Seems like the answer is no, judging by this email from a “Soviet-born scholar who teaches in an American public university”, as quoted in Rod Dreher’s Postcard From Pre-Totalitarian America. TLDR, what he is seeing is worse than post 1970s USSR:
I know from your blog that the work on your new book is going well and I’m glad because, boy, it’s so needed. I’m observing some disturbing developments on my campus, and we are really not one of those wokester schools for spoiled brats one normally associates with this kind of thing.
This academic year I’ve had an opportunity to work with some early-career academics. These are newly-minted PhDs that are in their first year on the tenure-track. What’s really scary is that they sincerely believe all the woke dogma. Older people – those in their forties, fifties or sixties – might parrot the woke mantras because it’s what everybody in academia does and you have to survive. But the younger generation actually believes it all. Transwomen are women, black students fail calculus because there are no calc profs who “look like them,” ‘whiteness’ is the most oppressive thing in the world, the US is the most evil country in history, anybody who votes Republican is a racist, everybody who goes to church is a bigot but the hijab is deeply liberating. I gently mocked some of this stuff (like we normally do among older academics), and two of the younger academics in the group I supervise actually cried. Because they believe all this so deeply, and I’d even say fanatically, that they couldn’t comprehend why I wasn’t taking it seriously.
The fanatical glimmer in their eyes really scared me.
Back in the USSR in the 1970s and the 1980s nobody believed the dogma. People repeated the ideological mantras for cynical reasons, to get advanced in their careers or get food packages. Many did it to protect their kids. But nobody sincerely believed. That is what ultimately saved us. As soon as the regime weakened a bit, it was doomed because there were no sincere believers any more. Everybody who did take the dogma seriously belonged to the generation of my great-grandparents.
In the US, though, the generation of the fanatical believers is only now growing up and coming into its prime. We’ll have to wait until their grandkids grow up to see a generation that will be so fed up with the dogma that it will embrace freedom of thought and expression. But that’s a long way away in the future.
I’m mentoring a group of young scholars in the Humanities to help them do research, and I’m starting to hate this task. Young scholars almost without exception think that scholarship is entirely about repeating woke slogans completely uncritically. Again, this is different from the USSR where scholars peppered their writing with the slogans but always took great pride in trying to sneak in some real thinking and real analysis behind the required ideological drivel. Every Soviet scholar starting from the 1970s was a dissident at heart because everybody knew that the ideology was rotten.
All of this is sad and very scary. I never thought I’d experience anything worse, anything more intellectually stifling than the USSR of its last two decades of existence. But now I do see something worse.
It seems like while we were busy trying to “raise the sanity waterline” (which BTW kept talking about religion, in retrospect a completely wrong target), others have managed to unplug the drain hole.
But the younger generation actually believes it all.
I recognize that there are a lot of novel and interesting trends in the last decade or so. But as I’ve said before, I’m unsure why you think that this type of stuff is unprecedented. Every generation grows old having to accept that the younger generations are embracing different moral truths. The new generation grows up seemingly unaware that the moral truth is even controversial to begin with (except of course that evil old people don’t believe it). This process mirrors Douglass Adam’s observation of technology,
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Replace “technology” with the appropriate phrases for moral norms, and I think what you are describing is not too dissimilar from this long-term trend that’s been going on for centuries.
I would assume that 75 years ago there would have been things called “woke” (or of course its equivalent) by the older generations that are now accepted nearly universally, or at the least are not generally questioned.
(For what it’s worth I’m currently writing a post for the EA Forum that will analyze the case against value drift. I suspect many young EAs would celebrate the trend towards “woke”ness, but more generally even if you agree with recent trends, you are still likely to disagree with generations that are yet to exist and this is a persistent pattern in world history.)
Every generation grows old having to accept that the younger generations are embracing different moral truths.
Not sure if this is a crux, but many of the “fanatical beliefs” described in the quoted email are not about morality, but are ideologically-driven empirical beliefs, which tend to be even worse than fanatical moral beliefs, because they cause a deadly spiral in which wrong beliefs cause wrong policies, which cause bad outcomes, which cause more activism/purity and more bad policies. (I’m seeing this play out IRL in my area.) (Until a couple of generations pass and people finally get fed up, as mentioned by the email writer.) Of course older generations also had ideologically-driven empirical beliefs (e.g., in the form of religion) but as I mentioned in the linked comment, we had built countermeasures to contain the damage from religious beliefs.
