theCircusWeakman
No bio...
User ID: 2239
theCircusWeakman
13d ago
They may have been worried about that, but if so I don't think their fears were realistic. Unless there is a confession, prosecutors almost never have direct evidence of intent. So they typically rely on circumstantial evidence. In this case, Diaz had actual possession of the car; she told an implausible story about the car belonging to her boyfriend, but she claimed not to know his address or phone number; and she refused to answer questions about the multiple phones found in her car. I think those circumstances would have been sufficient to prove intent, without needing a mind-reading expert. But the government may well have chosen to err on the side of caution--although, in so doing, they created an appellate issue they easily could have lost.
theCircusWeakman
13d ago
I don't share the blackpilled reading of this case that I'm seeing here. The vast, vast majority of gun owners have nothing to worry about from the narrow holding of this case. Even defendants who are similarly situated to Rahimi can plausibly argue for a different result in future cases.
First, Rahimi raised a facial challenge to the law. The only question before the Court, therefore, was whether the statute was unconstitutional in every single conceivable application. This means any future defendant may still raise an "as-applied" challenge to the law and argue that it shouldn't apply to their case. Since Rahimi's case was basically as bad as it could possibly be, it should be relatively easy to distinguish.
Second, it seems Rahimi did not contest the evidence of his numerous violent crimes. Even if a future defendant is accused of similarly egregious conduct, if he asserts his innocence, that alone would meaningfully differentiate his case from Rahimi's. To the extent gun owners are worried about "red flag laws" eroding due process, that issue was not addressed in this case, so it is fair game for a future challenge to the statute. The Court explicitly makes this point in footnote 2.
Third, the Court is careful to explain that historical gun regulations like the "surety and going armed" laws presumed that people had a right to carry guns in public. Their prohibitions on gun possession were limited to temporary disarmament of specific individuals based on a particularized judicial determination of their dangerousness. Meaning legislatures cannot use those cases, or Rahimi, as an excuse to prohibit broad swathes of the public at large from possessing or carrying guns.
Fourth, the Court explicitly rejects the government's argument that the 2A only applies to "responsible" citizens, whatever that means.
In no way does this case overrule Bruen, sub silentio or otherwise. The historical "going armed" laws, as already addressed in Bruen, did not prohibit public carrying of weapons for self-defense, so merely "validating" such laws (their validity was never challenged, just the degree to which they supported modern regulations by analogy) won't change anything.
I know progressive judges in the lower courts will grasp at any straw to ban guns, but that was already true before this case, and the Court expressly leaves open enough roads to challenge anti-gun laws that I don't see this opinion as realistically improving the lower courts' ability to hollow out the 2A.
theCircusWeakman
14d ago
the upshot was that PACs that run ads that are virtually indistinguishable from official ads are able to accept unlimited donations, which seems contrary to the spirit of restricted campaign donations.
This seems to be a common view of the outcome of the decision, but Justice Stevens' dissent makes the point that Citizens United could have poured unlimited funds into publishing and promoting the movie through a PAC without violating the statute. He argues that CU only violated the law by funding the movie through from their corporate treasury, rather than through a PAC. That's a big component of his argument that the 1A wasn't violated; he says the statute didn't ban CU's speech, it just diverted that speech through a different mechanism.
Which, if correct, makes the outrage over the CU decision even more puzzling. None of the critics of CU seem to be saying, "Unlimited campaign finance spending by corporations is just fine, actually, as long as it's done through a PAC rather than the corporate treasury!" That's why I still feel like I'm missing something.
theCircusWeakman
14d ago
Great write-up as usual.
I've thought a bit about Diaz, and one issue that doesn't seem to have been addressed by anyone (probably because it wasn't raised by the parties, if I had to guess) is why the government even needed expert testimony on this point in the first place. It sounds like the expert's opinion was "Drug cartels typically don't hide half a million dollars worth of drugs in the car of some unwitting rando and then just hope that it makes it across the border and that they can find a way to retrieve it." This seems like ordinary, common-sense reasoning, moreso than specialized technical knowledge that the jury needed an expert to weigh in on. I get suspicious when the government brings in an "expert" to testify about something that should be obvious to everyone; it feels like they're trying to take advantage of the "expert witness" designation to put extra weight behind the government's theory of the case, rather than to explain some complicated topic or express some scientific opinion that jurors ordinarily wouldn't understand.
By the same token, however, the prejudice from eliciting such everyday-common-sense views from an expert witness is fairly small; they're just expressing an argument that the prosecutor would have made anyway and that the jury likely would have accepted. So while it may be overreaching by the prosecutor, it's probably harmless in most cases.
theCircusWeakman
15d ago
In other SCOTUS news, we have four more opinions published today.
Two of the cases involve very similar issues--Section 1983 claims for retaliatory arrest and malicious prosecution--but for some reason the breakdown of Justices is different.
Gonzales v. Trevino: A per curiam opinion, with separate concurrences by Alito, Jackson, and Kavanaugh, and a dissent by Thomas. Gonzales was arrested and charged with stealing government documents, based on her allegedly attempting to make off with a city council petition (possibly to cover up that she obtained some of the signatures on the petition under false pretenses). Alito's concurrence helpfully summarizes the facts of the case, and, in an unusual move, even includes links to Youtube videos of the incident! (Here and here, for your viewing pleasure). Gonzales admits that there was probable cause to arrest her, but she claimed her arrest was in retaliation for her protected speech criticizing other city officials. The relevant precedent, Nieves v. Bartlett, says that probable cause defeats a retaliatory arrest claim unless the arrestee can show that other people, who allegedly committed the same crime, were not arrested (which would imply that the arrest was motivated by the arrestee's speech, rather then genuine law enforcement concerns). Gonzales presented evidence that other people ... had been arrested, for slightly different crimes, but nobody had been arrested for doing exactly what she allegedly did (with no evidence that anyone else had ever tried to do exactly what she allegedly did). To me, this evidence seems irrelevant to the Nieves exception, which requires a showing that similarly-situated people were treated differently, which is not what Gonzales' evidence showed. But the majority decided it was good enough to, at least, merit further consideration by the lower court.
