Said Steven Pinker, quoted in the NYT last November in "Steven Pinker Thinks the Future Is Looking Bright/The Harvard psychologist says he is no starry-eyed optimist. It’s just that the data don’t lie." The "interest" he's talking about is in his book "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress."
I found that this morning because I was searching the NYT for the phrase "hard left" after encountering a reference to the "hard right" in a NYT article about Ginni Thomas ("President Trump met last week with a delegation of hard-right activists led by Ginni Thomas") and seeing a barrage of comments objecting to the term. It raises the question whether the NYT will say "hard left" at the same degree of deviation from the center that causes it to say "hard right." I haven't systematically counted, but I think "hard right" is much more common, and "hard left" is most likely to come up in references to other countries (notably Venezuela) or in quotes, but I did find some examples of "hard left" in news articles, such as "Rally by White Nationalists Was Over Almost Before It Began" (from last August):
The alt-right movement, never very well unified, has been particularly rived by infighting and schisms in the last year. Members have been outed by both online activists and mainstream media outlets, causing some to lose their jobs. The left’s ability to turn out counterprotesters has also been a factor, from the hard-left activists threatening violence against far-right street protesters, to center-left citizens who have been vocal, and explicit, in expressing their disgust and scorn.And "There Is a Revolution on the Left. Democrats Are Bracing." (from last July):
Some national Democrats remain skeptical that voters are focused on specific policy demands of the kind Mr. El-Sayed and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez have championed. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a left-of-center Democrat who ran for president in 2016, suggested the party wants “new leaders and fresh ideas” more than hard-left ideology.Isn't the hard left more of a problem for Democrats than the hard right is a problem for Republicans? If so, I would expect the NYT to help the Democrats stay in the zone of electable leftish moderation.
And I love the Steven Pinker stuff. But he's not a political candidate (indeed that quote came after he rejected the idea of his running for office). I'd like a candidate for President who would talk like that. Howard?
Posts
169 comments:
Any left of center fellow (like Pinker) who even dares to use the phrase "Hard Left" is a clear-eyed fellow. Well done.
Problem: The Hard Left doesn't like to be outed and, if threatened by Pinker, they will retaliate. (See, Summers, Larry at Harvard).
The Times is Hard Left. When you are Hard Left there is nothing to the left of you. So the term is useless for the Times.
Who knew that Ginni Thomas (who I assume is Justice Clarence Thomas's wife) was "hard right"? Only the NYT would label her as such.
Yes. Opposing transgenders in the military is a centrist position. If you think it is a hard right position that means you are Hard Left.
“I'd like a candidate for President who would talk like that.“ He sounds mushy-mouthed to me.
I talk to NYT's-reading lefties/liberals all the time. They have absolutely no idea that one of the primary targets of the Post-Modernism that underlies so much of their politics is "Enlightenment Rationalism".
Pinker knows it. That doesn't mean he quite knows what to do about it.
Harvard is a Hard Left institution. Summers comments showed that joint doesn’t care about empiricism when it comes to Hard Left canards about race/sex and IQ.
Why is the NBA 70% black? Why is the fastest man in the world black?
You can’t ask these questions at Harvard.
Why does Harvard discriminate against Asian Americans?
Pinker is a coward like most of the Harvard faculty. He has Peterson-envy now.
At the Times, and the MSM in general, many things are "right-wing" or "far right-wing." There is a counterpart, however. Some things are "left-leaning."
I'd like a candidate for President who would talk like that. Howard?
Women are incapable of structural thought.
According to the hard left- hard left IS the new and fresh.
They don't get that it's old and busted.
Structural thought, like how the people hired to order pencils and pads wind up in charge of all academic research.
Peer review -- destroyed by the left. Look at climate "science"and gender studies.
free speech -- under attack by the center and hard left.
free press -- destroyed by the left
empirical testing -- ??
It would seem that the best way to get what he wants is to attack the left and drive them out of respectable politics.
"I haven't systematically counted, but I think "hard right" is much more common, and "hard left""
Somebody did this recently (did I see it posted at Instapundit?). NYT loves the term "hard-right". I don't think they have ever used "hard-left".
In order to have suffient pencils and pads on hand, please fill out your goals for the next year.
The Pinker quote comes close to justifying the left & right totalitarianisms of the 20th century. You are a mere individual, your intelligence is limited, your passions and sentiments are the product of your flawed upbringing and your flawed education. Only the State is able to reason and act in a manner that is truly rational.
It is not good to praise the inhuman.
". . . like peer review, like free speech, like a free press, like empirical testing . . ."
All of these are open to corruption and have been corrupted. The Marxist-Leninists who ran the USSR in the days when it performed its most inhuman acts believed that they were finally bringing reason to the governance of human beings. If you read "letters home" from the nazis who committed barbaric acts of war, they speak of having to overcome "sentimentalism," meaning giving their acts greater emotional weight than they rationally deserve.
Love is not rational. You do not want to be governed by rationalists.
"I was surprised by how much interest there’s been from centrist politicians, who are desperate for a coherent narrative to defend centrist liberalism, cosmopolitanism, open society..."
The use of the term "centrist" here seems to describe what I would personally considered globalist ideas. Those ideas include bigger governments, and ultimately the centralizing of power in a world government that would create and enforce one size fits all rules on things like education systems, financial systems, and climate polices. Basically the EU on steriods. The worst.
I have not gotten around to reading Enlightenment Now. I am generally a fan of Pinker's work He and Jordan Peterson both seem to endorse most of the suppositions of the so called "alt-right" and yet still act as if it's a cult from which people need to be rescued. Pinker's so called centrism is the neo-liberal consensus that has dominated for the last 40 years and helped get us into this mess in the first place.
"Enlightenment Now". Already read it, he sniffed.
One answer is to make people aware of [irrationality], because I think most people are not.
Good luck with that.
"The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list." -- Debyshire
Coyne has had a few posts recently re. Pinker, with secret correspondence, e.g.
Derbyshire <= Debyshire
Blogger rhhardin said...
Structural thought, like how the people hired to order pencils and pads wind up in charge of all academic research.
No, they are hired to ensure regulatory compliance; the more regulations, the more administrators, the more administrators the higher the tuition, the higher the tuition, the steeper the student debt. If there was some way to explain this to millennials. But the people who could explain it to them are far too invested in the regulation.
It’s not Republican who fucked them over for life.
Farmer,
I agree. The Centrism of the last 30-40 years is terrible. It’s no surprise now that Nationalism and Socialism are the two ascendant political approaches.
@Lewis W.
All of these are open to corruption and have been corrupted.
There is indeed a side to Pinker where he demonstrates a "religious" devotion to human reason. He's nowhere near as bad as Harris & Dawkins in pushing his atheism, but it's a big part of his message.
There are, BTW, a large number of interviews with Pinker on Youtube. The interviews by Joe Rogan & Dave Rubin are especially worthwhile, but they are long.
"I'd like a candidate for President who would talk like that."
And if we repeal the 19th Amendment, he might even have a chance of getting elected.
@Fernandistein:
Coyne has had a few posts recently re. Pinker, with secret correspondence, e.g.
Thanks for the link. I have not read Coyne's blog for a while. I'm generally a fan of his work and appreciate that he, like Pinker, is resistant to social justice platitudes even if their politics are still much too left for my taste. That said, I was shocked by the quotes from that Guardian article. I thought this part was particularly galling:
"Prior to colonisation, most people lived in subsistence economies where they enjoyed access to abundant commons – land, water, forests, livestock and robust systems of sharing and reciprocity. They had little if any money, but then they didn’t need it in order to live well – so it makes little sense to claim that they were poor."
What utter bullshit. Depicting a life of "subsistence economies" as some kind of land of milk and honey is absurd. Does the author have the slightest idea how difficult subsistence living is. What impact did he think droughts or other natural disasters had on these "economies."
...Isn't the hard left more of a problem for Democrats than the hard right is a problem for Republicans?
Yes I think it is. I tend to agree with the Althouse analysis here.