Not sure if this is a crux, but many of the “fanatical beliefs” described in the quoted email are not about morality, but are ideologically-driven empirical beliefs
To some extent, I agree. But I think a good general rule is that people don’t take their ideologically-driven empirical beliefs as seriously as you or I might aim to (including with religion). We could analyze the beliefs cited one by one, and analyze to what extent they are actually empirical
Transwomen are women
My understanding is that this belief is more about ensuring that transpeople feel respected, in the sense that they are reaffirmed and told that they are allowed to identify with their chosen gender. This stance has been defended by eg. Scott Alexander here as compatible with empirical reality.
black students fail calculus because there are no calc profs who “look like them,”
I seriously doubt that this belief has a worse grounding than the beliefs that prior generations have had about races in the past. If you disagree here, then I’d be surprised, but I’ll move on.
‘whiteness’ is the most oppressive thing in the world, the US is the most evil country in history, anybody who votes Republican is a racist, everybody who goes to church is a bigot but the hijab is deeply liberating
These definitely seem like moral beliefs, though particularly extreme ones (and in many cases strawmen).
Of course older generations also had ideologically-driven empirical beliefs (e.g., in the form of religion) but as I mentioned in the linked comment, we had built countermeasures to contain the damage from religious beliefs.
That makes sense, but I don’t think you have to go back to religion to find similarly ideologically driven beliefs. The civil rights movement of the 1960s could be seen as a shift in moral opinion (that carried some empirical undertones), and most people now consider the movement to have been good, probably because most of the opponents are now dead. Do you think what we’re experiencing is really different now?
Do you think what we’re experiencing is really different now?
Probably? My knowledge of that period of history isn’t great, but I’m not aware of 1960s academic environment being compared to the Cultural Revolution, or an entire generation of academics being compared to early Communism true believers. I’m not aware of any widespread ideologically-driven empirical beliefs in the 1960s civil rights movement that are as egregious as what I’m seeing today being publicly espoused by everyone around me in my local community. (I’d like to avoid the object-level discussion please.) In any case, even if what we’re experiencing is comparable to 1960s, that seems to imply that this is the worst epistemic environment in 60 years (and seemingly getting worse), which would be quite alarming already.
I’d like to avoid the object-level discussion please.
I think this is a reasonable norm, so I’ll refrain from picking apart specific parts of the quote.
In any case, even if what we’re experiencing is comparable to 1960s, that seems to imply that this is the worst epistemic environment in 60 years (and seemingly getting worse), which would be quite alarming already.
Well, there could have been comparable belief shifts between 1960 and now that aren’t as well understood because they had no leaders. Though, I’ll admit I’m ignorant of the history too.
Ok, I guess I feel relatively safe (both personally and for this forum) in citing this example:
An online petition circulating among parents in the region north of Toronto, which has a large Chinese population, calls on schools to ask students whose families have recently travelled to China to stay home for 17 days of “self-quarantine.”
The board chair and director of education wrote that such requests run the risk of “demonstrating bias and racism,” even when made in the name of safety.
I don’t live in Ontario myself, but see something very similar around here (except that nobody would dare to circulate such a petition in the first place). Every time someone makes a post about COVID-19 in the FB group for the local school system (including me, when I tried to give some early warning a few weeks ago), even if it has nothing to do with any countries, races or ethnicities, someone would reply about the need to fight racism related to the virus, and that response often gets more “likes” than the original post (including mine).
Remember that my objection is whether epistemic conditions “have always been this bad” as per the title of the post. The most convincing thing for me would be some sort of comprehensive analysis of how this era’s epistemic conditions are worse than prior eras. Otherwise, I could just respond by pointing to an area where we have better epistemic conditions now.
For example, there was a big stigma against gay people, and this caused people to have incorrect views about how HIV was spread throughout the 1980s. Does that count as evidence that our epistemic conditions have improved?