Chiaverini v. City of Napoleon: Kagan writes for the majority, Thomas dissents joined by Alito, Gorsuch writes his own dissent. A jewelry store owner allegedly bought a stolen ring. He was charged with receiving stolen property, dealing in precious metals without a license, and money laundering. Prosecutors later dropped the charges. Chiaverini brought a 1983 claim for malicious prosecution--which, again, requires proof that the government lacked probable cause to arrest him. The lower court threw out his claim because the first two charges were "clearly" supported by probable cause, even if the money laundering charge was not. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that if even one of the charges was not supported by probable cause, Chiaverini could have a valid claim. Both Thomas and Gorsuch, in dissent, seem to agree that malicious prosecution is not properly considered a constitutional claim for section 1983 purposes--the main difference is that Gorsuch relies on an opinion he wrote while a judge on the 10th circuit Court of Appeals.
Diaz v. United States: A case about expert witnesses in criminal trials. The most interesting thing about this case is that Thomas wrote the majority opinion, Jackson concurred, and Gorsuch wrote the dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan.
Moore v. United States: A mind-numbing income tax case. Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, Jackson concurred, Barrett concurred joined by Alito, and Thomas dissented alone as is his wont. Most interesting to me, however, is the publication of a "statement" by Justice Alito, concerning Senator Richard Durbin's sending a letter to Chief Justice Roberts "urging" him to "ensure" that Alito recuse himself in the case. Durbin's letter was ostensibly based on the view that Alito could not be trusted to decide the case without bias, because David B. Rivkin, an attorney for the Petitioners in the case, once interviewed Alito for the Wall Street Journal. Alito points out that the mere fact he was interviewed does not give rise to a presumption of bias. In addition, he points out that Durbin's letter seems like a suspiciously isolated demand for recusal: Alito provides a half-dozen footnotes detailing the numerous times his colleagues on the Court have been interviewed by media companies and then gone on to decide cases wherein those media companies were parties. I had fun reading this, but I'm sure politicians will continue making baseless demands for recusal on similarly flimsy pretexts.
theCircusWeakman
15d ago
Yeah ... the Court's expedited response to Anderson was an extreme outlier, such that I wouldn't draw any inferences from the Court's failure to follow the same expedited decision-making process in any other case. The issue in Trump v. U.S., while still extremely newsworthy and constitutionally significant, is only tangentially related to the upcoming election, whereas Anderson could have jeopardized the election itself (and Trump's campaign) if not addressed in time.
theCircusWeakman
15d ago
Can someone help me understand the continuing opposition to Citizens United? I didn't pay a lot of attention to Supreme Court news back in 2010, so I wasn't following the details of the controversy. But I remember the kerfluffle around Alito (allegedly) mouthing "not true" when Obama said, during a state of the union speech, that the ruling would "open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limits in our elections." But the Supreme Court's ultimate decision seemed so obviously correct that I'm amazed it was ever disputed at all--and the fact that, years later, some people continue to consider it an egregiously bad opinion is totally baffling to me.
Here's my quick and dirty understanding of the constitutional issue in that case (please correct me if it's wrong): Citizens United was a nonprofit corporation that made a documentary video criticizing Hillary Clinton. They wanted to 1. show the video on cable TV and 2. advertise the video on cable and broadcast TV. The Federal Election Commission wouldn't let them, because federal campaign finance laws prohibited corporations and unions from spending money to advocate for or against a candidate in an election. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of CU, finding that the provisions of the federal statute in question constituted a ban on political speech and were, therefore, unconstitutional.
Isn't this ... obviously right? Like, if "freedom of speech" means anything, it has to mean that advocacy groups can publish a criticism of a politician. The FEC's counterarguments all seem really lame, like saying the First Amendment doesn't apply to corporations because they have too much money (what if they don't? And what about rich individuals--are they unprotected by the 1A too?), or because their views don't necessarily reflect the views of the public at large (since when does that permit restricting someone's speech?), or because some shareholders might not agree with the corporation's position (which is equally true of media corporations; does the 1A not apply to "the press"?). I really struggle to see how anyone could agree that these arguments justify the FEC's position. On the other hand, the idea that Congress can ban political speech--the most important kind, for First Amendment purposes--about a presidential candidate, no less--just because the speaker is a body of multiple people joined together, rather than the same people acting alone--seems both arbitrary and clearly unconstitutional. (Especially in the guise of campaign finance laws, which in my opinion should have some connection to, you know, financing someone's campaign, rather than restricting independent criticism of a politician.)
