Quotulatiousness

April 26, 2023

Lowered standards, lowered trust, and the US military

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Free Press, Rob Henderson considers the changes in how the US military recruits for the various branches now that patriotism is a word only used ironically in scare quotes:

Uncle Sam wants YOU
Iconic recruiting image used in the First and Second World Wars.

The military can’t meet its recruitment goals. Too many young people are too fat, do drugs, or have a criminal record. This has been a problem for years. It’s now approaching a crisis.

To address the recruitment shortfall, the military has reduced previous standards for entry, allowing men to be 6 percent fatter (and women, 8 percent). It is also trying hard to lure recruits by appealing to their self-interest, with a video of individual soldiers speaking to the camera, encouraging candidates to find “the power to discover, to redefine yourself, to improve yourself, to challenge yourself” and “to realize there’s more in you than you ever knew that you could do”. Recruits can also win up to $50,000 bonus money for enlisting.

But this strategy carries a big risk: young adults tend to be less loyal to organizations with lowered standards that target their personal motives. Study after study has shown as much.

As the University of Toronto psychologist Paul Bloom has written, “If entering the group required a thumbs-up and a five-dollar entry fee, anyone could do it; it wouldn’t filter the dedicated from the slackers. But choosing to go through something humiliating or painful or disfiguring is an excellent costly signal, because only the truly devoted would want to do it.”

In other words, by lowering the barrier to entry, the military has opened itself up to more recruits like Jack Teixeira.

No one knows exactly why Teixeira, 21, the Massachusetts Air National Guard airman, allegedly leaked classified information about the CIA, exposing our intelligence on Russia, South Korea, Israel, and Ukraine. He is now cooling his heels in prison, charged with violating the Espionage Act for spilling state secrets on the gaming platform Discord.

The Tucker Carlson right and the Glenn Greenwald left have come to a similar conclusion: that Teixeira is a kind of folk hero. Greenwald recently stated that, much like Edward Snowden, Teixeira aimed to “undermine the agenda of these [intelligence] agencies and prove to the American people what the truth is”. And it’s hard to imagine any Republican ten years ago making the argument that Marjorie Taylor Greene did — that the “Biden regime” considers Teixeira an enemy of the state because he is “white, male, [C]hristian, and antiwar”. Regardless of their specific reasons, this bipartisan agreement that Teixeira should be applauded is emblematic of a broader lack of confidence in the American government and our military.

In recent years, support for the military has plummeted more than in any other American institution — with 45 percent of Americans voicing trust in the armed forces in 2021 versus 70 percent in 2018. This decline is almost entirely due to younger Americans: among those 18 to 44, confidence in all the branches of the military is in the low- to mid-40 percent range; for those 45 and up, it’s in the 80 percent range, according to a 2022 YouGov survey.

This decline in support for the military coincides with declining patriotism among young Americans: 40 percent of Gen Zers (those born from 1997 to 2012) believe the Founding Fathers are more accurately characterized as villains, not heroes, according to psychologist Jean Twenge’s forthcoming book, Generations.

March 14, 2023

Turkey has always been the awkward ally in NATO, but for how much longer?

Filed under: Europe, Middle East, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Strategika, Zafiris Rossidis examines the shift of Turkish sentiment away from its longstanding role in the NATO alliance and toward a more Russian-friendly and more independent stance in international affairs:

Turkish flag.
Photo by Burak Su via Wikimedia Commons.

A poll conducted in December 2022 by the Turkish company Gezici found that 72.8% of Turkish citizens polled were in favor of good relations with Russia. By comparison, nearly 90% perceive the United States as a hostile country. It also revealed that 24.2% of citizens believe that Russia is hostile, while 62.6% believe that Russia is a friendly country. Similarly, more than 60% of respondents said that Russia contributes positively to the Turkish economy.

Turkey began to distance itself from the United States as early as 2003, when it refused the passage of American troops to Iraq. In 2010, it destroyed the U.S.–Israel–Turkey triangle, breaking up with Israel. In 2011, Turkey implemented a policy in Syria that was hardly in line with U.S. interests. The final distancing took place in 2016, with the July coup, for which Turkey blamed the United States.

Turkey considers itself very important to the United States but declares that Ankara can live without Washington. This concept has become the point of departure for Turkey in its quest to reconstitute the Ottoman Empire. Minister of the Interior Süleyman Soylu declares that the Turkish government will design the new world order with the help of Allah, and Western powers will eat the dust behind almighty Turkey (December 8, 2022).