I guess it would, if the incorrect views were nearly universal among the intellectual elites (at least in public), and if anyone dared to speak up against those incorrect views they’d be “canceled” from elite institutions. If you think that was the case, please cite a source?
I guess it would, if the incorrect views were nearly universal among the intellectual elites (at least in public), and if anyone dared to speak up against those incorrect views they’d be “canceled” from elite institutions.
I mean, what happened wasn’t isomorphic to the canceling thing going on right now, but I’m not sure if that’s necessary. I’d recommend watching this video (it’s from a biased source but it just plays audio from the 1980s). I am honestly quite shocked with the way elites reacted to HIV at the time, based on what I’ve seen, and this makes me think that conditions haven’t actually gotten worse—perhaps they’ve just gotten different?
Even with the death from AIDS of his friend Rock Hudson, Reagan was widely criticized for not supporting more active measures to contain the spread of AIDS. Until celebrities, first Joan Rivers and soon afterwards Elizabeth Taylor, spoke out publicly about the increasing number of people quickly dying from this new disease, most public officials and celebrities were too afraid of dealing with this subject.
Reagan prevented his Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, from speaking out about the AIDS epidemic.[87] When in 1986 Reagan was highly encouraged by many other public officials to authorize Koop to issue a report on the epidemic, he expected it to be in line with conservative policies; instead, Koop’s Surgeon General’s Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome greatly emphasized the importance of a comprehensive AIDS education strategy, including widespread distribution of condoms, and rejected mandatory testing. This approach brought Koop into conflict with other administration officials such as Education Secretary William Bennett. In 1988, Koop took the unprecedented action of mailing AIDS information to every U.S. household. This information included the use of condoms as the decisive defense against contracting the disease.
So there was a taboo against the subject but it was broken relatively quickly (Joan Rivers publicly supported an AIDS charity in 1985, just 4 years after AIDS was discovered), and sane people could overcome politics/ideology to make their voices heard. This seems to compare quite favorably with the current situation. (Also keep in mind the medical science was in a much more primitive state so we can perhaps also excuse some of the craziness as just plain ignorance rather than bad epistemic norms/conditions.)
So there was a taboo against the subject but it was broken relatively quickly
Unless I’m reading it incorrectly, quickly refers to “years”?
I expect the epistemic dam to break on the coronavirus within months, in the sense that people will stop treating the main issue as one of racism. Why do you think that “This seems to compare quite favorably with the current situation.”?
It’s hard to directly compare AIDS with COVID-19 since the latter moves so much faster and will quickly and obviously affect a majority of people. I was thinking of other taboos related to race (which I can’t make explicit for obvious reasons) which have persisted for at least a decade, have negative effects on policy comparable to early 80s AIDS, and are only getting stronger.
ETA: The fact that epistemic conditions make it very difficult for two otherwise seemingly sane people to discuss how bad epistemic conditions actually are seems uniquely bad. How far would we have to go back to see something similar? (And it’s not entirely because we’re doing this in public. Even in private, in today’s environment I’d be afraid to talk about some of the object-level things because I can’t be sure you’re not a true believer in some of those issues and try to “cancel” me for my positions or even my uncertainties.)
At the time, it wasn’t clear whether AIDS was moving fast either. Given that the reporter said (IIRC) something like 600 people were infected and a third of them had died, and the other people in the room just laughed and dismissed him, don’t you think that’s really actually worse than what’s going on right now?
Another thing is that your evidence came from a school board, and personal Facebook interactions. But my evidence came from the executive branch of the United States, which is the official body that is supposed to take these things seriously. I imagine if Facebook existed in the 1980s you’d also be getting some pretty epistemically horrendous replies from people about what to do about AIDS. We just don’t have that type of evidence, but it’s easy to see that things could have been that bad.
It’s again important to remember that the thesis is that things are worse now. In order to convince me that epistemic conditions are worse now, you’d need to explain that whatever is going on, it’s worse than what I just showed you.
Now it’s possible I’ve been misled because the clip I linked was cherrypicked or something, and maybe their outright dismissal was warranted given their primitive state of science, but that’s just not clear to me right now.
