Got to say all of Caplan's arguments seem a bit ridiculous. To go through his enumerated list of reasons;
Endlessly complaining about alleged social problems. Poverty, the environment, racism, Covid, Ukraine, terrorism, immigration, education, drugs, Elon… Even if all of the coverage were true, the media is still - per Huemer - aggressively promoting the absurd view that life is on balance terrible and reliably getting worse.
Two problems here. Of course the news is going to have a slant towards bad news because notable events are usually bad things, though of course not always. What would Brian Caplan's news bulletins contain, reports on all the cities and countries were there were no terrorist attacks, wars didn't start and the economy was fine? That's not really news. Secondly, I don't think it's at all accurate that news promotes the view that life to terrible. While there is a slant towards 'negative' news if a viewer thinks that implies that things are in general bad and getting worse that's surely a fault of the viewer not of the coverage, because it doesn't imply that at all, it just as I say reflects the fact that newsworthy events are more likely to bad than good.
Spreading innumeracy. The media endlessly shows grotesque stories about ultra-rare problems like terrorism, plane crashes, police murdering innocents, school shootings, toddlers dying of Covid, and the like. They show almost nothing about statistically common problems like car crashes or death by old age. The media doesn’t just spread paranoia; it spreads inverted paranoia.
Again, while this is true this is simply the nature of news, not a problem specific to mainstream media. News is, by its nature, a record of events not an analysis of the general current state of affairs. Perhaps people should consume less news and more analysis, in fact they probably should, but again that's not really the fault of the organisations providing the news coverage.
Reasons 4 and 5 are basically the same thing, Caplan arguing that MSM puts everything in a negative light and places particular focus on whatever the 'current thing' is. Again I think these just complain about the nature of news, not the behaviour of MSM specifically.
Reason 2 is a bit different;
Painting government intervention as the obvious solution to social problems. Often the media openly asks loaded questions to this effect, like “Why isn’t the government doing more about this?!” with an exasperated tone. The rest of the time, they rely on heavy-handed insinuation, like “The people of Flint, Michigan feel like they’ve been forgotten.” Forgotten by who? Government Our Savior, of course. Mainstream media barely considers whether past government policies have worked, or how much they cost, or whether they have important downsides.
I mean who else is supposed to solve social problems? Clearly not 'individuals' or whatever, because manifestly absent government intervention they haven't been able to solve them, otherwise they wouldn't exist
Caplan re 2nd point would respond that government often (if not always) caused the problem. Or sometimes, just sometimes, it rooms communities time to solve problems (just like it takes time for government to “solve” problems).
To answer your question of who could solve individual problems, usually individuals.
For example poverty can be solved by getting a job, avoiding drugs and not becoming a single mother.
Poor drinking water for an individual living in Flint can be solved for the individual by leaving Flint - it's not as if Michael Moore didnt give people a heads up about Flint 33 years ago.
Ok but clearly that's a non-answer because the problems still exist. If you want to say 'I think the problems continuing is better than any potential remedy' that's a fine argument to make, but individuals cannot be called upon to solve existing systemic problems. Poverty exists, so clearly letting individuals 'solve' it themselves has not worked.
Well my opinion is irrelevant. The poor people who are refusing to look for work are the ones deciding that problems continuing is better than the remedy. The folks refusing to leave Flint for San Antonio (or other functional city) are similarly the ones deciding they want the problem to continue.
Not sure I really catch your drift. Simply because the people of Flint weren't willing to uproot their entire lives to find better water that doesn't imply that the problem isn't important enough to be worth solving via government intervention.
Previously you said "individuals cannot be called upon to solve existing systemic problems" and "who else is supposed to solve social problems? Clearly not 'individuals' or whatever, because manifestly absent government intervention they haven't been able to solve them, otherwise they wouldn't exist".
But this is kind of silly, since they demonstrably can.
But you've now retreated to:
Simply because the people of Flint weren't willing to uproot their entire lives to find better water that doesn't imply that the problem isn't important enough to be worth solving via government intervention.
