I don't find this to be true at all, maybe it has a few niche advantages, but GPT has significantly more data (which is what people are using these things for), and honestly, if GPT-5 comes out in the next month or two, people are likely going to forget about deepseek for a while.
Also, I am incredibly suspicious of bot marketing for Deepseek, as many AI related things have. "Deepseek KILLED ChatGPT!", "Deepseek just EXPOSED Sam Altman!", "China COMPLETELY OVERTOOK the USA!", threads/comments that sound like this are very weird, they don't seem organic.
GPT-5 has been a phantom boogyman for like a year. Any time something better comes up, people claim OpenAI is holding back by not releasing some secret model despite the fact that if they had it, they'd be fully incentived to release it.
the unpleasant truth is that the odious "bot marketing" you perceive is just the effect of influencers everywhere seizing upon the exciting topic du jour
if you go back a few weeks or months there was also hype about minimax, nvidia's "world models", dsv3, o3, hunyuan, flux, papers like those for titans or lcm rendering transformers completely irrelevant…
the fact that it makes for better "content" than usual (say for titans) is because of the competitive / political / "human interest" context — china vs the US, open weights vs not, little to no lip service paid to "safety" and "alignment" vs those being primary aspects of messaging and media strategy, export controls and allegedly low hardware resources vs tons of resources, election-related changes in how SV carries itself politically — and while that is to blame for the difference in sheer scale the underlying phenomenon is not at all different
the disease here is influencerism and the pus that oozes out of the sores it produces is rarely very organic
Thanks for saying it. People are far too cynical, and blame everything on bots. The truth is they should be a lot more cynical, and blame everything on human tendencies!
I think it's less bot marketing but more that a lot people hate C-suites. And a lot people hate the USA.
The narrative is the USA can never win. Even the whole AI trend was entirely started by the US companies, the moment a Chinese company publishes something resembling the SOTA it becomes the evidence of the fall of the USA.
No, it was a COINTELPRO operation. They made up a bunch of propaganda for character assassination that, to no surprise, never got released because it didn't exist.
Agreed, it's a purely reductionist take on taxes while showing complete ignorance on who decides how much people earn in society. I wish people would stop listening to Sowell like he was the Jesus of economics. Outside of theory, he fumbles all the time.
I'm not trying to be obtuse... but isn't "who decides how much people earn" always the two people that enter into free association with one another, either by an employment contract or a sales contract?
For the higher income classes it’s that class themselves who decides how much they are earn. They sit on each others’ boards, run investment funds and so on. They mingle with politicians who then create favorable laws.
There is is no input from people with lower income. It’s an insider group that negotiates and deals with itself.
It completely ignores political corruption 100%. It completely ignores union stomping over the past 60 years, among other things. This is what I mean by his ultra reductionist views, he refuses to consider external factors when he talks about social issues, which is weird for a top economist to do.
I think some people in this thread are recalling interviews or talk shows with Sowell, while others are referring to his books. In video I have seen of him, I can agree he can be flippant on some topics... maybe the format of the television interview or "debate" or "round-table" would leave the impression that he hasn't thought carefully about these things. I'd recommend his books and essays.
The notes on political corruption and union stomping over the past 60 years are intriguing, do you have any good references to solid academic sources on these or related topics?
Anarcho-capitalist, libertarian, and individuals that hold high-amounts of those related beliefs have very few basic laws that govern their world views (1-3, depending on who you ask). If you believe that the fruits of your labor are yours and yours alone with no exception, then no amount of talk of "union stomping", "historic injustice" and "external factors" will change the interpretation of the fact that taxation is violating that principle.
So I fully understand how you think his views are utra-reductionist.
The corruption issue is well-known, but not relevant. Corruption has been demonstrably worse in non-capitalist societies. Likewise, the biggest issue with capitalism is actually the lack of perfect information (and manipulation of information), but once again, non-capitalist systems have at least as big of an issue here (usually far worse).
The partial solution for information involves requiring more disclosures, having a smaller government with higher transparence, and (historically impossible) making that information easily available and publicly searchable on the internet. This also tends to help reduce the corruption issue.
A complete solution for either corruption or information transfer seems out of reach at the moment.
The short answer is simply that of all the systems we've tried as humans, capitalism (though imperfect) is the least worst and results in the least human suffering.
His economics are sound, but I often find that his takes on social issues are extremely reductionist. His social views a lot of the time are just standard conservative views (and wrong IMO), I wish he wasn't being praised for that.
One example being his view on systemic racism, which he described as:
“It does remind me of the propaganda tactics of Joseph Goebbels in the age of the Nazis, in which he was supposed to have said that people will believe any lie if it’s repeated long enough and loud enough. And that’s what we’re getting.”
I just can't take this sort of person seriously in regards to social issues. I just can't do it. And he does this all the time, all of his social views are just ultra-reductionist conservatives views that are identical to the things my hardcore mask-refusing conservative relatives post on facebook.
It is immeasurable, undefinable, unchangeable. As a propagandist you must take care to use things that can not be countered. Systemic racism is one of those.
What is the systemic racism measure for Canada vs US? That is his point, you can use that stick to beat anyone and anything you want without having to supply a shred of evidence. Just keep repeating it and call everyone who disagrees racist or Uncle Tom.
If it were immeasurable and undefinable, then we wouldn't have studies showing disproportionate sentencing of Black people [1] or the persistent negative effects of redlining [2]. And if it were unchangeable, we wouldn't be able to construct studies to show the specific choke-points of racial inequality, nor suggest policy solutions to remedy them.