I like to think that the Obama-esque critique of CU is more sophisticated than just "corporations BAD!" But that seems to be the thrust of both Obama's SOTU soundbite and, from what I've read of it, Justice Stevens' dissent. (Stevens also complains that the Court went beyond the narrow issues raised by the parties, but I guarantee you that's not why people are still up in arms about this case years later.)
theCircusWeakman
20d ago
I think I share that hope/cope. IMO, partisan hacks just aren't going to leave a lasting impression on the judicial culture. Whereas Justices who focus on principled outcomes, like Scalia with his textualist approach, have an undeniable impact (Kagan famously said "We're all textualists now," which has not proved as true as I could wish, but the trend does seem to be in that direction--at least, very few opinions on either side of the Court in recent years have been as nakedly outcome-oriented and political as the decisions of e.g. the Warren court).
theCircusWeakman
20d ago
I think so too. Textualists are supposed to care about the meaning of the statutory language, without worrying too much about "legislative intent." But Gorsuch, sometimes, takes this principal so far that he seems to enjoy finding a perversely-literal interpretation of a statute which everyone agrees the legislature could not have intended. Bostock is the clearest example IMO: according to Gorsuch, the Civil Rights Act's prohibition of sex discrimination also unambiguously prohibits employers from discriminating against homosexual and transgender employees (of both sexes), despite the fact that (in the words of Judge Posner) "the Congress that enacted [the Act] would not have accepted" that interpretation. In fact, Congress had already considered and rejected a proposed amendment to the Civil Rights Act that would have extended its protection to "sexual orientation and gender identity," and (Alito points out in dissent) "until 2017, every single Court of Appeals to consider the question" rejected Gorsuch's reading of the text. According to Gorsuch, treating men and women equally is not important; the Civil Rights Act apparently requires men and women to be treated exactly the same, to the point that you can't fire a male employee for wearing womens' clothing (it's important to note that Gorsuch's reasoning here would apply to all male employees, regardless of their "gender identity."). So, can an employer take action against a male employee--who identifies as a man--who insists on using the women's bathroom? Wouldn't firing that employee be motivated, in part, by the employee's sex, according to Gorsuch's rule? Yet Gorsuch refuses to engage with this inescapable extension of his reasoning, lamely announcing that those cases "are not before us ... we do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind."
So Gorsuch, one of the more reliable conservative votes, has on at least one occasion handed a huge culture war victory to the left because (in my uncharitable opinion) he thought it would be impressive to discover a "counterintuitive" reading of the statute. The reason Congress and all those appellate courts didn't interpret the statute the same way is that they just weren't smart enough to find the "unambiguous" meaning of Title VII, unlike the eagle-eyed textualist Gorsuch. Then he refuses to even consider the obvious import of his holding on nearly-identical culture war issues, like sex-segregated bathrooms and changing rooms, because--again--he's one of those elite compartmentalizing textualists who consider only the issues before them, and who are not swayed by irrelevant appeals to unlitigated issues and public policy concerns.
This turned into more of a rant than I intended, but I do think it supports the argument of some right-wingers that "thoughtful" conservative Justices can be a liability, since it only takes a couple of them to side with the defect-bot liberals and inflict huge damage on the right.
theCircusWeakman
20d ago
"Weirdo turbo-lawyers" is exactly how I view most of the Justices, with the exception of a few who seem reliably partisan (Alito on the right, Sotomayor on the left; maybe Jackson as well, but it's too early to tell). Thomas in particular holds so many idiosyncratic views at odds with the rest of the Court that he seems like a sort of mad genius: he loves to write these audacious solo opinions confidently attacking well-established precedents, but I often find myself thinking "damn ... he might be right!" after reading them. (For example, he consistently argues that the Establishment Clause is not incorporated against the States; in other words, the Constitution does not bar States from establishing a State religion--see Section II of this opinion). There has been a lot of scrutiny lately over Thomas receiving gifts from Republican donors, with pundits suggesting they were bribes for voting a certain way. Maybe, but Thomas's opinions seem way too weird, and at the same time too carefully-thought-out, to be insincere. And if I was a billionaire trying to buy votes, I wouldn't bother with Thomas--Empirical SCOTUS has a "Justice Power Index," and Thomas is consistently on the bottom because he so rarely agrees with the rest of the Court.
theCircusWeakman
20d ago
Interesting article! This finding in particular caught my attention:
The three liberal justices voted together in fewer than a quarter of the non-unanimous cases, and the six conservatives voted together only 17 percent of the time.
This suggests the pattern I noticed is real, although the size of the disparity is not huge. However, I would still like to see a similar voting breakdown focused only on cases with strong culture war salience. The court decides a large number of cases each term that don't have any obvious partisan ramifications. It may be the case that the justices don't particularly care about ideological conformity in such cases, but are more likely to vote as a block on cases involving controversial partisan issues. And the conservatives and liberals may do so at different rates.
I also dispute the 3-3-3 breakdown presented in the article. The authors put Gorsuch and Thomas (who agree 77% of the time) in the same group, but their chart shows that Thomas is more likely to agree with Barrett (82%) than with Gorsuch, and Gorsuch is more likely to agree with Barrett (82%) and Kavanaugh (80%) than with Thomas, and equally likely to agree (77%) with Roberts!
I confess, I am a hopeless wordcel, so it's highly likely that I've misunderstood the statistical wizardry at play in this chart. However, the numbers they give suggest to me that the Justices' breakdown more like 3-3-1.5-1.5: three liberals who vote together, three conservatives who vote together (Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett), Alito, and two Justices who often vote with Alito but don't reliably vote with each other (Thomas and Gorsuch).
theCircusWeakman
21d ago
This has been a busy week for the US Supreme Court, with a total of six published decisions on hot-button culture war issues including abortion (a boringly unanimous Article III standing decision, already discussed in its own thread below), gun control, immigration, labor relations, and even a Trump-bashing trademark registration case. Even the sixth case, about boring-old bankruptcy fees, produced an unusual 6-3 split: Jackson wrote the majority opinion, joined by Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Kavanaugh. Gorsuch authored an impassioned dissent, joined by Thomas and Barrett.