According to a RAND Corporation volume on Turkey, there are four scenarios for the future of Turkish strategic orientation: 1) Turkey will remain a difficult partner for the United States; 2) Turkey will become democratic and unite with the West; 3) Turkey will be between East and West, but have better relations with powers such as China, Iran, and Russia, than with the U.S. and the EU; and 4) Turkey will completely abandon the West.

From the evidence in the case of the Russian–Ukrainian war, Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran justify the Russian invasion since NATO and the EU have designs on their neighborhood. Above all, they are united by a common hatred for the West. They are frenemies and they know it: on the contrary, the U.S. tends to invest in frenemies as if they were true friends.

The U.S. observed the rapprochement of Turkey and Russia without renouncing the traditional alliance with Turkey, which today has no longer such importance. Turkey was useful when it was an “enemy” of the USSR and the U.S. made far too many concessions for the sake of this useful enmity. In short, there is some inertia in the modification of the principle “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, as of course “the friend of a friend is my friend”. Turkey’s role in NATO worries the U.S., as Ankara–Moscow relations have acquired some shared strategic characteristics.

?he attraction between the two countries lies in their equally authoritarian governance models and the fact that their strategic culture and operational codes bear similarities: Both countries are revisionist, aggressive, and assertive in their regions; both countries claim to be encircled, which they use as a pretext for their unilateral actions; and both countries have militarized their foreign policy, waging hybrid warfare, resorting to proxy warfare, and blackmailing countries that offer resistance. Russia and Turkey cooperate on natural gas and oil pipelines; Russia has sold weapons such as the S-400 missile system to Turkey; Russia has provided technical assistance in the construction of Turkey’s nuclear plants; the two nations have collaborated in Central Asia (i.e., Azerbaijan); they import and export each other’s commodities; and Turkey has illegally transported Russian fuel to China and Iran, thereby bypassing sanctions on Russia, to mention only a few.

But the big issue for U.S.–Turkey relations against the backdrop of the Russian–Ukrainian war has four strands: First, the issue of the important role Turkey plays in the grain export agreement, which if cancelled will create a food crisis in Africa. Second, Turkey’s blackmailing of the NATO candidacies of Sweden and Finland. Third, the Turkish application to purchase the F-16 and the possible conflict between Congress and the Biden administration over the administration’s request to grant Turkey the license to do so. Finally, Turkey’s non-adoption of NATO sanctions against Russia. The possibility of Erdoğan using a strategy of tensions with Greece (e.g., multiple violations of Greek airspace, aggressiveness in the Aegean, weaponization of immigration, threats of bombing Athens with the new “Tayfun” short-range ballistic missile) to rally the electorate around his party and detach it from any opposition — all recent polls have AKP trailing the opposition — prior to the June election is one explanation for Turkey’s behavior that is being considered by the U.S., which nonetheless is angered that Turkey is the only NATO country that has not adopted the sanctions against Russia.

March 11, 2023

British attitudes to crime differ substantially between average Britons and the ruling elite

Filed under: Britain, Government, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Scott Alexander does a monthly roundup of interesting links and this one popped up for his March collection:

Looks like the British population is tough on crime (h/t James Johnson):

… including about 15% who want prison time for not wearing a seatbelt, 47% who want prison time for sexist abuse on social media, and 80% who want prison time for possession of a knife (and 18% think it should be over five years)! Meanwhile, in actual Britain, a guy with multiple previous violence convictions who brutally assaulted a cyclist and then stomped on her head while she lay unconscious was let off with community service. This is an interesting contrast to see in a democracy!

As an illustration of the rift between the people who suffer from the criminal and sub-criminal activities of the “non-law-abiding community” and those who are fully insulated from that same community, this is pretty typical. Very similar rifts would almost certainly be found in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. When you have no skin in the game, you can let your virtue signalling freak flag fly, and our elites have no skin in the game.

February 3, 2023

A spectre is haunting Ontario politics: the spectre of [Shock! Horror!] American-style healthcare!

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Everyone in Canada has heard alarming stories of people in the United States being presented with five- or six-figure bills for hospital care, and any hint that one of our provincial healthcare systems might move in that direction scares the pants off almost everyone. Politicians know this well, and salivate at the chance of deploying charges that their opponents favour “American-style” changes to our system because it’s a guaranteed vote-winner. None of it has to be true — very few Canadians know much about US systems aside from the horror stories — but it’s always effective.

In The Line, Harrison Ruess makes the sensible point that there are more healthcare systems in the western world than those of Canadian provinces and our closest neighbour:

Toronto General Hospital in 2005.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

First, to be emphatic on this point, we need to be realistic about where our system ranks globally.