> What is the systemic racism measure for Canada vs US?
I don't understand this. Why do you want to measure against other countries, and why phrase it like you just want one number? Is it not enough to claim that certain inequalities appear in certain aspects of our society?
It would be like asking for a measure of our foreign policy. Sure, we could probably make one, but that seems like an entirely inadequate means of actually assessing what's happening in a complex sociological ecosystem. Our assessments have to be more individualized.
> That is his point, you can use that stick to beat anyone and anything you want without having to supply a shred of evidence. Just keep repeating it and call everyone who disagrees racist or Uncle Tom.
You can do that with anything though. I've heard all the same language used in Climate Change discourse: "well, if you don't think humans caused climate change, they'll just label you anti-science and beat you out of the discussion." This is just a blatant rhetorical tactic to shift discussion from about the actual problem—and indeed all the evidence that this problem has—to nebulous Twitter mobs.
When it comes to redlining, sowell directly addresses it in in Vision of the Anointed. He points out that the kinds of houses blacks tend to purchase tends to be ignored in studies that find widespread discrimination.
For example blacks are much more likely to want to buy multi family homes. The income and other requirements for these are much stricter which is why they are denied loans more often.
Moreover, he points out that if blacks were being subject to stricter requirements then one would expect that they were less likely to default since the requirements are notionally to calculate default risk.
He points out that before the redlining legislation black and white default rates were broadly the same indicating that whatever criteria the banks used it fulfilled its main purpose of estimating default likelihood.
He then shows data that the anti discrimination legislation increased black default rates and questions whether you encouraging minorities to declare bankruptcy and enter financial ruin is really something to be desired.
Before you make blanket statements on the man you should be familiar with his stance on things. Your comment lacks the nuance that one is apt to find in any sowell book.
>He then shows data that the anti discrimination legislation increased black default rates and questions whether you encouraging minorities to declare bankruptcy and enter financial ruin is really something to be desired.
Stop the Sowell worship. Please, internet, for the love of god. He will always talk about how everything that democrats do is bad and everything conservatives do is good. He isn't right on everything all the time.
It's actually an extremely common argument that conservatives make to this day. Thomas Sowell blamed the CRA himself, so I'm not sure what your point is.
>>He then shows data that the anti discrimination legislation increased black default rates and questions whether you encouraging minorities to declare bankruptcy and enter financial ruin is really something to be desired.
He brought up anti discrimination legislation causing defaulting and bankruptcy, which the 2008 crash literally caused. I brought up a specific example of how Sowell is wrong. Sowell has directly commented on this matter. It is obviously relevant and doesn't require me to explain any further.
>He brought up anti discrimination legislation causing defaulting and bankruptcy, which the 2008 crash literally caused.
No he didn't, what are you talking about? Just because he mentioned foreclosures means he meant the CRA caused the 2008 housing crisis? No one was talking about it, you just brought it up out of no where.
His statement had NOTHING to do with the housing crisis, the only link between them seems to be "both involve foreclosures, so if I prove CRA did not cause the crisis I will prove his other statement is also incorrect... Because they both have the word 'foreclose' in them"
The OP brought up that Sowell said that anti discrimination legislation increased defaulting and bankruptcy. Thomas Sowell literally wrote an entire article blaming CRA about 10 years ago. I brought up how Sowell is wrong because studies show that he is wrong.
So even though you quoted one argument, you posted a document to prove a whole other argument wrong, never bothering to bring up that the other argument you just proved wrong. I still don't know what other argument you proved wrong, did Sowell go on record saying the CRA caused the 2008 housing crisis?
Yes, as I said he literally wrote an article about it. I literally cannot understand how you can't connect Sowell's claim that anti-discrimination legislation (like CRA) is bad to my argument.
Can you post a link? I'm honestly under the suspicious you just posted a PDF you did not read, or knowingly knew did not back up your arguments but hoped no one would read the 25 pages to find out.
Damn, guess I was wrong. Still nothing to do with the parents argument though, you should at edit your comment to include that link so people understand what you're taking about.
Nah, you switched arguments mid stream without any reason or warning, besides that the crisis argument was easier to prove wrong than the parent's. CRA was introduced 43 years ago, the 2008 crisis was 12 years ago, there is no reason to link them today.
My entire point the whole way through was about Sowell being wrong about the CRA, and it literally doesn't matter when it was introduced. It was an example of anti discrimination legislation regarding loans that Sowell has directly commented on, what other example should I use?
Parent's argument can still be correct even though the CRA did not cause the housing crisis.
Those are unrelated. The first argument might be correct and the CRA increases defaults by giving loans to people who can't afford them, and still there was a regulatory failure with firms rubber stamping bad debts as AAA and packaging them up in 2008.
> Stop the Sowell worship. Please, internet, for the love of god. He will always talk about how everything that democrats do is bad and everything conservatives do is good. He isn't right on everything all the time.
Stop the bad-faith discussion. I never 'worshipped' Sowell. The commenter above claimed that Sowell has not grappled with various studies that show various racial disparities. I've read his works, and Sowell indeed does directly confront these studies, so to say he is ignoring evidence is wrong.
Whether or not Sowell is right is not really up for discussion. What was being discussed is whether Sowell acknowledges studies on topics he is interested in. Indeed he does, and he finds issues in many studies as well as other studies that have remained mostly unacknowledged by academia.
> He isn't right on everything all the time.
This is a ridiculous standard to judge anyone by. No one is right all the time. Stop changing the goalposts.
