Author Archives: Jake Seliger

Vote for Clinton or Johnson for president:

October 10, 2016 By in Culture, Personal Tags: 10 Comments

If polls are to be believed the presidential race was much closer than it should have been; they are widening now, but their previous narrowness is a travesty because Trump is unfit to be president. There are longer explanations as to why Trump is such a calamity and so unfit for office, like “SSC Endorses Clinton, Johnson, Or Stein” or many others, but perhaps the best thing I’ve read on Trump is “The question of what Donald Trump ‘really believes’ has no answer” (it came out before this weekend’s fiasco and I started this post before this weekend’s fiasco—I wish I’d posted this sooner). The “really believes” article is too detailed to be excerpted effectively but here is one key part:

When he utters words, his primary intent is not to say something, to describe a set of facts in the world; his primary intent is to do something, i.e., to position himself in a social hierarchy. This essential distinction explains why Trump has so flummoxed the media and its fact-checkers; it’s as though they are critiquing the color choices of someone who is colorblind.

Most of us are simultaneously trying to say something about the state of the world and trying to raise our place in it (or raise the place of our allies or lower the place of someone else). Particularly fact-based enterprises like science and engineering are notoriously averse to strongly positional-based enterprises like marketing and sales, where belief matters more than truth (or where belief is true, which is not true in engineering: It is not enough to believe that your bridge will remain standing). But Trump takes the basic way virtually all people signal their status to such an extreme that his speech and, it seems, mind are totally devoid of content altogether.

The number of people who would ordinarily be politically silent but who cannot be silent in the face of ineptness combined with cruelty is large. LeBron James endorses Clinton. Mathematician Terry Tao writes, “It ought to be common knowledge that Donald Trump is not fit for the presidency of the United States of America” (he’s right: it ought to be).

I’m not famous but will note that you should vote for Clinton or Johnson. This is not like any presidential election I’ve been alive for. The risks are real and the difference between Clinton and Trump is not one of policy. It is one of basic competence.

The situation is so bad that The Atlantic’s editors have endorsed Clinton—only the third time in the history of the magazine that it has endorsed a candidate for president (the other two were Lincoln and LBJ):

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.

The review “In ‘Hitler,’ an Ascent From ‘Dunderhead’ to Demagogue” is only superficially writing about Germany from 1931 – 45. It is really a commentary on Trump, like notes about how “Hitler as a politician … rose to power through demagoguery, showmanship and nativist appeals to the masses.” That’s part of Trump’s appeal. Or it was part of Trump’s appeal. One hopes that appeal is fading. The distressing thing is watching people fall for it (or did until recently), or view Trump as a way to express other grievances.

We collectively must not be willfully blind and the United States is better than Trump.

It is impossible to be even slightly skilled at close reading and not perceive Trump’s many weaknesses as a speaker, thinker, or human. If nothing else this election may be a test of the United States’ education level and the quality of its educational system. In all the other elections I’ve lived through, major politicians have had strengths and weaknesses, but none have been outright demagogues or dangerous to the fabric of democracy itself. This election is different and that’s why I’m writing this. America is better than this.

I hope to never again endorse political candidates, but when the structure and stability of the country itself is at risk it is a mistake not to say something, somewhere, publicly. Writing this post is itself depressing.

Links: Liu Cixin’s SF trilogy, cops, Trump country explanations, Nell Zink, Internet culture, and more

October 8, 2016 By in Links Leave a comment

* Robin Hanson on Liu Cixin’s Trilogy; I couldn’t get into the first book and abandoned it at some point.

* “‘Do Not Resist’: A look at the normalization of warrior cops.”

* “Deep Stories: Arlie Russell Hochschild journeys into the heart of Trump Country.”

* “Anti-globalists: Why they’re wrong.”

* I was looking through the archives and came across the entertaining-in-retrospect post “$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline will Change Our Lives for the Better — Christopher Steiner.” Oops. Someone got that one real wrong, at least over relevant time horizons.

* From a comment, Jeff’s thoughts on Nell Zink’s thoughts on the corporatisation of universities (or lack thereof).

