If you’re in the democratic coalition, being called racist on a flimsy basis by people on twitter is actually fairly inevitable. I can’t think of a single politician or faction this hasn’t happened to. And yet somehow, they keep on trucking.
Do you think this is an incentive that people don’t respond to?
The actual response to warning about the pandemic would be a handful of twitter weirdos calling you racist, most people going “that seems unreasonable”, and everyone continuing on with their lives. this is mainly because warning about pandemics isn’t actually racist.
See this search of pandemic news articles prior to March 2020. You can see lots of news outlets downplaying the virus in favor of racism concerns.
I’m curious just how many people reacted to these articles at the time by saying “that seems unreasonable”. I don’t remember much of anyone publicly reacting that way. This would be a good test of the degree to which “being called a racist” is an incentive people respond to, if you can find a number of prominent examples of people saying “that seems unreasonable” within the Democratic coalition.
My model is that if the coronavirus caused just as much damage, but in some complicated semi-hidden way that wasn’t directly attributable to a pandemic, people would still be just as focused on the racism aspect of coronavirus discussion.
I still don’t think being in the coalition is a good idea, but the portrayal here makes it seem like being loosely affiliated with a political movement makes you a dogmatic zombie.
As far as I can tell, Peter Thiel went from being an interesting and intelligent person I had a ton of respect for (he donated lots to MIRI and gave a couple of EA summit keynotes) to a dogmatic zombie, primarily due to loose affiliation with a couple of political movements (neoreaction and the Republican party).
If someone who’s famously contrarian and independently wealthy can’t resist the pull of polarization, I’m not betting on anybody.
Who fears the left? Strangely, the main answer seems to be: leftists. I talk to a wide range of people in academia about left-wing anger and the fear it sustains. As you’d expect, the people who are most outraged by the climate of fear are non-leftists. But the people who personally experience the most fear are leftists themselves. In my private conversations, some of the most boring milquetoast technocratic leftist scholars have grimly foretold that somehow, someday, a mob of their own ideological persuasion will come for them.
Do you think this is an incentive that people don’t respond to?
See this search of pandemic news articles prior to March 2020. You can see lots of news outlets downplaying the virus in favor of racism concerns.
I’m curious just how many people reacted to these articles at the time by saying “that seems unreasonable”. I don’t remember much of anyone publicly reacting that way. This would be a good test of the degree to which “being called a racist” is an incentive people respond to, if you can find a number of prominent examples of people saying “that seems unreasonable” within the Democratic coalition.
My model is that if the coronavirus caused just as much damage, but in some complicated semi-hidden way that wasn’t directly attributable to a pandemic, people would still be just as focused on the racism aspect of coronavirus discussion.
As far as I can tell, Peter Thiel went from being an interesting and intelligent person I had a ton of respect for (he donated lots to MIRI and gave a couple of EA summit keynotes) to a dogmatic zombie, primarily due to loose affiliation with a couple of political movements (neoreaction and the Republican party).
If someone who’s famously contrarian and independently wealthy can’t resist the pull of polarization, I’m not betting on anybody.
Edit: Here’s something from Bryan Caplan