The trademark case, Vidal v. Elster, is more interesting than it looks at first glance. The question is whether a provision of the Lanham Act (the federal statute governing intellectual property issues), which forbids registration of trademarks featuring the name of a person without that person's consent, is constitutional. All nine justices agree that it is. And yet, instead of a simple unanimous opinion, we get:
"THOMAS, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III. ALITO and GORSUCH, JJ., joined that opinion in full; ROBERTS, C. J., and KAVANAUGH, J., joined all but Part III; and BARRETT, J., joined Parts I, II–A, and II–B. KAVANAUGH, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which ROBERTS, C. J., joined. BARRETT, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which KAGAN, J., joined, in which SOTOMAYOR, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III–B, and in which JACKSON, J., joined as to Parts I and II. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which KAGAN and JACKSON, JJ., joined."
The gun control case, Garland v. Cargill, divides predictably 6-3 along right/left lines. Thomas, writing for the majority, holds that "bump stocks" are not machineguns within the meaning of the National Firearms Act, abrogating a (Trump-era) ATF ruling that sought to ban such devices.
The immigration case, Campos-Chaves v. Garland, is the closest of all, with Alito writing for the 5-4 majority and Gorsuch joining the three liberals in a dissent authored by newcomer Jackson.
The labor case, Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, was almost unanimous, except for Justice Jackson's solo partial-dissent-but-concurrence-in-the-judgment. It seems to me (I have not attempted to quantify this impression) that Justice Jackson is much more likely than the other liberals to author a solo opinion.
I have only skimmed a few of these cases, so I don't feel equipped to dive deep into the merits of each case, but I always enjoy the Motte's Supreme Court culture-war takes. For my own contribution, I just want to articulate my view of the Justices' voting patterns: I feel like the Court's conservatives disagree with each other a lot more often than the liberals do. It's very common to see conservatives on both sides of an issue, while the liberals overwhelmingly tend to vote as a block. This week is just an example of the general pattern, I think. Many right-leaning court watchers see that as a bad thing, as if the Court's conservatives are wishy-washy and ideologically unreliable. I tend to see it differently; to me, it suggests the conservatives are more even-handed and unbiased, while the liberals are more interested in conformity and towing the party line--undesirable traits in a judge. As I said, though, I haven't attempted to test my hypothesis by quantifying who voted which way, when. Someone has surely done that, and I'd be interested to see their results.
theCircusWeakman
2mo ago
I attribute a lot of the homogeneity of modern American whiskey to suppliers like MGP. It's not bad, but it's ubiquitous, and I worry that a lot of potential variety and novelty of flavor is missing because so many brands are just bottling one mega-producer's spirits. If it's not MGP, it's often some other supplier of "sourced" whiskey. I've started following this rule-of-thumb: only buy bourbon or rye that says on the label "Distilled AND bottled by..." instead of just "bottled by..." Whiskey needs to come pretty highly-recommended for me to break this rule nowadays.
theCircusWeakman
2mo ago
Is Foursquare worth the hype? I've never been much of a rum drinker, although I know plenty of whisky enthusiasts who love it.
theCircusWeakman
2mo ago
I kind of agree, actually. My favorite spirits are those where the smell reminds me of a specific memory or a place from my childhood. That subjective quality is going to be unique to each drinker, and it's far more interesting to me than the proof, or age, or region that the drink is from.
Jameson, on the rocks, is what I always order the first time I try out a new bar. They always have it in stock, it's always smooth and pleasant. It's great when I'm just hanging out and don't want to have to concentrate on what I'm drinking.
theCircusWeakman
2mo ago
I enjoy Lagavulin a lot, although the 16 is absurdly overpriced in my neck of the woods; I don't think I've ever seen it priced below $100. For a similar investment you could get some top shelf Islays like Laphraoig Lore, Ardbeg Uigeadail, or Kilchoman Loch Gorm, all of which I think are better than the Lag 16. Then again, I tend to gravitate towards higher-proof, bolder whiskies generally, while I think Lagavulin is aiming for a smoother, more subdued whisky that's still complex and interesting.
theCircusWeakman
2mo ago
How about another "what are you drinking" thread?
I picked up a bottle of Noah's Mill bourbon based on the recommendation of @yofuckreddit a few months back, and I really enjoy it so far. I usually find the "bourbon" category pretty homogeneous in terms of smell and taste, so I tend to seek out whiskeys with more varied flavors like rye and scotch. But this bottle has some wonderful nutty vanilla notes on the nose with a lingering woody, waxy flavor that helps set it apart from a typical bourbon.
At a friend's place I finally got to try Octomore for the first time. Peated scotch is probably my favorite kind of spirit, and Octomore's claim to fame is having the highest concentration of peat smoke--something like 2-5 times as much as other heavily-peated whiskeys like Laphroaig. The difference is impressive on paper, but on the palate it doesn't really taste much smokier than a Laphroaig or a Port Charlotte; maybe 5-10% smokier. Still an excellent whiskey, and I'm glad I got to try it to satisfy my curiosity, but I don't feel any desire to pay $300 for a bottle of my own.
theCircusWeakman
7mo ago
I picked up an excellent bottle of Knob Creek Rye, a single barrel pick from a local liquor store. It's high proof, has a wonderful waxy cedar flavor, with a background savory note that reminds me of olives. In the past I've mostly focused on Scotch, but I'm eager to find some more exciting American whiskies like this. I got to try some George T. Stagg at a whiskey tasting recently, unfortunately it was like the 7th thing we had and my palate was pretty much fried, so I wasn't able to fully appreciate it.
