Potpourri
==> CONTEST! Get your video posted for free admission to the Contra Cruise. Details in the middle of this episode (which is also quite good).
==> I differ with the Pope on transubstantiation *and* climate economics.
==> This is a great Tom Woods interview of Saifedean Ammous. He is an economist with a very particular interest in Bitcoin, and he makes the case passionately. (Note, I’m not necessarily agreeing with all of his positions.)
==> This is a great Scott Alexander post talking about the reaction to the “Intellectual Dark Web” stuff. My favorite part is when he points out the absurdity in a Reason response:
So. Threats against a professor and his family forcing him to leave town. Another professor told that she would lose her job if she communicated research to the public. A guy needing $600,000 worth of security just to be able to give a speech without getting mobbed. Someone showing up to a lecture with a garrote. And Reason Magazine reads all this and thinks “I know what’s going on! These people’s only possible complaint is that they feel entitled to have everyone agree with them!”
Incidentally, Elizabeth Nolan Brown’s Reason piece is a great example of why Jordan Peterson fans will become gradually impervious to legitimate criticism of their hero. There are plenty of things JP has said in interviews and especially on Twitter that make my eyebrow shoot up. But I get boxed into “defending” his most provocative claims when people utterly misrepresent what he said. (I won’t say “lie” because I do not claim to understand the behavior of people who so obviously misrepresent him. I am open to believing that they really think that the people who like Peterson do so out of hatred of women, instead of e.g. all the reasons his fans will list when you ask them why they like Peterson.)
Anyway here’s part of what Brown wrote about JP:
His YouTube videos and recently published self-help book are full of sensible advice—interspersed with wisdom about how all feminists have “an unconscious wish for brutal male domination,” rants against postmodernism (which has reached almost mythical megavillain status in Peterson’s worldview), threats to hit other academics, and goofy parables about lobsters.
OK so the “threats to hit other academics” doesn’t have a hyperlink, but I presume she is talking about the time somebody wrote a hit piece (in the New York Review of Books, not in a journal article) on JP saying he and JP’s colleague were courting fascists, and JP said on Twitter, “And you call me a fascist? You sanctimonious prick. If you were in my room at the moment, I’d slap you happily.”
So yeah, obviously JP shouldn’t have tweeted that, but it’s a bit misleading to summarize that as “threats to hit other academics.”
Anyway, the line about “how all feminists” desire domination is not correct. Now Brown went out of her way to write “all” in there. What I mean is, just imagine you are in casual conversation talking about someone’s views on a group. If you say “all” then you are deliberately emphasizing that the person thinks this of all members of the group.
Only problem is, that’s not what JP was doing. If you follow her link, you get a little snippet of a video from a guy who clearly hates JP’s guts. If you scroll down in the comments you’ll get the full context. What happens is that in the middle of a 4-hour interview (specifically at 2h14m27s) the topic comes up of how “radical feminists” (the term JP uses) inexplicably criticize American society for all sorts of stuff, but never criticize the US government’s cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia, even though that government literally subjugates women. On the face of it, that is weird. JP says he can’t understand it except in psychoanalytic terms–remember, the guy is a psychologist and a fan of Freud–and then he offers the bombshell statement that is the gift that keeps on giving.
To summarize, this is what’s so annoying about a lot of the criticism of Jordan Peterson. If people had just linked to this and said, “You on board with this Murphy? A lot more than just expositions of Noah’s flood huh?” then I would agree. But instead Brown has to say it’s JP’s opinion of “all feminists.”
EDITed to add: After I posted the above, I skimmed the NY Review of Books hit piece again to make sure I had characterized it fairly. It had this link to a FB post where Peterson asks about “feminists” (not just “radical feminists”) avoid criticizing Islam because of a desire for domination. So perhaps that’s what Brown had in mind, although her link was to a video where he was talking about “radical feminists.” And in any event, the more important thing is that she omits the part about “Why don’t they criticize Islam which subjugates women?” The way Brown is depicting it, JP is saying anybody who cares about women’s rights is actually seeking domination.