At least it is more urgent for Democrats. If there are hard-left Democrats who want nothing more than to defeat Trump, then there is a hell of a lot they will need to give up in a nominee for the Presidency. They need a very mainstream candidate.
Still, I hear from so many Trumpists that they will never support any mainstream Republicans because they don’t trust them. Sometimes I wonder if there are any Republicans whom they truly support other than Trump.
It’s also funny to me how the presumptive Republican nominee for 2020 is Trump. Isn’t it a better than 50-50 bet that a report from the Office of Special Counsel is going to be so devastating as to preclude a second Trump term?
We can set up institutions that result in greater rationality than any of us is capable of individually, like peer review, like free speech, like a free press, like empirical testing — norms and institutions that make us collectively more rational than any of us is individually
How much more rationality does a society need to know that walls keep out more people than no walls?
How much is our free press contributing to that rationality? Or peer review, or empirical testing?
This is yet another example of the academic placing himself (ximself?) above the masses. Peer review only works if your peer is interested in your work. Empirical testing only works when people are open with the data and how it was collected. Free speech only works when the idea of censoring hate speech is not advocated hourly by the press.
If Pinker could see the forest for the trees, he'd know it's on fire, not in need of better scientific management.
@Chuck,
Isn’t it a better than 50-50 bet that a report from the Office of Special Counsel is going to be so devastating as to preclude a second Trump term?
You mean after two years with the entire MSM, the "Deep State", the entire Democratic Party & much of the Republican trying to come up with such a "report", and coming up empty handed?
No.
Fish don't realize they are wet hence the hard left not understanding or accepting critiques. If you reject what they are saying that = racism, patriarchy, white maleism etc. How do you challenge this orthodoxy at Harvard of all places? Can't be done.
I also kind of want to know what Trumpism is.
Young Hegelian all I care about is OSC, and they still have a grand jury impaneled.
Individual 1 is still out there.
I'm generally a fan of his work and appreciate that he, like Pinker, is resistant to social justice platitudes even if their politics are still much too left for my taste.
Coyne calls them the "authoritarian left", and I agree with you. Coyne also has TDS. I got kicked off as a commenter for calling him "PC".
@Chuck,
Individual 1 is still out there.
Hope springs eternal, doesn't it?
Isn’t it a better than 50-50 bet that a report from the Office of Special Counsel is going to be so devastating as to preclude a second Trump term?
That ship sailed.
Russian collusion so clearly evident civil liberties must be suspended, yet so difficult to provide we're two years in with nothing to show?
People still believe that effort is grounded in any reality?
Steven Pinker is a starry-eyed Optimist. It's in everything he's ever written
Quick google-
"Hard left": 1,040,000 "extreme left": 1,740,000 "far left": 11,100,000
"hard right": 4,650,000 "extreme right": 3,340,00 "far right": 21,800,000
Looks like an answer.
Responding more to the substance of the quotation from Pinker above, I consider Pinker to be one of the more benign inhabitants of the academic-scientific demimonde. However, the problem I have with his, and others', rationalist optimism is that they underestimate the role that human nature, with all its late-of-the-trees tribalism, magical thinking, and mindless rage plays in human affairs, even when the Wise Heads are supposedly in charge.
The word "cosmopolitan" gives the game away. It is all too short a step from there to transnational government, eugenics, standardization of art and culture, and micro-management of the lumpenproletariat by the Inner Party. Experiments along these lines are within recent memory and even ongoing even as we speak, with regrettable results so far, inasmuch as we are aware of them.
Honestly, I would think it a better, more humane approach to try to return the the original vision of our Founders, who, knowing the immutability and imperfection of human nature over time, thought it best to minimize the power of the central government except to guarantee the liberty of the people, who were thus given a personal stake in the success of the polity and their own lives.
Rived?
Hate to say it but it's irrational to expect that the majority will behave rationally. Goes against human nature. Any rational politician, if they want to be successful, has to deal with irrational thought by, to a certain degree, pandering to it.
yes, he is the candide of the psychologist trade, whereas Peterson is more pragmatic, he understands institutions and values exist apres the individual's awareness,
We can set up institutions that result in greater rationality than any of us is capable of individually
Pinker, like the left in general, gets it exactly backward. No good idea ever originated in a committee. One individual sees a new truth and knocks himself out to convince a few others that it shouldn't be rejected out of hand. Those few create the revolution, for good or ill. Institutions exist to prevent that happening.
When you're accelerating so far to the left of center that the light from center is red shifted, everything else looks like it's hard right.
Individual 1 is still out there.
So is the secret router.
KEEP HOPE AlIVE!
There's barely a real "left" in this country, much less a "hard left," as least insofar talking about established political parties. There are probably some protest groups out there who identify as "hard left."
(Anyone who says an establishment paper such as the NYTIMES is "hard left," (as someone up-column did) is talking out of his or her hat. To the hard right, even centrists are considered "left."
What he describes was the objective and purpose of a so-called "liberal education." Unfortunately too many elite universities in this country have all but abandoned the concept. After decades of treating gender & race studies (and other nonsense majors) as legitimate academic disciplines, elite higher education is no longer "liberal" -- and the academy's contempt for reason and logic and idea of truth is spilling over into broader society.
A return to liberal education is a nice idea but how can we achieve that when our over-subsidized, bloated, fabulously well-funded higher education system increasingly rejects the idea of a liberal education?
Stop interfering and trying to drive a narrative and enlightenment (sic) will follow. Democrats on the whole want to interfere in basically every aspect of out lives. This is extremist behavior for a government.
Lewis Wetzel said...
The Pinker quote comes close to justifying the left & right totalitarianisms of the 20th century.
Very close to what I was thinking when I read that. My first association was to the Progressive movement. No doubt they thought eugenics was a depoliticized empirical issue steeped in rationality. It starts with forced sterilization and "progresses" from there.
Pinker's "we can set up institutions" idea requires ceding individual rights to the elite few who, because of their greater rationality, are the ones who run the top-down institutions for the betterment of the masses. Has anyone asked Pinker sees himself as one of the ones who should be in charge?
"It raises the question whether the NYT will say "hard left" at the same degree of deviation from the center that causes it to say "hard right.""
While you wait for that, can I borrow your car?
All of these are open to corruption and have been corrupted.
What's a better alternative?
Love is not rational. You do not want to be governed by rationalists.
I don't want to be governed by people who want to govern by 'love,' either.
site:nytimes.com
"hard right" 17,800 fake results, 353 actual results
"hard left" 903 fake results, 294 actual results
"herd left" only 11 fake results...
Interesting that left/right ratio of the fake results = 19, but only 1.2 for the actual results.
the piece gets the story backwards
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-protests-faes.html
this version of the 'dignity battalions' uses their uniforms,
Out of the crooked timber of encephalized apes no straight thing was ever made.
"Prior to colonisation, most people lived in subsistence economies where they enjoyed access to abundant commons – land, water, forests, livestock and robust systems of sharing and reciprocity. They had little if any money, but then they didn’t need it in order to live well – so it makes little sense to claim that they were poor."
He left out all the good parts...you know, slavery and human sacrifice.
Good one Charlie at 12:14PM!
The Marxist-Leninists who ran the USSR in the days when it performed its most inhuman acts believed that they were finally bringing reason to the governance of human beings.
It goes back much further than that. The career of Maximillien de Robespierre, for example...
There's barely a real "left" in this country, much less a "hard left,"
Remember, Comrade Marvin considers Pol Pot to be Rightwing.
We ought to use reason and science to enhance human well-being.... We can set up institutions that result in greater rationality than any of us is capable of individually, like peer review, like free speech, like a free press, like empirical testing — norms and institutions that make us collectively more rational than any of us is individually...
Here we go again, the collective is not a centrist position. And of course people who think like him must be in charge to bring greater rationality.
Building the better Soviet Man, but this time it will work! China sez so, trust us!
