1. Noise, by Cass Sunstein, Daniel Kahneman, and Olivier Sibony. The first two authors are Fantasy Intellectual Teams selections. As I often do when reading, I skipped ahead to the conclusion. They make the point that algorithms can reduce noise relative to human judgment. Think of mortgage underwriting as an example.
Or think of deciding when a fantasy intellectual has earned a point for stating a Caveat. I think it would be possible to state the criteria in algorithmic terms. Then in theory one could use machine intelligence to assign points. That would be powerful.
2. High Conflict by Amanda Ripley and The Way Out by Peter Coleman. These are both inspired by the problem of political polarization and purport to offer solutions. The authors are familiar with one another’s work.
Ripley is also a FITs selection, and I have listened to some of the many podcasts that she has done on the book, in which she comes across as a careful thinker. She is a journalist, and she likes to convey ideas through specific cases. Some readers claim that she tries to squeeze too much out of a couple of them. I have not gotten far enough into the book to say.
Coleman is an academic, who likes to speak in abstractions. Here is a passage from p. 78 of The Way Out.
However, the bubble principle also suggests that in order to sustain any positive change in our situation resulting from building on what is working, it is paramount that we also seek to actively reduce the attraction of our more (now latent) detrimental tendencies. Therefore, we must also find ways to break down or otherwise diminish the attraction of the more destructive dynamics that are driving us to mitigate the worst inclinations of our system. These practices complicate the need to address these drivers upstream, away from the heat of the conflict, to minimize resistance. In addition, it stresses the importance of leveraging or expanding existing repellers or social taboos for engaging in more destructive political acts.
I am inclined to associate clarity of thought with clarity of writing. Even after reading the entire book, this passage is opaque to me. A couple of chapters of the book are worthwhile. But Coleman’s style is not to my taste.
I’m rereading Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, and the Coleman passage reminded me of the way one of the villains in the book talks.
Excellent observation. If Lewis was around today he’d be a FIT first rounder.
Bros got one too many negatives in this sentence: Therefore, we must also find ways to break down or otherwise diminish the attraction of the more destructive dynamics that are driving us to mitigate the worst inclinations of our system.
Amanda Ripley’s book _The unthinkable_ is one of the best written books I’ve encountered in the last 10+ years.
“I am inclined to associate clarity of thought with clarity of writing.”
That was my fear with this one. Impenetrable jargon covers up for lackluster thinking and demonstrated results.
For some reason, Haidt has been a strong proponent of this book. Maybe just a rare miss for him or maybe I’m missing something?
https://twitter.com/jonhaidt/status/1398399899109146627?s=21
A video of the conversation can be seen here.
Coleman speaks much clearer than he writes, but I couldn’t pick out anything new that hasn’t been said in the mutual promotion echo chambers / “amen corners” of a dozen other ‘tribalization’ / polarization books over the last decade.
Overall it was a pretty disappointing talk and often self-contradictory. Basically we should all be more Christian to each other. That reminds of what used to be an old, famous funny political quote but which I can’t find now, which was some good ol’ boy American politician or diplomat mediating some Israeli-Arab conflict, something like, “They should come together and talk out their differences like good Christians.”
David Friedman has a great book, “Legal Systems Very Different From Ours.” Maybe he should write a follow-up, “Ethical Systems Very Different From Ours”, so people can better acquaint themselves with the actual cultural and ideological diversity which existed historically and realize many of the moral frameworks and assumptions they take for granted are based on one particular inheritance which is fading because no longer compelling, as the the basis for widespread adherence among elites has completely disappeared.
They both agreed Social Media has to be ‘regulated’, but alas, in dumb ways that have little to do with their explication of the problem. Haidt wants ‘know your customer’ rules and real-life-identity verification in order to post. I just don’t think he’s thought this through at all.
Well, first, it’d be nice if cancel culture was not a thing, but as Haidt knows all too well, it is. But second, he makes it seem like the real problem is ‘Russian’ trolls and bots, but in fact, most of the views and retweets are precisely to the “conflict entrepreneurs” using their own names as part of their public brand. KYC would mean the only people incentivized to be brave enough to state controversial opinions would be precisely the one about to compensate for the risks because they are the ones capitalizing on ramping up conflict.
Coleman talks about disengagement with people whose minds you don’t expect to change, which is not necessarily bad advice, but it would probably just reinforce what he decries as the sorting into de facto ideological apartheid and segregation into separate infosphere bubbles.
However, that does bring up what I regard as the sine qua non of good faith intellectual argumentation, the “explicitly conditional open mind”, that is, demonstrating reasonableness and providing a productive direction for dialogue by laying down a marker in advance of what it would take for one to change one’s mind about the most reasonable belief on a certain subject.
But I didn’t hear either of them recommend people do that, and instead they seemed to denigrate the value of adversarial debate yet again, without indicating what institutional substitute for criticism and counterargument there would be that imposes costs on errors needed to encourage rigor. Right now a lot of people get away with a lot of nonsense precisely because they face an uncontested domain and don’t have to worry about criticism.
That certainly appears to be a discerning reading list. Unfortunately, reading is now one of the few escapes from the toxic USA culture available so I have lately been spending most of my time with literature.
The authoritative Roger Kimball recently deemed Isabel Colegate the best current novelist in english so I read a sampling of her work which was fine indeed but not of a quality that would lead me to regret ignoring other living novelists writing in english. I also read her excellent A Pelican in the Wilderness and that inspired me to revisit some classics that I had last read decades ago: Flaubert’s Temptation of St Anthony, Tolstoy’s Father Sergius, and for reasons unclear Turgenev’s Smoke. All three were much more resonant in my dotage than they had been in my youth. And of course I continue to make slow but steady progress with The Human Comedy.
I have not completely ignored the political. Finally got around to Howard Fast’s novel Citizen Tom Paine which was entertaining. Cannot recommend Kaye’s Thomas Paine and the Promise of America which was agenda driven. I much prefer Craig Nelson’s book among the USA books on Paine. Carruther’s The English Civil War was an interesting look at those conflicts from a military battlefield perspective.
A free copy of Eraly’s Gem in the Lotus fell in my lap which added a lot to my knowledge of India’s history. One really can’t read too much about India. Endlessly fascinating.
Next up is William Cobbet’s Rural Rides.
Also ditto on Handle’s comment on David Friedman’s legal systems book.