Yeah, I was telling someone on Facebook that I like Peterson, but he’d rarely even come up on my radar if it wasn’t for people constantly taking him out of context, saying he believes the opposite of what he actually believes, or just plain making things up that he never said.
What’s amazing to me about Jordan Peterson is how little his critics know about basic psychology. I never imagined that psychology was such a blind spot for so many well-educated people until I started reading criticisms of Peterson. 9 times out of 10, each criticism can be summed up as, “I am completely unaware of a basic psychological finding or principle that Peterson is using to make a particular point, so I am going to assume the worst and most uncharitable layman’s interpretation of it, and then ATTACK!”
It’s like if someone read Adam Smith’s line about the invisible hand and started going ballistic about how economists have deified a man who believes that the wealth of nations is dictated by ghosts.
” the guy is a psychologist and a fan of Freud”
Pretty sure that he a fan of Jung rather than Freud.
Harold wrote: “Pretty sure that he a fan of Jung rather than Freud.”
Am I fan of Mises or of Rothbard? You must choose.
Bob if you think Jung is to Freud what Rothbard is to Mises you’re either a bigger heretic about Rothbardian thought than I could’ve imagined or you don’t know much at all about Jungian psychology.
Or you could interpret him as saying he is a fan of both Mises and Rothbard and Peterson is a fan of both Freud and Jung without comparing them against each other.
If that was Bob’s intent he still should’ve picked a pair that was more analogous.
I don’t know how this is possible, but in a lecture on psychoanalytic theory JP manages to praise both Freud and Jung. Harold/Andrew you should email him and set him straight.
Also for the future I will check with you Andrew before I make an analogy that is 100% fine.
It is a matter of emphasis really. One thing Peterson is well known for is being a fan of Jung. It is one of his principle characteristics, and he uses it to define his world view. If you look at the video you posted a few days ago on Peter Pan he goes all wobbly at about 4:40 when he mentions how wise Jung was. That is only anecdotal and illustrative rather than evidence. He may also like Freud but he is not particularly known for that.
Bob, I think the real reason why feminists don’t spend much time criticizing Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women is simple: they don’t want to encourage Islamophobia. Liberals view both women and Muslims as oppressed groups, and so they don’t want to demonize the second group in the process of supporting the first.
Now having said that, liberals certainly do view oppression of women as a problem in Saudi Arabia, and if, say, Obama were to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia for their oppressive laws while affirming his respect for Islam and Muslims, they would applaud the move. They just don’t want to contribute to efforts to smear all Muslims a misogynistic, homophobic, etc.
It’s the same reason why liberals don’t talk much about black-on-black crime: they don’t want to contribute to the demonization of black people.
Why not criticize those things while affirming respect for Muslims or black people? What good is feminism if they are so easily cowed to the point they won’t speak out on the worst treatment of women in the world because they fear being labeled something they don’t agree with?
Indeed, by withholding their criticism, they implicitly accept the notion that Saudis oppress women because Saudis are Muslims, rather than due to some other reason.
To see how weird this is, think of Harvey Weinstein. Nobody suggested for a moment that his religion was somehow behind his despicable behavior. Those who withheld their criticism of Weinstein don’t seem to have done so for fear of offending other members of his religion.
So, not only is it not required to offend someone’s religion when criticizing their treatment of women, it’s actually really bizarre to think that such criticism would be a religious matter to begin with.
The difference is that there are large numbers of people who are trying to use treatment of women in Saudi Arabia as a way to tar Islam and Muslims. Whereas there isn’t a largescale movement to use Harvey Weinstein to tar Judaism and Jews. (That’s not to say there’s no such thing as antisemitism, but it’s mostly confined to the alt-right.) So by giving prominence to Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women, you’re contributing to people’s negative attitudes towards Muslims, in a way that you’re not contributing to antisemitism by highlighting Harvey Weinstein.
This post by Scott Alexander illustrates this point well:
slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/
“I suggested imagining yourself in the shoes of a Jew in czarist Russia. The big news story is about a Jewish man who killed a Christian child. As far as you can tell the story is true. It’s just disappointing that everyone who tells it is describing it as “A Jew killed a Christian kid today”. You don’t want to make a big deal over this, because no one is saying anything objectionable like “And so all Jews are evil”. Besides you’d hate to inject identity politics into this obvious tragedy. It just sort of makes you uncomfortable.