* “Prosecutors who withhold or tamper with evidence now face felony charges.” Good. This is a long-overdue change.

* “To end the affordable housing crisis, Washington needs to legalize Main Street.” Local NIMBYs are impeding housing growth and enabling soaring housing prices.

* Likely SFW, as it’s all text: “Has Internet Culture Ruined Love and Sex? Tinder, orgies, alt-porn, and orgasmic meditation.” Likely answer to most “Has Internet ruined x?” stories is “no.”

* “Amazon wants Prime members to read a book,” hat tip Isaac.

* What Chinese corner-cutting reveals about the modern economy, more interesting than the title suggests.

* Sodom, LLC: The Marquis de Sade and the office novel.

Links: Nell Zink, spamming spammers, Tana French, monogamy’s discontents, and more

October 3, 2016 By in Links Tags: 2 Comments

* “Enigma Variations: Notes toward a theory of Nell Zink.” I like The Wallcreeper and have no idea what to do with it or say about it.

* Two years spamming spammers back, completely hilarious.

* “Sticker shock in Los Angeles Housing:” or, why you should’ve live in California. Granted I am writing this from NYC, which faces similar NIMBY and cost challenges.

* “Without tenure, professors become terrified sheep.” I think it more accurate to say, “Without market power, professors become terrified sheep.” Tenure distorts the academic market, making it hard for professors to get even one job, which in turn makes them terrified of losing it. See more from me on tenure’s discontents here.

* “The evolution of monogamy in response to partner scarcity,” interesting throughout.

* “Coding is not ‘fun’, it’s technically and ethically complex.” Is that incompatible with fun?

* “Tana French’s Intimate Crime Fiction: In her Dublin Murder Squad series, the search for the killer becomes entangled in a search for self.” I love the first paragraph in particular.

* “Dose of Reality: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations.” Short answer: Good all around. Other drugs ought to be next.

* Presidential candidate Gary Johnson: “Take a Deep Breath, Voters. There Is a Third Way.”

* “Why an Exotic Dancer Is (Financially) Just Like Your Hairdresser,” or, how strippers get paid (likely SFW).

Is most narrative art just a series of status games?

October 2, 2016 By in Books, ideas, Nonfiction, Writing Tags: , , , Leave a comment

In The Righteous Mind Jonathan Haidt writes:

If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you. But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our own social agendas—to justify our own actions and to defend teams we belong to—then things will make a lot more sense. Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.

And those post hoc constructions are often “crafted” subconsciously, without the speaker or listener even aware of what they’re doing. It occurs to me in light of this that most narrative art and the moral reasoning implied in it is just a set of moral status games: someone, usually the narrator, is trying to raise their own status and perhaps that of their group too. Seen in this way a lot of novels, TV shows, and movies get stripped of their explicit content and become vehicles for intuitive status games. Police shows are perhaps the worst offenders but are by no means the only ones. Most romance novels are about raising the heroine’s status through the acquisition of a high-status man.

One could apply similar logic to other genres. While realizing this may make most narrative art more boring, it may also open the possibility of writing narrative art that is explicitly not about status games, or that tries to avoid them to the extent possible. Science fiction may be the genre least prone to relentless status gaming, though “least prone” may also be faint praise.

The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction — Mark Lilla

September 28, 2016 By in Books, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Reviews Tags: , 1 Comment

The Shipwrecked Mind is many things, including inconsistently fascinating and incredibly useful in the contemporary political atmosphere. It has something of Albert Hirschman in it (which is a tremendous compliment). Others have discussed it, including an NYT review here and Tyler Cowen here. Here is the anti-reactionary FAQ, from 2013 and over long but relevant to The Shipwrecked Mind; the title itself tells us something of Lilla’s sympathies or perspective. The book is consistently surprising, as when we learn that philosopher Leo Strauss liked using “Dear Abby” columns as teaching devices (that he did speaks well of him: maybe he had a strong grasp on the texture of real life than most philosophers seem to).

