I believe his political views are somewhere between way to the left of the Democratic Party and socialism. He dislikes the entire field of intelligence research in psychology because it’s ideologically inconvenient. He criticises anything that he can find to criticise about it. Think of him as Stephen Jay Gould, but much smarter and more honest.
See, this is a place where the US is different from Europe. Because over here (at least in the bit of Europe I’m in), being “somewhere to the right of socialism” isn’t thought of as the kind of crazy extremism that ipso facto makes someone dangerously biased and axe-grindy.
Now, of course politics is what it is, and affiliation with even the most moderate and reasonable political position can make otherwise sensible people completely blind to what’s obvious to others. So the fact that being almost (but not quite) a socialist looks to me like a perfectly normal and sensible position is perfectly compatible with Shalizi being made nuts by it. But to me “he’s somewhere to the left of Barack Obama” doesn’t look on its own like something that makes someone a biased source and explains what their problem is.
Yup, that’s a good point. (Though it depends on what “local” means. I have the impression that academics in the US tend to be leftier than the population at large.)
Academia in the US is much leftier than the population at large. I believe it was Jonathan Haidt who went looking for examples of social conservatives in his field and people kept nomimating Philip Tetlock who would not describe himself thus. At a conference Dr.Haidt was looking for a show of hands for various political positions. Republicans were substantially less popular than Communists. Psychology is about as left wing as sociology and disciplines vary but academia is a great deal to the left of the US general population.
I believe his political views are somewhere between way to the left of the Democratic Party and socialism. He dislikes the entire field of intelligence research in psychology because it’s ideologically inconvenient. He criticises anything that he can find to criticise about it. Think of him as Stephen Jay Gould, but much smarter and more honest.
See, this is a place where the US is different from Europe. Because over here (at least in the bit of Europe I’m in), being “somewhere to the right of socialism” isn’t thought of as the kind of crazy extremism that ipso facto makes someone dangerously biased and axe-grindy.
Now, of course politics is what it is, and affiliation with even the most moderate and reasonable political position can make otherwise sensible people completely blind to what’s obvious to others. So the fact that being almost (but not quite) a socialist looks to me like a perfectly normal and sensible position is perfectly compatible with Shalizi being made nuts by it. But to me “he’s somewhere to the left of Barack Obama” doesn’t look on its own like something that makes someone a biased source and explains what their problem is.
Being an extremist by local standards may be more relevant than actual beliefs.
Yup, that’s a good point. (Though it depends on what “local” means. I have the impression that academics in the US tend to be leftier than the population at large.)
Academia in the US is much leftier than the population at large. I believe it was Jonathan Haidt who went looking for examples of social conservatives in his field and people kept nomimating Philip Tetlock who would not describe himself thus. At a conference Dr.Haidt was looking for a show of hands for various political positions. Republicans were substantially less popular than Communists. Psychology is about as left wing as sociology and disciplines vary but academia is a great deal to the left of the US general population.