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.
We haven't set things up to give everyone personalized think tank support yet.
I'm not proposing personalized think tank support, merely in loco parentis. If a person is part of this "unable to make good choices" class, they get to live in an institutionalized environment where important choices are made for them. They don't make the choice to overconsume soda and other junk food (as the current poor do), they get to pick a few options off a menu in a healthy food cafeteria. They don't get to control their own TV, there's a TV that plays wholesome programming a couple of hours a day and they don't get to use it if they don't participate in exercise and productive labor. Etc.
In short, the setup my 2 year old lives with.
Looking for a job is a cost. You don't actually do anything productive to society while looking for a job.
Yes, searching for something isn't productive until you find it. But refusing to search is a great way to ensure that you won't find it.
Looking for full time work (or having a job) at least 27 weeks/year is a 97.3% effective way to avoid poverty in the US.
In contrast, about 21% of people outside the labor force were poor. (28M poor people outside the labor force as per BLS report above) / (330M people x 40% outside the labor force).
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.
Why am I unsurprised you don't know? But it's actually not hard to know - it's pretty well documented that the situation is "drugs and video games are fun".
I suppose a theoretical alternative explanation is that jobs have suddenly become far more dangerous and people are becoming injured and turning to drugs to cope with pain. This change happened concurrently with the available jobs shifting away from factories/coal mines and towards air conditioned offices. Using a laptop is dangerous I guess!
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.
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.
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
I'm not proposing personalized think tank support, merely in loco parentis. If a person is part of this "unable to make good choices" class, they get to live in an institutionalized environment where important choices are made for them. They don't make the choice to overconsume soda and other junk food (as the current poor do), they get to pick a few options off a menu in a healthy food cafeteria. They don't get to control their own TV, there's a TV that plays wholesome programming a couple of hours a day and they don't get to use it if they don't participate in exercise and productive labor. Etc.
In short, the setup my 2 year old lives with.
Yes, searching for something isn't productive until you find it. But refusing to search is a great way to ensure that you won't find it.
Looking for full time work (or having a job) at least 27 weeks/year is a 97.3% effective way to avoid poverty in the US.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2019/home.htm
In contrast, about 21% of people outside the labor force were poor. (28M poor people outside the labor force as per BLS report above) / (330M people x 40% outside the labor force).
Why am I unsurprised you don't know? But it's actually not hard to know - it's pretty well documented that the situation is "drugs and video games are fun".
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23552/w23552.pdf https://qz.com/1070206/nearly-half-of-working-age-american-men-who-are-out-of-the-labor-force-are-using-painkillers-daily https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/video-killed-radio-star
I suppose a theoretical alternative explanation is that jobs have suddenly become far more dangerous and people are becoming injured and turning to drugs to cope with pain. This change happened concurrently with the available jobs shifting away from factories/coal mines and towards air conditioned offices. Using a laptop is dangerous I guess!
Perhaps you should speak plainly and be specific.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link