Via Insty: Chinese leaders will increasingly seek to assert China’s model of authoritarian capitalism as an alternative—and implicitly superior—development path abroad, exacerbating great-power competition that could threaten international support for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law,” he stated.
Xi and his advisers are imposing new dictatorial measures at home while backing authoritarian regimes around the world. The practice can be “corrosive to civil society and the rule of law,” the DNI said....
Meet the new boss, just like the old boss.
what is the alternative:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-31/venezuela-crisis-the-left-s-hollow-defense-of-maduro
Blogger Robert Cook said...
There's barely a real "left" in this country, much less a "hard left," as least insofar talking about established political parties. There are probably some protest groups out there who identify as "hard left."
. . .
You can say the same thing about the right. There is no established "blood and soil" party.
Frame of reference is a bitch.
@Robert Cook:
There's barely a real "left" in this country, much less a "hard left," as least insofar talking about established political parties. There are probably some protest groups out there who identify as "hard left."
I think this is generally right. When I think of "hard left," I tend to think of folks like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, the Cockburn clan, and the contributors to outfits like Counterpunch and Z Mag. These individuals/outlets loathe the Democratic Party with probably more ferocity than the Republicans, because at least Republicans do not claim to carry the banner of the left.
What impact did he think droughts or other natural disasters had on these "economies."
Pinker is a bright fellow, but his experience of the world is somewhat parochial. He's lived his entire adult life in the rarefied atmosphere of academia, a paradigm case of ivory tower idealism.
There is no true hard-left or hard-right.
There is only the front-end of the human centipede and the back-end of the human centipede.
I am Laslo.
about time:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/end-unclassified-threat-briefings-intelligence-community-findings/
"Prior to colonisation, most people lived in subsistence economies where they enjoyed access to abundant commons – land, water, forests, livestock and robust systems of sharing and reciprocity. They had little if any money, but then they didn’t need it in order to live well – so it makes little sense to claim that they were poor."
With the advent of property rights, it became possible to specialize and trade, which caused the standard of living to explode.
The particular mechanism is that a large disagreement about the value of things could happen, so mutually great beneficial exchanges were possible.
Isn't the hard left more of a problem for Democrats than the hard right is a problem for Republicans?
Just my observation but it seems prior to Obama the ubiquitous political strategy was an attempt at capturing the middle (though if there is a political middle at all is a topic of debate). Obama taught us if you could capture sufficient disparate voting blocks you could ignore any allusions to compromise policy. I think it opened the doors to the same 'hard left' what historically sinks most failed states. We're debating last centuries failed policies as if they're 'fresh and new' (my second hat tip to Dickin').
It is more a problem for Democrats since they've appeared to have gone all in on every shyte policy of the last century. The most unfortunate thing is from an election standpoint it's only a problem for Democrats if they don't work.
The left corrupt the debate by making anyone who does not agree with their radical agenda into a deplorable right wing nut job.
Enough.
@RC,
There's barely a real "left" in this country, much less a "hard left,"
That's true if you consider "Hard Left" to be synonymous with "Marxist" Left. But, that's not the world we live in. The "orthodox" Marxists have been on life-support for a long time.
The Post-Marxist (or Post Modernist or "Identity") Left is, on the other hand, very much alive & well, and its "extremists" are so well burrowed in to the social fabric that they aren't even seen as extremists any more, e.g. the huge social brouhaha over transsexuals.
There is a yuuuuge cultural & ideological apparatus that feeds the politics of Identity. Just because most folks on the Left (and on the Right) don't read it doesn't mean it doesn't exist & that it doesn't exercise great power in its domains (e.g. academia).
We all need to start reading this Po-Mo stuff because it is what we here are struggling against. Know thine enemy.
"There is no true hard-left or hard-right.
There is only the front-end of the human centipede and the back-end of the human centipede."
It only seems like there's a left and right because the damn thing comes at you sideways.
Things were all rosy in January, 1914, too.
Pinker doesn't seem to get catastrophe is the driver of human history, not gradual changes.
It's like saying the 20th century was relatively peaceful, except for the two World Wars. Uh, yeah, true, but...
Quaestor:
Pinker is a bright fellow, but his experience of the world is somewhat parochial. He's lived his entire adult life in the rarefied atmosphere of academia, a paradigm case of ivory tower idealism.
I was actually referring to a critic of Pinker’s quoted on Coyne’s blog.
@J. Farmer sez:
I think this is generally right. When I think of "hard left," I tend to think of folks like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, the Cockburn clan, and the contributors to outfits like Counterpunch and Z Mag. These individuals/outlets loathe the Democratic Party with probably more ferocity than the Republicans, because at least Republicans do not claim to carry the banner of the left.
Continuing the healthy tenor of our previous dialogue, I offer a dissent.
Yes, Noam Chomsky and and Howard Zinn are hard left. We agree.
But do you recognize how popular and influential these two were and are in the academy?
They have dominated the Universities for the past 50 years, and helped, more than any other Professor, shape these institutions into left wing factories.
You agree, generally, that Professors in the major universities across the nation are probably 90-10 Dem or Left, right?
Indeed, the only countervailing force was/is the science/engineering/biotech types who are largely apolitical and just want to get high-paying, productive jobs, upon graduation.
In the last Prez election, the country voted 66 Million v. 63 Million. That's essentially 50-50. Why aren't the Universities 50-50? Where is the cache of right-wing professors in the humanities? There are none, because such august institutions have been overtaken by the Hard Left, I would assert. And, two of the titans of the Hard left have been Chomsky and Zinn.
J. Farmer said...
@Robert Cook:
There's barely a real "left" in this country, much less a "hard left," as least insofar talking about established political parties. There are probably some protest groups out there who identify as "hard left."
I think this is generally right. When I think of "hard left,
I think of Occasional Cortex and other members of Congress just like her.
The funny thing is that Trump is a moderate Democrat.
(Whom we are lucky to have).
Transgenders serving in the military is a Hard Left position.
But compared to the people starving in Venezuela and eating their pets I guess the Times isn’t that Hard Left yet. If only Latinos could pull off Socialism like the Swedes. But you need blonde hair, blue eyes, and big tits to dobit. AOC ain’t going to make it work.
And poor Chomsky. Guy made a living off the money paid and donated by Capitalist Running Dogs to MIT who then cut him off some of the money. He didn’t have the guts to move to Venezuela and live under Chavez. Just decided to praise him but not scavenge for the dog meat. Useless poser like Bernie Sanders.
Our Universities are basically mental institutions with a few good sports programs. Pinker is just as much of a loon as Chomsky. These guys live in the Cambridge Cocoon.
And guilty as sin, free as a bird Friend of Barry Bill Ayers and his wife The killer Bernadette Dohrn.
Bill Ayers exhorted children to kill their parents to jumpstart the Revolution. And because of who his daddy was, free as a bird.
Chuck: It’s also funny to me how the presumptive Republican nominee for 2020 is Trump. Isn’t it a better than 50-50 bet that a report from the Office of Special Counsel is going to be so devastating as to preclude a second Trump term?
I'd take that bet. That is so much wishful thinking on your part. Is it even money that there isn't a second Trump term? Or that he get's a challenger in the primary and doesn't get to run for a second term?
Game theory this out for me, Chuck.
1. We know that the Mueller report won't show any "bombshell" Russian collusion. Bombshell in the form of memos/tapes/emails or other documentation of Trump conspiring with Putin asking him to hack the DNC, etc. How do we know that? Because something so slam dunk would necessitate it being brought to the DOJ sooner rather than later. It hasn't leaked in 2 years of investigating, so it won't.
2. Anything else is "process" crimes similar to what Clinton was accused of in his impeachment. Perjury, suborning perjury, obstruction of justice, etc. While that may get him impeached in the house, it won't cause 67 senators to remove him from office.
3. Trump won't resign. He's not Nixon. He's Clinton. Ride till you die. There's no "wise" leaders of the party who could get him to resign. Heck, I'll bet Don Jr. couldn't get him to resign.