The next day you hear that the local priest is giving a sermon on how the Jews killed Christ. This statement seems historically plausible, and it’s part of the Christian religion, and no one is implying it says anything about the Jews today. You’d hate to be the guy who barges in and tries to tell the Christians what Biblical facts they can and can’t include in their sermons just because they offend you. It would make you an annoying busybody. So again you just get uncomfortable.
The next day you hear people complain about the greedy Jewish bankers who are ruining the world economy. And really a disproportionate number of bankers are Jewish, and bankers really do seem to be the source of a lot of economic problems. It seems kind of pedantic to interrupt every conversation with “But also some bankers are Christian, or Muslim, and even though a disproportionate number of bankers are Jewish that doesn’t mean the Jewish bankers are disproportionately active in ruining the world economy compared to their numbers.” So again you stay uncomfortable.
Then the next day you hear people complain about Israeli atrocities in Palestine (what, you thought this was past czarist Russia? This is future czarist Russia, after Putin finally gets the guts to crown himself). You understand that the Israelis really do commit some terrible acts. On the other hand, when people start talking about “Jewish atrocities” and “the need to protect Gentiles from Jewish rapacity” and “laws to stop all this horrible stuff the Jews are doing”, you just feel worried, even though you personally are not doing any horrible stuff and maybe they even have good reasons for phrasing it that way.
Then the next day you get in a business dispute with your neighbor. Maybe you loaned him some money and he doesn’t feel like paying you back. He tells you you’d better just give up, admit he is in the right, and apologize to him – because if the conflict escalated everyone would take his side because he is a Christian and you are a Jew. And everyone knows that Jews victimize Christians and are basically child-murdering Christ-killing economy-ruining atrocity-committing scum.
You have been boxed in by a serious of individually harmless but collectively dangerous statements. None of them individually referred to you – you weren’t murdering children or killing Christ or owning a bank. But they ended up getting you in the end anyway.
Depending on how likely you think this is, this kind of forces Jews together, makes them become strange bedfellows. You might not like what the Jews in Israel are doing in Palestine. But if you think someone’s trying to build a superweapon against you, and you don’t think you can differentiate yourself from the Israelis reliably, it’s in your best interest to defend them anyway.”
Keshav, thanks for the link. I have to emphasize, however, that I already understood your idea. Our difference of opinion here is not caused by insufficient understanding on my end.
I don’t know if you’ve ever helped raise a child. Sometimes parents, in an attempt to shield a child’s ego, abstain from constructive criticism. This has the opposite of the intended effect: Instead of a child becoming more resilient to criticism, the child becomes more fragile, since he or she never hears such a thing.
The same is true of special demographic groups. If we’re always terrified of painting Muslims in a bad light, then we inadvertently condition them to refuse to accept any criticism as anything other than Islamophobia. It makes things worse.
We need to speak up more often. If done in a compassionate way, the result will be an Islam that is resilient to criticism and a world full of Muslims who dare to consider new kinds of freedoms without feeling as though they’ve turned their backs on their religion.
RPLong, I think currently Islamophobia is a far bigger problem than Muslims’ sensitivity to Islamophobia, racism is a far bigger problem than black people’s sensitivity to racism, etc. If that dynamic ever flips, then the calculus might change.
You appear to have misunderstood me. I’m not saying that sensitivity to Islamophobia is a problem, I’m saying that by withholding criticism, we’re further isolating an already-isolated group.
I was responding to your statement “If we’re always terrified of painting Muslims in a bad light, then we inadvertently condition them to refuse to accept any criticism as anything other than Islamophobia.” It sounds like you’re saying that the risk is that we might be conditioning Muslims to be oversensitive to Islamophobia, i.e. overclassifying criticism as Islamophobic when it’s really not. What I’m saying is that that risk is far smaller than the risk of exacerbating Islamophobia by highlighting stories of Muslims behaving badly.
Keshav, if you fear that then when you criticize SA’s treatment of women, you simply offer counter examples of Muslims who are treating women with respect. It makes no sense to stay silent about the most brutal conditions for women if you’re a feminist. They gain nothing positive from their silence.