I tried my first Indian whisky recently, the Indri Three-wood single malt. For about $55, I'm very happy with it; it has a lot of notes I don't usually find in whisky, like mango and lemon peel. I need to give Amrut and Paul John a try; I've heard good things about them. I also enjoyed the Cotswolds English single malt, which is similar but has more of a peaches-and-pears fruity flavor.
theCircusWeakman
8mo ago
Thanks for creating this topic. I've been mulling these things over since the earlier thread, in which I promised to explain my views in more detail. (For the purposes of this post, I'm assuming that Christianity is neither conclusively proved nor disproved by logic or science; the question is, in the absence of convincing proof, why be a Christian?). For what it's worth, here are my scattered thoughts on the matter:
You mentioned Chesterton's "truth-telling thing"; but another theme running through Chesterton's apologetics is that "rationalism" ultimately undermines its own foundations. A person becomes a Rationalist (TM) because he thinks truth is objectively valuable, but if he follows the tenets of rationalism to their logical conclusion he discovers that nothing is objectively valuable. A skeptic who begins by doubting everything that can't be confirmed by his own senses must (if he's consistent) end up doubting his senses themselves. Rationality, empiricism, skepticism, etc. are worthwhile tools, but they must yield at some point to pragmatism. We follow them as far as they are useful, but when they stop being useful and start being counter-productive, we have to reach outside of them for some common-sense axioms or external value judgments in order for them to keep working. The question is, working towards what? A saw may be the best tool for cutting a plank, but you don't cut a plank because the saw told you to. You have to have some ultimate project in mind--some terminal goal, independent of the saw, and for which the saw is merely instrumental.
I guess I'm saying my reasons for being religious might be better described as "meta-rational" than "rational." In the earlier thread, multiple people equated rationalism to "epistemic hygiene," and I think that's a good description. Just as physical hygiene prevents us from polluting our bodies with harmful organisms and filth, rationalism prevents us from polluting our epistemology with delusions and superstitions. But hygiene is only a means to an end; nobody treats "be hygienic" as a life goal. Or if they do, we recognize that that person's priorities are messed up. For example, a germophobe obsessed with cleanliness may practice impeccable physical hygiene, but in the process, he sacrifices his overall physical health. He may scrub his hands until his skin is raw; he may throw out all the food in his kitchen if he discovers a single spot of mold on a slice of bread, he may poison himself with the fumes of the industrial-strength cleaning products he applies to every inch of his home. He can't sleep for fear of unconsciously breathing in germs, and his heart is about to give out from the stress of his constant germ-related anxiety. Obviously, this person's obsession with hygiene is detrimental not only to his health, but to almost every other facet of his overall well-being. He needs to scale back his uncompromising commitment to hygiene until it stops jeopardizing his mental and physical health. He needs to apply "meta-hygiene": i.e., to evaluate whether his approach to hygiene has overstepped its usefulness.
Similarly, I think a commitment to epistemic hygiene can be taken too far, when it ceases to promote a person's overall well-being. Again, rationality is generally healthy and useful, and insofar as rationalism makes you better off, you should keep following it. And religion is by no means necessarily a good thing. Suppose you belong to a weird, fundamentalist religion that rejects modern scientific medicine as "witchcraft" and insists that all diseases can be cured with "faith healing" rituals. You suffer from some disease, and despite attending plenty of faith healing rituals you never seem to be improving. Eventually, you discover rationalism, and you determine that these tenets of your religion are false: modern medicine doesn't rely on witchcraft but on well-attested biology, whereas faith healing doesn't work any better than placebo. You leave your old fundamentalist beliefs behind, start going to a real doctor, and your health and overall well-being improves. This kind of outcome is celebrated both by militant atheists and by huge swathes of ordinary Christians, most of whom (in my experience) are happy to apply reason and empiricism to mundane-but-important issues like medicine.
I'm one of those ordinary Christians. I don't think my religion is comparable to the faith-healing cult described above; on the contrary, I think its effects on my life are extremely salutary. My belief that God created the universe as part of his benevolent plan gives me a reason to endure hardship with patience and hope. My belief in God's goodness provides an objective basis for morality that guides my actions and encourages me to follow my conscience. My church community has helped me make plenty of friends whom I trust to share my values. But ultimately, the primary reason I have no interest in abandoning my religion is that my faith provides a foundation of meaning for my whole life. It's only because I believe in Christ that I care about belief at all.
If my life wasn't given to me for a reason, then why should I care if I'm living my life for the wrong reasons? If there is no such thing as "good" and "bad," then how could it be bad for me to wrongly believe in good and bad? If there's no free will, who can judge me for going on believing in free will? If we're all dead in the long run, who cares whether I wrongly believed in life after death? When I say rationalism can't justify itself, I don't just mean in the sense that e.g. mathematics can't prove its own axioms. I mean that the acid of skepticism ultimately dissolves any reason for being a skeptic. Belief is different; as soon as you start to believe, you suddenly have a reason to care whether your beliefs are true.
My views might be different if the Rationalists (TM) I knew were noticeably better off than the Christians I know. But this doesn't seem to be true. The Christians I know tend to be sane, sensible, happy, friendly, calm--more or less in proportion to their devoutness. The Rationalists I know, on the other hand, don't seem to be any happier than the general population; if anything, they seem to be more anxious, aimless, and neurotic than average. In fact, I'd say the most unhappy people I know of--the most miserable nihilists, the doomsayers and blackpillers, the suicide and human extinction advocates--are pretty much all atheists and agnostics. This calls for epistemic meta-hygiene: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
To be clear, I'm just trying to explain why I have no interest in abandoning my religion for the sake of rationalism. I'm not trying to convince rationalists to join my religion. If they're happy where they are, why should they want to change? But at the same time, since I'm happy with my beliefs (rational or not), why should I want to change--especially when, for the reasons given above, I strongly suspect I wouldn't be happy or fulfilled outside a religious worldview? And if, from time to time, some rationalist should decide that he'd be happier in the Church, and if he finds the faith within himself to believe it, why shouldn't he take the plunge? What does he have to lose?
theCircusWeakman
8mo ago
Sorry for the late reply; I've had a busy couple days. Thanks for the through response!
