1) Conservatives have happier better lives based on a number of objective measures.
2) Conservatively governed areas are substantially better run then leftists areas, especially controlling for demographics.
3) Revealed preference strongly supports assertions #1 and #2, for instance in internal migration patterns.
4) Downsides of too much conservatism appear lower than leftism. MAGA might not get a COVID vaccine that probably doesn't matter 99% of the time (and 90% of the time he gets the vaccine anyway, he just opposes mandates). I've got leftist friends that are STILL MASKING in 2024!
Conservatism has the "leave me alone vibe". Leftism has a neurotic childless women on Xanax vibe.
Even all those MAGA buying gold bars or whatever at least have a gold bar in their basement. What does leftism have to show but an ulcer?
My tweet says "mental illness (and crazy beliefs)", so I am implying mental illness and crazy beliefs are different things. I agree Christians, MAGA fanatics, and many other groups of people have crazy beliefs but are not necessarily mentally. Humans will copy the beliefs of their leaders, that's normal and evolutionarily sound. All of us have beliefs that people will consider in 100 years to be crazy, just as we consider some of the beliefs people had 100 years ago crazy. I wrote about this recently. https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/sometimes-you-should-speak-up-with
Appreciate your response. The difference between "crazy" and "mentally ill" is sometimes a semantic quibble, but in this case, the difference is an important one. If you're open to it, I would like to interview you regarding this research and other topics that you have studied. Let me know.
When I was in college almost a decade ago, I noticed that the midwits largely gave their university professors as much attention as they gave their teachers, which was not much. This is especially true of the great mass who go to school for practical degrees like nursing, accounting, computer science and the like.
The more pernicious influence came from one's peers; in that most students are detached from the authority of their parents and the schools themselves provide very few boundaries. As such, childish notions of how the world operates proliferate and no one older and wiser is either willing or able to push back on the youthful group think.
Marriage and family are too much of a chore and require sacrifice.
You employer should pay "a living wage" (no comment on what standard of living this entails) regardless of the quality of one's work output.
The righteousness of the politics of your youth cadre ought to bare no epistemic doubt and as a consequence are the absolute standard by which your employer, your family, and your community shall be judged.
Had their parents made a greater effort to mature them, to humble them, and force them to contend with the natural limits to any individual intellect this could have been avoided.
Or not. Almost no one could have predicted the internet's unparalleled ability to create echo chambers and further entrench the naive and the gullible in childish patterns of thinking.
This is very near what I was trying to get across when we talked- I don’t think the political right is necessarily more wrong than the left in general, because any organised group requires lies to stay intact, however there is a necessity to lie about facts on the right which isn’t necessary on the left (talking about mainstream politics). Because of modern information overload, it’s not so much the interpretation of the facts that matters as the ones you emphasise that define your political stance. Leftists have less need to lie about facts (current and historical) because they use language as morals (much more effectively, at least), meaning every sentence of leftist speech is an appeal to a (Christian-descended, but not Christian) slave morality. Since the base lie of our society is that of equality, (mainstream) right wingers have to lie and downplay events in American history which contradict the coherent story of equality which guarantees a basic order. There’s a knowing lie, where the importance of order is placed before specific facts. Right wingers generally do not appeal to emotion, so rely heavily on ‘the right facts’, which makes lying necessary. It’s very reasonable to assume that Trump knows that he lies, but since right-wing ideas which prioritise order are rooted in use of force and the preservation of hierarchy, the facade of equality is deliberately enforced through lies, distraction and irrelevance.
The left reacts to this in a different way, it emphasises facts and events only so that everyone may reach the same moral conclusion, like a Dickens novel or a bedtime fable. A heresy on the left is not to lie, but to reach a different conclusion from the same set of events- to have a nonconformist emotional reaction to say, the death of George Floyd. Most leftists are not actually intolerant of Trump’s lies, what they detest is his intent, because Trump’s lies give him power. When Democrats lie, it fares much worse for them because the facts they emphasise form a coherent moral narrative- hence why this is the primary mode of attack for right-wingers, their claim on truth. When the left accuses the right of lying, it’s deny, downplay, distract, conspiracy. When the right accuses the left of lying, it’s « but why are you talking about this? Aren’t there more important things for you to be focusing on? » the reason for this being that certain facts are PRIMORDIAL to the teleology of the left. The left do not respond to these attacks because they cannot admit the potential of darkness into their idealism. The right cannot admit all the facts because not all the facts are important for social order, indeed many of them are bad. This is why for me, leftism = idealism and post-faith rightism = nihilism
My summary of what you said would be "the left lies about the future, and the right lies about the past." That means effectively that the left is fighting for the future, while the right is fighting for the past -- one side has a clear advantage going forward.
