Study Notes: Sep 20-Oct 24, 2015: "Beware Systemic Change"

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading in this time: 

• Post, "Beware Systemic Change", by Scott Alexander
• Article, "The dimming of the light", by Sudhi Hazareesingh
• Post, "Contra Caplan on Mental Illness", by Scott Alexander
• Article, "Murder she wrought", Melanie McGrath
• Post, "Baltimore, Leaderless; The Mafia Could Run Things", by Bob Parkinson

Homework for the future:

• Read the posts linked to by "Responses to the Anti-Reactionary FAQ.". Eventually. 
• Still on the to-do list: studying the Austrian School of Economics.
• Finish the reading for "Notes to: Anarchy: Never Been Tried?"
• Finish the reading for "Notes to 16 Articles on Writing"
• Read Fenrir's Shrine. 
• Also on the to-do list: All of those themes that I decide I want to play with, and cool bits that attract me, and things like that? Let's get systematic about that, put them into a single document (might be public, might not) and work with at least one of them every week. Systematic. Systematic. I do it best when I do it systematically. 
• Also, don't forget to flesh this section out a bit more with goals in general, and maybe include a section on which of those goals were accomplished since the last update.

"Beware Systemic Change"

• "One of the most common critiques of effective altruism is that it focuses too much on specific monetary interventions rather than fighting for 'systemic change', usually billed as fighting inevitable laws or capitalism in general." 
• "There are many more ways to break systems than to improve them. One Engels more than erases all of the good karma created by hundreds of people modestly plodding along and making incremental improvements to things. Given an awareness of long-tail risks and the difficulty of navigating these waters, I'm not sure our expected value for systemic change activism should even be positive, let alone the most good we can go." 
• "In terms of 'political causes that we can be totally sure won't backfire and devastate entire countries for generation', I would place open borders...well, let's say somewhere in the bottom quartile. A thorough analysis by one of its strongest and most intelligent advocates concludes with 'doubt that the American polity could survive and flourish under open borders' but has been mostly ignored in favor of constantly retreading the same old streetlight-illuminated ground of whether immigrants do or don't affect native wages. And this is the community that is supposed to have solved the hard problem of getting mind-killed by politics, and can now be sure it's genuinely pursuing the side of Good rather than the side that looks like Good but actually kills tens of millions of people?"
• "Even humble people who try their best to think about things rationally are allowed to let off steam on Facebook once in a while." 
• "Think back to the issues with the most recent EA Summit, which advertised fully vegetarian meals but added non-vegetarian options at the last second. This became a big enough scandal that I, who was two thousand miles away from the conference, got inundated with arguments about it on Facebook, Tumblr, and this blog. Several people threatened to quit effective altruism entirely, though I don't know if any of them followed through. This is a community that can literally almost tear itself apart over the question of what to have for lunch. I think there might be too much dynamite around to risk starting a fire."
• "I think this moral lesson is really important--if everyone gave 10% of their income to effective charity, it would be more than enough to end world poverty, cure several major diseases, and start a cultural and scientific renaissance. 

"The dimming of the light"