Some sections are just wildly good, like this paragraph, which I wish I’d written:

Successful ideologies follow a certain trajectory. They are first developed in narrow sects whose adherents share obsessions and principles, and see themselves as voices in the wilderness. To have any political effect, though, these groups must learn to work together. That’s difficult for obsessive, principled people, which is why at the political fringes one always finds little factions squabbling futilely with each other. But for an ideology to really reshape politics it must cease being a set of principles and become instead a vaguer general outlook that new information and events only strengthen. You really know when an ideology has matured when every event, present and past, is taken as confirmation of it.

shipwrecked_mindThese groups must also expand their size and scope, and convince others, none of which are easy: Most people are not ideological (or they are subconsciously ideological) and just don’t care. People who really care about and attempt to implement ideology in their own life are rare. Many also espouse an ideology but live contrary to it; socialists for example rarely got past this challenge.

There are many lines of the sort that explain why it’s hard for me to take philosophy seriously, like, “We live inauthentically because of Socrates” (note that this is not Lilla’s view; he is describing another’s view, accurately I hope). The section on Eric Voegelin is probably over-long, at least in my view, and it is hard to imagine him and his writings having so much influence on later reactionary thought. Or maybe I just find some of Voegelin’s claims ridiculous, like, his argument in The New Science of Politics, as articulated by Lilla: “the entire modern age, which grew out of a rebellion against Christianity, was gnostic in nature.” What? I’d argue that the modern age has grown out of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, with technical breakthroughs leading the way to social or cultural ones.

Still, Voegelin does eventually renounce his earlier thought, and until 1974 his “works were like those of other antimodern cultural pessimists who since the nineteenth century have constructed historical narratives presuming to pinpoint the moment when healthy modes of thinking and living were abandoned and the rot began.” Lilla’s list of those thinkers and their various answers is impressive, and it also points to the ridiculousness of the concept itself because of the variety of answers given and rationales behind those answers.

Later, in “From Luther to Walmart” (my favorite chapter), Lilla writes:

It is a revealing psychological fact that the most common historical myths with which early civilizations comforted themselves were stories of fated decline, which give temporal reasons for why life is so hard. We suffer because we live in the Age of Iron, far removed from our origins in the Age of Gold. If we are good perhaps one day the gods will smile down and return us to the world we have lost.

I don’t think I’ve ever bought the myth of the golden age; getting specific about what prior time one would like to live tends to kill it. Today is not perfect, but few of us choose to even attempt to give it up—not for any length of time, at least. I am reminded of the very end of Philip Pullman’s anti-reaction His Dark Materials Trilogy:

“We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and brave and patient, and we’ve got to study and think, and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we’ll build…”
“And then what? […] Build what?”
“The republic of heaven.”

In Pullman’s reading, we don’t get handed heaven (or much else). We make it for ourselves or don’t get it at all. A thrilling conclusion, in my view, and too uncommon, which is part of what makes it stand out.

Few if any of the writers in The Shipwrecked Mind seem to take this sunny view. It is perhaps telling that sunny views seem common in the tech industry and uncommon in the philosophy industry. A longer essay might explain why, but for now I will post the question.

Oddly at times I find myself thinking of The Shipwrecked Mind, “Does any of this shit matter in comparison to pop culture?”

I don’t think I got enough out of it in the first pass, which is a good sign.

Links: Making sense, the long game, schools and symbols, blogs and science and more

September 27, 2016 By in Links Tags: Leave a comment

* From the New Yorker, “Making Sense of Modern Pornography: While the Internet has made porn ubiquitous, it has also thrown the industry into severe decline.” The article is not as good as it could be but it is worth reading.

* “How Bolivia became a drug war success story—after ousting Uncle Sam.”

* “Whatever We Dig Up, We’ll End Up Buried,” a fascinating piece whose title does not do it justice.

* American against itself: does the future belong to authoritarians, left and right?

* “A Librarian Left $4 Million to His University. It Spent $1 Million on a Football Scoreboard.” Relative to the total budgets of universities this is not so bad, and remember that fancy dorms are not the reason tuition is skyrocketing, but the symbolism of this is vital.