I'm not debating Sowell—I don't have the background to dispute his claims, I'm arguing against the notion that systemic racism is "immeasurable, undefinable, unchangeable" and is thus propaganda. Researchers might be wrong about their findings, like in any field, but you can't just handwave the research as dogma.
If Sowell is responding to specific claims made by researchers of systemic racism, then it can't possibly be merely empty rhetoric, it's a subject of active academic inquiry.
Sowell believes that systemic racism doesn't exist because he has examined the various research and finds issues with all of them -- namely that the various discrepancies they find can be explained in other ways.
He never claimed that systemic racism could not exist. In fact, in his books, he openly admits that he believes that it did indeed once exist. He just questions whether the studies being produced today are done so without pre-existing bias (are they looking for data to back up their belief, or vice versa) and whether the data produced evidentiates the conclusion. If indeed the studies you cite and that he refutes are looking for data to back up their pre-existing conclusion, then propaganda is the correct description.
No one has put forth the argument that Sowell believes systematic racism cannot ever exist. All that has been said is that he questions whether it currently exists today and the conclusions of the studies you cite.
> No one has put forth the argument that Sowell believes systematic racism cannot ever exist.
The comment I was responding to literally said "It is immeasurable, undefinable, unchangeable. As a propagandist you must take care to use things that can not be countered. Systemic racism is one of those." A very clear implication that systemic racism doesn't exist.
Now, this may not be Sowell's views, but fortunately for Sowell, I never mentioned him in my initial reply.
> He just questions whether the studies being produced today are done so without pre-existing bias (are they looking for data to back up their belief, or vice versa) and whether the data produced evidentiates the conclusion.
All science is performed with biases. We couldn't possibly form a hypothesis without following our intuitions first. The question is whether our biases conform to the data. Of course, biases may also shape how we interpret data, but this is true for everyone. Sowell may be right, but let's not pretend that he, or anyone for that matter, is the only one approaching this research with a truly neutral, unbiased approach.
I think it's fair to subject research into systemic racism to scrutiny, but that's merely the process of academic review. It should never be touted as cutting through the propaganda, as if Sowell is some kind of crusader against the dogmatic PC police left.
> In fact, in his books, he openly admits that he believes that it did indeed once exist.
Now, call me crazy, but given that he believes it once existed, I find it hard to believe that he also believes that it's just over and done with now. John Lewis just died recently, and I consider it unlikely that we'd ferret out racism from our systems in just that span of time, especially when I hear stories of, for instance, a North Carolina legislature disenfranchising Black people with surgical precision as recent as 2014. If we still have that kind of explicit racism in our public institutions, it's unreasonable to think more subtle forms aren't also causing unequal outcomes.
> Now, call me crazy, but given that he believes it once existed, I find it hard to believe that he also believes that it's just over and done with now.
Yes, he does believe racism exists within systems. But this is not what is meant by 'systemic racism'. Today, systemic racism is both a description of a problem, as well as an insinuation of its cause -- namely 'white privilege' and white hegemony --
and an insinuation of solutions -- namely progressive legislation. Sowell rejects these insinuated causes and insinuated solutions and instead believes discrimination and poor outcomes for blacks today is driven by progressive policies such as a lack of school choice, laws encouraging loans be made to blacks who cannot afford it, etc. He believes that blacks will be helped by a return to a less regulated market. While this viewpoint could be named under the umbrella of 'systemic racism', let's be honest with ourselves that that's not what the term has come to mean
See, this just comes off as reactionary, as if saying "I believe in systemic racism" somehow secretly casts a vote for progressive policies behind your back. Is it really so hard to say "I believe that our institutions are systemically racist, and I believe that egalitarianism is best facilitated by the market"? It just seems strange to get caught up in the "culture war" notions that terms are getting co-opted for agendas and the like, when we can just address the actual issues themselves.
Also, if you believe that institutions discriminate against Black people, is the direct implication not that Whites are privileged over them in these spaces?
And as for school choice, my understanding was that the research showed that school choice worsened racial education outcomes, like this paper claims [1]. I know I've seen other research to this effect, but this is just one of the first results of google scholar. If nothing else, I would assume that any school choice policy must be coupled with a progressive transportation program, lest that choice become determined by geographic disparities, which because of segregation policies both on the books and within people's historical preferences, just bakes in racial disparities.
Regardless, to act like school choice is some kind of underground counter-culture movement to a progressive-dominated education system, when Betsy DeVoss is Secretary of Education, seems misguided at best. I don't know why you feel the need to dance around terms like "systemic racism" as if it will inadvertently empower a progressive movement when that progressive movement isn't even in power.
Words take on new meanings. Look... you're expecting me to continue to defend a man who has written dozens of full-length books explaining his positions. I'm not going to respond to your claims on charter schools because Sowell has just released a new book called 'charter schools and their enemies', which goes very in depth into his support of charter schools. I haven't read it yet, but I imagine it would contain his response to studies like the ones you posted.
Thank you for linking to studies on the systemic racism issue.
"Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing,
we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest
offense and criminal history, can explain most of the large raw racial
disparity in federal sentences, but significant gaps remain. Across the
distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer
than those of comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of
this disparity can be explained by prosecutors’ initial charging decisions,
particularly the filing of charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Ceteris paribus, the odds of black arrestees facing such a charge
are 1.75 times higher than those of white arrestees."
It should also be noted that the vast majority of people talking about the sentencing disparity ascribe 100% of the sentencing difference to racism, when this paper states that it's actually a 10% delta, and the other 90% is due to previous criminal record, etc. It's not like activists ever cared about nuance.