It is truly bewildering to me the lengths that otherwise smart and empathetic Canadians will go to to defend the status-quo approach to health care in Canada. The results we get, versus the money we spend, is simply not brag-worthy. The argument that our system works great, if only we threw more money at it, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Is our health care okay? Sure. Decent? Probably. Is it great? Hardly. Could we do better? Yes, much. Do we need to spend more? Maybe a tad, but not likely much, if any. To wit:

    According to OECD data, on life expectancy Canada ranks 16th. On mortality rates from avoidable causes, we’re 23rd. On cancer survival rates we range from 13th down to 18th, depending on the cancer type. On the number of one-year-olds vaccinated for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, we rank an abysmal 37th (even the U.S. is higher here at 27th. Gulp.). One area where we do rank closer to the top is spending as a proportion of GDP, where we sit seventh.

World Health Organization (WHO) data wasn’t any more flattering, where Canada’s health care ranked 30th in overall performance despite being 10th in spending. The Commonwealth Fund ranks Canada 10th out of 11 in performance and 6th out of 11 in spending. In report after report Canadians aren’t getting the outcomes we need or want based on the money we’re spending on our current system.

Besides for reasons of nostalgia, why would anyone spend their energy defending these sorts of results? “We’re 16th! We’re 16th!” is hardly a chant you’d hear at a rally. It’s time to do better. And I get the feeling most people recognize this – certainly when you get onto Main Street.

Ipsos polling from December 2021 reported that 55 per cent of Canadians are “somewhat satisfied” with their health care, alongside 22 per cent that are “somewhat dissatisfied.” I.e. three quarters of Canadians find themselves in the middle of the road on the quality of our health care. This seems about right — mediocre support for mediocre health care. (The strongly satisfied and strongly dissatisfied were about even, at 12 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.)

But today Canadians are also, rightly, very worried. Leger polling in January 2023 showed that 86 per cent of Canadians are worried about the state of our health care.

December 29, 2022

Selection bias in polling

Filed under: Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander points out that it’s impossible to do any kind of poll without some selection bias, so you can’t automatically dismiss any given poll on that basis. The kind of selection bias, however, may indicate whether the results will have any relationship to reality:

The real studies by professional scientists usually use Psych 101 students at the professional scientists’ university. Or sometimes they will put up a flyer on a bulletin board in town, saying “Earn $10 By Participating In A Study!” in which case their population will be selected for people who want $10 (poor people, bored people, etc). Sometimes the scientists will get really into cross-cultural research, and retest their hypothesis on various primitive tribes — in which case their population will be selected for the primitive tribes that don’t murder scientists who try to study them. As far as I know, nobody in history has ever done a psychology study on a truly representative sample of the world population.

This is fine. Why?

Selection bias is disastrous if you’re trying to do something like a poll or census. That is, if you want to know “What percent of Americans own smartphones?” then any selection at all limits your result. The percent of Psych 101 undergrads who own smartphones is different from the percent of poor people who want $10 who own smartphones, and both are different from the percent of Americans who own smartphones. The same is potentially true about “how many people oppose abortion?” or “what percent of people are color blind?” or anything else trying to find out how common something is in the population. The only good ways to do this are a) use a giant government dataset that literally includes everyone, b) hire a polling company like Gallup which has tried really hard to get a panel that includes the exact right number of Hispanic people and elderly people and homeless people and every other demographic, c) do a lot of statistical adjustments and pray.

Selection bias is fine-ish if you’re trying to do something like test a correlation. Does eating bananas make people smarter because something something potassium? Get a bunch of Psych 101 undergrads, test their IQs, and ask them how many bananas they eat per day (obviously there are many other problems with this study, like establishing causation — let’s ignore those for now). If you find that people who eat more bananas have higher IQ, then fine, that’s a finding. If you’re right about the mechanism (something something potassium), then probably it should generalize to groups other than Psych 101 undergrads. It might not! But it’s okay to publish a paper saying “Study Finds Eating Bananas Raises IQ” with a little asterisk at the bottom saying “like every study ever done, we only tested this in a specific population rather than everyone in the world, and for all we know maybe it isn’t true in other populations, whatever.” If there’s some reason why Psych 101 undergrads are a particularly bad population to test this in, and any other population is better, then you should use a different population. Otherwise, choose your poison.

December 19, 2022

QotD: When reality fails to follow the model, ditch reality

Filed under: Education, Politics, Quotations, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Alexander wept, for he saw there were no more worlds to conquer …

I get that, man. On some fundamental level. But that makes me a generally unhappy guy. So it is, so it has always been.

