An effort to write out the checks I use on everything I read — In the early 2000s, when I was a young teenager, there used to be emails going around saying weird scary things. One popular claim warned that gangs, as part of an initiation game, were killing anyone who flashed their headlights at them. Another warned against microwaving plastic containers, lest they…

What do we do when bodily autonomy and public safety conflict? — One of my spare-time fascinations is what happens when two deeply held values conflict on some given issue. Examples: Many liberals are cynical about large corporations having a lot of power, and also think it’s important to prevent harmful opinions from getting a platform. …

Julia Galef offers a path out of my gloomy cynicism, and a way for us all to think more clearly — for those of us who want it — The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t, by Julia Galef, New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 288 pages, 2021. Despite the title, this probably doesn’t qualify as a “review”, because there’s no way I could write anything about this book dispassionately. When I first heard of this book’s…

On reflection, perhaps there was something deeper to my 2018 rejection of political engagement — Three years ago, I vowed to eschew political engagement. Pointless, I groaned, this pretense that it helps with anything. I’m proud to say that I kept up my New Year’s resolution for that entire year, plus another. But I wasn’t letting on the whole picture. Part of it was what…

“People, not policies” seems to have helped a little — In 2014, I started a personal tradition of writing a bit about my thoughts on my party vote shortly before the election (2014, 2017). This year, I started three months early by explaining a shift in my meta-thinking. I had come to the conclusion that, contrary to conventional wisdom, policy…

There’s no such thing as a good opposition policy for a crisis that’s changing by the day — I feel like New Zealand has struggled to figure out what the opposition’s role in this pandemic is. Simon Bridges was eager to hold the government to account, but struck the wrong chord just when he thought it was safe to speak out. Left-wing partisans have called for national unity…

Why it’s not policies that’ll carry my vote in 2020 — In the first two elections I could vote in, I dutifully followed conventional wisdom. I studied parties’ policies, watched debates, reasoned about which policies I liked, and voted for the party most closely reflecting them. I have to say, it was laborious, even for someone who follows political news closely…

Spending a summer in continental Europe, I never got used to the ubiquity of English in a place where it’s no one’s mother tongue — A few years ago, a friend (let’s call him Johannes) suggested to me that the world would be better off if everyone exclusively used English in any international context. The idea shocked me, all the more given that his first language wasn’t English. Why should my native tongue be privileged…

The intentions are good, but the policy is a total misdiagnosis of why women are underrepresented — In some ways, it’s a predictable script. Whenever a university announces that they will accept a lower admission rank for members of an underrepresented group, there are always these three classes of responses: “This will welcome more members of [group] into [profession].” “It’s not fair that [group] doesn’t have to…