The issue I have with the term "systemic racism" is that it is typically used in a purposefully nebulous fashion to capture and group a collection of specific, actionable issues that can be measured.
Physics is also a purposefully nebulous term used to capture and group a collection of specific issues that can be measured. God forbid people want to group together racial disparities caused by institutional practices under the term "systemic racism." We could call them "fiddledydoop" for all I care, but there is obviously a good reason to group these things together.
Of course, you seem to be implying that people aren't actually trying to address these issues individually, and you couldn't be more wrong. Academics and policymakers alike are forming and implementing solutions all the time. You might just be looking too closely at Twitter.
It's frankly insulting that, despite the ongoing tragedy of racial inequality and the abundance of experts actively working to resolve it, that you and others are so caught up in such meaningless semantic games.
> It should also be noted that the vast majority of people talking about the sentencing disparity ascribe 100% of the sentencing difference to racism
I'm not sure how you can substantiate that claim.
> it's actually a 10% delta
You say that like a 10% delta because the color of your skin isn't tragic.
> It's not like activists ever cared about nuance.
Are they supposed to? We have a representative democracy for a reason: average people and activists push for change, and experts and representatives try to enact that push a reasonably as possible. I wouldn't expect the average person to approach policy failures with moderation. Most don't have years of higher education or a heterogeneous voter base to appease to moderate them. That goes for all sides. Don't act like the constituency who decry systemic racism approach it with the same nuance as Sowell.
Your analogy isn't correct. Physics isn't used as a catch-all to explain things that haven't been researched.
And I never said the 10% delta wasn't awful. That is of course a horrific thing that must be addressed. It's also a specific issue that can be measured and solved.
Systemic racism is used just like God was when I, growing up in the south, had to defend my belief in evolution. The favorite weapon of the biblical creationists is termed "God of the gaps". They would look for some biological feature (their favorite was the human eye) that wasn't fully explained by evolutionary science, and then claim that gap in science had to be filled by God's existence.
Systemic racism is "racism of the gaps". Every discrepancy between two arbitrarily separated groups is termed evidence of some non-specific, internal bigotry that absolutely must exist. The fact that various cultural groups behave and raise children differently is ignored. Southern whites are much poorer than norther whites. Must be bigotry. It couldn't be cultural differences.....
Women are radically underrepresented as victims of police violence. There must be systemic bigotry towards men by police. Asians are underrepresented in police killings. Police must systemically favor them.
We know that this isn't true, and that women are underrepresented in police killings because they are dramatically less likely to be in confrontations with police. But this logic is willfully ignored in place of the "systemic racism" canard when looking at black male overrepresentation in police killings. It's exactly what you would expect when people who seek power instead of truth are dominating the conversation.
And since you are defending activists willfully misrepresenting data to feed emotional narratives, let's talk about the fact that BLM's hyperbolic language around police killings of black men has caused a large percentage of the population to think that police are a statistically significant threat to the lives of black men in America. The other impression left on the minds of the public is that black men are exclusively the victims of police violence, when the data says otherwise.
Here, you see that 76% of the people killed by police are non-black in the US. And yes, black men are overrepresented, and so are latinos. Asians are underrepresented. Activists have SUCCEEDED in manipulating the public on this, and have created social pressure that academics are yielding to.
Ask yourself why you have to use Google to find the name of a Latino who was unjustly killed by police in the last 5 years, but you (if you are like me) can list the names of multiple black men unjustly killed by police in the same time frame? Do you think that discrepancy in knowledge is natural, fair, or just?
The ethno-centric activists have taken the very real issue of police violence, and turned it into a race specific one, needlessly. Racial issues are easy to weaponize, and that's probably the motivation, but it comes at the cost of actual truth. Police kill citizens of all colors with impunity. George Floyd's murderers were arrested a day later. The killer of Daniel Shaver (the second most egregious police killing video I've seen after George Floyd) was given early retirement with a full pension.
I think you make some good points toward the end, which is why I wanted to say that, as a member of the general public, I don't feel like activists manipulated me. They brought up the issue, and some of them may have more extreme views than I, but I think it's clear that some examples of police violence are unnecessary, regardless of whom they're perpetrated against.
> Physics isn't used as a catch-all to explain things that haven't been researched.
Has systemic racism not been researched?
I feel like you're just grasping at semantic straws here. Systemic racism is a theory, like any other scientific theory. Believe it or not, it's a framework that informs research.
> Systemic racism is used just like God was when I, growing up in the south
God is a theory too, just an increasingly tenuous one. Systemic racism seems to bear out in studies.
I don't know why scientifically minded people seem to act like science is just a done deal, and that any theory they instinctively don't like is somehow newfangled. This is just not how science has ever been conducted. Every theory starts out new and strange, and we just have to see how it comports to the data.
> Every discrepancy between two arbitrarily separated groups is termed evidence of some non-specific, internal bigotry that absolutely must exist.
Except the term "systemic racism" literally means that this bigotry is externalized—it exists within the systems of rules we created.
It also seems weird to use "absolutely must exist" sarcastically when you agreed to that 10% statistic earlier. That's just one stat. No, not everything is systemic racism, but as we established earlier, that's not what anyone's saying. Research suggests that the problem is pervasive enough to validate the phenomenon of "systemic racism" is quite real.
> The fact that various cultural groups behave and raise children differently is ignored.
It isn't? Culture, much like individual action, is determined heavily by institutions. People can complain about rap music glorifying a distrust of the law, but when there are actual stats showing a 10% disparity in sentencing, I can't really be too harsh on the rapper here.