For whatever reason, the Leftist is able to externalize that. If there are no more worlds to conquer, well, that’s the world’s fault. I remember hanging out with some of the Political Science goofs at Flyover State. For whatever reason, they rank pretty high for Poli Sci — their department developed some measure of whatzit to better analyze the doodad, you know how it goes, the Karl Roves and James Carvilles of the world all use it.

Anyway, this was 2004, when George W. Bush won his reelection campaign against Kerry. Exactly zero of the Flyover State Poli Sci goofs predicted that. They were all certain that Kerry was cruising to victory. When I pointed out that this seems to be a BIG flaw in their precious model — the election wasn’t even particularly close — their response was instructive: It wasn’t the model’s fault. Rather, it’s that the American public chose to throw a temper tantrum.

That’s seriously what they went with. There’s the actual, observed behavior of 70 million people; and there’s your model; and when the one contradicts the other, the only possible explanation is: All those people are idiots.

(One of those grad students I was talking to ended up doing something “unofficial” yet fairly important for the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016; if I’d known that, I could’ve called it for Trump at the very start of election and made a fortune on prop bets).

It’s probably genetic for them, too. Which is either hopeful or depressing, depending, but I think it answers the question: Why does society end up being ruled by Very Clever Boys? They just can’t do anything else. They can’t internalize; they have game the system. Have to. A society that wants to survive must find a system for them to game, somewhere far isolated from the real affairs of people.

Severian, “Me vs. The World”, Founding Questions, 2022-09-14.

November 16, 2022

“Angertainment is unlikely the sole cause of US political polarisation, but it certainly hasn’t helped”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Quillette, Claire Lehmann rounds up the rising distrust/disgust among the American public in their views of the legacy media:

In October, a study published in PLOS One provided some fresh insight into how and why American media has become so dysfunctional. Over the past 20 years, the study reported, headlines that convey anger, fear, sadness, and disgust have been increasing, while headlines conveying neutrality or joy have been in decline. These trends have coincided with a massive drop in trust in news journalism, particularly in the US.

According to Gallop polling, seven percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” of trust in the media, while 38 percent say they have none at all. As angertainment has increased, trust has decreased. As one political tribe provides angertainment for its loyal readers and viewers, the other becomes increasingly alarmed and disgusted. Angertainment may be profitable for journalism in the short-term but over the long-term it trashes the integrity of the profession.

Angertainment is unlikely the sole cause of US political polarisation, but it certainly hasn’t helped. Just as mad cow disease was caused by feeding bovine-meal to cows, angertainment feeds on polarisation which in turn feeds on angertainment. It’s a cannibalistic cycle.

[…]

The incentives for journalism are broken. This is not always the fault of individual journalists, although some strive for truth and accuracy with more sincerity than others. Nor is it solely the fault of media companies, although many of them prioritise profit and engagement over rigour and fairness. It is not even the fault of “Big Tech”, even though social media companies have built the machine on which these broken incentives run.

It’s the fault of all of us. We are the ones who devour angertainment and get high on watching our enemies suffer. We are the ones who want to see various idiots eviscerated and dismembered by the bayonets of Twitter. We are the ones who clamour after content which makes us feel virtuous, complacent, and like we belong. The 20-year incline in headlines denoting fear, anger, disgust, and sadness in American media would not have occurred if audiences had not been rewarding it. In a competitive eco-system, media organisations must adapt to their audiences, feed them what they want, or die. But like the cows feeding on the meat-and-bone meal of other cows, this feedback loop creates the cultural equivalent of a neurodegenerative disease.

I have been just as guilty of this as any other publisher, consumer, or creator of media. But in recent months I’ve largely stepped back from social media, stood outside this machine, and have watched it whir and whizz from the sidelines. It is possible to disengage and reconsider the machine from a safe distance, starving it of fuel. And every day at Quillette I am reminded by my writers and readers and subscribers that it is possible to publish and create journalism that is appreciated for its analytical and aesthetic value, rather than for the artillery it provides in a never-ending culture war. It’s a war in which facts and reputations exist merely as cannon fodder, and where truth is less important than tribe. The media’s incentives may be broken, but we as individuals do not have to be.

