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Behold Our Algorithmic Overlords

18 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by pnoetx in Automation, Censorship, Discrimination, Marketplace of Ideas

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Algorithmic Governance, American Affairs, Antitrust, Behavioral Economics, Bryan Caplan, Claremont Institute, David French, Deplatforming, Facebook, Gleichschaltung, Google, Jonah Goldberg, Joseph Goebbels, Mark Zuckerberg, Matthew D. Crawford, nudge, Peeter Theil, Political Legitimacy, Populism, Private Governance, Twitter, Viewpoint Diversity

A willingness to question authority is healthy, both in private matters and in the public sphere, but having the freedom to do so is even healthier. It facilitates free inquiry, the application of the scientific method, and it lies at the heart of our constitutional system. Voluntary acceptance of authority, and trust in its legitimacy, hinges on our ability to identify its source, the rationale for its actions, and its accountability. Unaccountable authority, on the other hand, cannot be tolerated. It’s the stuff of which tyranny is made.

That’s one linchpin of a great essay by Matthew D. Crawford in American Affairs entitled “Algorithmic Governance and Political Legitimacy“. It’s a lengthy piece that covers lots of ground, and very much worth reading. Or you can read my slightly shorter take on it!

Imagine a world in which all the information you see is selected by algorithm. In addition, your success in the labor market is determined by algorithm. Your college admission and financial aid decisions are determined by algorithm. Credit applications are decisioned by algorithm. The prioritization you are assigned for various health care treatments is determined by algorithm. The list could go on and on, but many of these “use-cases” are already happening to one extent or another.

Blurring Private and Public Governance

Much of what Crawford describes has to do with the way we conduct private transactions and/or private governance. Most governance in free societies, of the kind that touches us day-to-day, is private or self-government, as Crawford calls it. With the advent of giant on-line platforms, algorithms are increasingly an aspect of that governance. Crawford notes the rising concentration of private governmental power within these organizations. While the platforms lack complete monopoly power, they are performing functions that we’d ordinarily be reluctant to grant any public form of government: they curate the information we see, conduct surveillance, exercise control over speech, and even indulge in the “deplatforming” of individuals and organizations when it suits them. Crawford quotes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

“In a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company. . . . We have this large community of people, and more than other technology companies we’re really setting policies.”

At the same time, the public sector is increasingly dominated by a large administrative apparatus that is outside of the normal reach of legislative, judicial and even executive checks. Crawford worries about “… the affinities between administrative governance and algorithmic governance“.  He emphasizes that neither algorithmic governance on technology platforms nor an algorithmic administrative state are what one could call representative democracy. But whether these powers have been seized or we’ve granted them voluntarily, there are already challenges to their legitimacy. And no wonder! As Crawford says, algorithms are faceless pathways of neural connections that are usually difficult to explain, and their decisions often strike those affected as arbitrary or even nonsensical.

Ministry of Wokeness

Political correctness plays a central part in this story. There is no question that the platforms are setting policies that discriminate against certain viewpoints. But Crawford goes further, asserting that algorithms have a certain bureaucratic logic to elites desiring “cutting edge enforcement of social norms“, i.e., political correctness, or “wokeness”, the term of current fashion.

“First, in the spirit of Václav Havel we might entertain the idea that the institutional workings of political correctness need to be shrouded in peremptory and opaque administrative mechanisms be­cause its power lies precisely in the gap between what people actu­ally think and what one is expected to say. It is in this gap that one has the experience of humiliation, of staying silent, and that is how power is exercised.

But if we put it this way, what we are really saying is not that PC needs administrative enforcement but rather the reverse: the expand­ing empire of bureaucrats needs PC. The conflicts created by identi­ty politics become occasions to extend administrative authority into previously autonomous domains of activity. …

The incentive to technologize the whole drama enters thus: managers are answerable (sometimes legally) for the conflict that they also feed on. In a corporate setting, especially, some kind of ass‑covering becomes necessary. Judgments made by an algorithm (ideally one supplied by a third-party vendor) are ones that nobody has to take responsibility for. The more contentious the social and political landscape, the bigger the institutional taste for automated decision-making is likely to be.

