Richard Hanania on Wokeness, Israel-Palestine, and the Mythos of the Modern Right

I think Tyler said that EA had peaked. I think that EA's sort of destiny, it's not a, you know, it's not like a, you shouldn't think about it like a political movement the way you think about sort of libertarians or something like that, or like a conservative movement or something. Because it's, I think it real, I think that like, if you're going to focus on effectiveness, you're going to avoid controversy, like a libertarian or, you know, wokes or whatever, they're going to go and they're going to fight for the thing they want because they think they want many people oppose strongly. Like a lot of the EA stuff, I think like where the leverage is to make the world a better place is often where people aren't thinking about the issue much. Or it's like, oh, like do charity this way instead of that way, or like change this little regulation that's going to harm, you know, that's been harming technological development. And so Scott Alexander had, I think he linked to some website that listed some recent accomplishments of EA and they were, you know, they were impressive and I hadn't heard about any of them. Until then. And maybe that's, you know, if EA wants to do good, it can sort of do good in the shadows. I think it's, it's probably not going to be a sort of a trendy— and, you know, there's a cost to that because if you're just sort of doing things sort of behind the scenes, you know, you're not really building and becoming a giant movement or whatever. But I think that's sort of the limit. That's the, that's the sort of inherent limitation of just focusing on You know, just completely being utilitarian and focusing on what's effective, you're not going to inspire people, but that's okay. You could do some good things in the meantime.

This week on Upstream, I sit down with political scientist and writer Richard Hanania. This is Richard's 3rd appearance on the show, and we discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict, why the modern right needs a new mythos, Richard's upcoming debate with Curtis Yarvin, and more. Please enjoy.

Richard, welcome back to the podcast.

Great to be here, Erik. Thanks for having me again.

So last time we spoke about your book, The Origins of Woke, which is doing very well. Highly recommend people purchase it and read it if they haven't yet. And It's interesting because DEI is even more in the news. And ever since you published, we've had Bill Ackman and Chris Rufo's quest to unseat the presidents of some major universities, Harvard, Penn, MIT, and having some success with Harvard and Penn. Is this the kinds of efforts, the coordinated efforts that you recommend and think is positive for the overall movement? Or what do you make of of what's been happening so far?

Yeah, I mean, it's not a bad thing, um, that, you know, you have these very left-wing college presidents and they're being fired. Is it the most— is it going to fundamentally change these institutions? Uh, no, it's not really.

Do you think they just hire replacements that are like them, effectively?

Like, probably, but yeah, but you— I mean, the benefit might be you have a chilling effect. But, you know, they're not— it's not, you know, it's just because they're, uh, because of the, you know, they made Jewish students feel unsafe. So even, even the Justification is like a DEI-style justification. You know, I wrote an article about this, about I think the long-term political effect of all this is to make some Jewish billionaires more conservative. I mean, we can think about the ones who've been in the news, and so that's not nothing. I mean, such people are very powerful, and you want them on your side. And if you just a few Jewish billionaires, you know, want to start supporting right-wing causes instead of left-wing causes, or be maybe a little less enthusiastic about supporting left-wing causes, that's a good thing. Is this going to end wokeness or anything? No, I think that'll take more sustained political action.

Yeah. And so what is your advice to Rufo and Ackman for their goals? What would be the highest leverage thing they could focus on?

Rufo wrote an article in City Journal the other day, which is basically— it took my suggestions. He cited me in there, and he says Executive Order 11246, that's affirmative action contracting. He talks about the disparate impact standard. At the state level, they're doing exciting things with school choice. I mean, so it's a pretty boring answer, but I mean, Rufo has it figured out. I mean, it's not rocket science. He's figured out sort of what, where the problems are, you know, thanks to my work and other people. And he's, you know, sort of pushing politicians in the right direction. So it's not a big, you know, secret or mystery. It's funny, you know, DeSantis sort of, he got those things and just thinking about sort of Trump is going to be The nominee, you know, he'll do some of it just by accident, just because he's going to appoint conservative people and they're just going to— these ideas are in the air. And so they're going to end up doing some of it. If you had DeSantis or something, you know, you'd have a kind of more sustained focus on this stuff. But, you know, we're not— we're not going to get that.