* “Trumpism Is the Symptom of a Gravely Ill Constitution: No matter what happens in November, the sickness may be terminal.” In other words, we may be reaching the limits of non-parliamentary political systems, though there is no good way to get from where we are now to where we might like to be.

* Someone followed one of my Amazon links and then proceeded to buy an ebook version of Booty Camp Dating Service (no link here, sorry, but I did find the product page description amusing).

* On the role of blogs in the science reputation crisis.

* Old book, new look: why the classics are flying off the shelves. Maybe. Dubiously.

* “Want to hold police accountable? The evidence is clear: film them. Always.” Otherwise, cops can basically do anything, up to and including murder.

* “A beginner’s guide to socialist economics” (and why capitalism kicks its ass).

* “The Game at 10: Reflections From a Recovering Pickup.” See also me on The Truth, Strauss’s latest book.

Briefly noted: The Magicians, re-read, and the TV show

September 21, 2016 By in Books, Fiction, Reading, SF/Fantasy Tags: , Leave a comment

The Magicians holds up well (and the link goes to my original review). What stands out still is the relentless focus of Quentin on happiness: I’d guess that the word appears at last a dozen times, and maybe more, in the novel—too often for anyone who is actually happy to think about it. Quentin’s melancholia is a sort that, if it can be cured, cannot be cured in the ways in which he is attempting to cure it. Don’t be fooled by the magical trappings: the novel is still primarily psychological.

Between now and then The Magicians has been made into a disappointing TV show; that show has high points and funny moments but it cannot overcome a fundamental problem that is illustrative for other writers: it advances all of the characters’ ages by five to ten years, which defeats much of the point and pleasure of the book. The book is about coming of age. It is stuffed with references like this one, from late in it, when (I don’t think this gives anything away) most of the main characters make it to Fillory: “For all the glory of their high and noble purpose, it felt like they were going on a summer-camp nature hike, or a junior high field trip, with the kids goofing on and the two counselors looking dour and superior and grown-up and glaring them back into life when they strayed too far” (one decent definition of being grown-up is that you are no longer concerned with appearing grown up (or not)). It is hard to feel glorious and “noble” when you are being supervised by adults who’ve really seen the world, as Dint and Fen (their guides) have, or apparently have.

Characters who are in the 22 – 30 age range are less likely to analogize their lives to summer camps or junior high field trips. This may seem like a minor point at first. In the show, the characters are still angsty, but at their age their style of angst no longer makes any sense, as they ought to have decently developed, decently resilient personalities by then. That they do not is the flaw the show never manages to overcome.

To be sure, The Magicians tv show does have excellent individual moments, but they don’t add up to much. The actor who plays Penny in particular is a standout (unfortunately, there is something off about the one who plays Quentin). Mostly, the show is an exercise in showing why HBO is so good at its shows and the SyFy channel is so not good at its shows. The Magicians as a TV show is a weak show with a strong one lurking obviously within it, which may be the most frustrating kind. The ones that are transparently bad are just passing phenomena. The ones that are transparently good offer their pleasures. The ones that could be good pain.

Links: Quiet revolutions, Mary Gaitskill, why tuition is actually rising, Love Me Back, and more

September 20, 2016 By in Links Leave a comment

* “The Chevrolet Bolt Is a Quiet Revolution: It makes electric vehicles plausible in a way no other car has.”

* Me on on Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, a book I didn’t get the first time I read it.

* “Fancy Dorms Aren’t The Main Reason Tuition Is Skyrocketing:” in public schools, it’s state-level cuts. In private schools, it’s tuition discounting: All those $40K – $60K prices are used to soak the rich families, while most students get discounts in some form.

* “Addressing Peak Energy Demand with the Tesla Powerpack,” or, consider the more direct headline: “Tesla Wins Massive Contract to Help Power the California Grid.”

* “Never the End: Jennifer Sears interviews Mary Gaitskill.” Her story collection Bad Behavior is still excellent; her novels strike one as over-long short stories.