Political correctness is a regime of institutionalized insecurity, both moral and material. Seemingly solid careers are subject to sud­den reversal, along with one’s status as a decent person.”

The Tyranny of Deliberative Democracy

Crawford takes aim at several other trends in intellectual fashion that seem to complement algorithmic governance. One is “deliberative democracy”, an ironically-named theory which holds that with the proper framing conditions, people will ultimately support the “correct” set of policies. Joseph Goebbels couldn’t have put it better. As Crawford explains, the idea is to formalize those conditions so that action can be taken if people do not support the “correct” policies. And if that doesn’t sound like Gleichschaltung (enforcement of conformity), nothing does! This sort of enterprise would require:

 “… a cadre of subtle dia­lecticians working at a meta-level on the formal conditions of thought, nudging the populace through a cognitive framing operation to be conducted beneath the threshold of explicit argument. 

… the theory has proved immensely successful. By that I mean the basic assumptions and aspira­tions it expressed have been institutionalized in elite culture, perhaps nowhere more than at Google, in its capacity as directorate of information. The firm sees itself as ‘definer and defender of the public interest’ …“

Don’t Nudge Me

Another of Crawford’s targets is the growing field of work related to the irrationality of human behavior. This work resulted from the revolutionary development of  experimental or behavioral economics, in which various hypotheses are tested regarding choice, risk aversion, an related issues. Crawford offers the following interpretation, which rings true:

“… the more psychologically informed school of behavioral economics … teaches that we need all the help we can get in the form of external ‘nudges’ and cognitive scaffolding if we are to do the rational thing. But the glee and sheer repetition with which this (needed) revision to our under­standing of the human person has been trumpeted by journalists and popularizers indicates that it has some moral appeal, quite apart from its intellectual merits. Perhaps it is the old Enlightenment thrill at disabusing human beings of their pretensions to specialness, whether as made in the image of God or as ‘the rational animal.’ The effect of this anti-humanism is to make us more receptive to the work of the nudgers.”

While changes in the framing of certain decisions, such as opt-in versus opt-out rules, can often benefit individuals, most of us would rather not have nudgers cum central planners interfere with too many of our decisions, no matter how poorly they think those decisions approximate rationality. Nudge engineers cannot replicate your personal objectives or know your preference map. Indeed, externally applied nudges might well be intended to serve interests other than your own. If the political equilibrium involves widespread nudging, it is not even clear that the result will be desirable for society: the history of central planning is one of unintended consequences and abject failure. But it’s plausible that this is where the elitist technocrats in Silicon Vally and within the administrative state would like to go with algorithmic governance.

Crawford’s larger thesis is summarized fairly well by the following statements about Google’s plans for the future:

“The ideal being articulated in Mountain View is that we will inte­grate Google’s services into our lives so effortlessly, and the guiding presence of this beneficent entity in our lives will be so pervasive and unobtrusive, that the boundary between self and Google will blur. The firm will provide a kind of mental scaffold for us, guiding our intentions by shaping our informational context. This is to take the idea of trusteeship and install it in the infrastructure of thought.

Populism is the rejection of this.”

He closes with reflections on the attitudes of the technocratic elite toward those who reject their vision as untrustworthy. The dominance of algorithmic governance is unlikely to help them gain that trust.

What’s to be done?

Crawford seems resigned to the idea that the only way forward is an ongoing struggle for political dominance “to be won and held onto by whatever means necessary“. Like Bryan Caplan, I have always argued that we should eschew anti-trust action against the big tech platforms, largely because we still have a modicum of choice in all of the services they provide. Caplan rejects the populist arguments against the tech “monopolies” and insists that the data collection so widely feared represents a benign phenomenon. And after all, consumers continue to receive a huge surplus from the many free services offered on-line.