Keshav, I’m confused. How do you know what the exact level of risk is for either thing? You’re using quantitative language for a qualitative idea.
And anyway, the risk is certainly greater for some people than it is for others. When writing comments on a blog, it seems odd to self-censor about the poor treatment of women in a whole country if that poor treatment is factual. If you’re sitting down for dinner in a Saudi household, the situation may call for more tact. I don’t think it’s impossible to have that discussion in that household, but I agree that the risk for expressing Islamophobia is greater there.
What’s funny is that the only people who would accuse a feminist of Islamophobia for simply criticizing brutal treatment of women in Saudi Arabia is their fellow liberals. It’s their fellow travelers that they fear of being unreasonable.
It’s not about fear of being labeled as something, it’s about genuine concern for blacks and Muslims. They don’t want to amplify instances of blacks and Muslims behaving badly, because they don’t want to feed into negative attitudes people have about those groups.
That doesn’t mean they don’t believe in fighting for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, they just don’t want to make it the main thing that people hear about Muslims.
I get that and I’m saying that’s idiotic. As you say people are already using the treatment of women in SA to tar Muslims. These feminists holding their tongues on this brutality to talk about the gender pay gap are ceding the conversation to those with nefarious purposes, according to the way you lay things out. It’d be like if libertarians stopped talking about police brutality because some people use it as an opportunity to tar white people as all racists. No, you speak up and condemn, but you add the missing nuance to the discussion. Holding your tongue is stupid and counterproductive. It makes you look like a hypocrite.
“Bob, I think the real reason why feminists don’t spend much time criticizing Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women is simple: they don’t want to encourage Islamophobia.”
That’s what makes feminists dangerous. There is a religious obligation, in Islam, to subjugate women.
So, you cannot be consistent and oppose their laws, but respect their religion from which those laws are derived.
That was the basis for James Clapper’s insane statement that the Muslim Brotherhood was secular.
Again, these people are dangerous.
Islam is not a religion of peace, and more people *should* criticize it – especially more libertarians (a lot of whom seem to go out of their way to poo-poo Israel as against Muslims; Muslims want to exterminate Israel, while Israel wants to be left alone – Muslims are the main aggressors).
I actually did listen to the Tom Woods interview of Saifedean Ammous, but I was late enough to respond to it that the Erik Voorhees vs. Peter Schiff Bitcoin
debate presents an opportunity to basically respond to all of the main bitcoin arguments.
(Two of the points that were raised by Saifedean Ammous were that cryptocurrency adoption is inevitable, and that bitcoins’ value as money doesn’t depend on
the reason people choose to attempt to use it as money. Both of these points are addressed in some form in this response.)
I will understand if people don’t read this. If I saw this much text, I’d probably pass, too. I post it to have the anti-bitcoiner Austrian Economist
arguments somewhere.
I provided timestamps for the points to which I respond. For my own convenience, I will say that all time stamps are approximate (some may be exact, but I’m
not going to go back and check).
Let it never again be said that anti-bitcoiner’s don’t “get” why bitcoins supposedly work, because Erik present’s *the* foundational argument in this debate.
As I’ve said before, cryptocurrencies go down on my watch.
(0:30:00) Erik says that the source of bitcoin’s value comes from the network on which it’s traded.
(He says this again at the close of the debate at (1:19:23), saying that since bitcoins can “be transferred anywhere on earth, between any
two people, instantly, at near zero cost, and can’t be shut down or censored”, that this is what gives them value.)
False.
Lowered cost cannot be a *source* of value – to think otherwise is to believe in the cost of production theory of value.
As Menger’s Theory of Imputation shows, all value comes from the consumer’s subjective valuation of a good. This means that value is imputed from lower-order
goods to higher-order goods – they cannot be imputed in the other direction, as Erik’s argument would require.
Only when there already exists a valued good does lowering the cost of trading that good become valuable. Consider a service offered where I charge X amount
of gold to swim in corrosive acid. I can provide the most efficient payment system ever to decrease the costs of swimming in my acid pool, but unless people
want to kill themselves, it’s decreased cost would not make the acid pool valuable for swimming.