Consider the religious approach to morality: that God tells us right from wrong. I think the best rebuttal to that has remained unchanged for a couple thousand years when it was introduced by Plato, if I'm not mistaken. It runs as follows. Suppose God says killing is wrong. Did he have some reason to say that it's wrong? Or could he have just as easily said that it's always right to kill anybody else (in which case it would be right because he said it's right)? If you say either that it would still be wrong to kill even if God said it was right, or that God wouldn't/couldn't say killing is right because he had a reason for saying killing is wrong, well then we can appeal directly to the reason and skip the middle man.You're right, of course, that if morality had some basis more authoritative than God, then God would be a mere "middle man" and would not be necessary to the determination of moral truths. But I don't agree that "it would still be wrong to kill even if God said it was right, or that God wouldn't/couldn't say killing is right because he had a reason for saying killing is wrong." I believe God's nature is the source of goodness; you can't appeal to some standard of goodness higher than God. But it also isn't true to say that God could arbitrarily change good to evil or vice versa; God--being perfect--has no reason to change his nature, and--being omnipotent--his nature can't be changed by anything else. An actions is "good" insofar as it conforms to the immutable will of God.
Your "witchcraft" example conflates a factual dispute for a moral dispute: science can tell us whether or not the village witch is guilty of destroying the crops (a factual question), but it can't tell us whether or not people who destroy crops deserve to be punished (a moral question). I think you acknowledge this, since you agree that science can't derive an "ought" from an "is."
Reason can justify an "ought" statement, but only by presupposing a condition: "you ought to exercise if you want to be healthy; you ought to punish criminals if you want to deter crime" etc. So I don't think your examples work:
Suppose someone were to say, "Why should I care if I cause you pain or kill you? Your pain isn't my pain, and besides, I'd like to take your possessions after I kill you." Well, he won't convince anyone else that only his suffering matters and no one else's, so he is in no position to object if others were to treat him that way. Since no one wants to be treated that way, and since one's power over others is uncertain (tomorrow you might be in a position to be killed by a bigger man or a larger mob), it's in everyone's interest to collectively agree that randomly killing and pillaging is wrong.Plenty of powerful people can say, with a high degree of confidence, that they will*not* be killed tomorrow by a bigger man or a larger mob. Genghis Khan killed and pillaged to his heart's content, and he lived well into his sixties and, by most accounts, died by falling off his horse and/or contracting an illness. Meanwhile, plenty of moral people end up getting killed or pillaged *in spite of* always behaving as if killing and pillaging are wrong. If morality has no better basis than this sort of social-contract-theory, then the Genghis Khans of the world have no use for it.
Earlier, you (correctly) pointed out that, if God is a middle man between humans and morality, we can just skip God and go straight to morality. But your own view of morality seems to treat it as a "middle man" for rational self-interest. If Genghis Khan says, "Why don't I skip the morality, and go straight for my own rational self-interest (i.e. killing and pillaging with impunity, because I enjoy it and I'm powerful enough to get away with it)?", how could you dissuade him?
Similarly, while I agree humans generally have evolved a "moral intuition," I don't agree with you that it's "universal." Psychopaths seem to be lacking the moral compunctions that are innate in ordinary humans. And while plenty of psychopaths end up dead or in prison, intelligent and capable psychopaths often become wildly successful. It seems like, above a certain level of intelligence, psychopathy is a very useful trait (which might explain why it hasn't been selected out of existence). So, if you can't appeal to Genghis Khan's moral intuitions, because he wasn't born with them--and if you can't appeal to his rational or game-theoretic self-interest--how do you convince him not to kill and pillage?
The only way I can think of is to convince him that killing and pillaging are not desirable because they are not good. And we know they are not good, because God is good and God is opposed to killing and pillaging. If Genghis Khan continues to kill and pillage, his life will be unfulfilling because he has not followed what is good, and after his death he will be punished by God for disobeying his will.
Now, you may not believe these things, and Genghis Khan may not believe them either. In that case, we're no better off than we would be under your system. But we're no worse off, either. And, at the margins, there are some rare instances where religious appeals appear to have moved otherwise implacable pillagers and conquerors; we'll never know what Pope Leo said during his meeting with Attila the Hun, but we do know the latter subsequently called off the invasion of Rome.
But my arguments about the religious basis of moral truths are, obviously, less relevant to moral non-realists like you than to, say, atheists who still believe in objective morality, like a lot of utilitarians (Scott Alexander's Utilitarian FAQ, for example, never actually explains why anyone should assign value to other people; this seems like it's kind of the entire crux of utilitarianism, but Scott brushes it off as a "basic moral intuition" (section 3.1)). If you're willing to bite the bullet that morality is just a spook, then you have no reason to be troubled by materialism's failure to establish an objective basis for morality. But you also don't have much room to criticize people who are convinced of objective morality, if their convictions turn them away from a materialism that's inadequate to justify moral truths.
theCircusWeakman
8mo ago
(This is tangential to my main point, but just for fun: Is there a probability where it becomes justified to believe something? 2% is too low, but 100% is too high--that would "commit you to a useless stance of Cartesian doubt." Is there a cutoff? If so, where is it and why? Even if you only believe ideas at 99% probability or above, you're still accepting up to a 1% chance that your belief is false. Wouldn't it be safer to say that you simply "don't have a belief on the matter?" On the other hand, if you can believe something at 99%, why not at 80%, or 51%? Why not at, say, 30%, if all the alternatives are even less likely?)