But it also means that the left has no future, especially considering that the success of leftist regimes is contingent on their willingness to wind back those honeymoon ideals. It's only a matter of time and survival.
No I agree, I am generally referring the mainstream discourse which subordinates others to it’s majority will. It would take a long time before the moral framework which empowers the left is broken down (weak good, strong bad) especially because as you point out mainstream right wingers adopt a pseudo-working-class-man victim politics instead of being honest about their basically transgressive beliefs.
"None Dare Call it Conspiracy" was certainly far fetched with its web of control over all industry based on a second cousin owning a 5% share and whatnot.
On the other hand, we are now experiencing the endgame predicted by said book: big authoritarian government controlled by Big Finance. Corporate America *boasted* about how they worked together to foil Trump in 2020.
Whether this endgame is the result of a top down conspiracy or just the incentives of the elite is TBD. I lean mainly toward the latter explanation.
---
As for more children being converted leftward than rightward, the answer should be obvious: public school teachers are overwhelmingly Democrat. Children aren't just brought up by their parents. And college professors love messing with young minds. Back when colleges were more selective, the students had enough brainpower to wrestle with ideas with their professors. Today, many midwits are going to college to get brainwashed. Ergo, the large number of mentally ill college educated liberals -- not including the professors.
Have you read Bryan Caplan's article about UAE?Why would you want less elite migration,you think US will fail to assimilate them,and shouldn't we remove elite human capital from other nation
I basically agree that there is no American conservatism because there is no true aristocracy, however then this would apply to all Americanised territories, which is almost the entire world, where conservatism is just American conservatism (with ___ 'characteristics'). You can see how obvious the influence is with how Trump-coded right-wing politicians have become in the last almost 10 years.
Good article. An individual piece on conspiracy theories would be great.
Conspiracy theorists are driven mad by truth, not mad themselves…
This is what I've got so far:
https://deepleft.substack.com/p/how-gen-x-invented-wokeness
1) Conservatives have happier better lives based on a number of objective measures.
2) Conservatively governed areas are substantially better run then leftists areas, especially controlling for demographics.
3) Revealed preference strongly supports assertions #1 and #2, for instance in internal migration patterns.
4) Downsides of too much conservatism appear lower than leftism. MAGA might not get a COVID vaccine that probably doesn't matter 99% of the time (and 90% of the time he gets the vaccine anyway, he just opposes mandates). I've got leftist friends that are STILL MASKING in 2024!
Conservatism has the "leave me alone vibe". Leftism has a neurotic childless women on Xanax vibe.
Even all those MAGA buying gold bars or whatever at least have a gold bar in their basement. What does leftism have to show but an ulcer?
https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/1850675274566005157
1)
My tweet says "mental illness (and crazy beliefs)", so I am implying mental illness and crazy beliefs are different things. I agree Christians, MAGA fanatics, and many other groups of people have crazy beliefs but are not necessarily mentally. Humans will copy the beliefs of their leaders, that's normal and evolutionarily sound. All of us have beliefs that people will consider in 100 years to be crazy, just as we consider some of the beliefs people had 100 years ago crazy. I wrote about this recently. https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/sometimes-you-should-speak-up-with
2)
There is some evidence that attending university self-selects for mental illness, but this is being masked by the selection for intelligence. See the results discussed by Scott Alexander here. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/non-cognitive-skills-for-educational I am not aware of a study that predicted mental health as a function of political ideology and its interaction with higher education. However, maybe it can be done using the Finnish sample we recently used. https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/how-strongly-is-leftism-correlated
Appreciate your response. The difference between "crazy" and "mentally ill" is sometimes a semantic quibble, but in this case, the difference is an important one. If you're open to it, I would like to interview you regarding this research and other topics that you have studied. Let me know.
When I was in college almost a decade ago, I noticed that the midwits largely gave their university professors as much attention as they gave their teachers, which was not much. This is especially true of the great mass who go to school for practical degrees like nursing, accounting, computer science and the like.
The more pernicious influence came from one's peers; in that most students are detached from the authority of their parents and the schools themselves provide very few boundaries. As such, childish notions of how the world operates proliferate and no one older and wiser is either willing or able to push back on the youthful group think.
Marriage and family are too much of a chore and require sacrifice.
You employer should pay "a living wage" (no comment on what standard of living this entails) regardless of the quality of one's work output.