But the reality elucidated by Crawford is that the tech firms are much more than private companies. They are political and quasi-governmental entities. Their tentacles reach deeply into our lives and into our institutions, public and private. They are capable of great social influence, and putting their tools in the hands of government (with a monopoly on force), they are capable of exerting social control. They span international boundaries, bringing their technical skills to bear in service to foreign governments. This week Peter Theil stated that Google’s work with the Chinese military was “treasonous”. It was only a matter of time before someone prominent made that charge.

The are no real safeguards against abusive governance by the tech behemoths short of breaking them up or subjecting them to tight regulation, and neither of those is likely to turn out well for users. I would, however, support safeguards on the privacy of customer data from scrutiny by government security agencies for which the platforms might work. Firewalls between their consumer and commercial businesses and government military and intelligence interests would be perfectly fine by me. 

The best safeguard of viewpoint diversity and against manipulation is competition. Of course, the seriousness of threats these companies actually face from competitors is open to question. One paradox among many is that the effectiveness of the algorithms used by these companies in delivering services might enhance their appeal to some, even as those algorithms can undermine public trust.

There is an ostensible conflict in the perspective Crawford offers with respect to the social media giants: despite the increasing sophistication of their algorithms, the complaint is really about the motives of human beings who wish to control political debate through those algorithms, or end it once and for all. Jonah Goldberg puts it thusly:

“The recent effort by Google to deny the Claremont Institute the ability to advertise its gala was ridiculous. Facebook’s blocking of Prager University videos was absurd. And I’m glad Facebook apologized.

But the fact that they apologized points to the fact that while many of these platforms clearly have biases — often encoded in bad algorithms — points to the possibility that these behemoths aren’t actually conspiring to ‘silence’ all conservatives. They’re just making boneheaded mistakes based in groupthink, bias, and ignorance.”

David French notes that the best antidote for hypocrisy in the management of user content on social media is to expose it loud and clear, which sets the stage for a “market correction“. And after all, the best competition for any social media platform is real life. Indeed, many users are dropping out of various forms of on-line interaction. Social media companies might be able to retain users and appeal to a broader population if they could demonstrate complete impartiality. French proposes that these companies adopt free speech policies fashioned on the First Amendment itself:

“…rules and regulations restricting speech must be viewpoint-neutral. Harassment, incitement, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress are speech limitations with viewpoint-neutral definitions…”

In other words, the companies must demonstrate that both moderators and algorithms governing user content and interaction are neutral. That is one way for them to regain broad trust. The other crucial ingredient is a government that is steadfast in defending free speech rights and the rights of the platforms to be neutral. Among other things, that means the platforms must retain protection under Section 230 of the Telecommunications Decency Act, which assures their immunity against lawsuits for user content. However, the platforms have had that immunity since quite early in internet history, yet they have developed an aggressive preference for promoting certain viewpoints and suppressing others. The platforms should be content to ensure that their policies and algorithms provide useful tools for users without compromising the free exchange of ideas. Good governance, political legitimacy, and ultimately freedom demand it. 

Social Media Content Control

06 Friday May 2016

Posted by pnoetx in Censorship, Marketplace of Ideas

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Blacklisting, Block & Report Spam, Censorship, Community Standards, Content Neutrality, Content Standards, Gizmodo, Marketplace of ideas, Mobbing, News Curators, Social Media

censorship

Do social media and networking platforms unfairly restrict speech and content by users expressing certain political views? Is the “marketplace of ideas” subject to entry barriers imposed by the platforms themselves? Twitter has been in the news recently for a “Block & Report Spam” feature whereby complaints can trigger a suspension. Some claim that leftists are gaming the system to take down certain posters. Twitter claims to never filter or moderate content proactively, but the system seems to invite abuse by activists at either end of the political spectrum.