Frankly, I never understand this vector of attack. Like, let's assume that all this was actually 100% culture. How do we fix anything? How do you change culture? You can't just tell Black people "be better, and stop that rap music." It seems to me that the answer is still institutional change.
> There must be systemic bigotry towards men by police.
This is actually true. The justice system is disproportionately harsher on men, but that's because we perceive men as being stronger and more in control of their actions. Indeed, we do need to have a cultural shift towards the perception of men, but that shift starts by making our institutions more willing to consider men as vulnerable so we can address it.
> women are underrepresented in police killings because they are dramatically less likely to be in confrontations with police.
But why is that the case. It's not random.
> And since you are defending activists willfully misrepresenting data to feed emotional narratives
You can be dismissive of activists, just make sure it's universal. No side has ownership of "calm rational discourse." I just see a lot of people focus on the temperament of activists rather than the actual policy being considered. It's just a pointless ad hominem. Everyone can point to some group of the unwashed masses and say "look at all those dumb people supporting you, don't you look silly now!"
> The other impression left on the minds of the public is that black men are exclusively the victims of police violence, when the data says otherwise.
Sure, I also think "defund the police" is a misguided slogan. Fortunately, laws aren't written by slogans, they're written by experts.
> Ask yourself why you have to use Google to find the name of a Latino who was unjustly killed by police in the last 5 years, but you (if you are like me) can list the names of multiple black men unjustly killed by police in the same time frame? Do you think that discrepancy in knowledge is natural, fair, or just?
No, but the reforms that BLM protesters are asking for would also help Latino people. I agree that it would be great that the discourse could be on all police violence, because it certainly is pervasive, but I'm not really going to blame Black people, who have an incredibly unique history in this country to focus on their own community's strife.
I also wouldn't expect an organization called Black Lives Matter to be advocating for Latinos (though, I think the work that they do conveniently does). No one is suppressing a Latino Lives Matter movement, it's just that the Latino experience in this country doesn't seem to coalesce in that way. I'm sure there's a very interesting investigation one could perform to figure out why.
> The ethno-centric activists have taken the very real issue of police violence, and turned it into a race specific one, needlessly.
I don't see why that's a problem when the goal is the same. Proposed police reforms aren't race-specific.
"I don't see why that's a problem when the goal is the same. Proposed police reforms aren't race-specific."
It's a problem because making it race specific undermines the goals of police reform. BLM the slogan isn't the same as the organization. The organization conflates the goals of police reforms with a lot of the typical ultra-left wing ivory tower identity ideas like claims that the nuclear family is internalized white supremacy. These ideas are unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans on all parts of the political spectrum, and weaken the goal of police reform.
I grew up in a mostly black county, and the first time I walked into a classroom that wasn't mostly black was freshman year in college. I've noticed a pattern among whites who grew up in segregated suburbs of holding black people to a lower moral and intellectual standard than they hold themselves to. Words like "its understandable that they would" are used to justify BLM willfully, actively, and purposefully misinforming the public on police violence. A consistent minority of people of all racial categories are inherently wired for bigotry. White people need to get more comfortable calling out these hard-wired bigots when they DON'T share their own skin color. Stop celebrating this behavior. It's bad, and needlessly divisive. I got my ass kicked several times by the minority of black kids in my school who were bigots. Most of the non-bigoted black kids stood by and watched. A minority would intervene on my behalf. This is pretty identical to historical acts of white racism. The conformists are what worry me the most. You know, people who suddenly, because the New York Times said so, start capitalizing Black when they've never done so in their entire lives. NYT did so because they think the tiny ivory tower academic community that told them to capitalize black was representative of the black community. As if white academics are remotely similar to the typical white American.
I was honestly unaware of the difference. Upon looking up the term on Wikipedia, the first line is "Institutional racism (also known as systemic racism)." Every subsequent article I looked at under the google search "systemic racism vs institutional racism" seemed to make roughly the same equality.
I'm under the impression that institutional refers to specific formal institutions, like policing, jobs markets, etc. Systemic refers to that plus informal cultural biases, that is institutional is a subset of systemic.
Of course, patriarch theory completely accounts for this. The common view that men are more powerful and autonomous, and therefore dangerous, can probably account for some degree of their harsher treatment under the justice system, just like this view probably helps them in acquiring positions of power in the workplace.
I don't see how. If men are perceived as being stronger and more rational, that will help them in acquiring jobs, but hurt them when being found culpable of a crime.
I'm not sure where you learned feminist theory, but it's fairly resolute about the fact that Patriarchy is deleterious to both men and women.
Nobody learns feminist theory because it's not a learnable topic, it's just a collection of nonsensical anecdotes bound together with clever sounding words.
If men get sentenced more harshly because they are "stronger" and "more rational", or even just perceived that way, then there's no problem with them dominating roles that benefit from a lot of strength or rationality, roles like CEO of a company. But feminists have a big problem with that notion. They're all about how women are just as good as men at everything, equal in all respects and thus deserving of equal outcomes, right until there's an outcome that's better for women than men. Then suddenly there's an intellectual sounding but illogical explanation.
Something being difficult to precisely measure does not make it a Nazi tactic. This is just an attempt to reframe the argument to be more charitable to Sowell, but no, his argument is bad.
Sowell has some well-thought-out views on these issues, and he’s been expressing many of them for decades, but he has a curmudgeonly side as well. And I think if you understand his more well-thought-out views on these issues, I think you’ll also at least understand his curmudgeonly attitude.