Given that the reporter said (IIRC) something like 600 people were infected and a third of them had died, and the other people in the room just laughed and dismissed him, don’t you think that’s really actually worse than what’s going on right now?
But that was a direct reflection of them not caring about (or actively hating) gays, not an error of empirical fact. Also laughter/dismissal is better than taboo/sanction because you’re still free to speak out (like that reporter did) and slowly change people’s minds. With strong enough taboo/sanction we can be stuck in a bad equilibrium for much longer.
I imagine if Facebook existed in the 1980s you’d also be getting some pretty epistemically horrendous replies from people about what to do about AIDS. We just don’t have that type of evidence, but it’s easy to see that things could have been that bad.
Again what’s different now is that nobody dares to speak up against the social consensus, because they’d risk being “canceled” or suffer other strong sanctions (in part due to social media). I think that’s a key difference from 1980s. (See for example Joan Rivers and that reporter, neither of whom got canceled.) There’s going to be wrong beliefs in every decade, but by “bad epistemic conditions” I mean social mechanisms that keep those wrong beliefs frozen or move them in even worse directions. (Perhaps I didn’t make this clear enough?)
Even in private, in today’s environment I’d be afraid to talk about some of the object-level things because I can’t be sure you’re not a true believer in some of those issues and try to “cancel” me for my positions or even my uncertainties.
This seems like a problem we could mitigate with the right kinds of information exchange. E.g., I’d probably be willing to make a “no canceling anyone” promise depending on wording. Creating networks of trust around this is part of what I meant by “epistemic prepping” upthread.
A “no canceling anyone” promise isn’t very valuable if most of the threat comes from third parties—if you’re afraid to talk to me not because you’re afraid of attacks from me, but because you’re afraid that the intelligent social web will attack you for guilt-by-association with me. A confidentiality promise is more valuable—but it’s also a lot more expensive. (I am now extremely reluctant to offer confidentiality promises, because even though my associates can confidently expect me to not try to use information to hurt them, I need the ability to say what I’m actually thinking when it’s relevant and I don’t know how to predict relevance in advance; there are just too many unpredictable situations where my future selves would have to choose between breaking a promise and lying by omission. This might be easier for people who construe lying by omission more narrowly than I do.)
I also want to point out that the epistemic conditions displayed in the linked video I sent are much worse than what I would expect from either the Trump administration or a Sanders administration regarding coronavirus, even in early days. Of course, it’s difficult to compare these situations, but I’m not sure if you think that people talking about racism being a big issue is comparable to the outright dismissal that happened in the clip, or whether you are arguing some other claim.
Seems like the answer is no, judging by this email from a “Soviet-born scholar who teaches in an American public university”, as quoted in Rod Dreher’s Postcard From Pre-Totalitarian America. TLDR, what he is seeing is worse than post 1970s USSR:
It seems like while we were busy trying to “raise the sanity waterline” (which BTW kept talking about religion, in retrospect a completely wrong target), others have managed to unplug the drain hole.
I recognize that there are a lot of novel and interesting trends in the last decade or so. But as I’ve said before, I’m unsure why you think that this type of stuff is unprecedented. Every generation grows old having to accept that the younger generations are embracing different moral truths. The new generation grows up seemingly unaware that the moral truth is even controversial to begin with (except of course that evil old people don’t believe it). This process mirrors Douglass Adam’s observation of technology,
Replace “technology” with the appropriate phrases for moral norms, and I think what you are describing is not too dissimilar from this long-term trend that’s been going on for centuries.
I would assume that 75 years ago there would have been things called “woke” (or of course its equivalent) by the older generations that are now accepted nearly universally, or at the least are not generally questioned.
(For what it’s worth I’m currently writing a post for the EA Forum that will analyze the case against value drift. I suspect many young EAs would celebrate the trend towards “woke”ness, but more generally even if you agree with recent trends, you are still likely to disagree with generations that are yet to exist and this is a persistent pattern in world history.)