Facebook admits that it attempts to enforce a set of “community standards” that cover the general areas of safety, respect (covering hate speech and nudity), security, and intellectual property. There is ample evidence, however, that enforcement of these standards is “arbitrary and capricious“. Examples range from inconsistent treatment of “Death to Israel” posts, images of buttocks, sculptures or drawings of body parts vs. actual body parts, and a variety of gay-themed images. These cases and many others are likely a consequence of different moderators responding to complaints differently in attempts to interpret and enforce rules that are vague by necessity. In addition, decisions to censor or suspend users are sometimes reversed by committee at higher levels, only to be made again later. And there have been allegations that content from advertisers is treated with a “lighter touch” than from non-advertisers. Perhaps the organization is simply trying to find a fair way to moderate the complicated social thicket, but the effort seems largely misplaced. A broader policy of content neutrality and allowing users to censor their feeds for themselves, as they are empowered to do, would avoid many of the inconsistencies.

Facebook also admits to employing contractors as “news curators”. This, and the mysterious disappearance of certain “trending topics” having a conservative bent, have led to strong complaints of blacklisting and censorship. The curators’ instructions from Facebook are described by Gizmodo:

“They were also told to select articles from a list of preferred media outlets that included sites like the New York Times, Time, Variety, and other traditional outlets. They would regularly avoid sites like World Star Hip Hop, The Blaze, and Breitbart, but were never explicitly told to suppress those outlets….  News curators also have the power to “deactivate” (or blacklist) a trending topic—a power that those we spoke to exercised on a daily basis. A topic was often blacklisted if it didn’t have at least three traditional news sources covering it, but otherwise the protocol was murky—meaning a curator could ostensibly blacklist a topic without a particularly good reason for doing so.“

This has the potential to create a bias in favor of certain viewpoints. If a trending topic comes from a source or involves a viewpoint that is not in favor, “news curation” amounts to a distasteful cover for outright political censorship. The Facebook system is also vulnerable to the sort of “mobbing” by activists that has been problematic for Twitter. Some of the complaints against unfair treatment by Facebook undoubtedly have merit. Such bias could have an influence sufficiently great to alter election outcomes.

Some forms of censorship on these platforms may be justified, such as preventing threats, abuse or harassment. As well, the platforms are required to comply with laws that are more restrictive in certain countries. Nevertheless, whatever the content standards, and whatever political bias might be created, the platforms are operated by private entities. They can do whatever they want, as much as anyone might hate it. The accusers are entitled to complain, of course, but they should bear in mind that these platforms are not exactly an open marketplace or a public square, however tempting it is to think of them that way. They could be open and free, given a more enlightened approach by the organizations that run them, but as things stand they are not. Positive action remains an option for those who object: agitate, package your content more carefully, or get off the platform and find an on-line community to your liking.

Words of Weasels

26 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by pnoetx in Liberalism, Marketplace of Ideas, statism

≈ 1 Comment

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Access, Daniel Klein, David Harsanyi, Disenfranchisment, Emmitt Rensin, Full Rights, Kevin Williamson, Kyle Smith, Language of the Left, Liberalism, Loophole, Reason, Safe Spaces, Vox

1984 instruction-manual

Take a moment to consider some examples of the horrible misuse of words in political debates. David Harsanyi at Reason provides a few choice examples of the corrupted and misleading language used by Democrats:

  • the absence of a tax that “should” exist but doesn’t is a “loophole”;
  • failure to pay that tax is a “fraud”;
  • denial of “access” occurs when the state doesn’t give something to you for free;
  • “disenfranchisement” means you have to show an ID or wait in line;
  • “full rights” means the entire world must be a “safe space” for your actions or views, even if the rights of others are denied in the process.

These are all recent examples of mangled language from the two candidates for the Democrat Party nomination. But here’s a big one that Harsanyi overlooked: the misuse of the term “liberalism” to describe statism. In fact, he misuses the word “liberals” himself! In “Don’t Call Leftists Liberal; They’re Not!” on Sacred Cow Chips, I offered some thoughts on this bit of Newspeak practiced by so-called progressives. I can’t resist reposting the following quote of Daniel Klein quoting Kevin Williamson, which says it all (links are in the original post):

“Williamson [quotes] two leftist authors writing in The Nation, one decrying ‘unbridled individualism,’ the other ‘unfettered capitalism.’ Williamson concludes: ‘A ‘liberalism’ that is chiefly concerned with the many clever uses of bridles and fetters does not deserve the name. It never has.’”

