My gut reaction to this post is that it’s importantly wrong. This is just my babbled response, and I don’t have time to engage in a back-and-forth. Hope you find it valuable though!
My issue is with the idea that any of your examples have successfully tabooed “should.”
In fact, what’s happening here is that the idea that we “should taboo ‘should’” is being used to advocate for a different policy conclusion.
Let’s use Toxoplasma Memes as an example. Well, just for starters, framing Jihad vs. War on Terror as “toxoplasma” works by choosing a concept handle that evokes a disgust reaction to affect an ethical reframing of the issue. Both Jihad/War on Terror theorists and “Toxoplasma” theorists have causal models that are inseparable from their ethical models. To deny that is not to accomplish a cleaner separation between epistemology and ethics, it’s to disguise reality to give cover to one’s own ethical/epistemic combination. You can do it, sure, it’s the oldest trick in the book. If I were to say you shouldn’t, “because it disguises the truth,” I’m just being a hypocrite.
Likewise, the fact that “tabooing ‘should’” makes the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics seem silly also illustrates how “tabooing ‘should’” is a moral as much as an epistemic move. The point is to make an idea and its advocates look silly. It’s to manipulate their social status and tickle people’s jimmies until they agree with you. It might not work, but that’s the intent.
Yglesias simply misrepresented the claim made by at least the snippet of the PS5 review that you cite.
The review said:
a lot of people simply won’t be able to buy a PlayStation 5, regardless of supply. Or if they can, concerns over increasing austerity in the United States and the growing threat of widespread political violence supersede any enthusiasm
Yglesias said:
the sales outlook for a new video game console system is very good.
“Regardless of supply” is a colloquialism. I think a more charitable reading of this statement, which obviously isn’t meant primarily as a projection of console sales, would be that there will be people who want a PS5 who can’t afford it, and that we have bigger issues in the world than being excited about the PS5. This is obviously true.
Yglesias’s rhetoric isn’t just meant to refocus the discussion on the sales outlook for the PS5. It’s to smack down the status of the author of the PS5 review and those in the same camp, as thoughtless nincompoops who don’t understand reality and therefore aren’t qualified to be moral authorities either.
Now, that’s all fine, because it’s really all there is to do once you’re getting into the realm of policy. If your goals and values aren’t axiomatic, but if instead you’re debating some conjunction of epistemics, values, and goals, as we usually are, then it might be a great rhetorical move to pretend like you’re just having a “facts and logic and predictive abilities” debate, but that’s rarely true.
Like, if Yglesias really was interested in that, then why would he ever, ever pick out such an obviously stupid piece of writing to address in the first place? He has the greatest thinkers and writers available to him to engage with! Why pick out the dumbest thing anybody ever wrote about the PS5?
Well, you know why already. There is a contest over facts/status/virtue/goals going on known as the “Culture Wars,” and he’s participating in it while pretending like he’s not.
And maybe this is a culture war that needs to be fought. Maybe we really are ruled by the dumbest things anybody ever wrote on Medium and social media, and it’s time to change that. And maybe there’s value in pretending like you’re performing a purely technical analysis when considering economics or the war on terror or how to address homelessness. I’m not a subjectivist. I do think that, although it may be impossible to prove what the truth is in some perfectly self-satisfying fashion, there’s such a thing as being “more wrong” and “less wrong,” and that it’s virtuous to strive for the latter.
But I think that here, in our community of practice where we strive for the latter, we should strive to be skeptical about claims to objectivity. It’s not that it’s impossible. It’s that it’s a great rhetorical move to advance a subjective position, and how would you tell the difference?
Well, just for starters, framing Jihad vs. War on Terror as “toxoplasma” works by choosing a concept handle that evokes a disgust reaction to affect an ethical reframing of the issue.
This part is just objectively wrong. I don’t have a disgust reaction to toxoplasma (possibly because I have no particular visual image associated with it). Do you?
The point is to make an idea and its advocates look silly. The point is to make an idea and its advocates look silly. It’s to manipulate their social status and tickle people’s jimmies until they agree with you. It might not work, but that’s the intent.