(Indeed, decreasing its cost, even for purposes of killing oneself would not increase the services *value*. It would increase any profits gained [probably
zero unless you intended to pass your wealth to someone else], but anything that is valued has that value regardless of its cost – cost affects a thing’s
rank on one’s preference scale, but not its value.)
It’s the same with bitcoins. Unless bitcoins, themselves, have a use-value, the fact that the blockchain network lowers the costs of transactions made in
them can not imbue them with value.
Bitcoins are not valued for anything but speculating in how much others will value it, and so it’s value is completely arbitrary.
That’s why anti-bitcoiners say that bitcoins’ real value is zero. If you can just make values up, then you can choose to value it as zero in the next second.
(It will be argued that the same could be said of gold, except that it is gold’s physical properties that are being used to satisfy a subjective end – people
can’t choose to value gold at zero without denying themselves the use-value of gold’s physical properties. That’s why commodity money’s value cannot fall to
zero, and that is also why a commodity money must be valuable as a commodity in order for it to be money.)
And the fact that people voluntarily trade bitcoins at arbitrary values does not change the fact that it’s real value is zero. If that were true, then sheer
faith in the value of anything would be sufficient to make it valuable, and the solution to “bad money” would be to just believe in it harder.
(0:35:30) Erik says we don’t need to debate the theory, we can see people transacting in it. Erik also makes this point at
(1:05:00). False.
You need a theory to interpret what is seen. Just because we see people invest in Ponzi schemes does not mean that the Ponzi scheme is valuable – it could
mean that it’s necessary for someone to lose in order for someone else to make a profit.
(0:35:47) Erik argues that the price of bitcoins increased even though number of clone’s also increased, saying that the price in nominal
fiat dollars should have gone down. False. Peter also corrects this.
That could just mean that there was an increase in the number of Greater Fools, thereby increasing the speculative demand for bitcoins. All else being equal,
though, it is the case that an increase in supply (for any given individual) results in each unit being valued less – that’s Marginal Utility, a law of
economics. So, since there is no limit to the number of cryptocurrencies that can be created, the number of crypto units that can be created is infinite even
in spite of the fact that only a limited number of bitcoins can be created.
(0:37:00) Erik says that cryptos will displace gold as free market money governments will not allow commodities to compete with their fiat,
and because you need a 3rd party to transact in gold and governments can just sieze the gold from the 3rd party. False.
Commodity money restrains the power of government. It was the unfortunate faith in paper, non-commodity money that allowed governments to syphon wealth from
the private sector through giving banks monopoly privileges.
(0:42:20) Peter tries to argue that the fiat dollar has value because it used to be redeemable in gold. False.
Historical value can provide some information as to why it was valued at any given time, but historical values, themselves, cannot provide a basis for a
money’s current value.
Money derives it’s value as money through a chain of perceived use-values (as opposed to a chain of historical values). To say otherwise is to believe that
speculating on what others will give for it is what gives it value. But if *everyone* values it only because they believe someone else will value it, then
you have a circular argument:
Person-A will accept it because
Person-B will accept it because
… Person-Z will accept it because
Person-A will accept it – and here we’ve completed the circle
Since that would be a logical impossibility in practice, what is *actually* happening in the trading of bitcoins is that some in the economy falsely believe
that bitcoins have an actual value, or equality of value to some good, and it is this false belief that is the basis for all the other trades in bitcoins
that happen.
The guys that hold this false belief in the set value of bitcoins are the first losers because they are giving something of value for something of no value –
and they have to find a Greater Fool in order to make a profit off of them.
This is precisely how fiduciary media causes losses in the economy. You start with money certificates that are redeemable in some commodity, and then the
first person to accept any “certificates* created in excess of the supply of that commodity has accepted literally nothing for something. And the fact that
other people are mistakenly willing to accept that fiduciary media does not give it value.
(0:58:23) Peter claims that the cost of mining gold gives it a base value. False – for the same reason lowered transaction costs cannot give
bitcoins value.
Again, Menger’s Theory of Imputation precludes value being imputed from higher to lower-order goods; Value ultimately derives from consumers’ subjective
ends.