Or phrased differently, the people closest to the problem and with the most to gain from solving it have decided it's not worth exerting an ordinary level of effort to solve. That's a quite different claim.
Have you been mislead by journalists into not noticing this fact? I think that's what Caplan is complaining about.
When I say "ordinary level of effort" I mean a level of effort that is regularly exerted by a majority of Americans. The majority of Americans avoid poverty by working a job for most of the year, whereas the vast majority of poor Americans don't work by choice. (I.e. they are not looking for work.) The annual rate of inter-county moves in the US hit it's lowest in 2016 (at 5% of the US population), meaning that in 33 years the average American moved more than 1.7 times.
You're right that individuals can demonstrably solve social problems. But it is not always demonstrable that individuals can solve social problems.
For example, I have ADHD. On days when I don't take my meds, I am literally less of an agent. I have less power to make choices happen. It's clear to me that agency is a spectrum. Just because someone could make a good choice in theory in a vacuum, doesn't actually mean they could make a good choice given the neurotransmitters presently available in their brains. Choices are made out of physical and psychological levers and dice that can be manipulated and stacked.
I'd note that childhood Lead exposure is famous for damaging the ability of humans to make rational choices, which makes the choice of Flint Michigan as an example an odd one.
Your idea of "an ordinary level of effort" is also very odd.
The typical response of a rat in a learned helplessness test is to lay down and rot. Is this the 'ordinary' level of effort? Of course not. The 'ordinary' rat is not subject to being trapped in a room with electric shocks until it's used to them. The idea of "an ordinary level of effort" being constantly looking for work is likely holding some similar assumption. These people could all be responding entirely 'typically'. 'Ordinary' is just a line drawn in the sand here.
The idea that Anyone who isn't looking for work is "not working by choice" is odd for another reason. Jobs exist in a market. Even a perfectly rational agent will notice that there are costs to finding a job and benefits to having one, and that if the costs or benefits change, the cost benefit analysis changes. A rational agent "choosing not to have a job" is making that choice in the context of the current market. It's not like they have the libertarian free will to snap their fingers and have a 100k salary. Systemic changes to the costs and benefits will change the number of rational agents looking for Jobs.
However, this isn't to say you're wrong either. For one, I've given examples of things that remove people's ability to make rational choices, and things that can cause your observations while being beyond an individual's power to change. But these aren't going to be responsible for everything. Some things are going to be things individuals can change, under the right circumstances. I only mean to point out that agency is a spectrum, and that spectrum responds to systemic changes.
But also- as you are also pointing out, Media response might still be part of what contributes to things like learned helplessness.
I notice the irony though, that if media response contributes to learned helplessness- this can still be framed as a systemic issue that could be affected by regulating the media.
If you want to claim that poor Americans and residents of Flint lack agency and cannot make good choices for themselves, then the natural question is why do we allow them the freedom to make choices?
My 2 year old daughter wants to watch TV and eat candy all day. But she is not competent to make that decision and has her freedom restricted.
Even a perfectly rational agent will notice that there are costs to finding a job and benefits to having one, and that if the costs or benefits change, the cost benefit analysis changes. A rational agent "choosing not to have a job" is making that choice in the context of the current market
Yes. It seems that for some folks, idleness (supplemented by wealth transfers) is more fun than work, and that's why we have poverty.
Which media do you believe is actually conveying this message?
If you want to claim that poor Americans and residents of Flint lack agency and cannot make good choices for themselves, then the natural question is why do we allow them the freedom to make choices?
Making choices isn't free. We don't just let people make them, we often make people make them. We haven't set things up to give everyone personalized think tank support yet.
Trust is also an issue. If I had a personalized think tank I'd want to be part of the process of personalizing it and so on. Ultimately we give people freedom because we value freedom, and not having to trust or depend on other people. Sometimes to a fault. Sometimes to our own societal detriment.
Yes. It seems that for some folks, idleness (supplemented by wealth transfers) is more fun than work, and that's why we have poverty.
That is not what I said.
For one I'm explicitly avoiding any claims about what the situation actually is on average, or on a case by case basis, because I don't actually know.
But two, fun is far from the only factor in the cost benefit analysis I am describing.
