which result is very distorted body identity. We don’t really know what gives us our sense of identity. It seems plausible that a much lesser change in brain morphology would be needed to switch between identifying as a different gender than it would to identify a limb as alien.

      Whatever we call it, the sense of identity is very real to the individuals concerned. Great harm can come from denying the identity, as we see from the alien arm people, who prefer amputation to living the lie. But why should it matter to everyone else? Why is everyone so bothered that some people want to identify as the other gender, or no gender?

      • Dan says:

        “Whatever we call it, the sense of identity is very real to the individuals concerned. Great harm can come from denying the identity, as we see from the alien arm people, who prefer amputation to living the lie. But why should it matter to everyone else? Why is everyone so bothered that some people want to identify as the other gender, or no gender?”

        Outside of the fact that a lot of people don’t like things they don’t understand, as we’ve seen through history, the biggest issue is that trans activists are not simply saying “let me live.” They are getting people arrested for saying words they don’t like, getting people kicked off social media, etc.

        This is the motte and bailey. Act as if they are just asking to be left alone. Then their activists do shit like harassing women to wax their balls. Next they get called out on this craziness, and then they retreat back to “Why can’t you just let us live.”

        It’s madness. Nobody, besides the evangelical left, looks at this as activists meekly asking for peace. We see activists trying to bully all of us into bending our knees to their political will.

        • Harold says:

          But you do get that the “born this way” and “your choice” are totally compatible? There is no inconsistency?

  3. Transformer says:

    I agree that Karl’s article on Laffer was good.

    Curious on Bob’s views on Karl’s statement that:

    ‘When the economy is depressed, however, tax cuts would not only increase the incentive to expand output, but would also inject money into the economy — in effect, a Keynesian stimulus.’

  4. Kevin says:

    The Week article was interesting, but at the end, wouldn’t a good libertarian take away the opposite conclusion? That is if both gay marriage and eradication of gender language are steps toward more radical individualism, shouldn’t we encourage such rebellions to come faster and stronger each time? How many such crusades until progressives realize the tyranny of nationality? Or even of the aggressive tendencies of tribe and community?

  5. Benoit says:

    Just realized the picture in your blog’s banner is a reference to chaos theory 🙂
    Clever.

  6. Harold says:

    The Linker article is wrong to a staggering degree.

    First, the logical failure. Same sex marriage is not fundamentally incompatible with the use of gender neutral pronouns. How could it be? He has totally mangled Sullivan’s rather more careful and thoughtful analysis and claiming Sullivan said what he did not say.

    “The first, which morally justifies same-sex marriage, presumes that biological sex and binary gender differences are real, that they matter, and that they can’t just be erased at will.” No! There is no need for such an assumption. The law was the thing that prevented these marriages. Allowing same sex marriage is compatible with saying anyone can marry anyone, regardless of sex. It says nothing at all about whether gender differences can be erased at will or otherwise. Same sex marriage is saying treat all people the same with regard to their ability to marry. It is removing the unnecessary divide between genders and says effectively all genders are the same with regard to marriage.

    “The second, which Manjoo and many transgender activists embrace and espouse, presumes the opposite — that those differences can and should be immediately dissolved.” No again! Manjoo argues that to assume gender is unnecessary. he does not argue to dissolve differences. So this is a complete straw man, but even were it not so, think about it for a second and you see that if differences were dissolved then what is currently referred to as same sex marriage would be totally possible.

    It is consistent to allow gender identity and also encourage the use of gender neutral pronouns to avoid assuming you know what the other person identifies as.

    Manjoo says: “When I refer to an individual whose gender I don’t know here in The Times, why do I usually have to choose either “he” or “she” or, in the clunkiest phrase ever cooked up by small-minded grammarians, “he or she”?”

    Anyone who writes is aware of this problem. “He or she” is clumsy and inelegant. Do we dot our narrative with random “he’s” and “she’s”? Do we always use “he”, as was considered correct from the mid 19th to the late 20th centruies? Is it OK to use the male pronoun to talk about men and women? Many no longer think so. “In 2016, Garner’s Modern English calls the generic use of masculine pronouns “the traditional view, now widely assailed as sexist.”