The righteousness of the politics of your youth cadre ought to bare no epistemic doubt and as a consequence are the absolute standard by which your employer, your family, and your community shall be judged.
Had their parents made a greater effort to mature them, to humble them, and force them to contend with the natural limits to any individual intellect this could have been avoided.
Or not. Almost no one could have predicted the internet's unparalleled ability to create echo chambers and further entrench the naive and the gullible in childish patterns of thinking.
This is very near what I was trying to get across when we talked- I don’t think the political right is necessarily more wrong than the left in general, because any organised group requires lies to stay intact, however there is a necessity to lie about facts on the right which isn’t necessary on the left (talking about mainstream politics). Because of modern information overload, it’s not so much the interpretation of the facts that matters as the ones you emphasise that define your political stance. Leftists have less need to lie about facts (current and historical) because they use language as morals (much more effectively, at least), meaning every sentence of leftist speech is an appeal to a (Christian-descended, but not Christian) slave morality. Since the base lie of our society is that of equality, (mainstream) right wingers have to lie and downplay events in American history which contradict the coherent story of equality which guarantees a basic order. There’s a knowing lie, where the importance of order is placed before specific facts. Right wingers generally do not appeal to emotion, so rely heavily on ‘the right facts’, which makes lying necessary. It’s very reasonable to assume that Trump knows that he lies, but since right-wing ideas which prioritise order are rooted in use of force and the preservation of hierarchy, the facade of equality is deliberately enforced through lies, distraction and irrelevance.
The left reacts to this in a different way, it emphasises facts and events only so that everyone may reach the same moral conclusion, like a Dickens novel or a bedtime fable. A heresy on the left is not to lie, but to reach a different conclusion from the same set of events- to have a nonconformist emotional reaction to say, the death of George Floyd. Most leftists are not actually intolerant of Trump’s lies, what they detest is his intent, because Trump’s lies give him power. When Democrats lie, it fares much worse for them because the facts they emphasise form a coherent moral narrative- hence why this is the primary mode of attack for right-wingers, their claim on truth. When the left accuses the right of lying, it’s deny, downplay, distract, conspiracy. When the right accuses the left of lying, it’s « but why are you talking about this? Aren’t there more important things for you to be focusing on? » the reason for this being that certain facts are PRIMORDIAL to the teleology of the left. The left do not respond to these attacks because they cannot admit the potential of darkness into their idealism. The right cannot admit all the facts because not all the facts are important for social order, indeed many of them are bad. This is why for me, leftism = idealism and post-faith rightism = nihilism
My summary of what you said would be "the left lies about the future, and the right lies about the past." That means effectively that the left is fighting for the future, while the right is fighting for the past -- one side has a clear advantage going forward.
But it also means that the left has no future, especially considering that the success of leftist regimes is contingent on their willingness to wind back those honeymoon ideals. It's only a matter of time and survival.
Really good comment.
No I agree, I am generally referring the mainstream discourse which subordinates others to it’s majority will. It would take a long time before the moral framework which empowers the left is broken down (weak good, strong bad) especially because as you point out mainstream right wingers adopt a pseudo-working-class-man victim politics instead of being honest about their basically transgressive beliefs.
"None Dare Call it Conspiracy" was certainly far fetched with its web of control over all industry based on a second cousin owning a 5% share and whatnot.
On the other hand, we are now experiencing the endgame predicted by said book: big authoritarian government controlled by Big Finance. Corporate America *boasted* about how they worked together to foil Trump in 2020.
Whether this endgame is the result of a top down conspiracy or just the incentives of the elite is TBD. I lean mainly toward the latter explanation.
---
As for more children being converted leftward than rightward, the answer should be obvious: public school teachers are overwhelmingly Democrat. Children aren't just brought up by their parents. And college professors love messing with young minds. Back when colleges were more selective, the students had enough brainpower to wrestle with ideas with their professors. Today, many midwits are going to college to get brainwashed. Ergo, the large number of mentally ill college educated liberals -- not including the professors.
Have you read Bryan Caplan's article about UAE?Why would you want less elite migration,you think US will fail to assimilate them,and shouldn't we remove elite human capital from other nation
Christos, why can't you use the spacebar?
I basically agree that there is no American conservatism because there is no true aristocracy, however then this would apply to all Americanised territories, which is almost the entire world, where conservatism is just American conservatism (with ___ 'characteristics'). You can see how obvious the influence is with how Trump-coded right-wing politicians have become in the last almost 10 years.
It does vary, but I would suggest The West™ has been seared well-done by Americanism.
You’ve got the spirit