• "The Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke described [French philosophy] in 1790 as 'the conquering empire of light and reason'. He meant this as a criticism of the French Revolution, but this expression would undoubtedly have been worn as a badge of honour by most French thinkers from the Enlightenment onwards." 
• "The notion that rationality is the defining quality of humankind was first celebrated by the 17th-century thinker Rene Descartes, the father of modern French philosophy... This French rationalism was also expressed in a fondness for abstract notions and a preference for deductive reasoning, which starts with a general claim or thesis and eventually works its way towards a specific conclusion--thus the consistent French penchant for grand theories."
• Atoine de Rivarol: "What is not clear is not French." 
• "A British Army manual issued before the Normandy landings in 1944 sounded this warning about the cultural habits of the natives: 'By and large, Frenchmen enjoy intellectual argument more than we do. You will often think that two Frenchmen are having a violent quarrel when they are simply arguing about some abstract point." 
• "Yet even this disputatiousness comes in a very tidy form: the habit of dividing issues into two. It is not fortuitous that the division of political space between Left and Right is a French invention, nor that the distinction between presence and absence lies at the heart of Jacques Derrida's philosophy of deconstruction. French public debate has been framed around enduring oppositions such as good and evil, opening and closure, unity and diversity, civilisation and barbarity, progress and decadence, and secularism and religion." Getting an idea now for a tripolar philosophical tradition. 
• "Underlying this passion for ideas is a belief in the singularity of France's mission. This is a feature of all exceptionalist nations, but it is rendered here in a particular trope: that France has a duty to think not just for herself, but for the whole world." 
• Jean d'Ormesson: "There is at the heart of Frenchness something which transcends it. France is not only a matter of contradiction and diversity. She also constantly looks over her shoulder, towards others, and towards the world which surrounds her. More than any nation, France is haunted by a yearning towards universality."
• "One might object that, despite this common and lasting revolutionary heritage, the French have remained too diverse and individualistic to be characterised in terms of a general mind-set. Yet there are two decisive reasons why it is possible--and indeed necessary--to speak of a collective French way of thinking. Firstly, since the Enlightenment, France has granted a privileged role to thinkers, recognising them as moral and spiritual guides to society--a phenomenon reflected in the very notion of the 'intellectual', which is a late-19th-century (French) invention. Public intellectuals exist elsewhere, of course, but in France they enjoy an unparalleled degree of visibility and social legitimacy. Secondly, to an extent that is also unque in modern Western culture, France's major cultural bodies--from the State to the great institutions of secondary and higher education, the major academies, the principal publishing houses, and the leading press organs--are all concentrated in Paris. This cultural centralisation extends to the school curriculum (all high-school students have to study philosophy up to the baccalaureat), and this explains how and why French ways of thought have exhibited such a striking degree of stylistic consistency."
• "Brazil's flag bears the motto of Auguste Comte's positivist philosophy: order and progress." 
• Jean-Paul Sartre: "Never were we more free than under the German occupation." 
• "This French love of paradox has also given us mystical rationalists, conservative revolutionaries, secular missionaries, republican monarchs, and (most wondrous of all) the concept of the glorious defeat." 
• "In less apocalyptic terms, the French philosophical rationalism has also been charged with creating a nation of individualists, with a crippling fetish for skepticism, and for calling authority in all its forms." 
• "It is instructive that neither the fall of Soviet-style communism in eastern Europe or the Arab spring took any direct intellectual inspiration from French thinking. The European project, the brainchild of French thinkers such as Jean Monnet, has likewise stalled, as European peoples have grown increasingly skeptical of an institution that appears too distant and technocratic, and insufficiently mindful of the continent's democratic and patriotic heritages." 
• "This colonialist legacy still casts a long shadow over the ways in which France treats and perceives its ethnic minority citizens, especially those from the Maghreb. Because of their rejection of 'communitarian' group identities in the British or American mould, the French have no generic way of even designating these minority groups (the only available word is the slang term beur), except to refer to their country of origin. Even worse, these minorities are regularly demonised in the French conservative press and by the extreme right. This vilification has been made easier by the typically abstract and binary ways that French thinkers have framed the debate about minority integration... Since the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo, there have been widespread calls for French citizens of Maghrebi origin to 'prove' their attachment to the nation." 
• "In the absence of specific social facts and trends, the debate about minority integration has become mired in crude ideological oversimplifications: the equation of secularism with Frenchness (even though the 1905 law separating church and state has never been implemented in some parts of France, such as Alsace-Moselle); the suggestion that the white secular French are the bearers of 'reason', while those who practice the Islamic faith are 'reactionary' (the very same argument deployed earlier against any natives who dared to question French colonial rule); and the essentialist assumption of an immutable, and yet paradoxically-fragile, French 'national identity'." 
• "The present Gallic intellectual crisis is in part an anguished collective reaction against France's shrinking place in a world increasingly dominated by Anglo-American culture. Indeed, this penetration has now advanced deep into the French heartlands: Disneyland Paris is one of the most visited theme parks in Europe; translations of US and UK novels routinely feature on French bestseller lists; and to the dismay of many of the nation's intellectual elites, the French government recently voted a law allowed French universities to teach certain courses in English." 
• "The French still idolise their major writers, and remain a nation of avid readers, across all age groups and occupations." 
• "Regeneration, after all, is one of the most potent ideals of modern French culture." 

"Contra Caplan on Mental Illness"

• "One of the theories of depression I have found most plausible is that it's a malfunctioning of sickness behavior--you're not necessarily really sick, but your immune system releases its 'stop acting and lie in bed all day so we can recover' chemicals anyway."
• "The alcoholic who says 'Yup, I'm drinking myself to death and you can't stop me?' I agree that it is in some sense rational. It is rational because that person has so many problems that drinking alcohol becomes more pleasant than dealing with them. Often, these problems are related to psychiatric issues--for example, many people with PTSD become alcoholics because alcohol helps them briefly forget their traumatic memories." 
• "That even very deeply mentally ill people can think strategically can sometimes be surprising, but no one who has worked with them would deny it can be true." 
• "Many schizophrenics have what's called 'formal thought disorder', which means their thoughts go in weird directions. A classic example is the tangential person, who will get so distracted they can't finish a thought. 'Tell me how the medication is working?' 'Well, I took my medication this morning, after waking up, because I had a bad dream last night, I can't remember exactly what it was about, I think there was a dog in it, my favorite kind of dog is Labrador Retriever, I think they're from Canada, I was in Canada once, it was really cold.'"
• "Another kind is the clang, where they connect thoughts based on sound rather than meaning: 'I took my medication this morning, it was a warning, a warning of doom, coming at noon with the moon.'"