Looking for a job is a cost. You don't actually do anything productive to society while looking for a job. Your cultivation options are limited while actively looking for a job. It's not worth very much to the person looking for a job or for anyone else in the economy until a job is actually acquired. Looking for a job is not always the best way to not die, or even the best way to contribute to society. In some cases, looking for a job is legitimately a waste of everyone's time, because the individual is worth little to employers and their time is worth more elsewhere. I'm not talking about playing video games here.
Which media do you believe is actually conveying this message?
Not nearly convinced of that message but-
Yeah the media is fucked. The main issue is I don't see a way to gain epistemic certainty about the object level of anything politically charged by watching the news.
There might be some outlet that has a complete model of why people are poor. But it's not like I can tell without becoming an expert myself.
Another situation that is sort of like the inverse of your ADHD meds is intoxication, often drunkenness. It is common for the law to distinguish between voluntary intoxication (I went to the bar and got drunk) and involuntary intoxication (I was at a party and someone spiked my nonalcoholic drink without my knowledge). With some edge-case exceptions, you're considered responsible for wrongdoing if you voluntarily became intoxicated, but not responsible if it was involuntary.
By a parallel construction, even if unmedicated ADHD causes a loss of agency, you might be considered responsible if your meds were available and you chose not to take them. (I think the Kanye situation is related--he's pretty severely bipolar, but unmedicated by choice, as the meds negatively affect his creativity. In my opinion, he gets to take the good with the bad in terms of being "publicly creative.")
In my case my meds stop working if I take them more than two days in a row, so I have to take off days during which I am less of a person and need more supervision.
I'm lucky enough to have people who look after me in those times.
I imagine someone without my resources in my situation would just be fucked. And would not be contributing nearly as many data science dashboards to the economy.
I mean who else is supposed to solve social problems? Clearly not 'individuals' or whatever, because manifestly absent government intervention they haven't been able to solve them, otherwise they wouldn't exist
The government causes many of the problems. The "News" answer is never to stop doing stupid things.
Actually no, the solution is usually wait a few years and industry will solve it. That is unless you do something stupid like get regulators involved. Or more often even than that it's not even a problem where a solution is a reasonable thing to expect. How do you 'solve' a couple dozen people being unlucky enough to be struck by lightning every year? You don't. End of story. Any attempt would be idiotic.
Sure there are some problems were there just is no solution, but I don't think any MSM outlet would suggest otherwise. Clearly though, there are innumerable problems that industry has not simply solved, in many cases because industry has no incentive to resolve negative outcomes that aren't internalised. In general though, most 'big' problems are not new ones we just have to wait for industry to sort out, they're fairly long-running or sometimes getting worse.
In addition, even if that's sometimes true, which I concede it may be, coverage will inevitably be framed in terms of a government policy response because that's the only putative action one might consider taking.
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Notes -
Got to say all of Caplan's arguments seem a bit ridiculous. To go through his enumerated list of reasons;
Two problems here. Of course the news is going to have a slant towards bad news because notable events are usually bad things, though of course not always. What would Brian Caplan's news bulletins contain, reports on all the cities and countries were there were no terrorist attacks, wars didn't start and the economy was fine? That's not really news. Secondly, I don't think it's at all accurate that news promotes the view that life to terrible. While there is a slant towards 'negative' news if a viewer thinks that implies that things are in general bad and getting worse that's surely a fault of the viewer not of the coverage, because it doesn't imply that at all, it just as I say reflects the fact that newsworthy events are more likely to bad than good.
Again, while this is true this is simply the nature of news, not a problem specific to mainstream media. News is, by its nature, a record of events not an analysis of the general current state of affairs. Perhaps people should consume less news and more analysis, in fact they probably should, but again that's not really the fault of the organisations providing the news coverage.
Reasons 4 and 5 are basically the same thing, Caplan arguing that MSM puts everything in a negative light and places particular focus on whatever the 'current thing' is. Again I think these just complain about the nature of news, not the behaviour of MSM specifically.