* Merritt Tierce: “I Published My Debut Novel to Critical Acclaim—and Then I Promptly Went Broke: On the dark side of literary fame.” She wrote Love Me Back, and I wrote one of those positive reviews (which is at the link). This should be a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks that the conventional publishing industry will solve their financial problems.

* “The Thrill of Losing Money by Investing in a Manhattan Restaurant.” It is amazing to me that as many people as do go into restauranting.

* A theory of why people say or think they “hate” the media so much, which simultaneously implies that people love the media.

* “To the four policemen who beat me for checking the health of a sick man in their custody,” it is distressing that my first instinct is to add, “More of the usual” to this story (hat tip Chris Blattman).

Links: Efficient plot hypothesis, Megan Abbott, honey traps, affording to live, and more

September 16, 2016 By in Links Tags: Leave a comment

* “The efficient plots hypothesis,” on how writers should deal with plot, among many other topics.

* How Megan Abbott Spends Her Sundays; you may remember her from this essay about her novel Dare Me.

* “Novels in Third Places: The Case for More Classrooms in Our Literature.”

* “The Brilliant MI6 Spy Who Perfected the Art of the ‘Honey Trap:’ During WWII, Betty Pack used seduction to acquire enemy naval codes.” She also worked to free Spanish fascists. By the way, John le Carré has a new biography out.

* “‘An aggressive proposal that touched a lot of nerves’: Why Gov. Brown’s plan to stem the housing crisis failed.” And why California is going to continue to be ludicrously expensive for a long time to come.

* “How Did G.M. Create Tesla’s Dream Car First?” An incredible, unexpected story.

* It’s time to talk about Byron again; a much more hilarious and fascinating piece than you may be expecting.

* Building bigger roads actually makes traffic worse.

* “Can U.S. Cities Compensate for Curbing Sprawl by Growing Denser?” So far, no; we are choosing sprawl instead.

* “Jay Z: ‘The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail.’” Seems obvious, but when notable people say it it becomes news again.

Briefly noted: Swimming Across — Andy Grove

September 15, 2016 By in Briefly Noted, Nonfiction Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Swimming Across will probably be of niche interest to most, with those most interested likely to be the World War II crowd and the high tech crowd. I don’t know how much they intersect, but Grove survived the war to become a titan of the tech industry. Most who know of him don’t know that he and his family barely survived the Holocaust; Hungary, where Grove was born, allied with the Nazis, then got rolled over by Soviets. Grove eventually got out, and we are all the beneficiaries of his departure:

Stalin died in March 1953, and a gradual relaxation of totalitarian controls took place. Over the next few years, this process accelerated until it culminated in a rebellion against the Communist government—the Hungarian revolution of October 1956.

The revolt lasted for thirteen days and was then put down by Soviet armed forces. Many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West.

I was one of them.

Oddly, despite Hungary’s long experience with totalitarianism, it has now elected, more or less fairly, a would-be dictator and strongman named Viktor Orban. One can imagine Grove’s reaction to Orban and the historical amnesia that allowed him to come to power, but after Grove got out he never went back. He says he isn’t entirely sure why. I would guess that someone forced to flee by the roof is unlikely to willingly return by the front door.

Swimming Across an oddly moving book, though the story is simply told. I wonder if Grove will be mostly forgotten over time, as most of us are, despite his contributions. Still, Swimming Across is of humane and technological interest; so far most of the books about the rise of the tech industry have not been of literary interest. A book like The Intel Trinity is intelligently reported but is no Making of the Atomic Bomb. Too bad. It’s still good. But not quite there, and not quite enough to go beyond a technical history. Swimming Across is closer to there—the “there” that is hard to define but easy to know once it’s seen.

Swimming Across may also be a good book for Americans to read right now, in the midst of declinist political narratives. When Grove arrives he writes:

The skyscrapers looked just like pictures of America. All of a sudden, I was gripped by the stunning realization that I truly was in America. Nothing had symbolized America more to me than skyscrapers; now I was standing on a street, craning my neck to look up at them.

He goes far; the U.S. is the fundamental platform on which he builds.

Since Grove’s death there have been many tributes to him; this is one of my favorite.