4. So any primary challenger for Trump would have to side with Democrat talking points in a Republican primary. "He's a crook, etc." That won't go very far. Kasich? Ha. Jeb!? Double Ha. Romney? Triple ha. They are Losers There might be a Republican that will run against him in the primaries, but they won't WIN.
5. I would add that if you are a anti-Trump Republican and you want to run for president, better to sit out the next 4 years and challenge Pence. Pence has none of the campaign advantages of Trump, yet will be stuck with all of the disadvantages (he normalized Trump!).
Statistically speaking, in the modern era, it's rare (absent a recession) for a President to NOT win re-election. All of his damaging stuff is out. There is no October surprise left to drop. He's a known quantity. They had to make up something to October surprise Bush. He has a track record of winning elections by virtue of being in the office. And he has the office itself to campaign with. Very powerful.
There's a reason that Cuomo didn't run in '92. It took an upstart nobody centrist governor from the Midwest to beat the incumbent president.
"We can set up institutions that result in greater rationality than any of us is capable of individually"
This is absolutely not true. Pinker does not understand institutions. These are not driven by rationality, but by incentives and culture, i.e., power. It takes a rather isolated, intellectual person to assume that his state of mind is ideal or practical or scalable.
And most human culture is created by layers of empirical solutions to portions of problems, as are human institutions. They are not built on reason but on expediency.
And because of perverse incentives that are inherent to institutions (that are not regularly challenged existentially by competition), the tendency is for these things to devolve into an ever more "irrational" state, as viewed by an outside observer.
I'm sure Pinker has read Schumpeter, but he has not lived Schumpeter.
@BAG,
Yes, Noam Chomsky and and Howard Zinn are hard left. We agree.
Chomsky & Zinn consider(ed) themselves to be anarchists. I consider them both to be lying about this. I think they call themselves anarchists because they want to separate themselves from the moral horrors that were the Marxist regimes of the 20th C.
Every anarchist knows that no regimes murdered more anarchists than the Marxists. Every anarchist knows that the Marxist state never withers away, but it is captured by the Party to use as a weapon against the people. Every anarchist knows that the power of the State, no matter if the state serves the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, must be destroyed.
Every now & then Zinn or Chomsky could be forced into a corner & forced to criticize a Marxist regime. Mostly, though, they just publicly sucked cock for these odious regimes, while turning the full force of their critiques on the capitalist West.
I'm sorry, these guys were Commies.
Statistically speaking, in the modern era, it's rare (absent a recession) for a President to NOT win re-election. All of his damaging stuff is out. There is no October surprise left to drop. He's a known quantity. They had to make up something to October surprise Bush. He has a track record of winning elections by virtue of being in the office. And he has the office itself to campaign with. Very powerful.
Hatred is also powerful.
Zinn and Chomsky were university professors. No self-respecting radical cashes paychecks from The Man.
Soccer moms have more guts than these two wimps. Nothing more worthless than an Academic.
Pinker is no different than these guys. The live very sheltered lives. Shut-ins really.
"Transgenders serving in the military is a Hard Left position."
There is a left and there is a left and there is a left.
A traditional Anarchist position, of the Bakunin-Durruti sort, would have rejected the concept of a standing army in the first place, and classed transgenderism as a perversion created by capitalism.
A Leninist-Stalinist position would have likewise classed transgenderism as a perversion created by capitalism. Not only out of place in the Red Army, but off to the labor camps with them. This was also the Gramsci-ite concept. The long march was supposed to have led to that.
A Maoist position, as above.
A third-world anticolonialist revolutionary-left position, as above, but adding that the perversion is rooted in the evil influence of European colonialism.
All of the above are the vision of the left as the revolutionary movement of the working class, or of the native masses, etc. The core idea was that of classes, a hierarchy of economic power. The anticolonialists added the layer of native-foreign.
The only flavors of the left that could and do support such things as transgenderism is the post-class concept variants born in western universities, which abandoned the masses as the designated beneficiaries of the movement, as well as the concept of class entirely. Instead they created a non-class coalition based on ethnic, sexual and goodness knows what else (sanity/insanity?) distinctions. Feminism and antiracism, or rather racial separatism, were early components of this new variant.
It is not class warfare as the left defined it for 200+ years. It is not the war between capital and labor, of the bosses against the workers, but, to put it bluntly, of the fashionable bourgeoisie against their plumbers and electricians, those oppressors.
Religious catastrophists need end times fear for crowd control. Sheeple like to be shorn
Tucker Carlson recently promoted the Lincoln premise that labor precedes and produces wealth.
" Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, the Cockburn clan, and the contributors to outfits like Counterpunch and Z Mag."
These are as obsolete as the Holy Roman Empire. They were obsolete in 1968. The institutions of the left, the intellectuals and the fruits of the "long march", being unable to gain traction, abandoned the working class as a bad job, and set off to find some other way to slice up the people, in order to define a more acceptable version of the oppressed.
Hey, wasn't this thread supposed to be about Pinker?
"I was surprised by how much interest there’s been from centrist politicians, who are desperate for a coherent narrative to defend centrist liberalism, cosmopolitanism, open society..."
Centrist. There's that word again. Let the centrists tell us what they want, and we'll judge.
"... from the threats both by populists and by the hard left."
What "threats" by "populists"? "Threats" as determined by "reason and science" or as determined by the personal preferences by our would-be scientific overlords?
"We ought to use reason and science to enhance human well-being"
So, for example, if reason and science show that illegal immigrants bring crime and murder and low wages and problems for minority communities, we'll all be against it, right?
"We can set up institutions that result in greater rationality than any of us is capable of individually, like peer review, like free speech, like a free press, like empirical testing — norms and institutions that make us collectively more rational"
Forgot to mention markets. Not very centrist of you, Pinker. Anyway, where's the evidence that our "free press" enhances "collective rationality"?
"to try to depoliticize issues as much as possible"
Ah, yes, gotta love those political thinkers trying to depoliticize political issues. Right up Althouse's alley.
@buwaya - I think there's still plenty of connective tissue between old fashioned Leftism and the modern variants. Generally the modern Western left still identifies and seeks to champion victims of perceived evil capitalistic systems. It's just that these victims aren't the old fashioned oppressed proletariats, but are instead various identity groups. But the perscribed solutions for these victims are often very similar to the old fashioned left's solutions: Using government power to level the playing field with revolution. That revolution can take the form of either a traditional violent one, or a nonviolent restructuring (fundamentally transforming) of the existing systems.
perverse incentives that are inherent to institutions (that are not regularly challenged existentially by competition)
Religious/moral philosophy to order the lives of people capable of self-moderating, responsible behavior, and competing interests to mitigate the risk of others running amuck.
@YoungHegelian:
Every now & then Zinn or Chomsky could be forced into a corner & forced to criticize a Marxist regime. Mostly, though, they just publicly sucked cock for these odious regimes, while turning the full force of their critiques on the capitalist West.
I'm sorry, these guys were Commies.
I'm sorry, but I cannot imagine that you are even minimally conversant in Chomsky's work (as opposed to what people say about Chomsky) and believe this is true. Chomsky has given at length his views on Marx, and there is no indication that he is misrepresenting his opinions on the matter.
Chomsky's position is that as American citizens, it is our duty to hold our own government responsible for its crimes since its the government we have the power to effect. Similarly, it is the job of Soviet dissidents to concern themselves primarily with the crimes of their government. Whatever one thinks of this position, it has nothing to do with "publicly sucked cock for these odious regimes." In fact, can you quote something of Chomsky's that you would consider an example of this?
@Bay Area Guy:
But do you recognize how popular and influential these two were and are in the academy?
They have dominated the Universities for the past 50 years, and helped, more than any other Professor, shape these institutions into left wing factories.
Cook's original comment was in the context of "established political parties." Cultural power is another story. There you and I probably agree more. A sort of identity left does dominate within the academy and within the media. Although it's worth pointing out that Chomsky has long been critical of post-modernism, and especially the French influence beginning in the 1970s. He was an early opponent of Faucault, and I think correctly identified Derrida as a charlatan. Chomsky is from the English empirical school and has a lot of loathing for French intellectual history.