Yeah, it's funny because people were saying that Ackman seems to have just discovered DEI like a few months ago. And, you know, right away saying, hey, this— but not only is he unlike everybody else, He's, he's actually, you know, been willing to challenge it. He's basically doing right-wing cancel culture effectively, effectively. And, and it's actually working to some degree, which is—

Yeah, it's a remarkable thing. I mean, it's funny that, you know, also, I mean, the Congress having the hearing on the— it's the, it's the, it's a template, but it's like, you know, people will be like, oh, conservatives, they don't use their power for— like, no, they use the power for the things they care about, like at the state level. Like they do these things about like BDS, like you can't boycott Israel or like you can't work for the state or something like that. And so this is that kind of thing. It's like the pro-Israel position where it's— but it was like Congress and right-wing Twitter and Bill Ackman were all talking about the same thing. And then right-wing press machine like New York Post and these things were all like talking about the exact same thing and they were pushing in the exact same direction. And you could do something like that. Like, they don't do that. It's not coordination. It's not conscious coordination. It's like what Congress actually cares about, because Congress is sort of the head. They could call people and they could shine the light on things. And when everything's moving in the same direction, then things can happen.

Yeah, it's funny how sort of the plots converge in terms of, you know, 10/7 in Israel. Now we're talking about DEI in colleges, and it's all like one straight line. It's also funny how the, the conversations are basically going— what I'm hearing from, uh, your conversation with these universities is they're trying to get, um, you know, Jews to be part of the progressive stack, uh, basically put Jews in DEI so you don't have to get rid of DEI. Um, and another thing that's interesting, to your point on sort of the, the Jewish realignment, is this is an acceptable way of critiquing BLM. Because you can't say, you know, you can't say— you can't complain about anti-white, but you can complain about antisemitism. And that, you know, Jew is just a subset of, of white. And so you could say, hey, BLM's antisemitic, woke is antisemitic. And so that just creates an attack vector, acceptable attack vector, uh, which didn't exist prior.

Yeah, I mean, from a, you know, from a, um, truthful standpoint, I mean, it's— I, I don't know if there's much independent antisemitism, um, that is separate from the anti-whitism. Like, I don't think that there's— like, there, there's just— but it's just It, I mean, happens to be antisemitic, just like anti-white happens to be anti-British or something. It's just, it just happens to be that way. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't have like, I don't have a thing, oh, they have to say it in this exact way or they have to have this exact right justification. It's good. You know, these people who are very anti-Israel, who sympathize with Hamas, they tend to be terrible in every other way too. So like, you know, these people sort of not having influence or positions in administrations is a good thing. Yeah.

Do you— there was this tweet that went around that's basically saying that sentiment towards Israel-Palestine is, you know, so age polarized, similar to our generation polarized, similar to how gay marriage was generation polarized, that it was just inevitable that gay marriage was going to become sort of, you know, accepted once, once enough time had passed. Do you think that's similar to the sort of Palestine-Israel sympathy, that when these college students who, you know, favor Palestine in droves, you know, get into these organizations 10 years from now, that they're going to influence them to be pro-Palestinian organizations? Or do you think they're, uh, you know, different, you know, likely to change their mind in a way that they didn't around gay marriage?

I don't know if they change their mind, but, you know, foreign policy is usually not on people's Radar, right? So it's like, is young people more pro? I think more young people are actually more not as anti-Russian as old people. I've seen polls like that. Like the old people, I don't know; they remember the Cold War or something. But like, does that matter what our policy is going to be against Russia in thirty years? I don't think so because like, unless there's a war going on like Ukraine, like nobody's going to be thinking about Russia. But there's going to be policy. There's going to be something going on with Russia that like the American president is going to have to negotiate with. And like public opinion just sort of fades into the background because it's not a very salient issue. You know, like gay marriage was settled because the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage, you know, the Supreme Court's not going to rule that, you know, there's going to be a two-state solution and, you know, Palestinians have to have their own state. There's no, there's sort of nowhere to go. And so, yeah, I mean, if you're Israel, I don't think it's, you know, what American public opinion is going to be in 20, 30 years. Is your biggest concern. I think your biggest concern is probably winning the war. I mean, there's reports that Israel is going all in. They're increasing their military spending. They don't need the U.S. I mean, they don't like actually need the U.S., and hopefully they would get it to the point where one day where they don't. And, you know, at that point, like, what does it even matter that much?