Oddly enough, what you’re doing now—if it were done to dismiss the thoughts of a “progressive” black person—would probably be characterized as “tone policing”, and to whatever extent that’s a legitimate concept I think it applies to someone who makes his fair share of curmudgeonly remarks in the context of many decades of otherwise thoughtful and reasoned argument.
I cannot agree more. I think he's brilliant, and I've learned a lot from his ideas. However, I've seen him in multiple interviews putting forth evidence-free ideas aligned with Republican talk points.
Did you mean to reply to a different thread? This was about Sowell’s conservative social views and the sometimes intemperate way he expresses them, not about his economics (which the person I’m replying to expressed an appreciation for).
Looking at his claim isolated from his evidence is hard to discuss. I think that also came from a TV interview, which is not the ideal forum for him to present evidence.
(When discussing "systemic racism", let's set aside specific racism, which can (and should) be specifically called out and changed.)
To explore systemic racism in more detail, we'd want to look at some measure (not necessarily a single number) of systemic racism. Once we have a way of measuring it (even crudely), we could compare across various races, countries, states, and regions. Importantly, we could compare it within a given race -- if systemic racism varies within a race, then clearly we need to revisit the definition because there are other factors at work. We could also look for other signs that something is awry, like areas that are "systemically racist" against the most politically powerful group.
Dr. Sowell has been performing this kind of research and analysis for decades, and documents it extensively in his many books.
From the quotation above, it seems that he believes that he believes that the term "systemic racism" has no useful definition remaining after this analysis, and that it's being used as propaganda to undermine institutions that stand in the way of political goals.
If you believe that systemic racism is a useful construct that leads to solutions for a better world, then by all means follow where it leads. But please focus on offering alternative policies that lead to good results, and adapt (or revert) those policies if they lead to bad results. Don't just turn it into a never-ending "discussion" that divides people with no solution.
His social commentary is some of his most important work. If you had to isolate Sowell's most repeated, potent point, it would be that disparities in population outcomes are nowhere near sufficient to infer discrimination as a primary contributor. If people better understood this single fact, it would go a long way to disentangling the absolute mess of a concept that is systemic racism.
If you're a little older and were reading papers in the late 80s and 90s, Thomas Sowell was a fixture of the Op-Ed as a reliable apologist for capitalism and white supremacy.
It's definitely _why_ he was so prolific at that time because back then papers published hardly any Black views in editorials, much less left/liberal Black ones. Concepts that are common now (slavery's legacy is still with us; criminal justice is a huge problem for minorities; etc) would get you banned from pretty much anywhere then. But cheerily offering views like "Stop helping Black people" and "people are poor because they're lazy" with a Black writer was positively applauded.
There was kind of a moment around then, you had Ward Connerly on the UC board of directors busily dismantling affirmative action, Clarence Thomas' appointment, and Sowell blowing up the op-ed pages. There was no question that if you were a conservative Black you would be amplified and supported all over the place.
Needless to say, this led me to dismiss him intellectually then, as his political arguments are threadbare paleoconservativism. I haven't looked at his economic work, but given the appaling history of arch-conservative economics from "giants" like Friedman, I can't imagine I'd find anything very persuasive.
Invoking similarity to Nazi propaganda is almost always a strategic error, and Thomas Sowell should know better. The actions of the third reich were so heinous that they are mostly recognized as precluding any comparison with the thoughts or actions of any normal, nonheinous people, and when you try to articulate such a comparison you come off in many or most people's eyes as totally hyperbolic.
Still, if you're willing to remain cool headed and entertain the most reasonable interpretation of what's being said, you'll have to admit that claims about 21st-century sociopolitical rhetoric having features in common with Nazi propaganda does not need to imply any kind of moral equivalence between the relevant 21st century activists and the Nazis.
The rhetoric of the third reich is probably the most famous example of a particular strategy, in which particular bugs of human psychology are exploited using scapegoating and the cultivation of a sense of victimhood. One could very reasonably believe that either (or both) of Donald Trump and lefty-social-justice-warrior types have been using such strategies to garner support WITHOUT thinking even with a few brain cells that either is morally comparable to the Nazis.
I have to think that this is how Mr. Sowell expects you to interpret what he's saying. It would be nice if he had an example other than the Nazis to use, since the holocaust carries so much emotional baggage, but there's just no other historical example of this rhetorical strategy that is so well known or so universally recognized as being in the wrong.
The idea that calling out systemic racism is like a Nazi propaganda tactic. Look up any of his other views on literally any social issues, it's just whatever Fox News-esque conservative would want to hear. Like, somehow it's not the government snatching people up in vans that is Nazi-like, it's actually the anti-racist protesters that are Nazi's to the genius brain of Thomas Sowell. How do people idolize this guy?
if you define “conservative” as “wrong”, then I understand your point, but then your statement is trivial - it’s a statement of opinion, “sowell is wrong”, masquerading as evidence and using 12 times as many words as needed.
Yes, I am giving my opinion on Thomas Sowell in a post about Thomas Sowell. My post is very short, like a third of it is a quote from him. And I didn't define conservative as wrong, I said he is a standard, non-special conservative AND wrong. What are your actual disagreements?
Well, the problem with opinions is that they are not that helpful. For example, I could say the following:
Sowell is a classical liberal and right. Sowell is a neoconservative and wrong. Sowell is a traditional conservative and right. Sowell is a neoliberal and wrong. Sowell is a classical liberal and wrong. Sowell is a neoconservative and right. Sowell is a traditional conservative and wrong.
Without some way to separate the true sentences from the false sentences none of them are very helpful, even if one in the pile happens to be true.