The following quote from Harsanyi gives emphasis to the wrongful appropriation of “liberalism” by the left, though it relates more specifically to the misuse of the term “loophole”:

“Basically, all of life is a giant loophole until Democrats come up with a way to regulate or tax it. In its economic usage, “loophole” … creates the false impression that people are getting away with breaking the law. It’s a way to skip the entire debate portion of the conversation and get right to the accusation.“

Another behavioral characteristic of leftists is a certain self-righteous satisfaction that they hold the moral high ground on any number of issues. “The Smug Style in American Liberalism“by Emmitt Rensin in Vox takes a poke at this presumption. Of course, Rensin misuses “liberalism”. I find this review of the article by Kyle Smith an effective summary, and it’s even better because it skips what comes off as a long catalog of excuses by Rensin as to why leftists might be forgiven for patting themselves on the back. I give Rensin credit, however, for a good analysis of the origins of leftist “smug”, which he attributes to a backlash against defections from the Democrat coalition by working-class voters in the second half of the twentieth century. And I credit Rensin for his ultimate condemnation of undeserved leftist attitudes of superiority. Here are some difficult realities for the left cited by Rensin:

“Nothing is more confounding to the smug style than the fact that the average Republican is better educated and has a higher IQ than the average Democrat. That for every overpowered study finding superior liberal open-mindedness and intellect and knowledge, there is one to suggest that Republicans have the better of these qualities.“

Perhaps inventing new definitions for words in the service of rhetoric comes easy with pomposity. In the end, assertions that the left is more “caring”, “tolerant” or “peaceful” are balderdash. There are honest policy debates to be had about the best way to solve social problems and respect for the rights of others, but having experienced angry reactions in debate with befuddled leftists for myself, I wholly concur with this Kyle Smith observation:

“Ridiculing opponents is easier than arguing with them. Liberals don’t want debate, they want affirmation.“

 

Trump Tower of Babble

09 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by pnoetx in Big Government, Marketplace of Ideas, Obamacare

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Andrew Popkin, Bankruptcy, Brett Baier, crony capitalism, Donald Trump, eminent domain, GOP Debate, Hillary Clinton, Megyn Kelly, Obamacare, Peter Suderman, Rand Paul, single-payer plan, Vox

Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has been critical of fellow Replubicans including Sen. John McCain. Some voters are curious about his "daffy" behavior.

Here’s a post-debate follow-up on Donald Trump the Shape Shifter: I’m surprised to hear anyone praising his performance after that debacle. He came off as a dick, and that’s really The Donald. I thought so before I heard that he suggested Megyn Kelly was menstruating that evening. Megan was tough, but please…. Trump is a loud-mouthed, offensive, and often incoherent bully.

Two Trump moments that I thought were amazing were his exchange with Brett Baier about political donations and his dust-up with Rand Paul over a single-payer health care system.

On donations, Trump seemed to take satisfaction in the fact that Hillary Clinton “had no choice” but to attend his wedding after he gave to her Senate campaign. He then made the following statement, which made me laugh:

“I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.“

Should I love him or hate him for that statement? He admits with no shame that he participates in crony capitalism, and he realizes that it’s corrupt. Andrew Popkin at Vox has a good analysis:

“Something Trump identifies that doesn’t always get mentioned is the way transactional politics transcend partisanship and ideology. Trump gave to Democrats and he gave to Republicans. He didn’t care what they believed. He cared what they could do for him. He wasn’t supporting them — he was buying them, and that’s completely different.“

It’s convenient for Trump to brag that he doesn’t need donations from others when campaigning. When he’s on the other side of the table, he’s happy to participate in the corruption. Did Trump buy the politicians who helped him arrange eminent domain actions against property owners who were in the way of his developments? He’s also quite proud of his use of bankruptcy laws allowing him to stiff lenders and investors in his enterprises. By the way, in comparing his four corporate bankruptcies to the many “deals” he’s executed over the years, he’d have you believe that the “deal” is always the relevant unit for a bankruptcy proceeding. That’s loose and misleading jargon.