The hard left, totalitarian, the hard right, anarchist, and the left-right nexus that gives life to each. As for centrist, it's Constitutional, less the Twilight Amendment, with a normal distribution of left-right sociopolitical attributes.
Chuck at 11:33 AM
Isn’t it a better than 50-50 bet that a report from the Office of Special Counsel is going to be so devastating as to preclude a second Trump term?
I do not think that anything from Robert "The FBI Whitewasher" Mueller will preclude a second Trump term.
When I look at the elite and the establishment that has been running things for the last half century, "hard left" is not the adjective that comes to mind. They are, if anything, radical centrists. They are left on social/identity issues and right on economic/statist issues. They are the Davos set. They are the party of Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. They went to elite universities; they dominate the media and the boardrooms. They benefit from outsourcing and cheap immigrant labor, and it's by and large not their children serving in foreign wars. Exclusive zip codes and private schools keep them insulated from the byproducts of their choices. Trump is but a tiny chink in that armor. And just look at the collective insanity that has unleashed.
@J Farmer,
In fact, can you quote something of Chomsky's that you would consider an example of this?
Yes, years ago in my hard Left days, I watched an interview with Chomsky where he either knowingly or ignorantly misrepresented the ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime in a way to minimize the horror of what was actually unfolding in Cambodia. He stated that the Khmer Rouge were reaching back & reviving the [mythologies] of the the ancient Khmer state.
Nothing was further from the truth. The Khmer Rouge ideology was a melange of Maoism & Jacobinism & it sought to re-create society from the ground up. There was no respectful appropriation of Cambodian history. It was all to be destroyed root & branch.
Read what I said, Farmer: Zinn & Chomsky were/are liars. They built a very sophisticated public image to hide the fact that they weren't anarchists, & didn't have the ideological interests of anarchists. C'mon, you asked me for an example of when Chomsky sucked cock, and I gave you one. Now give me one of Chomsky or Zinns "Meditations" on Bakunin or Kropotkin. What did they ever say that wasn't in the wider ambient of Marxism? Those two were in reality fellow travelers, and they worked hard to obscure it.
Mostly, though, they just publicly sucked cock for these odious regimes,...
I thought we were done talking about Kamala Harris and her stint as San Francisco DA.
[Bada bing]
@YoungHegelian:
Yes, years ago in my hard Left days, I watched an interview with Chomsky where he either knowingly or ignorantly misrepresented the ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime in a way to minimize the horror of what was actually unfolding in Cambodia. He stated that the Khmer Rouge were reaching back & reviving the [mythologies] of the the ancient Khmer state.
With all due respect, I don't accept as an example an interview you say you remember from some time in the distant path. Chomsky's record on Cambodia is well established and available to anyone who wants to read it. His original comments on the matter, in the 1977 Nation article was a review of three books giving conflicting reports of what was going on in Cambodia. Chomsky was skeptical of the genocide and was obviously proven wrong by history. But that was not an untenable position in 1977. The full extent of the Cambodian nightmare did not become well known until after the Vietnamese invasion the following year.
What did they ever say that wasn't in the wider ambient of Marxism?
That is an absurd standard. Child labor laws are within "the wider ambient of Marxism."
"Centrist:" an even-handed mixture of liberty with statism. Like cyanide mixed evenly with water.
The "party of Reagan" is left on identity issues, dominates the media, and lives in exclusive zip codes?
@J. Farmer,
Chomsky was skeptical of the genocide and was obviously proven wrong by history. But that was not an untenable position in 1977
Bullshit. What I'm talking about is the ideology of the Khmer Rouge, not what they did with it. What Chomsky said in that interview was either by malfeasance or ignorance wrong as a point of ideology, and as someone as connected on the Left as Chomsky, there was no shortage in French & other western languages on the ideology of the Khmer Rouge.
Farmer --- Chomsky calls himself an "anarcho-syndicalist". When has Chomsky discussed the destruction of the modern state & its replacement by autonomous collectives? That's what anarcho-syndicalism is. Anarcho-syndicalism sounds just like Dennis The Peasant in The Holy Grail. Where's Chomsky's Dennis The Peasant speech?
As for your claim that Chomsky thought the fight against Soviet tyranny was for the Soviet dissidents -- how convenient. Just like the job in the 40s of American Jews is to fight American antisemitism & Polish Jews to fight Nazi antisemitism. There's a big moral difference there. And that's what Chomsky did. He just threw the Soviet peoples under the bus because it wasn't our moral job to help them. He, from his sinecure at MIT, faced the big bad American state, and grew rich doing it. The Soviet dissidents ended up dead or in the Gulag. But, Chomsky's conscience was clean.
"If only we had established systems of peer review, free speech and a free press years ago, we wouldn't be in this mess now!"
None of this is useful or workable or persistent without competition.
The point, I suppose, that Pinker is missing is the competition the Trumpian movement is attempting to bring, its anti-Schumpeterian nature.
I think its too little too late.
@Sebastian:
The "party of Reagan" is left on identity issues, dominates the media, and lives in exclusive zip codes?
Most certainly. Reagan's presidency is squarely within the neo-liberal agenda. Their roots are actually in the Carter administration. Reagan had some good protectionist instincts but otherwise was in the globalist tradition. He laid the foundation for what would become the WTO and NAFTA. He gave us an amnesty. Bush I was a new world order guy, and Clinton hit the gas pedal on all of these policies.
Reagan was swindled with that Amnesty. *Never give an inch to the left.
There's the hard left. Then there's the hard, hard left.
And then come the Jill Stein voters.
AA: And I love the Steven Pinker stuff.
Really? What do you think it means? It's anodyne fluff, and politically naïve. "Peer review!" "Free speech!" "Free press!" "Empirical testing!" "Norms and institutions!"
Well, yeah, that's all nice. So how do we go about getting back what we've lost among all those things? J.Farmer, above, has it exactly right. "Pinker's so called centrism is the neo-liberal consensus that has dominated for the last 40 years and helped get us into this mess in the first place."
AA: But he's not a political candidate (indeed that quote came after he rejected the idea of his running for office). I'd like a candidate for President who would talk like that. Howard?
Any candidate could easily talk like that. But what would it mean if they did? Nothing. It's standard now for Dem candidates, at least, to gas on about being the party of "reason" and "science", and it tells you as much about their understanding of reason and science as it tells you about their understanding of "free speech". So why would you "like it"?
@YoungHegelian:
Bullshit. What I'm talking about is the ideology of the Khmer Rouge, not what they did with it.
Again, I am not going to accept an amorphous "interview" that you say you once heard. I am well aware of Chomsky's writings on Cambodia, and he does not concern himself with the ideology of the Khmer Rouge. So if in fact he has commented on it, I would be surprised. I am not closed to the idea that he has, but I'd like a source.
Farmer --- Chomsky calls himself an "anarcho-syndicalist". When has Chomsky discussed the destruction of the modern state & its replacement by autonomous collectives? That's what anarcho-syndicalism is. Anarcho-syndicalism sounds just like Dennis The Peasant in The Holy Grail. Where's Chomsky's Dennis The Peasant speech?
Chomsky has in fact discussed those issues in a variety of settings. The state has an illegitimate power structure has been a central tenet of Chomsky's work.
Now, don't misunderstand me. I do not share Chomsky's politics or necessarily a lot of his conclusions. But I think he is a serious person whose point of view is worth listening to. I also think his critiques of US foreign policy, the primary focus of his political work, are worth considering and responding to. But like any good conservative, I am highly skeptical of the Enlightenment.
@Angle-Dyne, Samurai Buzzard:
Really? What do you think it means? It's anodyne fluff, and politically naïve.
I honestly believe that Pinker is trying to say that blacks have lower IQs than whites, and men are better than women at somethings without becoming a total pariah. He is already a partial pariah. If there is one thing that unifies the Intellectual Dark Web and the so called "alt right," it's that they have at least come to accept those two statements and are trying to work through how best to respond to their implications.