Reason 2 is a bit different;
I mean who else is supposed to solve social problems? Clearly not 'individuals' or whatever, because manifestly absent government intervention they haven't been able to solve them, otherwise they wouldn't exist
Caplan re 2nd point would respond that government often (if not always) caused the problem. Or sometimes, just sometimes, it rooms communities time to solve problems (just like it takes time for government to “solve” problems).
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To answer your question of who could solve individual problems, usually individuals.
For example poverty can be solved by getting a job, avoiding drugs and not becoming a single mother.
Poor drinking water for an individual living in Flint can be solved for the individual by leaving Flint - it's not as if Michael Moore didnt give people a heads up about Flint 33 years ago.
Ok but clearly that's a non-answer because the problems still exist. If you want to say 'I think the problems continuing is better than any potential remedy' that's a fine argument to make, but individuals cannot be called upon to solve existing systemic problems. Poverty exists, so clearly letting individuals 'solve' it themselves has not worked.
Well my opinion is irrelevant. The poor people who are refusing to look for work are the ones deciding that problems continuing is better than the remedy. The folks refusing to leave Flint for San Antonio (or other functional city) are similarly the ones deciding they want the problem to continue.
Not sure I really catch your drift. Simply because the people of Flint weren't willing to uproot their entire lives to find better water that doesn't imply that the problem isn't important enough to be worth solving via government intervention.
Previously you said "individuals cannot be called upon to solve existing systemic problems" and "who else is supposed to solve social problems? Clearly not 'individuals' or whatever, because manifestly absent government intervention they haven't been able to solve them, otherwise they wouldn't exist".
But this is kind of silly, since they demonstrably can.
But you've now retreated to:
Or phrased differently, the people closest to the problem and with the most to gain from solving it have decided it's not worth exerting an ordinary level of effort to solve. That's a quite different claim.
Have you been mislead by journalists into not noticing this fact? I think that's what Caplan is complaining about.
When I say "ordinary level of effort" I mean a level of effort that is regularly exerted by a majority of Americans. The majority of Americans avoid poverty by working a job for most of the year, whereas the vast majority of poor Americans don't work by choice. (I.e. they are not looking for work.) The annual rate of inter-county moves in the US hit it's lowest in 2016 (at 5% of the US population), meaning that in 33 years the average American moved more than 1.7 times.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-189.html
You're right that individuals can demonstrably solve social problems. But it is not always demonstrable that individuals can solve social problems.
For example, I have ADHD. On days when I don't take my meds, I am literally less of an agent. I have less power to make choices happen. It's clear to me that agency is a spectrum. Just because someone could make a good choice in theory in a vacuum, doesn't actually mean they could make a good choice given the neurotransmitters presently available in their brains. Choices are made out of physical and psychological levers and dice that can be manipulated and stacked.
I'd note that childhood Lead exposure is famous for damaging the ability of humans to make rational choices, which makes the choice of Flint Michigan as an example an odd one.
Your idea of "an ordinary level of effort" is also very odd.
The typical response of a rat in a learned helplessness test is to lay down and rot. Is this the 'ordinary' level of effort? Of course not. The 'ordinary' rat is not subject to being trapped in a room with electric shocks until it's used to them. The idea of "an ordinary level of effort" being constantly looking for work is likely holding some similar assumption. These people could all be responding entirely 'typically'. 'Ordinary' is just a line drawn in the sand here.
The idea that Anyone who isn't looking for work is "not working by choice" is odd for another reason. Jobs exist in a market. Even a perfectly rational agent will notice that there are costs to finding a job and benefits to having one, and that if the costs or benefits change, the cost benefit analysis changes. A rational agent "choosing not to have a job" is making that choice in the context of the current market. It's not like they have the libertarian free will to snap their fingers and have a 100k salary. Systemic changes to the costs and benefits will change the number of rational agents looking for Jobs.
However, this isn't to say you're wrong either. For one, I've given examples of things that remove people's ability to make rational choices, and things that can cause your observations while being beyond an individual's power to change. But these aren't going to be responsible for everything. Some things are going to be things individuals can change, under the right circumstances. I only mean to point out that agency is a spectrum, and that spectrum responds to systemic changes.