I have said that Trump’s supporters really don’t know what their getting. Perhaps he won’t tell anyone because he’d lose “leverage”. A prime example of Trump’s shiftiness was his response to the following question on single-payer health care systems, including his attempt to embarrass Rand Paul:

Baier: “Now, 15 years ago, you called yourself a liberal on health care. You were for a single-payer system, a Canadian-style system. Why were you for that then and why aren’t you for it now?“

As Peter Suderman noted, Trump’s response to this question about health care began with his views on the war in Iraq. Donald’s rules…. But eventually, he addressed the health care question with a stream of words that thinking people might have been tempted to process logically in order to divine a coherent “Trump” position on the issue, but that would have been a mistake:

“As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here.

What I’d like to see is a private system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees. And if I’m negotiating in New York or in New Jersey or in California, I have like one bidder. Nobody can bid. You know why? Because the insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians, of course, with the exception of the politicians on this stage. But they have total control of the politicians. They’re making a fortune.“

This is not a great moment of clarity for Trump. We still don’t know what he has in mind. He demonstrates that he doesn’t quite understand the inherent flaws in single-payer. If his complaint is with consolidation of the health insurance industry, single-payer would imply an even greater consolidation, indeed, a monopoly. A “private system” does not rule out single-payer. While the insurance companies have undoubtedly influenced politicians, just as Trump has, why is he complaining about a lack of choice, having just asserted that single-payer could work so well? And artificial lines have to do with non-price rationing, a typical feature of government intervention in markets. Thus far, the profits of under-pricing insurers have been protected by so-called “risk corridors” built into Obamacare. Would Trump allow health care providers and insurers to reprice in order to eliminate “artificial lines”? Trump’s words did not settle any questions about his position.

The end of Trump’s response is this:

“And then we have to take care of the people that can’t take care of themselves. And I will do that through a different system.“

So… was Trump still talking about single-payer or not? I forgive Rand Paul for imagining that he was. It was the only solid statement that one could cling to in Trump’s ramble.

Here is Suderman’s summary of Trump’s response with an account of the exchange with Rand Paul that followed:

“What matters is that [Trump] would be different. Different how? So very, very different—and definitely not a moron/loser/dummy/incompetent (pick one) like this other guy.

This is how Trump responds to almost everything: By not answering the question, by babbling out some at-best semi-relevant references, by promising to somehow be different and better without explaining how or why, and then by lobbing an insult.

An insult is how Trump finishes the Obamacare exchange as well. After Trump finishes answering the question, Sen. Rand Paul cuts in, saying, ‘News flash, the Republican Party’s been fighting against a single-payer system for a decade. So I think you’re on the wrong side of this if you’re still arguing for a single-payer system.’ [SCC’s bolding]

Trump’s comeback: ‘I’m not—I’m not are—I don’t think you heard me. You’re having a hard time tonight.’

The gist, as always, is that someone else—indeed, practically everyone else—is a dummy, a loser, a politician. Trump is the only one who really gets it, whatever it is.“

While I thought Rand Paul’s interjectory approach to debating was unwise, his comment to Trump was on-target, and he even qualified it. Trump responded with snark. Trump has yet to take a real position on health care in this campaign, but he has supported single-payer in the past. He doesn’t want to go to the trouble of deciding or revealing a specific plan just yet. Perhaps he’s “maintaining leverage”, keeping his options open, because he’s such a smart businessman. If you want to treat politics like a business deal, fine, but smart voters should be your partners, and they will expect you to reveal your terms.