You say "Why is it a problem to simply state that you don't know why there is something rather than nothing or what consciousness is, and thus don't have a belief on the matter?" Good question, and I can't think of a good answer except that it seems painfully unsatisfactory to me, like asking someone starving in the desert "why can't you simply enjoy being hungry?" But I can't help but notice you didn't apply that reasoning to the next big question I mentioned: "how ought we to act?" The is/ought gap can't be bridged empirically. But it has to be bridged somehow--before you can act, you need to know how you ought to act. You can't just throw up your hands and say, "I don't know"; every deliberate action implies a value judgment.
If science is silent on the "ought," then we either need to look outside of science for our values or else give up on objective values altogether. If, as you argue, all beliefs should be scientifically justifiable, then we can't look outside science for our values; therefore, we have no alternative but to abandon the idea of objective values, and with it any ideas about how we "ought" to act.
If this premise: "All beliefs ought to be based on empirical discoveries about the universe"
leads to this conclusion: "Beliefs about what 'ought' to be are baseless and unjustifiable"
then the premise seems to refute itself.
I'm interested to know if you consider yourself a moral realist or not; if you do, how do you respond to this? Apologies if I've grossly misunderstood your position.
theCircusWeakman
8mo ago
Thanks for this thorough response. Just to clarify, I don't think "people should believe falsehoods because they're beneficial"--people should aspire to have correct beliefs, even if they get warm, fuzzy feelings from having incorrect beliefs. I think arguments about ideas should be focused on whether the ideas or true, without worrying about the collateral concern of whether they are "beneficial" in some other way. What I do think is that, in areas where "such-and-such remains unclear, more research is needed" (which covers an enormous amount of the space of possible truth), it's not an irrational heuristic to select among available truth claims the one that adds the most meaning to your life.
I apologize for my flippant "oxygen" example--it was the best I could think of at the time--since I am absolutely happy to defer to scientific consensus (in proportion to the reliability of the subfield) in all matters. I don't believe in young-earth creationism, for instance, even though a lot of Christians do believe in it and have advanced some conveniently non-falsifiable theories explaining away the physical evidence of fossils, radiocarbon dating, etc. The consensus of lots of reliable subfields--geology, biology, astrophysics, etc.--would need to be wrong in order for young-earth creationism to be right. So--like most Christians who aren't fundamentalist Protestants--I'm happy to accept the mainstream scientific view on that question.
But there are some very important questions where there is no scientific consensus: why is there something instead of nothing? What is consciousness? (Incidentally, I'm often confused by the confidence with which atheists reject the possibility of any sort of "afterlife"--they may not know what consciousness is or how it works, but they're positive it disappears when you die! But that's another discussion.) Is morality even real, and if so, how ought we to act? In my view (you may disagree) these questions have resisted scientific explanation since the dawn of time, and they don't seem likely to be scientifically settled anytime soon. I don't want to get too into the weeds of these particular questions, unless you want me to. Suffice it to say that, if we have to wait for "better science" to explain these things, we may be waiting a long time. What should we believe in the meantime? It's not like we can just brush these questions off; they seem super important to any kind of complete worldview! I can't wait for science to catch up; I need to live now!
Finally, I don't know that "being convinced of the truth value" of something is necessary to belief. Being convinced of the falsity of an idea is, of course, fatal to belief--but as long as something could be true, and isn't patently less probable than other competing ideas, I don't see why one couldn't believe it. I think everyone relies on heuristics like "meaning" to select their most important beliefs from among several more-or-less-as-likely ideas.
theCircusWeakman
8mo ago
For my part, I'm not sure I experience the "paradox of belief." I've never understood why some rationalists act like "faith" is irrational, as if you're only permitted to believe in things that are epistemically certain. Beyond "cogito ergo sum," there's not much knowledge available to us that's not ultimately based on pragmatic leaps of logic. I can't prove that the world outside my head really exists, or that the past and future really exist, or that causation is real. I don't pretend to understand Godel's incompleteness theorem, but my layman's understanding of it is that even math relies on unprovable assumptions to work. And most of what we call "scientific knowledge" is far more tenuous than these propositions: we say that we know, for example, that an oxygen atom has eight protons, but I've never actually checked. I just assume the scientists who say that know what they're talking about and have no reason to lie. (These are not always safe assumptions to make about scientists.) I'm told that a lot of chemical reactions would not work if oxygen had more or less than 8 protons per atom, but again, I have no personal way of knowing whether that's true, beyond my mostly-uncritical acceptance of scientific consensus. In the face of pure, uncompromising skepticism, scientific "knowledge" is just as untenable as religious belief.
We ultimately rely on faith for almost all the knowledge we use--because otherwise we couldn't use any knowledge. Epistemic certainty has to yield to pragmatic utility. Therefore, as long as my religious beliefs aren't provably false (which would be utility-decreasing, because it would cause me to make predictions that turn out to be incorrect, to my detriment), and if those beliefs make me better off (consensus seems to be that religious people tend to be happier and more mentally healthy than nonbelievers), I don't see why it's "irrational" to continue being religious.
Finally, plenty of prominent rationalists have beliefs that seem just as strange and unfalsifiable as my own religious beliefs; some believe that we're living in a simulation, some believe in panpsychism, some believe we inhabit a multiverse where every possible reality exists at once, etc. I don't see why Christianity is any less compatible with rationalism than these other weird ideas.