"Murder she wrought"

• "In crime fiction, as in life, the view persists that female violence is aberrant and that women resort to it only in absolute extremis: women are most commonly victims, occasionally crime-solvers; only rarely are they killers." 
• "The neurobiological research overwhelmingly suggests that there are sex-specific differences in response to stress, abuse and other environmental variables. There are clear correlations, for example, between a variant of the MAOA gene, which regulates the production of serotonin, along with interactions between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala (which regulates emotional expression), which together can make males more vulnerable to environmental risk factors for violence. But this does not in itself make males more violent." 
• "Gina Rippon, Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at Aston University in Birmingham, observes that violence is as much a function of the 'experience-dependent plasticity' of the brain, as it is of X or Y chromosomes. This means that although men are more likely than women to respond to environmental and experiential stress, neglect or abuse with violence, their propensity to do so is often reinforced by social conditioning. A man whose experience and upbringing do not expose him to aggravating factors for violent expression and who is not socialised to view violence as a legitimately 'male' response to stressors is no more likely to be violent than a women with a similar upbringing." 
• "By insisting that women are more often mad than bad, we are denied agency over our violent acts. It is too easy to equate women's relative social and physical powerlessness to what Pearson calls 'moral innocence' which infantilises women, limiting 'our capacity to promote ourselves as autonomous and responsible beings' and 'demeans the right our victims have to be valued.'"
• "It's hard not to think of victim/femme fatale as a tired rerun of the madonna/whore binary." 
• "Joanna Dennehy, the British serial killer who in 2013 stabbed three men to death and seriously injured two more, claimed that she 'killed to see how it felt, to see if I was as cold as I thought I was, and then it got moreish'. Bitch or femme fatale simply doesn't cover it... Unlike the vast majority of female killers, Dennehy has been diagnoses psychopathic. Her crimes run so counter to the stereotype of the violent female that the only label we can find for her is one more usually applied to men." 
• "Like most storytelling, crime fiction cleaves more readily to myth than to reality... [and is] a conservative genre (though its creators might not be), concerned with restoring order and equilibrium. Even at its more experimental limits, it tends to play with stereotypes, not discard them." 
• "Over the last decade, straight whodunits have lot ground to whydunits, which focus more on character and motivation."
• "In sum: it's a verifiable fact that women do not participate in violence as much as men. The neurobiological research suggests that men are more likely to react to experiential and environmental stressors with violence than women. But we should approach official stats, academic research and media reports with extreme caution. We might not be able to draw as many conclusions from them as we think." 

"Baltimore, Leaderless"

• "Compare Baltimore to Boston. In 2008 there were 282 homicides in Baltimore, and 63 in Boston. The insufferable Boston sports fans and their awful grating accent aside, Boston is the more livable city. Why is that? It's not Boston's crappy weather, nor is it their people. The difference is that Boston has Luigi Mannochio. Monnochio runs the Patriarcha crime family, part of the Mafia. He lives in Providence, RI, but Boston organized crime traditionally has been managed from Providence... [and] the man provides competent, adult leadership to the organized criminals in Boston and the rest of New England."
• "In Baltimore, our organized criminal element is made up of many small crews that operate on one street or one housing complex. Some are larger. But there are far too many crews, and they are constantly struggling against other similar crews, fighting over control of drug corners. They shoot each other, several hundred times a year. Worse, they often murder witnesses to their murders of rival drug dealers. These gangs are virtually all run by children, by which I mean boys in their early 20s." 
• "The Black Gorilla Family (BGF) is the only organized gang I've seen that has grown men (men in their 40's and 50's) in leadership positions. One could hope that they could take over drug dealing across the entire city and reduce the violence to Boston-like levels. But... they may well be finished in the near term." 
• "Why don't we negotiate with the Mafia about managing things in Baltimore? Let's invite them to come to Baltimore, and organize the city. My suggestion would be to make three territories: west side (including Park Heights/Pimlico), east side, and southern, with southern additionally having control of Annapolis. As in other Mafia run cities, no violence would be tolerated from the bosses, and the bosses would collaborate on that approval."
• "We need some pragmatism here. The Mafia understand that violence and murder bring police attention, and that's why they survive today--they keep the violence level down, the people don't complain, and the Mafia do their business mostly unmolested by police. This is a lesson our Baltimore criminals can't seem to learn. If you stop shooting each other, the police will leave you alone." 
• "If we can give tax credits to businesses that treat their employees like crap to stay in the city of Baltimore, certainly we can bring in a competent organization like the Mafia and incentivize them to manage crime, reduce murders, and improve quality of life in the city. The Mafia are no worse, and arguably better, than the corporations Baltimore courts."