@Farmer,
The state has an illegitimate power structure has been a central tenet of Chomsky's work.
You dance around the central fact -- Chomsky claims he is an anarcho-syndicalist. Does he preach the Gospel of anarcho-syndicalism? Or, does he basically use the argument of illegitimate state power as a stick to beat the capitalist West?
The latter isn't anarcho-syndicalism. It's fellow-traveling, and if so, Chomsky's a liar.
Chomsky never really fit. Anywhere. The Marxists hate him because he really isn't any form of "orthodox" Marxist. The Capitalists hate him because he's anti-capitalist. he certainly doesn't fit anywhere on the Identity Left. But, as a stick to beat the West, he's very useful. Matter of fact, he's the largest selling American author in Europe, and has been for a long time. Basically though, he's just an ideological muddle, and one in a long line of Analytic philosophers who decided to get politically engaged and got lost in the muddle.
I'm done. You have the last word.
I haven't systematically counted, but I think "hard right" is much more common, and "hard left" is most likely to come up in references to other countries (notably Venezuela) or in quotes.
And then you have those who deny that Venezuela has anything to do with Socialism.No, Venezuela doesn’t prove anything about socialism. The writer is a prominent member of the opposition in Venezuela.
@YoungHegelian:
You dance around the central fact -- Chomsky claims he is an anarcho-syndicalist. Does he preach the Gospel of anarcho-syndicalism? Or, does he basically use the argument of illegitimate state power as a stick to beat the capitalist West?
I did not "dance around" this. I addressed it head on. Yes, in fact, Chomsky has written and spoken extensively on the subject, and the material is available if you care to read/listen to it. Chomsky wrote the introduction to Anarcho-syndicalism: Theory and Practice by Rudolf Rocker, which is the central text on the subject.
Chomsky never really fit. Anywhere.
That can also be a sign of intellectual independence. I prefer someone who "never really fit" to a dogmatic anything.
But, as a stick to beat the West, he's very useful.
By "beat the West," you mean criticize US foreign policy. It is perfectly legitimate for Chomsky, or any other citizen, to criticize US foreign policy. You seem to be faulting him for not criticizing the countries you want him to criticize. It is not a defense of US foreign policy to say that some other regime is worse.
"We can set up institutions that result in greater rationality than any of us is capable of individually"
This is absolutely not true. Pinker does not understand institutions.
It is true. Being a superstitious person, you tend to denigrate "science" because of its successful conflict with your inferior superstitions; "science" was created via those flawed institutions of attempted rationality, but those institutions and the resulted knowledge are the difference between vaccinations, sewage systems and fertilizer vs praying that the ole Debbil don't getcha and having most of your children die in childhood.
They are not built on reason but on expediency.
I do believe your view is warped by the false and extremely perverse institution known as the Catholic church, which is built on the opposite of reason. But it doesn't really matter, those flawed institutions and their small accomplishments in knowledge and rationality made modern life possible by not kowtowing to superstition.
The amazing part is how quickly "knowledge" of mostly everything currently known from almost nothing occurred - 500 years or so, following say, 50,000 years of "anatomically modern humans" making up ghost stories.
Howard said...Religious catastrophists need end times fear for crowd control. Sheeple like to be shorn
--
Sure. See AOC's 12 year blather.
Harold Camping smiles.
You have to be pretty far left to think there is no hard left in this country. I imagine the USSR was centrist by comparison.
@Fernandistein,
The amazing part is how quickly "knowledge" of mostly everything currently known from almost nothing occurred - 500 years or so, following say, 50,000 years of "anatomically modern humans" making up ghost stories.
Do you ever read any Enlightenment philosophy? Like, ever?
If you think that somehow the concept of God disappeared from pulling heavy philosophical duty in the Enlightenment, you're really mistaken. Pull up and example of an Enlightenment philosophe & we can work through it.
@alanc709:
You have to be pretty far left to think there is no hard left in this country.
I don't think anyone is saying there is "no hard left." It's more a question of how much political power they possess. I don't think very much. I think the same about the far right.
"I do believe your view is warped by the false and extremely perverse institution known as the Catholic church"
My view is warped by 40 years working for and with F1000 technology companies.
Decision-making is rarely rational, in the sense of advancing the interests of the corporation. Most are expedients undertaken with vastly insufficient knowledge, modified by layers of additional expedients undertaken in the same spirit. Many if not most of the better ones are grounded on non-rational judgement working off accumulated experience. Hunches and prejudices. Tons of decisions are driven by very local internal incentives, not those of the purpose of the organization.
And here we are talking of commercial firms. Public institutions are worse.
A demand for rationality does not take the reality of humanity into account.
If you want a picture (lots of pictures!) of the reality of my world, well, that is Scott Adams life work. Get the Dilbert books. A bit extreme you say? No, not really.
@buwaya:
A demand for rationality does not take the reality of humanity into account.
100% agree. Human beings are barely scratching the surface of rationality. Pinker does live in a cocoon, but I don't thank it's so much the ivory tower as the cocoon of his own cognitive endowments. One of the things that intelligent people have difficulty doing is understanding what it's like to be unintelligent. The Hitchens/Dawkins/Harris/Krauss argument is, I think, utterly naive. I am a materialist and well aware of the existential anxieties such a worldview can cause, but I think it is very unlikely that materialism alone can sustain a civilization for very long.
Most business decisions are not "rational" at all. There is, to begin with, little scope for rationalism in the absence of information. Fear, hope, experience, personalities, intangibles of emotional reactions, love and hate, faith and doubt, despair and elation.
And religion, faith, is a huge deal. Even if it is disguised as something else, which is what it usually is these days.
"You have to be pretty far left to think there is no hard left in this country. I imagine the USSR was centrist by comparison."
Of, for Pete's sake! How silly can one be?
@buwaya:
My first job was as for a private company within a public institution. I was employed by a private medical and psychiatric care provider who provided these services within a state-run residential facility for juvenile offenders. This company provided similar services in facilities all over the state. The number of pathological dynamics within that system were astounding. It was the kind of place where the secretary had been there for 25 years and basically ran the place, while every few years a new director was plopped in to sign off on paperwork and take the heat if any shit hit the fan. The old boys club in Florida politics is legendary.
"Remember, Comrade Marvin considers Pol Pot to be Rightwing."
Citation, please!
@Farmer:
"The "party of Reagan" is left on identity issues, dominates the media, and lives in exclusive zip codes?
Most certainly. Reagan's presidency is squarely within the neo-liberal agenda"
You noticed, I'm sure, that I left out aspects of your initial statement -- "cheap labor," etc. The "party of Reagan" did stand for free trade, and therefore parts of the "neoliberal agenda." It was not left on identity issues, it did not dominate the media, and only a few members lived in exclusive zip codes.
"I think of Occasional Cortex and other members of Congress just like her."
How many other members of Congress are "just like her," and who are they?
"...as American citizens, it is our duty to hold our own government responsible for its crimes since its the government we have the power to effect."
This is absolutely true.
and it was not as actively proexpeditionary force:
http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/31/no-amount-u-s-intervention-going-save-afghanistan-now-ever/#.XFN2FeFeeaE.twitter
Sebastian:
It was not left on identity issues, it did not dominate the media, and only a few members lived in exclusive zip codes.
It might be unclear by what I mean by "party of Reagan." My point is that the neo-liberal agenda encompassed both major political parties. One of the characteristics of American political society is that the parameters of acceptable debate are drawn very narrowly but a tremendous amount of vociferous debate is permitted within those parameters. Whether it is Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Obama, we have consistently gotten more globalization, more immigration, and more war. I think Trump has put a toe outside of those parameters and hence you see all hell breaking loose.
" I imagine the USSR was centrist by comparison."
Of, for Pete's sake! How silly can one be?"
Depends on your definition of "left".