Leftists Propose New Ministry of Speech Approval

18 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by pnoetx in Liberty, Marketplace of Ideas

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Andrew Gripp, Book burners, Censorship, Fact Checkers, Fox News, Kevin D. Williamson, Marketplace of ideas, Politifact, Snopes

FactCheckers

I witness so many calls for censorship on a day-to-day basis that I find it astonishing. This in a free society, and from people who fancy themselves liberal. They prefer a form of censorship that carries criminal penalties for speech that does not meet with approval by media “fact checkers”. Which fact checkers shall we choose? Will they be fact-checking juries of our peers, or a new cadre of officials donning armbands?

Does anyone truly believe that the branch of the media engaged in “fact-checking” is objective? Andrew Gripp covers this topic, demonstrating that the assessment of “facts” often doesn’t stand the test of time. Fact checkers will call a statement false, only to rule otherwise years later, or vice versa. That’s just how it went down with President Obama’s pronouncement that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan”. True in 2008, false in 2013. Would Obama receive an exemption under this approach?

But that is just one way in which the fact checkers go wrong. More basic is the fact that the assessments they make are essentially opinions! Gripp puts his finger on the primary weakness of the fact-checking industry:

“… it is important to remember that old Enlightenment figure Giambattista Vico’s verum factum principle: the truth is made — made by people with their own biases, limitations, and subjective standards.“

As part of the same censorious narrative, I sometimes hear that Canada “bans” Fox News. This is patently false, as Snopes asserts. Another trope is that Fox News lies 50% of the time, or 82% of the time, or some such claim that should immediately set off the BS alarm of any discerning observer. I get aggravated with certain things I hear on Fox too, but as an empiricist, this just smells like BS. Kevin Williamson shreds these reports as exercises in bias in a piece entitled “How Stupid Happens“:

“The most obvious problem — though certainly not the only problem, not even close — is selection bias: PolitiFact is a readership-driven online publication, and thus it exercises a great deal of discretion about which statements it chooses to evaluate and why. The most obvious factor is that it evaluates only statements that are disputed. Specifically, it evaluates only statements that are disputed and that its editors believe will be of some interest or benefit to its readers. …

But the fact is that unsupportable, boneheaded claims … will live forever, because people are mostly interested in having their biases confirmed and their values affirmed rather than learning new things about the world and how it works. True, much as I like yelling at people on television, it is pretty hard to feel too bad for Fox News and MSNBC over an exercise in confirmation bias, but this sort of sloppy thinking and malicious manipulation does have the effect of leaving the polity a little dumber than it absolutely has to be. And that is an unforgivable sin.“

In many respects, it feels like this topic is hardly worth a blog post, because the wannabe censors exist in an impenetrable ideological bubble. But on the other hand, they are little tyrants, not merely content to seek a monopoly over the market place of ideas, which is bad enough. They also seek to criminalize statements with which they happen to disagree. There is no doubt that they would burn books. Their ideas are dangerous and should not be treated with respect in a free society.

 

 

Censor Me, For My Fathers Have Sinned

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by pnoetx in Marketplace of Ideas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ben Affleck, Bryan Caplan, Coyote Blog, Group Identity, Identity Politics, Ideological Turing Test, Original Sin, PBS, Privilege, privileged white male, Warren Meyer

Male Privilege

Are you White? Asian? Male? A stay-at-home mom? Or maybe your family earns too much? Or your parents did? If any of those are “yes”, you just might be disqualified to engage in debate with those who self-proclaim their big-heartedness. You won’t be disqualified if your views are deemed “correct”, but then “debate” won’t really be an issue. If your views are “incorrect”, your privileged-group status is the stain of original sin, as Warren Meyer would say. Not only are you disqualified; you are an appropriate target for ad hominems.