    If we used a gender neutral pronoun that problem would be solved. It is already happening. As Manjoo tells us, “they [Uber] send you a notification that says something like: “Juan is almost here. Meet them outside.”

    He says grammarians don’t like it, but they don’t like a lot of changes to the language and we survive. We boldly split infinitives with reckless abandon, and end sentences with prepositions with scarcely a thought.

    Manjoo then goes on to discuss how gender stereotypes affect everyone. This is completely uncontroversial. There is a riddle:
    “A man and his son are in a terrible accident and are rushed to the hospital in critical care. The surgeon looks at the boy and exclaims “I can’t operate on this boy, he’s my son!” How could this be?”

    In research on psychology students and children aged 7-14 (Wapman and Belle, 2014) “In both groups, only a small minority of subjects—15 percent of the children and 14 percent of the BU students—came up with the mom’s-the-surgeon answer.”

    That this even exists as a riddle is strong evidence. The fact that so few people get it right is conclusive.

    Manjoo argues that gendered constructs shape our development, and it is hard to disagree given that the concept of a female surgeon is still apparently out of most people’s grasp.

    Manjoo is making an argument for gender neutral pronouns, and argues that “they and them” are better than made up ones like “ze” because they are already in widespread use, are readily understood and do not hinder communication in any significant way. Why not go the whole hog? On top of this, he argues that gender schemas and stereotypes shape our development, so classifying things into make and female is unnecessary and in some instances restricting.

    What of Linkers piece? How does he characterise these arguments?

    He says “The first thing to be said about these convictions is that, apart from a miniscule number of transgender activists and postmodern theorists and scholars, no one would have affirmed any of them as recently as four years ago. ”

    He is so far off base here it is comical. From Wikipedia “They with a singular antecedent goes back to the Middle English of the 14th century[22][23] (slightly younger than they with a plural antecedent, which was borrowed from Old Norse in the 13th century),[24] and has remained in common use for centuries in spite of its proscription by traditional grammarians beginning in the late 18th century.”

    So the singular “they” has been affirmed not for four years but over 6 centuries. Still, close enough for a conservative, I guess.

    “They” as a singular pronoun was used by Jane Austen, Lord Byron and Daniel Defoe.

    “The earliest known attempt to create gender-neutral pronouns dates back to 1792, when Scottish economist James Anderson advocated for an indeterminate pronoun “ou” And “By 1980, the movement had gained wide support, and many organizations, including most publishers, had issued guidelines on the use of gender-neutral language.”

    Yet Linker thinks this all started 4 years ago! How can this be?. Where has he been all this time? Has he not access to books or a computer to look this stuff up?

    “The emergence and spread of the contrary idea — that “gender is a ubiquitous prison of the mind” — can be traced to a precise point in time: the six months following the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, ”

    Has Linker not heard of feminism? Where was he when all the arguments about gender stereotypes was going on? Back in the 1960’s it was the “women’s liberation movement.” What does Linker think they were trying to get liberated from? Rita Gross wrote “What went wrong? Feminism and freedom from the prison of gender roles” in 2000 – some years before Obergefell.

    We have perhaps discovered the first living Martian, because little else could explain his opinions but that he has been living on another planet until recently.

    In short, he is wrong about everything. The interesting question is why? Why does he see everything through such a distorting lens?

  7. Georgie Tirebiter says:

    @Harold: “He says “The first thing to be said about these convictions is that, apart from a miniscule number of transgender activists and postmodern theorists and scholars, no one would have affirmed any of them as recently as four years ago. ”
    He is so far off base here it is comical. From Wikipedia “They with a singular antecedent goes back to the Middle English of the 14th century[22][23] (slightly younger than they with a plural antecedent”

    Harold, you are a prevaricator. You KNEW that Linker was NOT talking about the use of “they” as a singular noun, but the idea that binary gender clasifications are oppresive. So you KNEW your Wiki cite was irrelevant, but it might score points.