Consider universities. A Soviet university treatment of literature, or philosophy, or most "soft" subjects, would be extremely "conservative", as in traditional, by today's American standards.
exactly it is the conceptual framework involved,
http://invisibleserfscollar.com/systematizing-human-nature-via-internalized-marxian-standards-of-truth-goodness-and-beauty/
And, for the record, science isn't science.
Most of the tech improvements ascribed to "science", and I mean the vast majority of the causes of the differences between human living standards of the middle ages vs those of today, come from something entirely separate from both the institutions and process of science as it is usually understood.
It was all empirical, and it was done by blacksmiths, or their kin and equivalents.
Most of this stuff was not done to prove or disprove a hypothesis, but to make something work, or work better, the "principles" or the reason why be damned. Add a inch of steel here, or a fudge factor there, adjust a coefficient, add a timing delay, squirt in more oil.
A couple of thousand years of that got us here.
Just because dems want to raise taxes, tax wealth, 70% income tax (not counting state and sales taxes), confiscate all your guns, medicare for all, free college, and open borders, why would you think this is extreme? heh
buwaya:
A couple of thousand years of that got us here.
I take your point, but is the curve really that gradual? There seems to be a pretty undeniable explosion beginning in the 19th century. It took around the year 1800 for the world's population to reach one billion and in the 200 years since we have done that seven times over. Look at the distance in progress between 1950 and 1850. Is there an equivalent hundred-year period in other time in human history? Or are you saying that the small incremental improvements are what led to the explosion?
I’m thinking this sudden interest in centrism is gonna fade pretty fast. Mainly because there are only about 10 of us left.
"There seems to be a pretty undeniable explosion beginning in the 19th century."
Yes indeed. Tech built on tech, each improvement speeding up others, and quite independently of the Royal Society. Machine tools and steam engines made the people technologists. More tech facilitated more tech.
It was not scientists that did all this in an academic-intellectual milieu. Newcomen was basically a blacksmith. James Watt was an instrument technician.
yes, the distinction between theoretical breakthroughs and applied science:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1080805/venezuala-us-donald-trump-Nicolas-Maduro-russia-china-iran
Whether it is Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Obama, we have consistently gotten more globalization, more immigration, and more war.
Globalization is not a political choice. It's an inevitable outcome of technology and engineering.
buwaya:
It was not scientists that did all this in an academic-intellectual milieu. Newcomen was basically a blacksmith. James Watt was an instrument technician.
I agree, and science and technology are overlapping but still distinct enterprises. I see science as a method for increasing knowledge about the world. The other primary method seems to be revealed knowledge. And I am constitutionally incapable of accepting that.
It wasn't scientists, it was the DIY crowd, the kind of people who built hot rods in the 50s and 60s. Folks who could dream in motion control mode, build the dormers on their houses and wire it up. One of the best guys I worked with wanted to 3D scan his daughter's palsied legs for effective braces. This was in '94 and he wanted to get the doctors into this stuff back then. He was dyslexic and a mechanical savant who visualized in 3D.
"Globalization is not a political choice. It's an inevitable outcome of technology and engineering."
This is true. The fallout of changes in technology.
The problem with technology is that it changes the world much faster than the biological human animal or his social systems can adapt.
@Rick:
Globalization is not a political choice. It's an inevitable outcome of technology and engineering.
That, of course, depends on what you mean by "globalization." There was nothing inevitable about NAFTA or the EU. There was nothing inevitable about creating a guest worker/indentured servant guest worker visa racket so that tech companies could import cheap labor. There was nothing inevitable about permitting unchecked mass immigration along with very high levels of legal immigration. There was nothing inevitable about militarily intervening all over the world. The globalization crowd loathes nation-states and the borders that protect them and work relentlessly to erase those borders and they sovereignty they entail.
All those Democrat "centrists" are either liars or collaborators.
"That, of course, depends on what you mean by "globalization."
The increased ease and reduced cost of travel and communication, of education that permitted better collaboration between cultural groups, of a wider range of resources and manufacturing options for tradeable goods, and of course the outsourcing of services.
NAFTA and the EU are just responses to the underlying fact that it is now easy to integrate Mexican portions of a transcontinental business process. Or for millions of Poles to move across Europe to do plumbing work for foreigners. Even without NAFTA or the EU all that isn't going to change, some accommodation will come, because it obviously is to many peoples advantage to do what is possible, which will probably also make many other people unhappy.
The globalists are right, as far as that goes. It is inevitable. They are wrong about whether it is a good thing, or entirely a good thing. The other problem is that there isn't much that will delay or mitigate it. It is a sort of human-culture "grey goo" catastrophe.
"There was nothing inevitable about militarily intervening all over the world."
It is an inevitable requirement for a Pax-whatever.
Human beings are a**h***s, and they will, given the option and on random occasions, decide to use their nation-states to do in their neighbors. Keeping the peace requires someone or something to squash down the lid on that always boiling pot.
The alternative is an armed truce between Great Powers. Which involves the danger of ending.
Even Great Powers are likely to be a**h***s.
@buwaya:
It is undeniable that technological changes made globalization possible; it couldn't have happened otherwise. But it does not follow that because technological change made a certain kind of world possible that that world was inevitable. Because NAFTA was possible does not mean it was inevitable. There were people working hard to oppose it at the time, on both ends of the political spectrum. The steps towards globalization have all required specific choices, made by specific actors, within a specific timeline.
Let us all remember that remarkably small percentages can effect changes in nations. Considerably less than 10% for Bolsheviks and Nazis, not sure about Khmer Rouge or Vietnam Cong. Probably not much more than 10% for our Revolution and secession of the South. Keep that in mind when you laugh off AOC and KKKamala.
"But it does not follow that because technological change made a certain kind of world possible that that world was inevitable. "
Something different is inevitable. This is not a thing that can be stuffed back into the genie bottle.
"The steps towards globalization have all required specific choices, made by specific actors, within a specific timeline."
The details of the legislated accommodation can be argued. But something will happen, and most likely it will be a whole lot of emergent phenomena that we can only pretend to control.
@buwaya:
It is an inevitable requirement for a Pax-whatever.
I think the "Pax-whatever" is an anachronism to describe a brief period of world history dominated by European powers that has ceased to exist for a hundred years. The post-war period in which the supposed Pax Americana was ascendant I think is mostly a chimera. For one thing, the second half of the 20th century was just as violent as the first half, with the exception that the violence mainly took place within international borders as opposed to between them.
Human beings are a**h***s, and they will, given the option and on random occasions, decide to use their nation-states to do in their neighbors. Keeping the peace requires someone or something to squash down the lid on that always boiling pot.
Your analysis ignores that US international meddling for the last several decades has more often than not left chaos and instability in its wake.
The alternative is an armed truce between Great Powers. Which involves the danger of ending.
Such a truce already exists and has existed for some time. Of course any truce or agreement or alliance has "the danger of ending." That's life. American interests are far more convergent with the other great powers than they are divergent, and there is no real impediment to us maintaining good, balance of power relations with China and Russia. But it is foolish for us to to aggravate these relationships over relatively minor security concerns like Syria and North Korea.
There was nothing inevitable about NAFTA or the EU.
NAFTA has some impact in speeding up globalization but less than people think. And since speeding it up reduces the total impact it is mitigating in the long term. I'm not sure what the EU reference is to. The EU isn't about trade or globalization, it's an effort to create unelectable and unreplaceable government by bureaucracy, a reformation of enlightened despotism. Trade was the bait. If they had stuck to that the EU wouldn't be the autocratic disaster it is today.
There was nothing inevitable about creating a guest worker/indentured servant guest worker visa racket so that tech companies could import cheap labor.
This is immigration, not globalization.
There was nothing inevitable about permitting unchecked mass immigration along with very high levels of legal immigration. There was nothing inevitable about militarily intervening all over the world.
Which has nothing to do with what I wrote.
@buwaya:
The details of the legislated accommodation can be argued. But something will happen, and most likely it will be a whole lot of emergent phenomena that we can only pretend to control.