September 17, 2022

Is it still a conspiracy theory if more than 50% of Canadians believe it?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Chris Selley posted a link to this rather eye-opening Abacus Data poll summary by Bruce Anderson and David Coletto:

We recently completed nationwide surveying among 1500 Canadians. The focus was on the levels of trust people have in institutional sources of information, and belief in conspiracy theories. This is the first in a series called “Trust & Facts: What Canadians Believe”

44% THINK MUCH OF THE INFORMATION FROM NEWS ORGANIZATIONS IS FALSE

Almost half of those interviewed found themselves agreeing with the statement “much of the information we receive from news organizations is false”.

While this means a majority of Canadians have some trust in news organizations, more than 13 million adults (extrapolating 44% to an adult population of 29.5 million) don’t.

Those with no post-secondary education, Alberta residents and those on the right show greater mistrust. But by far the biggest differences are visible when we look at party affinity. The vast majority of People’s Party supporters don’t trust news organizations and a (smaller) majority – 59% – of Conservative voters feel the same way.

Among those who think Pierre Poilievre is the Conservative leadership candidate who best reflects their views, 55% don’t trust media information, while among those who identify with Jean Charest the proportion is much lower, at 27%.

52% THINK OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTS OF EVENTS CAN’T BE TRUSTED

More than half of those interviewed found themselves agreeing with the statement “official government accounts of events can’t be trusted”

As with trust in news organizations, those with no post-secondary education, Alberta residents and those on the right showed markedly higher levels of mistrust in government.

Majorities of People’s Party, Conservative and Green Party voters indicate mistrust. Those on the left and Liberal voters show higher levels of trust.

September 4, 2022

Who was reading during Plague Year Two, and what format did they prefer?

Filed under: Books, Business, Cancon — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest edition of the SHuSH newsletter, Kenneth Whyte summarizes some of the findings of the most recent Booknet survey:

H/T to Marc Adkins who shared this meme at the perfect moment for me to steal it, file off the serial number and repost it here.

A few months ago, BookNet Canada, which does a lot of valuable research into the book market, released the 2021 edition of its annual survey of Canadian leisure and reading habits. It’s always an interesting study. I was slow getting to it this year because there’s been so much else going on. Here are the ten most interesting findings.

  1. Canadians have had plenty of time on their hands: 81 per cent report having enough or more than enough leisure. Pre-COVID, about 25 per cent of respondents said they had more-than-enough; during COVID, that jumped to about 35 per cent. The pandemic wasn’t all bad.
  2. Canadians read books more than they listen to radio or play video games but less than they shop or cook; 42 per cent of us (led by 58 per cent of the 65-plus crowd) read books daily; 35 per cent of the 18-29 age group read daily and 57 per cent of that cohort read at least once a week. Young people are no more likely to read books less than once a month than any other under-65 segment, which bodes well for the future of the industry.
  3. The statement “books are for enjoyment, entertainment, or leisure” received a ‘yes’ from 62 per cent of respondents, and a ‘sometimes’ from 34 per cent; the statement “books are for learning or education” received a ‘yes’ from 41 per cent of respondents and a ‘sometimes’ from 50 per cent.
  4. The top reasons for selecting a book to read are the author (40 per cent), the book’s description (30 per cent), recommendations (25 per cent), the main character or the series (20 per cent), its bestselling status (14 per cent), and reference needs (13 per cent). “Recommendations and the impact of bestseller lists have trended down from 2019 to 2021.”
  5. The love affair with print continues with 68 per cent of readers citing hard copies as their preferred format. Ebooks came in at 16 per cent and audiobooks at 10 per cent Interestingly, readers had a marked preference for paperbacks over hardcovers. Format preferences differ from age group to age group, with some evidence that the kids might not be keen on physical books:

I was interested in that apparent rejection of physical books by the 18-29 cohort so I looked back at the last two years of the survey […] The results are quite different, suggesting a methodological shortcoming (the survey sample is 1,282 adults so the margin of error will be large when you eliminate those who don’t read a given format, those without format preferences, and break the remainder down into five age groups).

August 27, 2022

On the verge of leaving No. 10 Downing St., Boris is still Tory voters’ top choice

Filed under: Britain, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In UnHerd, Dominic Sandbrook discusses the astonishing popularity of disgraced Tory PM Boris Johnson among ordinary Tory voters:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson at his first Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, 25 July 2019.
Official photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

With just over a week to go until the climax of the Conservative leadership contest, the name of the people’s favourite is surely not in doubt. After five ballots of MPs, weeks of campaigning and more than ten public hustings, the will of the members could not be clearer. The punters have weighed up the two candidates, examined their pasts, studied their principles and reflected on their promises. And faced with a choice between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, the finger of fate points to … Boris Johnson!