But also- as you are also pointing out, Media response might still be part of what contributes to things like learned helplessness.
I notice the irony though, that if media response contributes to learned helplessness- this can still be framed as a systemic issue that could be affected by regulating the media.
If you want to claim that poor Americans and residents of Flint lack agency and cannot make good choices for themselves, then the natural question is why do we allow them the freedom to make choices?
My 2 year old daughter wants to watch TV and eat candy all day. But she is not competent to make that decision and has her freedom restricted.
Yes. It seems that for some folks, idleness (supplemented by wealth transfers) is more fun than work, and that's why we have poverty.
Which media do you believe is actually conveying this message?
Making choices isn't free. We don't just let people make them, we often make people make them. We haven't set things up to give everyone personalized think tank support yet.
Trust is also an issue. If I had a personalized think tank I'd want to be part of the process of personalizing it and so on. Ultimately we give people freedom because we value freedom, and not having to trust or depend on other people. Sometimes to a fault. Sometimes to our own societal detriment.
That is not what I said.
For one I'm explicitly avoiding any claims about what the situation actually is on average, or on a case by case basis, because I don't actually know.
But two, fun is far from the only factor in the cost benefit analysis I am describing.
Looking for a job is a cost. You don't actually do anything productive to society while looking for a job. Your cultivation options are limited while actively looking for a job. It's not worth very much to the person looking for a job or for anyone else in the economy until a job is actually acquired. Looking for a job is not always the best way to not die, or even the best way to contribute to society. In some cases, looking for a job is legitimately a waste of everyone's time, because the individual is worth little to employers and their time is worth more elsewhere. I'm not talking about playing video games here.
Not nearly convinced of that message but-
Yeah the media is fucked. The main issue is I don't see a way to gain epistemic certainty about the object level of anything politically charged by watching the news.
There might be some outlet that has a complete model of why people are poor. But it's not like I can tell without becoming an expert myself.
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Another situation that is sort of like the inverse of your ADHD meds is intoxication, often drunkenness. It is common for the law to distinguish between voluntary intoxication (I went to the bar and got drunk) and involuntary intoxication (I was at a party and someone spiked my nonalcoholic drink without my knowledge). With some edge-case exceptions, you're considered responsible for wrongdoing if you voluntarily became intoxicated, but not responsible if it was involuntary.
By a parallel construction, even if unmedicated ADHD causes a loss of agency, you might be considered responsible if your meds were available and you chose not to take them. (I think the Kanye situation is related--he's pretty severely bipolar, but unmedicated by choice, as the meds negatively affect his creativity. In my opinion, he gets to take the good with the bad in terms of being "publicly creative.")
In my case my meds stop working if I take them more than two days in a row, so I have to take off days during which I am less of a person and need more supervision.
I'm lucky enough to have people who look after me in those times.
I imagine someone without my resources in my situation would just be fucked. And would not be contributing nearly as many data science dashboards to the economy.
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The government causes many of the problems. The "News" answer is never to stop doing stupid things.
Ok but even in such cases the solution is a governmental policy response (albeit a 'negative' one, not just asking individuals to solve it.)
Actually no, the solution is usually wait a few years and industry will solve it. That is unless you do something stupid like get regulators involved. Or more often even than that it's not even a problem where a solution is a reasonable thing to expect. How do you 'solve' a couple dozen people being unlucky enough to be struck by lightning every year? You don't. End of story. Any attempt would be idiotic.
Sure there are some problems were there just is no solution, but I don't think any MSM outlet would suggest otherwise. Clearly though, there are innumerable problems that industry has not simply solved, in many cases because industry has no incentive to resolve negative outcomes that aren't internalised. In general though, most 'big' problems are not new ones we just have to wait for industry to sort out, they're fairly long-running or sometimes getting worse.
In addition, even if that's sometimes true, which I concede it may be, coverage will inevitably be framed in terms of a government policy response because that's the only putative action one might consider taking.
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Hence why Caplan says that silence is better than the news.
The problem is that he's criticising MSM specifically not just the idea of 'news' in general.
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