Yes; change is inevitable. That is a truism. That still says nothing about the inevitability of any particular outcome. The same technological forces enabling globalization exist in Japan as they do in the US, but Japan did not go down the mass immigration route like North America and Europe.
The opposite of the hard right is not hard left. It's LIMP left.
@Rick:
The EU isn't about trade or globalization, it's an effort to create unelectable and unreplaceable government by bureaucracy, a reformation of enlightened despotism.
I think you have the causal direction completely backwards. The European Union begins as the European Coal and Steel Community. The single market and the free movements of goods, services, capital, and people is the cornerstone of the entire system.
This is immigration, not globalization.
Immigration is part and parcel of globalization. The World Economic Forum defines globalization as "the process by which people and goods move easily across borders." The utopian vision of globalization is a borderless world.
Which has nothing to do with what I wrote.
In fact it does. Immigration as a just described. Similarly, a disregard for national sovereignty makes it much easier for one country to interfere with the sovereignty of another.
"Such a truce already exists and has existed for some time."
The "truce" was not between equals, or powers that acted as equals. The situation is not equal yet, but it is becoming more so. It still is, for a while more, a "Pax Americana".
"Of course any truce or agreement or alliance has "the danger of ending." That's life."
Or that's death. But such a case is of course also inevitable, in the long run. Any positive plateau of international relations is but a moment. And it takes active policies to keep it that way. There is way too much tending to entropy in the situation.
Democrat party BS. This week alone their leaders have called for Eliminating private insurance, nationalizing "healthcare", restricting private firearms ownership, and killing babies as policy. These scumbags are avalanching away from the center. It's a Sprint by Democrat party members to see how fast they can turn the US into Venezuela.
"Similarly, a disregard for national sovereignty makes it much easier for one country to interfere with the sovereignty of another."
The disregard comes as a result of a cost-benefit analysis. Often a defective one, but so it is anyway, and the aggressor often gets away with it regardless. Sovereign nations are sovereign only to the degree that their neighbors perceive them as too much trouble to bother with. Which is, by the way, one of the benefits of a "Pax".
Consider the reason why China can get away with grabbing the South China Sea, an enormous violation of sovereignty. And it has gotten away with it, because the "Pax" is breaking down.
The European Union begins as the European Coal and Steel Community. The single market and the free movements of goods, services, capital, and people is the cornerstone of the entire system.
The bait always comes before the switch. The single market within the EU is not globalization. The EU countries (especially the starting core) were relatively similar in both culture and economics compared to the differences between the US (or EU) and India/China, and these countries had millenia-long trading partnerships. The common market was not a radical change in that environment: a difference measured in percentages and not orders of magnitude. Globalization is the integration of places previously unable to participate in the world economy.
Immigration is part and parcel of globalization.
I disagree and think this is the core problem. While many people treat these issues as linked it doesn't have to be so. Globalization is improving people's lives around the globe lessening the need and desire for them to immigrate. Further those who want both these outcomes use opposition to globalization to discredit those opposed to immigration.
The World Economic Forum defines globalization
Again that's a choice to define it as so. But if we allow the goods to flow the economic benefits even out and the economic motivation for people to flow is vastly reduced.
Similarly, a disregard for national sovereignty
What I'm describing does not disregard national sovereignty.
@buwaya:
The situation is not equal yet, but it is becoming more so. It still is, for a while more, a "Pax Americana".
Well, as I have said, I don't think the Pax Americana ever really existed. Tremendous violence continued throughout South America, Africa, and Asia. Yes there was peace in Western Europe primarily because the European powers destroyed themselves over the course of two wars. They were suddenly in the middle of two new global powers, the US and the Soviet Union, they were indebted to the US financially, and their overseas empires were dismantled. But even on the continent, what could Pax Americana due for Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968?
Any positive plateau of international relations is but a moment. And it takes active policies to keep it that way.
I completely agree. And as I said it is not worth aggravating otherwise productive relationships with China and Russia over relatively minor concerns like Syria and North Korea.
Consider the reason why China can get away with grabbing the South China Sea, an enormous violation of sovereignty. And it has gotten away with it, because the "Pax" is breaking down.
The same reason Russia can get away with annexing the Crimea or invading Georgia. We can't stop the. Similarly, there are many things that we do that they wish they could stop but can't. The US has not been able to do much about China since 1949. This eventually led to Nixon's accommodation. And that was less than 20 years since Communist Chinese forces directly engaged US forces in Korea.
@Rick:
I think we may be talking past each other. We need to distinguish between some hypothetical globalization that can possibly exist and globalization as it is actually practiced in the real world. The EU is obviously an example of globalization. As is NAFTA. But we also have to dispense with the myth that this is "free" trade. That is a complete misnomer. Free trade does not require an army of lawyers and corporate lobbyists and thousands of pages of regulations. A free trade agreement could be written on a cocktail napkin. No tariffs, no quotas. What we have is managed trade, and these agreements have by and large been written to benefit the elite at the expense of the average citizen.
What I'm describing does not disregard national sovereignty.
How can globalization not disregard national sovereignty. It specifically requires the creation of super-national organizations that take power away from elected governments.
Isn't "peer review" on a large scale an example of failed socialism?
Um the real framework of the EU, came from also spinelli, an Italian marxist, you excuse the Khmer rouge which was in part the blood price of Nixon's embrace of Mao, one of the most sanguinary bits of real politik.
It specifically requires the creation of super-national organizations
Not true, we find it convenient to do so but it is not necessary. And since it is voluntary the nation is not ceding power but delegating it according to rules it finds acceptable. This delegation is no different from a traditional international treaty.
I'd just like to thank Buwaya, JFarmer, and Rick for engaging in such a spirited and respectful discussion. This is the Althouse community at its best.
@narciso:
Um the real framework of the EU, came from also spinelli, an Italian marxist,
This doesn't contradict anything I wrote before. The EU's hostility to nation-states is well noted. UKIP has been thundering the alarm about the EU for nearly 30 years. That does not belie the fact that the powers behind globalization and the large mutlinational corporations are all wildly in favor of the EU. They are doing this because of self-interest, not out of Marxist ideology.
@Rick:
Not true, we find it convenient to do so but it is not necessary. And since it is voluntary the nation is not ceding power but delegating it according to rules it finds acceptable. This delegation is no different from a traditional international treaty.
Again, we can talk about some kind of hypothetical globalization or we can talk about how globalization as it is practiced in the world today. NAFTA has mechanisms such as the Investor-state dispute settlement that allows investors to challenge foreign national and local laws in front of international arbitration tribunals. Regular citizens do not have that ability.
From Free Trade, Sovereignty, Democracy: The Future of the World Trade Organization: "In a world of increasing technological and economic integration, the United States must continue to balance and rebalance a defense of national sovereignty against grants of authority over its economic and social policy to international organizations such as the WTO."
And from Globalization vs. Economic Sovereignty
"The cost can be perceived to be a weakening of the nation's "economic sovereignty," namely the erosion of permanent and exclusive privileges over its economic activities, wealth, and natural resources.
A review of the world's history will find it is common that economic sovereignty of an individual member is from time to time influenced by global economic trends.
The increase of the number of international organizations and the expansion of their functions have undeniably restricted an individual country's sovereignty to certain extent.
The most typical example is the increasingly extensive involvement of the world's three leading financial institutions the World Bank (WB), the International Momentary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in domestic economic affairs of their members."
Probably easier for ISIS to stop beheading than NYT to be even handed. Doo not know why this is a worthwhile wait.
we can talk about some kind of hypothetical globalization or we can talk about how globalization as it is practiced in the world today.
I'm not under any pretense trade is free but that is beside the point. The relevant questions are (1) what can we do about globalization and (2) given that set of options what should we do. Nothing about these questions presumes or requires that trade be perfectly free.
A review of the world's history will find it is common that economic sovereignty of an individual member is from time to time influenced by global economic trends.
Anything which changes the cost benefit analysis of any decision influences the decision maker therefore essentially everything falls into this category. Globalization is not a unique or even materially different threat to sovereignty.
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