Like you, I find Christianity imparts meaning to my life in a way no other worldview can. It has unequivocally improved the quality of my life. The smart thing to do--the rational thing--would be to go on believing it and acting accordingly. I have further thoughts, but I've got to go now.
theCircusWeakman
8mo ago
Culture war stories involving the legacy of the Confederacy--and Confederate heroes like Lee in particular--are always troubling to me, in part perhaps because, as a Southerner, I don't know myself what to make of that legacy. The existence of the whole Confederate movement is so inextricably bound up with the crime of slavery that celebrating the heroes of the movement seems, on its face, indefensible. I am probably more "woke" than the average Mottizen when it comes to American race issues; I believe HBD is a worse explanation for persistent black underachievement than the lingering effect of centuries of cultural disruption under slavery combined with decades of further disruption under racist post-Civil-War legislation (although neither explanation is fully satisfactory). I would find it shocking if the current problems with American black culture weren't primarily due to the uniquely extreme oppression blacks faced for so many generations. We can debate whether or not the South would have abandoned slavery on its own initiative without it being forced to do so by the Union's victory in the Civil War, but I don't see how one could deny that the intent of the founders of the Confederacy was to preserve slavery in perpetuity (mostly for the benefit of wealthy plantation owners, rather than working white Southerners). When people, on the Motte or elsewhere, castigate the Confederates as racist losers who picked a stupid fight in furtherance of an execrable cause, I can't find a good reason for disagreeing with them.
And yet I do disagree with them--I do admire Lee, and for some reason I'm proud of the South and of the Confederacy. I can't explain it rationally. I like that, despite being ill-equipped and outnumbered 2-1, the South held out for over four years in a hot war with a technologically superior foe. I'm glad we didn't just roll over to the North's demands, but made the Yankees fight for it. I even take a perverse and morbid pride in the fact we killed more of them than they killed of us.
What's even more confusing is that, for most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, it seemed like it was fine to like the Confederacy. Pop-culture protagonists in books, movies, TV shows, comic strips, etc., could be Confederate soldiers or open Confederate sympathizers and still be beloved by post-war Americans, North and South. American society didn't seem interested in condemning pro-Confederate Southerners as "traitors" or excoriating them as "racists"--even though the charges were as just then as they are now. I feel like the attitude of Americans, a few decades after the Civil War, might be summed up in this picture. At best, people on both sides seemed willing to put the dark past behind them and settle into a mutual civility. At worst, it seemed like non-Southerners viewed Southern pride and loyalty to the rebel cause as a sort of quaint, harmless expression of regional patriotism.
The vitriol towards Confederates I see in stories like this and in some of the comments here seems new. I can't say that those commenters are wrong--I share their reasons for disliking the Confederacy, although something (maybe just the loyalty of my Southern blood) prevents me from reacting with the same level of antipathy. I just wonder what happened to the truce that seemed to have once reigned in this particular culture war.
Thanks for the response. I agree that nonprofit vs. for-profit corporations is not really a relevant distinction ... but Citizens United did not rely on that distinction, so it doesn't have anything to do with the outcome of the case.
Not that clear, actually. There is a live debate about whether the "Freedom of the Press" clause protects "the press" as an industry (professional journalists, newspapers, and media corporations) or "the press" as a type of speech-related activity, which anyone can do. The linked article argues for the latter interpretation, which I think is clearly the better view.
SCOTUS expressly held "We need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation’s political process ... Section 441b is not limited to corporations or associations that were created in foreign countries or funded predominately by foreign shareholders. Section 441b therefore would be overbroad even if we assumed, arguendo, that the Government has a compelling interest in limiting foreign influence over our political process." In other words, SCOTUS did not address whether Congress could restrict corporate speech based, specifically, on foreign ownership, but since the statute in question applied to all corporations, the statue was not "narrowly tailored" to that concern.
The Court addressed, and rejected, that argument on the following grounds: (1) it applies equally to media corporations, and nobody believes the government should have the power to restrict political speech by e.g. newspapers; (2) there's little evidence such abuses could not be corrected through the procedures of corporate democracy; (3) the statute in question is clearly inadequate to address such concerns, because those concerns implicate all speech in all media at all times, but the statue only applies to certain kinds of political speech, in certain media, at certain times close to an election; and (most importantly, IMO) (4) the statute is at the same time overinclusive--again, not "narrowly tailored"--because it covers all corporations, including those with only a single shareholder. I think these points add up to a pretty compelling argument that the statute in question was "narrowly tailored to address a compelling government interest," but, again, it left open the possibility that Congress could pass a narrower law that would satisfy the constitution.
This issue was also addressed by the court, and found wanting. The big reason is that CU's spending was an "independent expenditure"--it did not give any money to any political candidate, nor to any political party, nor did it coordinate with any candidates or parties. It didn't even endorse a particular party or candidate; it just criticized Hillary Clinton. If CU's spending could be construed as a quid-pro-quo, so could just about any form of political advocacy. Obviously, politicians probably appreciate it when private parties (corporate or otherwise) are critical of their opponents, and unscrupulous politicians might even be tempted to show favoritism as a result--but that clearly doesn't justify Congress banning independent criticism of political candidates!
If by "common sense conflicting with the actual meaning of the law", you mean that ignoramuses misinterpreted, and continue to misinterpret, the Court's "probably correct" decision, I suspect you are likely correct. And in the sense that ignoramuses, in this matter and many others, vastly outnumber those who actually know what they're talking about, I agree that the decision was likely not "broadly popular." But I don't agree that SCOTUS perpetrated a "needless own-goal," in your words, by arriving at a well-reasoned and probably correct decision, just because it was misrepresented and misunderstood by left-leaning pundits and their gulls.
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