Miscellaneous

• Outeast, commenting on "Predatory Practices": "The conventional wisdom is that targeting adults is best practice for hunters because it allows the young to grow to maturity, providing the next generation of prey--this is evident in hunting and fishing regulations, for example, especially in game species. So the argument that killing adults actually exerts a deleterious selection pressure is at least under-acknowledged." 
• Y., commenting on "Predatory Practices": "Recently I ran across a brief bio and some quotes by Pentti Linkola. It seems I have a sentimental fondness for taking grim things too far and like WH40K, Pentti is a master of that. He is someone who celebrates the Holocaust (a promising first attempt, and believes the salvation of man lies in his propensity for murderous behavior. Unsurprisingly, his books sell well in Finland... According to him, genocide is the highest form of love towards humankind. We must kill most of it so some can survive." 
• David Wallace, Ford Director of Planning: "We concluded that cars are the means to a sort of dream fulfillment. There's some irrational factor in people that makes them want one kind of car rather than another--something that has nothing to do with the mechanism at all but with the car's personality, as the customer imagines it." 
• Other names proposed for the Ford Edsel: Mars; Jupiter; Rover; Ariel; Arrow; Dart; Ovation; Phoenix; Altair; Silver Sword; Hirundo; Intelligent Bullet; Bullet Cloisonné; Intelligent Whale; Resilient Bullet; Ford Faberge; Arcenciel; Pastelogram; Mongoose Civique; Anticipator; Thunder Crester; Magigravure; Regina Rex; Cresta Lark; Triskelion; Andante con Moto; Utopian Turtletop; Zoom; Zip; Benson; Henry; Drof; Corsair; Citation; Pacer; Ranger
• Nomothetic: Referring to laws or rules that pertain to the general case (nomos) and contrasted with the term "idiographic", referring to laws or rules that relate to individuals.
• Third Variable Problem: When there is a relationship between two variables, but a third unknown variable is causing both the independent and dependent variable to rise or to change. 
• Leah Libresco, "The (Epistemic) Floor is Made of Lava": "If you have two plausible descriptions of the world, how do you check which world you're living in? When both sides have access to the same data, they're going to come up with explanations and theories that are at least reasonable sounding on the surface, so you end up admiring the way the other peak is constructed with little idea if it's true." 
• Sphexish: "The kind of behavior we might associate with an automaton--with the robot whose axles keep turning even though the wheels have fallen off... After the digger wasp Sphex ichneumoneus that allegedly follows very inflexible behaviourial routines (and is therefore easily tricked by mean entomologists)."
• Bethany A. Jennings, "Worldbuilding: The Ripple Effect": "When you write outside the bounds of reality, every 'What if?' has to come with consequences." 
• Orson Scott Card: There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever." 
• Ozy, "Kintsugi": "A lot of times, the narrative about mental illness is a narrative of recovery... A lot of narratives about neurodivergence depict it as a place you visit. For me, it's a place I live. People who are visiting get to spend all their time looking at train schedules trying to figure out when's the soonest they can get out. Me, I have to make the best of it. I have to put up some nice curtains, set up a ramp so I don't have to step on the rotten stoop, and think 'well, at least it's walking distance from the beach.' It's different to live inside crazy than to visit there."
• Kingreaper: "A life barely worth living is worth living. I see no pressing need to disagree with the Repugnant Conclusion itself. However, I suspect there is a lot of confusion between 'a life barely worth living' and 'a life barely good enough that the person won't commit suicide'. A life barely good enough that the person won't commit suicide is well into the negatives." 
• Jonathan Becher, "Simple Rules Can Overcome A Complex World": "Simple rules often lead to better outcomes than complex analysis. A simple example of a simple rule: burglars reduce the likelihood of being caught by avoiding houses with a car parked outside. Simple rules work because they are easy to remember... Simple rules provide consistency for teams but allow for some flexibility to pursue new opportunities or explore boundary conditions. From this point of view, I think of these rules as heuristics--mental shortcuts that reduce our cognitive load when making a decision... Heuristic methods are best used when finding an optimal solution is impractical... Limit [simple rules] to a handful. Capping the number of rules makes them easy to remember and maintains a focus on what matters most... Apply to a well-defined activity or decision. Rules that cover multiple activities or choices end up as vague platitudes, such as 'Do your best' and 'Focus on customers.'"
• Lincoln Cannon, "What do Imaginary Sky Masters have to do with Transhumanism?": "We should certainly do our best to make clear what we mean, both how it's similar to and different from other meanings of 'God.' However, to relinquish 'God' entirely would be to privilege fundamentalist notions of God. And that feeds the risks of religion rather than mitigating them, granting to fundamentalists a substantial historical accumulation of cultural capital and esthetic weight that, so far as I'm concerned, they do not deserve, and that they would use to destructive ends."