Such is the implication of a recent YouGov survey, which found that fully 49% of Tory members would choose as their leader the darling of the Greek tavernas, if only he were allowed to run – a higher proportion than those backing Sunak and Truss put together. And as The Times reported earlier this week, this was echoed in findings of focus groups among swing voters, who seem exceptionally unenthusiastic about either of Johnson’s potential successors.

Again and again, in fact, the same theme appears: Boris was robbed. “I really liked Boris and I was really, really disappointed in the way he was treated,” said one swing voter in Esher and Walton, speaking for the rest. “They’re picking on minor things. You know, furnishings and wallpaper and making such a big deal about it. And it’s the media. The media are the ones that turn everyone against him.”

Was Boris robbed, though? You didn’t often hear that line in June and July, when he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote, led his party to crushing defeats in the Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton by-elections and was forced to watch the collapse of his government as some 31 ministers from all sides of the party, equating to just over a quarter of his entire administration, resigned in protest. On 7 July, the day he finally threw in the towel, YouGov found that his public favourability had sunk to truly diabolical levels, with just 19% having a positive view, and fully 72% a negative one. That made Johnson even more unpopular than Theresa May just before she quit, and almost as unpopular as Jeremy Corbyn at his nadir. So much, then, for the populist hero of the Red Wall masses.

And yet, as extraordinary as it may sound, the Big Dog’s fightback began that very afternoon. The opening shots came as he stood outside 10 Downing Street, reminding the cameras of his “incredible mandate: the biggest Conservative majority since 1987, the biggest share of the vote since 1979”. Then came Johnson’s insistence that it was “eccentric to change governments when we are delivering so much”, and his dismissal of the Westminster “herd” that had moved against him. And then, in his final Prime Minister’s Questions appearance a fortnight later, came those ominous words “Mission accomplished, for now”, as well as that classic Johnsonian sign-off: “Hasta la vista, baby.” The only surprise is that he didn’t use another Terminator payoff: “I’ll be back.”

Ever since, the idea that Boris was robbed, cheated, stabbed in the back has been gathering force. The Tory tabloids insist that he was the victim of a “putsch“, while his adoring Culture Secretary, the ridiculous Nadine Dorries, maintains that he was removed by a “ruthless coup” led largely by Sunak. And among Tory activists, the idea that he was toppled by a sinister media campaign has almost visibly gathered strength — enthusiastically fed, it has to be said, by Liz Truss. When, at one Tory hustings earlier this month, the former Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn asked if Johnson had been the author of his own downfall, an activist shouted that it was “the media”. “Sounds like you’re being blamed, Tom,” said Truss with a smirk, “and who am I to disagree with this excellent audience?”

August 12, 2022

Testing the old saying about those who believe in nothing will believe anything

Filed under: Media, Politics, Religion, Science, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander considers the old saying — often mis-attributed to G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis:

There’s a popular saying among religious apologists:

    Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything.

Big talk, although I notice that this is practically always attributed to one of GK Chesterton or CS Lewis, neither of whom actually said it. If you’re making strong claims about how everybody except you is gullible, you should at least bother to double-check the source of your quote.

Still, it’s worth examining as a hypothesis. Are the irreligious really more likely to fall prey to woo and conspiracy theories?

This Economist article examined the question and concluded the opposite. See especially this graph:

“White evangelicals” are more likely to believe most measured conspiracy theories, and churchgoers were more likely to believe in QAnon in particular.

There’s an obvious confounder here: the authors are doing the usual trick where they cherry-pick right-wing examples of something bad, show that more right-wingers are in favor of them, then conclude that Science Has Proven Right-Wingers Are Bad. QAnon, illegal votes, and COVID microchips are inherently right wing conspiracy theories; vaccines/autism has probably become right-coded post-COVID. Only the moon landing seems politically neutral, and it’s hard to tell if there’s a real difference on that one. So this just tells us that white evangelical church-goers are further right than other people, which we already know.

These data still deflate some more extreme claims about religion being absolutely protective against conspiracy theories. But I was interested in seeing how people of different faiths related to politically neutral conspiracies.

June 29, 2022

It’s not your imagination: young women are becoming more liberal

Filed under: Education, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Daniel Cox looks at the noted shift in political opinions among young women (aged 18-29) compared to their male counterparts, and not just on the current hot-button topic of abortion rights:

… In fact, young women have become significantly more liberal over the past decade whereas the political identity of young men has remained largely unchanged over time.

Rise of Unmarried Women

There are a few reasons for the increasingly liberal politics of young women. One explanation may lie in their marital status. Compared to previous generations of young women, far more women under the age of 30 today are unmarried. Only 15 percent of young women today are married compared to more than one-third of young women two decades ago.