Yeah, it's interesting to watch sort of how sentiment evolves. It feels like the sort of Israel-Palestine has been the first wedge issue where there's a, um, you know, sort of fight between establishment and woke, uh, Democrats, uh, on— and sort of, uh, you know, moderates aren't afraid to push back because they feel like they have the moral high ground, whereas in previous sort of culture wars they didn't feel like that, or there's this sort of schism. And I, I— one way I think about that is there's like, you know, you wrote in your post in the right— sort of the Jewish realignment, how Jews are so influential in the donor class. Um, you know, 10% of billionaires, like 20% of donors or something like this, with— but so small numbers-wise. So there's, there's a huge divergence between sort of population size and, uh, their, their influence, um, or, you know, monetary influence. And so it feels like it's just going to continue to be a wedge issue in, in our— for, you know, in my local, uh, industry, tech. Um, it feels like you know, people are starting to speak up more for sort of Palestinian— we have Paul Graham, uh, you know, Amjad, even Sam Altman, um, you know, had a sort of another sort of saying, hey, Muslims are discriminated against in tech or something. And so it's— I'm curious how, if you see sentiment changing or evolving or, um, yeah, how do you see that playing out?

You say, you say that people in tech are taking more pro-Palestine positions?

Well, I guess I should say before it was like 99 to 1 and now it's like 95 to 5 or 90 to 10. Like, I just, like, meaning it was 90, it was unanimously pro-Israel. And now I see a little bit of sympathy for Palestine. So it's still overwhelmingly pro-Israel. But it's rare in tech to have a culture issue that isn't unanimous. You know, tech isn't like a super sophisticated culture, you know, place. And so it's the first time in my, you know, career where there are, you know, smart people on both sides of a culture issue who can publicly Really?

I mean, woke seems to be very divisive in tech. Aren't there very woke tech people and very anti-woke tech people?

It's been very woke up until the last like year or two. Most people who were anti-woke couldn't say anything publicly. You know, Vivek was like one of the first, you know, and he's not really in tech.

Well, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, I know they've been—

this is all in the last year or last two.

It's been a little bit longer than that. Yeah. I mean, these guys have been anti-woke for a little longer, but yeah. Yeah. Right.

But they haven't been anti-DEIs, you know, find me Mark saying something anti-DEI or even, I mean, most people haven't been anti-DEI till like last few months or by, I mean, publicly, publicly saying DEI is bad.

So the standard position in tech was woke and pro-Israel is what you're saying. And now it's anti-woke and a little, or mixed.

No, no. I think people were always privately anti-woke. And in, um, and sort of over time, in, you know, um, they took baby steps towards sharing public— like, you know, Brian Armstrong's, hey, we're not going to talk about politics. He didn't even establish an anti-woke position in 2020, but he got flamed for, for it. And no, no company followed suit up until like a couple years later, and now it's the norm. So people have always been privately anti-woke, and now more recently in the last couple years, a few years, they're more comfortable saying it in baby steps. And they'll increasingly say it, I think. Yeah. But the pro-Israel, I think it's a little bit the opposite, whereas some people are sympathetic to Palestinian cause but don't feel comfortable saying it. And, you know, up until Paul Graham or maybe a couple others, but I think tech is largely, you know, pro-Israel and, you know, it's very Jewish.

Yeah. I mean, that's interesting.

Yeah.

You said Jews were like 20% of the donor class or something like that. If you go to the top donors, I mean, when you talk about like the top 10, 20, it's like 50%. I mean, It's really just amazing.

Wow.

You know, you just look at the top 10 donors, like top 10 Democratic or Republican people who donate to a Democrat or Republican or these super PACs or whatever. Yeah, I think it's depending on the year, but it's like, yeah, a third to 50% or something. And so this is huge. And if you just move a few of these people, you can, you know, like, you know, Peter Thiel basically got one senator and then the nominee for another, you know, just Blake Masters wouldn't have been, wouldn't have been even in the conversation. He was the candidate. He only lost by a few points. J.D. Vance, you know, he had an independent sort of identity. Maybe he would have won on his own. But you could see just one person can, you know, almost, you know, arguably get 2 Senate seats or come close to it. And so, yeah, I mean, just a few donors, you know, can have a massive influence. And so that's like, you know, most foreign policy issues are usually something, you know, they're usually in the background and people get bored. Like even Ukraine is not completely in the background because Congress still has to pass.