I wrote about this phenomenon after experiencing it first-hand a few months ago in “Privileged While Males May Not Comment“. Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog just got me excited again when he expressed his amazement in “The Left and Original Sin“:

“… the sins of past generations somehow accrue to individuals of this generation. If you are male, you are born guilty for the infractions of all past males.“

Meyer mentions the recent incident involving Ben Affleck, who asked the host of a PBS documentary to omit any mention of a slave-owning Affleck ancestor:

“So an ancestor held opinions about slavery we all would find horrifying today. But given the times, I can bet that pretty much every relative of Affleck’s of that era, slaveholder or no, held opinions (say about women) that we would likely find offensive today.

Congrats to Affleck for achieving some negative alchemy here. He took an issue (his ancestor’s slave-holding) that did not reflect on him at all and converted it via some “I am a star” douchebaggery into something that makes him look like a tool.”

In addition to the demographic origins of sin mentioned above, you are likely to be stained if you believe in the profit motive, gun rights, or any number of other individual liberties. If you can’t be marked as a sinner by some privileged-group identity, the Left will find another label. If you are a black conservative, you will be called an “Uncle Tom”. Dealing with your arguments is just too inconvenient. As Meyer mentions in another recent post, Leftists are particularly unlikely to pass Bryan Caplan’s Ideological Turing test. They simply don’t listen to, or understand, other points of view.

Dogma, Intolerance and The Decline of Inquiry

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by pnoetx in Marketplace of Ideas

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Bryan Caplan, Lee Jussim, Liberal Bias, Michael Munger, Monoculture, Peer Review Process, Political Diversity, Psychology Today, Rabble Rouser, Research Bias

confirmation_bias

Bias in academic research is more common than most people realize. Some recent posts on this topic by Lee Jussim on the Psychology Today Rabble Rouser blog caught my eye. In “Psychology’s Political Diversity Problem“, Jussim shows the abstract of a paper he coauthored on the decline in political diversity among psychological researchers, and the nefarious effects that decline has had on the scope and quality of research. From the abstract:

“This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike;”

Similar phenomena can and have corrupted other areas of research, such as climate science, in which outright fraud has been committed (East Anglia, temperature records) amid a   breakdown in the integrity of the peer-review process. The destructive mechanisms, according to Jussim and his coauthors,  are “self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination” against researchers holding minority views. I would add that research often will be colored when future funding is perceived as contingent on the nature of the findings.

Jussim follows up with another post on the Rabble Rouser blog entitled “Liberal Bias Distorts Scientific Psychology (and Education)“. In this post, he links to a “disclaimer” essentially stating that his conclusions are NOT a condemnation of the personal morals, competence, or fair-mindedness of so-called liberals in his profession (I disagree with his use of the term “liberal”– these are leftists, not real liberals). He also elaborates on the article he coauthored and provides links on various dimensions of the topic, such as this post by economist Michael Munger entitled “Our higher education system fails leftist students.” From Munger:

“Our colleagues on the left could choose to educate their liberal students, but since education requires ‘collision with error,’ that is no longer possible. That’s because the faculty on the left were themselves educated by neglect, never confronting counterarguments, in a now self-perpetuating cycle of ignorance and ideological bigotry.”

Of course, none of this is new. Bryan Caplan, who is a big fan of the Jussim article, confronted the same topic ten years ago as it pertained then (and still does) to academic economists:

“Even if we control for quality of publications, the gatekeepers – journal editors and referees – also feel virtually no financial cost of rejecting articles they find ideologically distasteful. So there is probably more discrimination against right-wingers than the data suggest, not less. …

If there is no discrimination, how does it happen that Alex [Tabarrok] and I and half the other staunch libertarian economists in the world are all in the same department? Segregation is the predicted effect of worker-on-worker discrimination. And that’s what we see.”

These are the lamentations of some extremely talented academics, not amateurs or pseudoscientists. This is not sour grapes; they are all engaged in a principled fight against bad odds. More importantly, they marshall powerful arguments that their respective fields of study suffer greatly from the effects of “monoculturalism”. After all, differences and argument are the essence of vibrant research and, ultimately, truth-seeking.

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