Well, by no means am I trying to shut you down, I'm doing the opposite, asking for more details. For example another comment on this thread pointed out that apparently Republicans usually sign some kind of "loyalty oath" that's associated with him. I would consider that strong evidence for his association with traditional conservatism.
If you check that part of the thread again, you'll see that that "loyalty oath" is associated with Grover Norquist rather than Thomas Sowell (although I'm fairly sure Sowell also thinks that taxes and government expenditures in the U.S. are way too high).
What specifically is he right about? Why do we require evidence when someone says he is wrong, but we do not require evidence for the numerous times in this thread where people say his book is “required reading”?
First, everyone here who likes Sowell can put forth specific, concrete examples where he is right, instead of making vague statements about how brilliant he is and then demanding evidence only when someone disagrees.
> First, everyone here who likes Sowell can put forth specific, concrete examples where he is right, instead of making vague statements about how brilliant he is and then demanding evidence only when someone disagrees.
Why? The positive argument already exists. It's Sowell's writing. What are you asking for a cliff's notes? The disagreement you're talking about must obviously stem from something in the source material we're talking about. So what is it?
Do you expect to be taken seriously when you dismiss someone with a resume like his as “nothing more than a common twitter conservative”? How do you even fool yourself into believing that?
None of his books that I've read are about economics, they're all about social issues, including very deep ones like why people separate into opposing camps on political issues.
It's really just worth reading some of that stuff before you decide he's just a Tweeter. He's basically the opposite of that.
I'm asking for concrete evidence that his opinions have predictive power which has been assessed independently.
If no such evidence exists then all we have is just-so story-telling, which can be discounted.
The fact that a lot of people seem to believe his ideas are convincing is irrelevant to this discussion.
People believe all kinds of things because they sound plausible to them - partly because other people have made careers out of working out how to push people's "This sounds plausible so I shall believe it" buttons.
Which is why reproducible evidence and independent peer review are things. And why it's absolutely reasonable - in fact required - to question assertions that can't be grounded in them.
> The idea that calling out systemic racism is like a Nazi propaganda tactic. Look up any of his other views on literally any social issues, it's just whatever Fox News-esque conservative would want to hear.
With regard to the Fox News-watching American conservative base and bad Nazi analogies, it's useful to keep in mind what you're dealing with. Grover Norquist said in an interview in 2003 that the estate tax is equivalent to the Holocaust. When Terry Gross politely allowed him to walk that statement back, he said that it's just morally equivalent to the Holocaust. [2] Of course all the thinking involved is total bullshit and the man is batshit crazy, but the interview is not without interest.
Such a lunatic must be the object of widespread derision on the right, right? Nope. Almost all Republican lawmakers sign his bizarre loyalty oath upon taking office, pledging they're not going to raise taxes. [3]
Well in fairness he didn't actually compare anything to Nazis. He compared something to one single precept that was espoused and made well-known by them. Unlike say the "Punch a Nazi" movement from last year that literally claimed modern day Nazis are numerous and living amongst us.
So then, how does a black person adopt, of their own free will without a thought of "white belief", a conservative outlook an not run afoul of your complaint?
Are you suggesting that they stay silent? How is injecting race into the political discourse at this level not in itself patently racist?
Are you suggesting that only whites are allowed such free choices in their beliefs?
Are you suggesting all white conservatives are racist? Doesn't that sound like an overbroad, racist generalization itself?
I'd like to find a good faith interpretation of your statement, but it really seems like your world view is that someone's skin color and political inclination determines their moral standing and beliefs.
> To say things that white conservatives believe but suffer ridicule for saying.
This is so ridiculously racist and uninformed I don't know where to begin.
First, it assumes Sowell hasn't made any unique contributions to economics or politics. This is completely false but you presume it because... he's black? If he were white would you take him more seriously?
Second, you presume the only reason he is allowed to speak is to justify the racism of others. Which reduces Sowell to a useful idiot or a token. It completely strips him of his accomplishments. Imagine saying that a former member of government, a PhD, award winning economist, author of more than a dozen best selling books, and fellow at more than a dozen prestigious institutions is only listened to because he's black.
Could you clarify "the point of Thomas Sowell"? It seems as though you are ascribing a "point" to an individual, what do you mean by that?
It seems like a non-sequitur to bring racism in on this thread - how does Sowell appeal to "white conservatives" more than conservatives of other backgrounds?
because they can hold him up as an unbiased intellectual despite the fact that most of the opinions that he voices are trite, and honestly just sound like talk radio. I mean, just go through a few of his statements:
"Instead of trying to propagandize children to hug trees and recycle garbage, our schools would be put to better use teaching them how to analyze and test what is said by people who advocate tree-hugging, recycling, and innumerable other causes across the political spectrum."
"What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice."
If you think that's uncharitable go read what he's written over the years, in particular on politics, it's indistinguishable from my rambling grandfather. Even pay attention to the title of the post. "Thomas Sowell, the Nonconformist". How is he nonconformist as far his views go? He isn't, what's nonconformist is his background.
A lot of stuff that goes into the recycling bin doesn't actually get recycled though, right? [0] So if your reason for recycling is "that's what good people do", and you don't actually know what happens to your stuff...you're not actually helping. You're doing a useless ritual that makes you feel better.
"What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice." This just sounds like a modern rephrasing of Murray Rothbard, I wouldn't necessarily call it "trite".
> "Instead of trying to propagandize children to hug trees and recycle garbage, our schools would be put to better use teaching them how to analyze and test what is said by people who advocate tree-hugging, recycling, and innumerable other causes across the political spectrum."