Not sure if this is a crux, but many of the “fanatical beliefs” described in the quoted email are not about morality, but are ideologically-driven empirical beliefs, which tend to be even worse than fanatical moral beliefs, because they cause a deadly spiral in which wrong beliefs cause wrong policies, which cause bad outcomes, which cause more activism/purity and more bad policies. (I’m seeing this play out IRL in my area.) (Until a couple of generations pass and people finally get fed up, as mentioned by the email writer.) Of course older generations also had ideologically-driven empirical beliefs (e.g., in the form of religion) but as I mentioned in the linked comment, we had built countermeasures to contain the damage from religious beliefs.
To some extent, I agree. But I think a good general rule is that people don’t take their ideologically-driven empirical beliefs as seriously as you or I might aim to (including with religion). We could analyze the beliefs cited one by one, and analyze to what extent they are actually empirical
My understanding is that this belief is more about ensuring that transpeople feel respected, in the sense that they are reaffirmed and told that they are allowed to identify with their chosen gender. This stance has been defended by eg. Scott Alexander here as compatible with empirical reality.
I seriously doubt that this belief has a worse grounding than the beliefs that prior generations have had about races in the past. If you disagree here, then I’d be surprised, but I’ll move on.
These definitely seem like moral beliefs, though particularly extreme ones (and in many cases strawmen).
That makes sense, but I don’t think you have to go back to religion to find similarly ideologically driven beliefs. The civil rights movement of the 1960s could be seen as a shift in moral opinion (that carried some empirical undertones), and most people now consider the movement to have been good, probably because most of the opponents are now dead. Do you think what we’re experiencing is really different now?
Probably? My knowledge of that period of history isn’t great, but I’m not aware of 1960s academic environment being compared to the Cultural Revolution, or an entire generation of academics being compared to early Communism true believers. I’m not aware of any widespread ideologically-driven empirical beliefs in the 1960s civil rights movement that are as egregious as what I’m seeing today being publicly espoused by everyone around me in my local community. (I’d like to avoid the object-level discussion please.) In any case, even if what we’re experiencing is comparable to 1960s, that seems to imply that this is the worst epistemic environment in 60 years (and seemingly getting worse), which would be quite alarming already.
I think this is a reasonable norm, so I’ll refrain from picking apart specific parts of the quote.
Well, there could have been comparable belief shifts between 1960 and now that aren’t as well understood because they had no leaders. Though, I’ll admit I’m ignorant of the history too.
Ok, I guess I feel relatively safe (both personally and for this forum) in citing this example:
I don’t live in Ontario myself, but see something very similar around here (except that nobody would dare to circulate such a petition in the first place). Every time someone makes a post about COVID-19 in the FB group for the local school system (including me, when I tried to give some early warning a few weeks ago), even if it has nothing to do with any countries, races or ethnicities, someone would reply about the need to fight racism related to the virus, and that response often gets more “likes” than the original post (including mine).
Remember that my objection is whether epistemic conditions “have always been this bad” as per the title of the post. The most convincing thing for me would be some sort of comprehensive analysis of how this era’s epistemic conditions are worse than prior eras. Otherwise, I could just respond by pointing to an area where we have better epistemic conditions now.
For example, there was a big stigma against gay people, and this caused people to have incorrect views about how HIV was spread throughout the 1980s. Does that count as evidence that our epistemic conditions have improved?
I guess it would, if the incorrect views were nearly universal among the intellectual elites (at least in public), and if anyone dared to speak up against those incorrect views they’d be “canceled” from elite institutions. If you think that was the case, please cite a source?
I mean, what happened wasn’t isomorphic to the canceling thing going on right now, but I’m not sure if that’s necessary. I’d recommend watching this video (it’s from a biased source but it just plays audio from the 1980s). I am honestly quite shocked with the way elites reacted to HIV at the time, based on what I’ve seen, and this makes me think that conditions haven’t actually gotten worse—perhaps they’ve just gotten different?
From Wikipedia:
So there was a taboo against the subject but it was broken relatively quickly (Joan Rivers publicly supported an AIDS charity in 1985, just 4 years after AIDS was discovered), and sane people could overcome politics/ideology to make their voices heard. This seems to compare quite favorably with the current situation. (Also keep in mind the medical science was in a much more primitive state so we can perhaps also excuse some of the craziness as just plain ignorance rather than bad epistemic norms/conditions.)
