A man at the bar is complaining: “You see that bridge there?
asserted
You → complain → bridge
I built it with my own hands!
asserted
I → build → hands
But do they call me ‘MacGregor The Bridge-Builder’?
asserted
they → call → me
And I raised five beautiful children!
asserted
I → raise → children
But do they call me ‘MacGregor The Child-Raiser’?
asserted
they → call → me
But, you fuck one sheep . . .”
asserted
you → fuck → sheep
Has MacGregor been treated unfairly?
asserted
MacGregor → treat → ?
This was my complaint in The Beauty Of Settled Science.
asserted
This → settle → Science
Psychology laid bare the secrets of the brain - it performs computations through a neural network communicating via electrical impulses intermediated by neurotransmitters crossing synaptic gaps - but do they call it Psychology The Brain-Secret-Revealer?
asserted
they → lay → Psychology
Its concepts have turned into the categories that ordinary people use to interpret the world - extraverts, ingroups, the unconscious, IQ, Pavlovian conditioning - but do they call it Psychology The Useful Concept Creator?
asserted
they → turn → Psychology
But you do one (thousand) bad social priming studies!
asserted
you → do → studies
I had the same complaint in In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism.
asserted
I → have → Altruism
Nobody has the slightest interest in the first-order effects of effective altruism - the hundreds of thousands of lives saved - but you buy one castle!
asserted
you → have → castle
Even capitalism is a sort of MacGregor - the average kid these days seems to think of it as centrally about Mark Zuckerberg stealing your data, rather than about whether you have electricity at all, or whether you die from cholera at age three because your country is too poor to afford health care.
asserted
country → seem → care
Someone or something spends years, decades, or centuries doing amazing work, winning victory after victory, and it all fades into noise, leaving the topic to be identified entirely with last week’s tawdry scandal.
asserted
topic → spend → scandal
You judge someone by their single worst and most embarrassing action.
asserted
You → judge → action
At its worst, the victim gets fired, but that part is hardly necessary.
asserted
part → fire → worst
For a while, the culture enforced conformity just by making sure that the slightest deviation would become 100% of your reputation.
asserted
become → enforce → reputation
Write 100 great blog posts on technical topics, 100 orthodox liberal blog posts, and one blog post expressing where you disagreed with feminism, and for the rest of your life the media would introduce you as “So-and-so, known for his anti-feminist blogging…”
asserted
media → write → blogging
Everyone knew this would happen, and it was more than enough to produce chilling effects even without the immediate job loss.
asserted
it → know → loss
One time we invited Richard Hanania to a prediction market conference.
asserted
we → invite → conference
There were five or six news articles about it, and I can’t remember whether any of them mentioned the word “prediction”.
asserted
any → be → word
As far as our reputation was concerned, it had become the Richard Hanania Conference For Richard Hananias.
asserted
it → concern → Hananias
You invent an amazing new form of forecasting, incubate multibillion dollar startups, accidentally get thousands of people addicted to sports gambling - but you invite one conservative!
asserted
you → invent → conservative
If you allow this sort of thing, you can discredit any individual, field, or movement.
asserted
you → allow → individual
Nobody is perfect enough to survive having every good thing they’ve ever done swept to one side while people hyperfocus on a single indiscretion.
asserted
people → survive → indiscretion
In this sense, the dynamic that MacGregor points out is antithetical to human freedom.
asserted
MacGregor → point → freedom
On the other hand, I do this all the time and don’t feel bad about it.
asserted
I → do → it
For example, I assume Anthony Weiner had a rich and diverse career full of many highs, lows, accomplishments, and defeats.
asserted
Weiner → assume → highs
He even spent twelve years in Congress - for all I know, he saved taxpayers billions of dollars, or created new social programs to help the neediest among us, or cut red tape to unleash some new form of economic dynamism.
asserted
he → spend → dynamism
Maybe he burnt himself out over years, spending late nights hunched over his desk trying to get the text of some bill exactly right, stressed to the point of ulceration about the possibility of failing in his duty to the American people.
asserted
text → burn → people
I have no idea.
asserted
I → have → idea
All I know about him is that he kept sending pictures of his penis to women who were not his wife, and that one of these times, it had an indirect but significant effect on the 2016 presidential election.
asserted
it → know → election
Am I being a bad and unfair person for not caring too much about the rest of his Congressional career, let alone whether he is a good husband or a good father or a dutiful son or loves volleyball or collects stamps or otherwise has a multifaceted life?
asserted
he → care → life
If I were to force myself to regard Anthony Weiner as a complex individual - maybe go over his Wikipedia page and carefully read every section except Scandals - it would feel like exactly that: forcing myself.
asserted
it → force → myself
Even after doing this (I tried it as an experiment) I’m still unable to think of him in any terms besides “generic Congressman who did various generic Congressman things and then had some extremely nominative deterministic sex scandals”.
asserted
who → do → scandals
Apparently he fought hard for health care for 9-11 first responders, good job Representative Weiner, too bad I am going to forget about that literally the moment I stop typing this sentence.
asserted
I → fight → sentence
Trying to temper judgment this way feels like violence against my brain’s attention heads, the sort of thing that would turn me into an opinionless zombie.
asserted
that → try → zombie
(It’s the same with people who make one nasty barb on Twitter.
asserted
who → ’ → Twitter
No matter what else they accomplish, they will always and forever be “that one guy who called my friend an ignorant buffoon that one time”.
asserted
who → accomplish → friend
…and 3 more, not listed.
