ending compelled speech, attention, mental toughness, and more!
RWL #393
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! No, that is not Hampton Beach. That is South Beach in Miami! TLW and I were in Miami over the weekend for our nephew’s wedding. I love Miami. But flying is always frustrating (we were delayed 9 hours and spent most of the first day at Logan waiting to leave). Yet it’s still stunning to think about the fact that we flew - through the air! - at speeds inconceivable to humans throughout almost all of history and were able to spend the weekend half of a country away and then come back over the course of four days. So many of the things we take for granted today are simply miracles if you take a step back and look at the broad sweep of history.
Speaking of history, I hope you checked out my new podcast with my colleague from UNH history, Julia Rodriguez, and our conversation about the history of childhood. If you missed it, you can find it here.
Classes are over for the semester. I have one final tomorrow that I have to write after I finish this newsletter, and then it will be just grading between me and summer. Lots of work to be done over the summer - I have some research projects I need to get back to that I’ve had to put off - so I am looking forward to that, and of course more FITW podcasts, and visiting all my students in their internships! It’s going to be a great summer.
On to the links! As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: AIER, They Can Afford It!
https://www.aier.org/article/they-can-afford-it/
Why: Econ blogger Don Boudreaux explains why (Leftist) populist troopes about how firms like Walmart and McDonalds can afford to pay higher wages and just don’t are wrong. Boudreaux’s prose is always a pleasure to read.
Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, and my protesting students presume that if the minimum wage is hiked, Walmart and other employers of low-skilled workers will simply dip into their cash reserves to cover the costs of paying higher wages. But this presumption is mistaken. Even if Walmart has in reserve billions of dollars of cash, nothing compels Walmart to spend any of these reserves on higher wages. The ability to pay for something doesn’t make purchasing that something an attractive deal for the wealth holder. You, I’m sure, can afford to buy baby diapers. But if you don’t have a baby, the ‘affordability’ of baby diapers to you will not prompt you to run out and buy them. The gain you’d get from owning diapers is less than the cost you’d incur to buy them.
Read the whole thing. Populists from the Left and MAGA Right are generally wrong in the same ways about different things. It’s fascinating. And frustrating.
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What: WBUR, MIT quietly ends diversity statements in hiring as leaders try to manage protests on campus
https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/07/massachusetts-institute-technology-diversity-statements
Why: I am happy to see an elite school taking the first step toward sanity in the culture wars. Compelling speech just results in lots of false speech.
“We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a statement Tuesday confirming the decision.
Academics are supposed to pursue truth, not harmony with a particular ideology. I will be writing my annual performance contributions this week and have to write a statement about how I have supported the University’s DEI policies. I am deeply committed to human flourishing (hence the name of the podcast and newsletter), but DEI is ideology dressed up as Truth. Time for all of this to go.
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Watch
What: Why You Should De-Optimize Your Life | Maria Cano (10 min)
Why: A good discussion of how attention and the subconscious work.
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Listen
What: Hard Fork, AI at Your Jobs + Hank Green Talks TikTok + Deepfake High School (73 min)
Why: I continue to find this pod both informative and interesting. Toward the end they discuss a deepfake recording of a school principal made by a disgruntled employee that got the principal suspended before the police figured out it was a fake. They play a short clip from it and discuss why it would be so hard to discern it was actually a fake. It’s scary how real it sounds. Things we took for granted as evidence are now going to be completely unreliable.
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What: Conversations with Tyler, Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity (56 min)
Why: Hughes continues to make waves as a brilliant young public intellectual. He’s recently published a book encouraging us to re-embrace colorblindness (for identity wars purposes, he’s half Black, half Puerto Riccan). Cowen does a great job drawing out the key points, and also exploring Hughes other interests, such as jazz and hip-hop. If you haven’t heard of Hughes yet, you really should take the time to listen.
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What: The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish, Dr. Jim Loehr: Change the Stories You Tell Yourself (88 min)
Why: Loehr is a performance psychologist. He discusses a number of techniques for improving performance that he has studied with athletes. He also discusses mental toughness. Mental toughness is out of fashion in polite society, which is unfortunate. I am looking forward to reading his latest book.