Unless I’m reading it incorrectly, quickly refers to “years”?
I expect the epistemic dam to break on the coronavirus within months, in the sense that people will stop treating the main issue as one of racism. Why do you think that “This seems to compare quite favorably with the current situation.”?
It’s hard to directly compare AIDS with COVID-19 since the latter moves so much faster and will quickly and obviously affect a majority of people. I was thinking of other taboos related to race (which I can’t make explicit for obvious reasons) which have persisted for at least a decade, have negative effects on policy comparable to early 80s AIDS, and are only getting stronger.
ETA: The fact that epistemic conditions make it very difficult for two otherwise seemingly sane people to discuss how bad epistemic conditions actually are seems uniquely bad. How far would we have to go back to see something similar? (And it’s not entirely because we’re doing this in public. Even in private, in today’s environment I’d be afraid to talk about some of the object-level things because I can’t be sure you’re not a true believer in some of those issues and try to “cancel” me for my positions or even my uncertainties.)
At the time, it wasn’t clear whether AIDS was moving fast either. Given that the reporter said (IIRC) something like 600 people were infected and a third of them had died, and the other people in the room just laughed and dismissed him, don’t you think that’s really actually worse than what’s going on right now?
Another thing is that your evidence came from a school board, and personal Facebook interactions. But my evidence came from the executive branch of the United States, which is the official body that is supposed to take these things seriously. I imagine if Facebook existed in the 1980s you’d also be getting some pretty epistemically horrendous replies from people about what to do about AIDS. We just don’t have that type of evidence, but it’s easy to see that things could have been that bad.
It’s again important to remember that the thesis is that things are worse now. In order to convince me that epistemic conditions are worse now, you’d need to explain that whatever is going on, it’s worse than what I just showed you.
Now it’s possible I’ve been misled because the clip I linked was cherrypicked or something, and maybe their outright dismissal was warranted given their primitive state of science, but that’s just not clear to me right now.
But that was a direct reflection of them not caring about (or actively hating) gays, not an error of empirical fact. Also laughter/dismissal is better than taboo/sanction because you’re still free to speak out (like that reporter did) and slowly change people’s minds. With strong enough taboo/sanction we can be stuck in a bad equilibrium for much longer.
Again what’s different now is that nobody dares to speak up against the social consensus, because they’d risk being “canceled” or suffer other strong sanctions (in part due to social media). I think that’s a key difference from 1980s. (See for example Joan Rivers and that reporter, neither of whom got canceled.) There’s going to be wrong beliefs in every decade, but by “bad epistemic conditions” I mean social mechanisms that keep those wrong beliefs frozen or move them in even worse directions. (Perhaps I didn’t make this clear enough?)
This seems like a problem we could mitigate with the right kinds of information exchange. E.g., I’d probably be willing to make a “no canceling anyone” promise depending on wording. Creating networks of trust around this is part of what I meant by “epistemic prepping” upthread.
A “no canceling anyone” promise isn’t very valuable if most of the threat comes from third parties—if you’re afraid to talk to me not because you’re afraid of attacks from me, but because you’re afraid that the intelligent social web will attack you for guilt-by-association with me. A confidentiality promise is more valuable—but it’s also a lot more expensive. (I am now extremely reluctant to offer confidentiality promises, because even though my associates can confidently expect me to not try to use information to hurt them, I need the ability to say what I’m actually thinking when it’s relevant and I don’t know how to predict relevance in advance; there are just too many unpredictable situations where my future selves would have to choose between breaking a promise and lying by omission. This might be easier for people who construe lying by omission more narrowly than I do.)
I also want to point out that the epistemic conditions displayed in the linked video I sent are much worse than what I would expect from either the Trump administration or a Sanders administration regarding coronavirus, even in early days. Of course, it’s difficult to compare these situations, but I’m not sure if you think that people talking about racism being a big issue is comparable to the outright dismissal that happened in the clip, or whether you are arguing some other claim.
This was really important for me to read. Thanks for sharing.