Advocating for critical thinking is not bad. You shouldn't tell children what to believe. You should give them the tools to determine their own beliefs.
> "What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice."
Are criticisms of social welfare limited to talk radio hosts?
> How is he nonconformist as far his views go?
He's nonconformist for the class he occupies. I.e. the "intellectual elite" (or however you want to refer to them).
Strawmanning the education systems by ranting about tree-hugging hippies who indoctrinate the children and calling taxation theft isn't critical thinking, it's living in the bizarro world that is modern American conservatism.
His views also aren't non-conformist at all, they have a deep history in US politics. Friedman, Hayek, and so on for a large time during Sowells career practically dominated public discourse. Friedman alone probably is the single most influential economist of the last few decades as far as public discourse is concerned.
And that is squarely where Sowell is situated given that he hasn't ever actually worked as an economist, but basically as a pundit. Within American conservative punditry his views are as standard as it gets.
Maybe he is. If that's the case, let's "steelman" his position and do better. Do you feel that Thomas Sowell would read your response and feel you grasped the argument he was making to the fullest extent? Do you feel you've honestly and accurately portrayed his position after understanding it fully?
In my opinion, you haven't. I think you're upset and its preventing you from understanding the argument being made.
Sowell has published over thirty books, but I can find virtually no actual academic research. One of the last papers dates to the 60s, where he debates Marxism, but I think this is actually just a sort of philosophical treatise.
He's repeatedly rejected modelling, mathematics and virtually every other econonmic tool, so to call him an economist is kind of a misnomer.
And actually I do think I've portrayed his position fairly accurately. When you read his stuff it's often hard to tell if you're reading Sowell or Ann Coulter.
Btw I'm not opposed to conservative intellectual work in general. Chesterton is great, Carl Schmitt is probably one of the most intelligent writers of the last century. But Sowell isn't, and American Conservatism is in an intellectual crisis to put it mildly.
I'm not a neo-nazi, I'm personally not even conservative. But Schmitt is probably one of the most influential conservatives of the 20th century. He's not only influenced conservative thought but people ranging from Arendt, to Habermas, Strauss even Derrida among others. His writing on the state of exception or the friend-foe distinction had wide reach from theory to policy-making.
Meanwhile in US Conservatism you have people ranting about taxation being theft, I mean if that's the intellectual elite I don't know what's going on exactly.
I think Sowell is a very important thinker in his own right.
At the same time, there is nothing conservatives love more than a black intellectual who strongly agrees with them. Perhaps for both good and bad reasons. That adoration does color the perception of people like Sowell.
Not a joke. I got heated over (what seems to me) whitewashing of liberal racism. It is a very real problem that liberals can spout blatantly racist garbage ("You ain't black") but never actually get classified as racist. Yet merely thinking capitalism is a good system is enough to get one classified as a racist and a fascist.
I apologize for getting triggered on the second part of your post and forgetting the first, but I think it's very important to call racism racism. Calling racism "colored perceptions" is so misleading as to be false.
> I just can't take this sort of person seriously in regards to social issues. I just can't do it.
Unfortunate, but it’s your loss. I definitely understand where you’re coming from, as I thought the same a few years ago. Challenge yourself to objectively listen to people who you think you disagree with. You might find that things you were certain about have serious flaws.
There are many reasons why terms like “systemic racism” are not constructive, and frankly, he’s not at all wrong on that point.
Spurious comparisons to Nazis are a favorite tactic of his -- he famously compared Obama to Hitler because they both had enthusiastic crowds for their speeches. It's a mystery to me why anybody takes this man seriously.
Everything you've said has demonstrated that you're _choosing_ not to understand, or agree with, his arguments rather than disagreeing with them through counter arguments and evidence.
At this point I'm not even sure what people mean when they say "slow" or "poor performance", since I have a mid-tier PC and have no problems with VSCode or anything else. Everything starts fast and I have no latency issues when typing. Imperceptible differences in time are not something I would ever consider a performance problem, certainly not in the case of UX.
Same thing with memory usage. If I'm not even using a third my RAM with my browser, editor and a few other random things open I'm not going to complain about something being a "resource hog".
One, you simply may not know better. If you've never experienced the typing latency of an 80s or 90s style system, you may not have a reference point for low latency. Not saying this is necessarily the case for you, but I suspect it's the case for some people.
Second, people genuinely have different perception. The most stark example of this in practice for me was the perception of flicker on CRTs. Many people claimed to just not notice flicker at 60Hz, while for me going back from 100Hz to 60Hz was unbearable for longer amounts of time. I'm sure similar differences exist with our perceptions of latency.
I gave an example of a prominent web app I don't think needs a js framework - most web apps don't IMO as the web correctly centres the experience on documents. Games would be the obvious exception where an immersive app experience is warranted and there are no documents as such, almost every other app works with data organised into stores of documents (i.e. in gmail every email is a document and deserves its own URL IMO).
> fortunately people don't use React for making About pages.
No, About pages are out of fashion and people don't do them in high numbers anymore. But they do use react to display news articles, web shops, and all kind of text.
This doesn't match my experience at all. I've seen many, many places where a bleeding-edge React stack was deployed to serve what was 100% static content.
Also, I am incredibly suspicious of bot marketing for Deepseek, as many AI related things have. "Deepseek KILLED ChatGPT!", "Deepseek just EXPOSED Sam Altman!", "China COMPLETELY OVERTOOK the USA!", threads/comments that sound like this are very weird, they don't seem organic.