(1:06:00) Erik believes there have been bubbles in gold, and Peter agrees. False.
It is logically impossible for the commodity, itself, to be in a bubble (which is why sound money cannot cause the boom-bust cycle). The reason it’s
impossible is because there’s only so much utility people can get from a given supply of a commodity, and this fact puts speculative values in check.
(The only reasons that fiat money continue to circulate is because people mistakenly believe it has a value that is somewhat derived from precious metals,
and because not all governments have run out of people to whom they can export inflation. The FRN may have had over a 100-year run (our paper currency became
fiat in 1914, not 1971), but that’s because the U.S. government happens to be good at robbing other countries through monetary inflation.
(If nobody but the U.S. had ever used FRN’s, it would have collapsed a long time ago.)
Even with Tulipmania, the bubble was in the paper futures market for the silver in which the tulips were priced, not the tulips (or the silver), themselves
(Doug French wrote about this).
The same is true in so-called bubbles in precious metals. Prices rose in terms of the fiduciary media claiming to be backed by gold; That’s not a bubble in
gold, but in the fiduciary media.
(1:09:00) Gene asks what will happen to gold if supply doubles or triples, presumably arguing that gold cannot be superior to cryptos on the
basis that cryptos can fall to zero. (concern about dumping). False.
All cryptos real value is zero, which is why anti-bitcoiners claim that bitcoin’s value (it’s speculative value) will fall to zero.
If an asteroid of pure gold crashed into earth, gold would certainly stop being money, but it’s value wouldn’t be zero for the same reason that the abundance
of water wouldn’t cause water’s value to fall to zero.
If gold stopped being money due to super-abundance, we wouldn’t then run out of money, either. People could just start trading in the next commodity that is
least valuable to them, personally, but is valuable in trade.
So, in a free market, there would be a period of adjustment, but there would be no necessary systemic crisis. People may have to find different trade routes
as those with the newly valued commodity become more wealthy than those that held gold, but that’s just a matter of logistics.
(1:10:55) Erik thinks that bitcoin’s growth in it’s early years was hindered by people who just didn’t know a good thing when they saw it
That’s an appeal to intrinsic value (it’s apparently valuable to them even when you put it in front of them and they still don’t value it), which nothing
has.
If people don’t value it, that’s not a “hinderance” to a good thing, rather it shows that the thing isn’t valued as being good.
Adoption of bitcoin has increased since then, not because more people are seeing its value, but because more Greater Fools have began speculating in it, and
this allows those earlier skeptics to make profits off of those Greater Fools.
(1:11:37) – Erik thinks that when the next financial crisis happens, people will rush to cryptocurrencies. Irrelevent; Out of the frying
pan, and into the fire.
When fiat money dies in a financial crisis, it won’t be necessary to adopt cryptos, people can just adopt the next highest valued commodity as their medium
of exchange. This would work whether they chose to adopt it or not.
In a free market, adjustment would be relatively quick for the reasons mentioned earlier.
(1:18:10) Erik says “At what point do I get to call scoreboard, here?”
Not a huge issue. I opine on it for humor.
Cryptos have been around for nine years, and Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme (according to Wikipedia) was apparently founded in 1960, and was exposed in 2008 –
that’s 48 years – so it would seem that Erik has at least 39 years to go before he can credibly claim that the scoreboard is an issue.
Of course, the length of time that people attempt to stick something between transactions is not, itself, an indication of it’s money-ness (or whether it’s a
medium of exchange). Experience cannot prove or disprove the money-nes of either bitcoins or gold.
That’s why Mises insisted on the method of deduction from the Action Axiom.
Again, this one’s not a huge issue. Like Bob, I will not let a stone take my glory.
(1:18:40) Erik says bitcoins cannot be debased. False. Peter addressed this, too.
Every bitcoin that has ever been created and that ever will be created, has and will have been created out of thin air with zero use-value and only
speculative value.
Artificially limiting it’s maximum supply doesn’t change that; all bitcoins are created as debased. Or, as Peter Schiff noted, there’s nothing to debase if
there’s no value in the first place.
*Takes a bow*
Suck it, Fetz.