Why does this matter? Research has shown that unmarried women feel more connected than their married counterparts to other women — a phenomenon known as “linked fate” — and it can lead them to support more liberal policies. In their fascinating 2017 study, Christopher T. Stout, Kelsy Kretschmer, and Leah Ruppanner argue that “women consistently earn less money and hold less power, which fosters women’s economic dependency on men. Thus, it is within married women’s interests to support policies and politicians who protect their husbands and improve their status.” This phenomenon of “linked fate” was not found to be evident among men, so even though young men are also less likely to be married compared to older generations, their marital status may have less of an impact on their politics than for women.

The Growing Education Divide

Over the past several decades, women’s educational attainment has far outpaced that of men’s; “Women in the United States have earned more bachelor’s degrees than men every year since the mid-1980s”, writes Derek Thompson in the Atlantic.

    American colleges and universities now enroll roughly six women for every four men. This is the largest female-male gender gap in the history of higher education, and it’s getting wider.

The education divide between men and women has become more politically relevant because of the stronger connection between educational attainment and political behavior. In recent elections, college graduates have become a much more loyal Democratic constituency. And on a range of issues, college-educated Americans are more liberal than those without a Bachelor’s degree.

June 16, 2022

Among GenZ adults, LGBT identification tracks far higher than LGBT behaviour

Filed under: Health, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In conversation on social media the other day, I speculated that in years gone by, some possibly significant proportion of self-identified lesbians would probably identify as asexuals today. Coming of age long before more relaxed modern attitudes toward non-heterosexual relationships, women who were not attracted to men would probably assume that this lack of attraction meant they must be lesbians. Similarly, Eric Kaufmann discusses a recent survey that shows some interesting divergence among GenZ adults between their declared sexual orientation and their actual behaviour:

A granular look at survey data on same-sex behaviour and LGBT identity shows that identification is increasingly diverging from behaviour. More importantly, those who adopt an LGBT identity but display conventionally heterosexual behaviour are a growing and distinct group, who lean strongly to the left politically and experience considerably greater mental health problems than the rest of the population.

By contrast, those who engage in same-sex behaviour are more politically moderate and psychologically stable. These facts sit awkwardly with the progressive view that the rise in LGBT identity, like left-handedness, is explained by people increasingly feeling that they can come out of the closet because society is more liberal. My analysis of these data raise another interesting question: Has some of the increase in anxiety and depression among young people, like the LGBT identity surge, arisen from a culture that values divergence and boundary-transgression over conformity to traditional norms and roles?

[…]

But has the LGBT share of young people really tripled in a decade? It has not. First, a growing share of LGBT identifiers engage in purely heterosexual behaviour. Figure 1, drawn from the General Social Survey (GSS), shows that, in 2008, about five percent of Americans under the age of 30 identified as LGBT and a similar number had a same-sex partnership in that year. By 2021, the proportion identifying as LGBT had increased 11 points to 16.3 percent but the share reporting same-sex relations had only risen four points, to 8.6 percent. LGBT identity had become twice as prevalent as LGBT behaviour. We must also bear in mind that 20 percent of young people now report no sex in the previous year, which means the four-point rise in same-sex partnering since 2008 is actually closer to a three-point rise: not nothing, but hardly a sexual revolution.

The trend towards greater LGBT identification has been particularly pronounced for young women, among whom there are three bisexuals for every lesbian in the 2018–21 period. Among young men, on the other hand, gays outnumber bisexuals and the LGBT total is only half as large as it is for women. Other large major surveys conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and by Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) find a similar pattern.

Furthermore, the GSS data show that bisexual women are the fastest-growing category, accounting for a disproportionate share of the post-2010 rise. A closer look at trends among female bisexuals in figure 2 shows that an increasing share of them display conventional sexual behaviour. In 2008–10, just 13 percent of female bisexuals said they only had male partners during the past five years. By 2018 this was up to 53 percent, rising to 57 percent in 2021. Most young female bisexuals today are arguably LGBT in name only.

June 12, 2022

“Culture is upstream of politics; and the culture is clearly changing”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the free-to-cheapskates segment of Andrew Sullivan’s Weekly Dish, he discusses some of the cultural sea change convulsing American society and how that will inevitably feed into the political situation in an election year:

A building burning in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Photo by Hungryogrephotos via Wikipedia.

