Expert caution, amateur engagement

In an earlier post, I talked about whether it is appropriate to judge historical people using today’s standards. I was surprised that commenters were so opinionated on an issue of arguably little importance.

On the “anti” side, multiple people argued that to truly understand history, you shouldn’t be so judgmental about it. But the thing is, I am not a historian, so why should I act like one? I do not perform any original historical research. The only way I might ever teach history is by sharing stuff I learned from Wikipedia or news articles. If I were to withhold judgment on historical people, I would not learn more about history, I would learn less because I would be less engaged.

Let’s switch to talking about my area of expertise, physics. I am a professional physicist, and most of my readers merely have an amateur interest in it. We have different attitudes towards physics, as well we should.
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A scandal per week: Trump headlines from the past year

Brought to you by Google’s time-range search function. Note that many links include autoplay videos.

January 1-7: Trump: Clinton, Obama ‘created ISIS’

January 8-14: Donald Trump: NFL ‘football has become soft like our country has become soft’

January 15-21: Donald Trump Quotes Scripture, Sort of, at Liberty University Speech

January 22-28: Trump: I could ‘shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters’

January 29-February 4: Trump: I Would ‘Strongly Consider’ Appointing Judges To Overturn Same-Sex Marriage

February 5-11: Trump puts a price on his wall: It would cost Mexico $8 billion

February 12-18: Donald Trump on 9/11: “You Will Find Out Who Really Knocked Down The World Trade Center”

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On judging people of the past

A bold statement: People of the past should almost always be judged by today’s standards. This results in thinking of a lot of historical figures as horrible people. So yeah, I’ll say it: most historical figures were horrible people. Some of them were horrible because their surrounding culture was horrible, and others were just plain horrible.

My basic reasoning: Moral judgment isn’t for people of the past. The people of the past are dead, and their actions are already foregone conclusions. Moral judgement is for people of the present. I do not wish for people of the present to valorize or emulate people of the past just because they were great by the standards of their own time. I strive for the perpetual improvement of humankind, not the stagnation of virtue. [Read more…]

Japanese “herbivore men” hold a mirror to our culture

This is a repost of an article from 2013. There were a lot of comments on this one, probably because it upset MRAs.  To MRAs I say, cry more.

Herbivore men briefly explained

The Japanese subculture of “herbivore men” seems to hit the news every so often.  Here is a recent example in the Guardian: Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?  What exactly is going on over there?

I’m no expert in Japanese culture, but my coblogger on The Asexual Agenda, Queenie, is an expert.*  I will defer to what she’s written about herbivore men.  My summary: In Japan, men are expected to be “carnivores”, aggressively pursuing relationships with women.  But many men in metropolitan areas have become “herbivores”, being less assertive in relationships, more sensitive, and even willing to be friends with women (in Japan this is a big deal).  And there’s probably other stuff as well, like their attitude towards money, jobs, and fashion.  Women of course are expected to be herbivores to begin with, although there is also talk of carnivore women.

*She’s actually an expert in Japanese religion, but close enough.

In Japan, herbivore men are sometimes the subject of moral panic because they’re not forming relationships, are defying Japanese gender roles, and may be contributing to the declining birth rate.  Cry me a river I say.  People aren’t obligated to make babies just to uphold the national birth rate, and if Japanese people really wanted population growth so badly they could try being less racist and accept more immigrants.

In the English speaking world, the reaction to herbivore men is… different.  Sometimes, the reactions really say more about our own culture than about Japanese culture.

Here I will briefly show the reactions coming from three different groups: mainstream news, asexuals, and men’s rights activists. [Read more…]

Time for some music

I have hangups about sharing music. Basically, I hate everyone else’s taste in music so much, I can’t see why I should expect anyone to feel different about my tastes. At the same time, I hope that people hate it, then they might know how I feel about culture in general.

Multiple people have said the music I like is “depressing”. I can see why, although I have never thought of it that way myself. I just like the tonality. But fair warning. Streaming videos below the fold.
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Calling ordinary people racist

Following the election, many people have called for liberals to stop calling their opponents racist. According to them, many of Trump’s supporters aren’t racist, they’re just ordinary people.

Let’s talk about this. I mean, let’s not talk about Trump, because ugh. But this has long been a point of contention: I do, in fact, think that ordinary people are racist. Yet lots of people reject the idea out of hand.

There is nothing inherently ridiculous about saying everyone is a thing. I can say that ordinary people are human. I can say that ordinary people are kind or fascinating or patriotic. What separates “racist” from the other adjectives is that it expresses strong moral disapproval. Humans have massive hangups about moral disapproval.  Here I try to identify and address those hangups.
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Linkspam: November 11th, 2016

This linkspam does not mention the election, since I collected the links in the previous week.

How Should We Respond to Passive Communication? – Miri discusses the conflict between “ask” and “guess” culture, and more specifically how she responds when people around her use “guess” culture.  I was also raised with ask culture.  But I’d say for me the more serious cultural conflict is between positivity and negativity.  Many people have trouble understanding that I don’t like compliments.  I’d rather people be critical of me, and let me be critical of them.

Valeant sued for botching marketing of female libido pill – Some of you may heard of Addyi (aka Flibanserin), which is used to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder in pre-menopausal women.  After getting approved by the FDA last year, it seems to have been a market failure.  Possibly because it’s barely effective and has serious negative side effects.  And now the investors are suing the owning company for poor marketing.  Via Next Step: Cake.

Entropy and Complexity, Cause and Effect, Life and Time – Sean Carroll teams up with Minute Physics to explain stuff.  I particularly like the one on cause and effect, embedded below the cut.  One of my pet peeves is when people cite physics as supporting their intuition that causation is real.  Causation isn’t really a physics concept, it’s a philosophy concept.

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