This also seems objectively wrong. I mean, I first did this exercise years ago as a way to make my own beliefs more accurate. Manipulating other peoples’ social status presumably wasn’t the intent, because I didn’t share it with anyone for years. I didn’t care about making other people look silly; I generally kept the exercise and its results to myself. I wrote this post figuring that other people would find it helpful; the event which prodded me to write it up now was someone else finding the exercise useful for themselves.
Also, if I were trying to make other peoples’ ideas look silly, tabooing “should” looks like a wildly suboptimal way to do that, since so many people have implicitly-moral-realist worldviews. This is a technique which would only seem sensible in the first place to people with unusually firm philosophical foundations. I expect many such people will want to use the technique themselves, for their own benefit, entirely independent of wanting to make other people look silly.
Like, if Yglesias really was interested in that, then why would he ever, ever pick out such an obviously stupid piece of writing to address in the first place? He has the greatest thinkers and writers available to him to engage with! Why pick out the dumbest thing anybody ever wrote about the PS5?
Because he was specifically trying to talk about problems with modern journalism. The title of the piece was “What’s Wrong With The Media”.
Now, you could certainly interpret that as Yglesias administering a status slap-down to some journalist(s), but if his goal was a status slap-down there are far more effective ways to do that. He could just write an actual hit-piece.
More generally, in all of these examples: you are pointing out that an argument has status/ethics/politics impact, and claiming that the status/ethics/politics impact must therefore have motivated the argument. That’s simply not true. There are non-status/ethics/politics reasons to think about things which have status/ethics/politics implications.
Being skeptical about claims to objectivity is an epistemically-sensible policy. (Matt Yglesias in particular has probably earned an extra helping of such skepticism.) But I think your prior on “argument was chosen for its status/ethics/politics implications” is far too high, and you are making objectively inaccurate predictions as a result (including the first two quotes above).
For the record I do get some disgust reaction out of the toxoplasma thing, think it was at least somewhat intentional (and I think I may also endorse it? With significant caveats)
Regardless of the details of why he picked the piece, it’s pretty clear from a clear-headed reading of the review that Yglesias is attributing to the reviewer a claim they did not make. I think the “PS5 will have outstanding sales” and “there are many people who won’t buy a PS5 due to some impact of the pandemic” can both be true and likely are.
Sorry, I know that this runs the risk of being an exchange of essays, making it hard to respond to each point.
In Toxoplasma of Rage, the part just prior to the reference to the war on terror goes like this:
Toxoplasma is a neat little parasite that is implicated in a couple of human diseases including schizophrenia. Its life cycle goes like this: it starts in a cat. The cat poops it out. The poop and the toxoplasma get in the water supply, where they are consumed by some other animal, often a rat. The toxoplasma morphs into a rat-compatible form and starts reproducing. Once it has strength in numbers, it hijacks the rat’s brain, convincing the rat to hang out conspicuously in areas where cats can eat it. After a cat eats the rat, the toxoplasma morphs back into its cat compatible form and reproduces some more. Finally, it gets pooped back out by the cat, completing the cycle.
[Lion King image] It’s the ciiiiiircle of life!
What would it mean for a meme to have a life cycle as complicated as toxoplasma?
Consider the war on terror.
Now, maybe Scott’s description of Toxoplasma doesn’t evoke the same visceral disgust reaction you might have if you were scooping out the litter box of a cat that you knew was infected with toxoplasma.
But it seems clear that Scott’s conscious intent here was to evoke that feeling. The point is not to use toxoplasma as intellectual scaffolding to explain the cause-and-effect model of violence-begets-violence.
Instead, it was to link the violence-begets-violence model with disgusting imagery. Read that article, and when somebody talks about the War on Terror, if your previous association was with the proud image of soldiers going off to a noble battle with a determined enemy, now it’s with cat shit.
Likewise, read enough “problem with media” articles that selectively reference the silliest media pieces—classic cherry picking on a conceptual level—then slowly but surely, when you think of “media” you think of the worst stuff out there, rather than the average or the best. Is Matt Yglesias looking for the silliest takes that Scott Alexander ever wrote and excoriating them? No, because Scott’s on his team in the blogosphere.
Now, you could certainly interpret that as Yglesias administering a status slap-down to some journalist(s), but if his goal was a status slap-down there are far more effective ways to do that. He could just write an actual hit-piece.