We]re now two years out from what may in retrospect be seen as peak “social justice”. In the summer of 2020, a hefty section of the elite was enthralled with the idea of the police being defunded, demobilized and demonized. Critical theory’s critique of liberal democracy as a mere mask for “white supremacy” everywhere. Countless people were required to read woke tracts — from DiAngelo to Kendi — as part of their employment. Corporate America jumped in, shedding any pretense of political neutrality; mainstream media swiftly adopted the new language and premises of critical theory. The Trump madness, and his attempted sabotage of an election, largely silenced liberals in their clash with the left. They had a more immediate threat. And rightly so.

But now look where we are.

Last year, Eric Adams became mayor of New York City, propelled by minority voters horrified by surging crime and chaos. This past week, DA Chesa Boudin, scion of leftwing terrorists, was ousted by minority voters in San Francisco, after he allowed much of the city to become a chaotic hellhole in pursuit of “racial justice”.

Recent polling suggests a sea-change in attitudes. Pew found that only three percent of African-Americans put “racism/diversity/culture” as the most important issue to them while 17 percent cited “violence/crime”, and 11 percent said “economic issues”. (Among Democrats overall, “49% now view racism as a major problem, down from 67% about a year ago”.) New York City voters now put “crime” ahead of “racial inequality” as their most urgent concern by a huge ratio of 12:1. Polling in San Francisco found that 67 percent of Asian-Americans wanted Boudin gone — a sign that the Democrats’ ascendant coalition of non-whites is now fast-descendant.

Hispanics also appear to be fleeing the left. In the usually Dem-friendly Quinnipiac poll last month, “48% of Hispanic registered voters said they wanted Republicans to take control of the House of Representatives, while just 34% said they wanted Democrats in power. In addition, 49% of Hispanic voters said they wanted the GOP to win the Senate, while 36% said they wanted Democrats to remain in control of the chamber.” Biden’s approval among Hispanics is now 24 percent. I’m not sure what to make of this, but even if it’s half true, it’s an electoral emergency for Democrats.

Some Dem pols have noticed the vast cultural gap between most Latino voters and wealthy white leftists, and adjusted. Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres last week criticized the use of the absurd term “Latinx” — because denying the sex binary is not exactly integral to a culture where the language itself is divided into masculine and feminine. AOC, of course, demurs.

Elite imposition of the new social justice religion — indoctrinating children in the precepts and premises of critical race and gender theory — has also met ferocious backlash as parents began to absorb what their kids were being taught: that America is a uniquely evil country based forever on white supremacy; that your race is the most important thing about you; that biological sex must be replaced by socially constructed genders of near-infinite number; and that all this needs to be taught in kindergarten. Yes, some of this was politically exploited or hyped by the right. But if you think there is no there there in this concern about schooling, you’re dreaming.

Across the country, school boards are thereby in turmoil, with those supporting less ideological education on the march. On the question of trans rights, there is broad support for inclusion — but most Americans are understandably uncomfortable with pre-pubescent kids having irreversible sex changes, and with trans women competing with women in sports. For which those normies are called “hateful”.

June 9, 2022

Moving Sprinting to the extremes

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Scott Alexander considers the passion-provoking question, “which US political party has moved further/faster to the extreme end of the spectrum?”

Matt Yglesias has written a couple of posts […] on the subject of this meme (originally by Colin Wright, recently signal-boosted by Elon Musk):

He concludes that, contra the image where the Right stays in the same place and the Left moves, both Republicans and Democrats have “changed a lot” since 2008. He wisely avoids speculating on whether one party has moved further or faster than the other.

I’m less wise, so I’ve been trying to look into this question. My conclusion is: man, people really have strong emotions on this.

I think a lot of the disagreement happens because this is more than one question. You can operationalize it a couple different ways:

  • Which party’s policy positions have changed more in their preferred direction (ie gotten further left for the Democrats, or further right for the Republicans) since 2008 — or 1990, or 1950, or some other year when people feel like things weren’t so partisan?
  • Which party has diverged further from ordinary Americans?
  • Which party has become more ideologically pure faster than the others (ie its members all agree and don’t tolerate dissent)?
  • Which party has become crazier in terms of worldview and messaging, in a way orthogonal to specific policy proposals? That is, suppose one party wants 20% lower taxes, and plans to convene a meeting of economists to make sure this is a good idea. The other party wants 10% higher taxes, and says a conspiracy of Jews and lizardmen is holding them back, and asks its members to riot and bring down the government until they get the tax policy they want. The first party has a more extreme policy position (20% is more than 10%), but the second party seems crazier.

I think these subquestions are easier to get clear answers on and will hopefully start less of a fight, starting with …

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