    Sexual immorality leads to immorality in all areas, right Harold?

    Oh, and Linker is a liberal.

    • Harold says:

      Have you read the Manjoo article? If what you say is true he is making his own stuff up to argue against, not what Manjoo said. Commonly called a straw man. I assumed Linker was referring to the article, which was about neutral gender pronouns.

      Honestly, go and read the original article and tell me if you think it said what Linker said it did.

  8. Georgie Tirebiter says:

    @Harold: Man, you are dishonest: “Has Linker not heard of feminism? ”

    Which *relies* upon binary gender!

    • Tel says:

      Feminism will happily utilize binary gender … but at the same time they also claim to be all about equality and therefore gender should be irrelevant.

      First step is to get some statistics and divide up the sample into two groups male & female (hence the binary split) … then second step is when inevitably some aspect of the statistic does not come out precisely equal on both sides you say, “Ah ha! Since we know already that men and women are exactly the same, any statistical discrepancy is YOUR FAULT! So I demand restitution.”

      A lot of these kind of arguments are not much more than logical bait and switch: start out with one assumption, then halfway through slide across to something else but keep going without worrying about consistency. The result is always, “Gimme something!” and it’s fairly safe that the argument was constructed around anything convenient to achieve that result.

      If men and women are intrinsically different (and they they do appear to look different, and operate somewhat differently at the biological level) then logically there’s no particular reason to believe they would get paid the same, nor perform equally in various sports, nor live the same lifespan, nor be equally represented in the prison population, nor commit suicide at equal rates, etc, etc.

    • Harold says:

      Linker’s article was a response to Manjoo’s article. Manjoo said in conclusion:
      “I would hope to call you “they” too, because the world will be slightly better off if we abandoned unnecessary gender signifiers as a matter of routine communication. Be a “him” or “her” or anything else in the sheets, but consider also being a “they” and “them” in the streets.”

      There is no denial of gender. All the things Linker is complaining about he made up himself.

      Manjoo wrote about neutral gender pronouns. Linker then attributed the most extreme positions on gender and claimed falsely that Manjoo had demonstrated these positions.

      His article utterly failed because Manjoo did not say the things Linker claimed he did. When Linker says “these convictions,” what is he talking about? Since he opened the article with “Sometimes a piece of writing so perfectly distills a cultural moment and mood that it deserves to be given outsized attention.” we are entitled to believe that the convictions he is writing about were actually in the original article. Otherwise the original does not “perfectly distill” a cultural moment but make reference to something in culture, some aspects of which really annoy Linker, so Linker is going to write about what annoys him rather than what is in the article.

  9. Tel says:

    https://www.csis.org/events/are-sanctions-working

    Slightly off topic … but gives a broader perspective of how Washington bubble-people see themselves.

  10. James says:

    I don’t think that ardent individualism can be blamed for this craziness. It’s pure selfishness.

    I don’t think of individualism as selfish as such. The people who lobby to force others to treat them in a special way (or else!) are not being rational individualists, they are being selfish tyrannical brats.

  11. Craw says:

    Gender, as some want to define it, does not exist. It is a reification of stereotypes. How for instance could one decide a gender? Imagine as a first step looking at a few preferences: likes cars more than dolls, likes dresses more than pants, and so on. How many preferences do we look at? Say thirty. Then there are already 2**30 genders. That just with simple preferences, which really is too simple. But 30 isn’t enough. 200. But 2**200 is more than the number of atoms in the universe. So this notion of gender is just a confusion.

    Gender really is a grammatical notion. And it is true that usually the human referent of a masculine referrer (such as a pronoun) is a male person, and vice versa,this is not always so. Examples are common in German. Even in English babies can be referred to as it without disrespect.

  12. Tel says:

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=7Ag3D0rjGuc

    Thought I’d put this here, since it has been quiet lately. It’s got statistics in it, but no economics. Enjoy!!

Leave a Reply