I disagree with this. In fact, his methods are an extremely effective way of administering a status slap-down. If he wrote an actual hit-piece, that’s what his readership would interpret it as: a hit-piece. But when he writes this article, his readership interprets it as a virtuous piece advocating good epistemic standards. It’s a Trojan Horse.
There are non-status/ethics/politics reasons to think about things which have status/ethics/politics implications.
This is true. But what I’m saying is that advocacy of epistemic accuracy as opposed to virtue signaling is in many contexts primarily motivated by status/ethics/politics implications.
And that is fine. There is nothing inherently wrong with an argument about the nature of reality also having status/ethics/politics implications. It’s even fine to pretend, for vague “this makes us think better” reasons, that for the sake of a discussion those status/ethics/politics implications are irrelevant.
But those implications are always present. They’ve just been temporarily pushed to the side for a moment. Often, they come swooping back in, right after the “epistemic discussion” is concluded. That’s the nature of a policy debate.
My gut reaction to this post is that it’s importantly wrong. This is just my babbled response, and I don’t have time to engage in a back-and-forth. Hope you find it valuable though!
My issue is with the idea that any of your examples have successfully tabooed “should.”
In fact, what’s happening here is that the idea that we “should taboo ‘should’” is being used to advocate for a different policy conclusion.
Let’s use Toxoplasma Memes as an example. Well, just for starters, framing Jihad vs. War on Terror as “toxoplasma” works by choosing a concept handle that evokes a disgust reaction to affect an ethical reframing of the issue. Both Jihad/War on Terror theorists and “Toxoplasma” theorists have causal models that are inseparable from their ethical models. To deny that is not to accomplish a cleaner separation between epistemology and ethics, it’s to disguise reality to give cover to one’s own ethical/epistemic combination. You can do it, sure, it’s the oldest trick in the book. If I were to say you shouldn’t, “because it disguises the truth,” I’m just being a hypocrite.
Likewise, the fact that “tabooing ‘should’” makes the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics seem silly also illustrates how “tabooing ‘should’” is a moral as much as an epistemic move. The point is to make an idea and its advocates look silly. It’s to manipulate their social status and tickle people’s jimmies until they agree with you. It might not work, but that’s the intent.
Yglesias simply misrepresented the claim made by at least the snippet of the PS5 review that you cite.
The review said:
Yglesias said:
“Regardless of supply” is a colloquialism. I think a more charitable reading of this statement, which obviously isn’t meant primarily as a projection of console sales, would be that there will be people who want a PS5 who can’t afford it, and that we have bigger issues in the world than being excited about the PS5. This is obviously true.
Yglesias’s rhetoric isn’t just meant to refocus the discussion on the sales outlook for the PS5. It’s to smack down the status of the author of the PS5 review and those in the same camp, as thoughtless nincompoops who don’t understand reality and therefore aren’t qualified to be moral authorities either.
Now, that’s all fine, because it’s really all there is to do once you’re getting into the realm of policy. If your goals and values aren’t axiomatic, but if instead you’re debating some conjunction of epistemics, values, and goals, as we usually are, then it might be a great rhetorical move to pretend like you’re just having a “facts and logic and predictive abilities” debate, but that’s rarely true.
Like, if Yglesias really was interested in that, then why would he ever, ever pick out such an obviously stupid piece of writing to address in the first place? He has the greatest thinkers and writers available to him to engage with! Why pick out the dumbest thing anybody ever wrote about the PS5?
Well, you know why already. There is a contest over facts/status/virtue/goals going on known as the “Culture Wars,” and he’s participating in it while pretending like he’s not.
And maybe this is a culture war that needs to be fought. Maybe we really are ruled by the dumbest things anybody ever wrote on Medium and social media, and it’s time to change that. And maybe there’s value in pretending like you’re performing a purely technical analysis when considering economics or the war on terror or how to address homelessness. I’m not a subjectivist. I do think that, although it may be impossible to prove what the truth is in some perfectly self-satisfying fashion, there’s such a thing as being “more wrong” and “less wrong,” and that it’s virtuous to strive for the latter.
But I think that here, in our community of practice where we strive for the latter, we should strive to be skeptical about claims to objectivity. It’s not that it’s impossible. It’s that it’s a great rhetorical move to advance a subjective position, and how would you tell the difference?
This part is just objectively wrong. I don’t have a disgust reaction to toxoplasma (possibly because I have no particular visual image associated with it). Do you?
This also seems objectively wrong. I mean, I first did this exercise years ago as a way to make my own beliefs more accurate. Manipulating other peoples’ social status presumably wasn’t the intent, because I didn’t share it with anyone for years. I didn’t care about making other people look silly; I generally kept the exercise and its results to myself. I wrote this post figuring that other people would find it helpful; the event which prodded me to write it up now was someone else finding the exercise useful for themselves.
Also, if I were trying to make other peoples’ ideas look silly, tabooing “should” looks like a wildly suboptimal way to do that, since so many people have implicitly-moral-realist worldviews. This is a technique which would only seem sensible in the first place to people with unusually firm philosophical foundations. I expect many such people will want to use the technique themselves, for their own benefit, entirely independent of wanting to make other people look silly.
Because he was specifically trying to talk about problems with modern journalism. The title of the piece was “What’s Wrong With The Media”.
Now, you could certainly interpret that as Yglesias administering a status slap-down to some journalist(s), but if his goal was a status slap-down there are far more effective ways to do that. He could just write an actual hit-piece.
More generally, in all of these examples: you are pointing out that an argument has status/ethics/politics impact, and claiming that the status/ethics/politics impact must therefore have motivated the argument. That’s simply not true. There are non-status/ethics/politics reasons to think about things which have status/ethics/politics implications.
Being skeptical about claims to objectivity is an epistemically-sensible policy. (Matt Yglesias in particular has probably earned an extra helping of such skepticism.) But I think your prior on “argument was chosen for its status/ethics/politics implications” is far too high, and you are making objectively inaccurate predictions as a result (including the first two quotes above).
For the record I do get some disgust reaction out of the toxoplasma thing, think it was at least somewhat intentional (and I think I may also endorse it? With significant caveats)
Regardless of the details of why he picked the piece, it’s pretty clear from a clear-headed reading of the review that Yglesias is attributing to the reviewer a claim they did not make. I think the “PS5 will have outstanding sales” and “there are many people who won’t buy a PS5 due to some impact of the pandemic” can both be true and likely are.
Sorry, I know that this runs the risk of being an exchange of essays, making it hard to respond to each point.
In Toxoplasma of Rage, the part just prior to the reference to the war on terror goes like this:
Now, maybe Scott’s description of Toxoplasma doesn’t evoke the same visceral disgust reaction you might have if you were scooping out the litter box of a cat that you knew was infected with toxoplasma.
But it seems clear that Scott’s conscious intent here was to evoke that feeling. The point is not to use toxoplasma as intellectual scaffolding to explain the cause-and-effect model of violence-begets-violence.
Instead, it was to link the violence-begets-violence model with disgusting imagery. Read that article, and when somebody talks about the War on Terror, if your previous association was with the proud image of soldiers going off to a noble battle with a determined enemy, now it’s with cat shit.
Likewise, read enough “problem with media” articles that selectively reference the silliest media pieces—classic cherry picking on a conceptual level—then slowly but surely, when you think of “media” you think of the worst stuff out there, rather than the average or the best. Is Matt Yglesias looking for the silliest takes that Scott Alexander ever wrote and excoriating them? No, because Scott’s on his team in the blogosphere.
I disagree with this. In fact, his methods are an extremely effective way of administering a status slap-down. If he wrote an actual hit-piece, that’s what his readership would interpret it as: a hit-piece. But when he writes this article, his readership interprets it as a virtuous piece advocating good epistemic standards. It’s a Trojan Horse.
This is true. But what I’m saying is that advocacy of epistemic accuracy as opposed to virtue signaling is in many contexts primarily motivated by status/ethics/politics implications.
And that is fine. There is nothing inherently wrong with an argument about the nature of reality also having status/ethics/politics implications. It’s even fine to pretend, for vague “this makes us think better” reasons, that for the sake of a discussion those status/ethics/politics implications are irrelevant.
But those implications are always present. They’ve just been temporarily pushed to the side for a moment. Often, they come swooping back in, right after the “epistemic discussion” is concluded. That’s the nature of a policy debate.