It's still—

they're debating legislation.

legislation to give them more money. And, you know, public opinion matters. But like, people just— I mean, just because it requires a constant infusion of funds. I mean, most people— well, I guess Israel gets a constant infusion of funds. So you'd have to get a long way before you got to that point where that was threatened. But most of the time, this stuff is just in the background.

Yeah. I guess my prediction is that this is an issue that as long as the war keeps going on, it is not solved in some degree, you know, I think that the culture war will continue around this issue because it's a convenient way to attack wokeness and because there are people who are genuinely split on the issue and both feel empowered to say their views publicly. And unlike the situation in Ukraine—

Well, you talk about America becoming more pro-Israel or not, or less pro-Israel or whatever. I think it, like with many things, is going to be huge, huge polarization. I think that the Republican Party, you know, Trump was the most pro-Israel president. He did things that were unthinkable before, like recognizing Golan Heights, moving the embassy to Jerusalem. This was things that people talked about for a while. It was like nobody imagined that American president would do it. So Trump did that. I think whether Trump or, you know, it's going to be Trump probably. But, you know, the next Trumps, like everyone who's anyone in the Republican Party is pretty much completely pro-Israel and the Democrats are divided. And so I don't, you know, I think that like, you know, people can have very unpopular positions like the pro-life position. Right. And they can just have one party. So I think Israel is a place where it has one party. Just one party is not going to budge from the pro-Israel position. And then as long as there are some Jewish people on the left who care about Israel, who like Israel, that's going to be a very divisive— and that will always exist. That's going to be a very divisive issue on the left. So yeah, public opinion is going to move, but I think we're going to have polarized Republicans pro-Israel, Democrats, maybe these fights, but that's mostly a good position for the right. If it unites one side and divides another, that's exactly what you want.

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Yeah, you had on your great podcast Clown Car your friend Philip Lemoine. I'm not sure how to pronounce his name, and he had a different view On sort of the— you guys had a great sort of disagreement or debate on sort of the Israel-Palestine situation. How would you characterize both of your positions?

So I think his position, you know, if I'm going to give the best version of his position, his position is that Palestinians and Israelis, their only real path to some kind of, you know, way out of this conflict is they, you know, there's some negotiations, serious concessions on both sides, and Israel's going to have to take steps to not kill so many Palestinian civilians, pull back its war ambitions, live with Hamas still in power. You know, he even says, you know, just getting rid of Hamas is not even a, is not even, you know, a realistic sort of option. And my view is there's not much evidence that the Palestinians, you know, could make peace, that they, that like Israel stepping back or Israel being humane wouldn't just be taken as an opportunity to Do more things against Israel, and I do think that there's you know potentially a solution here. I think that, and he says this, and he says this is completely unrealistic. That you know that you eventually try to get the people from Gaza to leave, and it's like everyone says no. Biden says no, and the Egyptians say no, and the Arabs say no. Now, like okay, like people are saying no now, but the idea the idea really is only you know a couple months old. People in Israel have been talking about it. Nikki Haley has pretty much endorsed it. So you have like it is something like you. imagine an American president actually putting political capital and money behind this idea. So it's like now, like Biden, you know, the Democrats are too left-wing to do it. But it doesn't seem to me like it's that big of a deal. And I think one thing that Trump showed, um, was that you could, uh, you know, you could just buy off the, the Gulf Arabs. I mean, you could just, you know, they're not, you know, they're very sort of rational businessmen. Um, and, um, you know, and I think they're doing the best thing for their country actually just to be bought off rather than fighting for the Palestinian cause forever is actually the best thing for their country. And so, yeah, I don't know why it is unrealistic to have some kind of population transfer. And, you know, Matthew Yglesias has written about this too. This is seen as some kind of great war crime. But in every other conflict, like we say, it's a good thing for people, you know, to be able to leave and, you know, leave as refugees. So in this, in this particular case, we say that this is a horrible war crime, but it's just not a consistent standard we apply.

Yeah, I'm curious where you differ or where you think that John Mearsheimer is incorrect. He was famous for sort of a number of things, but most recently in the last few years, his strong view that on the Ukraine situation, we had instigated it by not, you know, by a few efforts that we did to not make clear that Ukraine would not be part of NATO, etc. And I think he recently said something like the, the sort of our support of Israel is less in the U.S. national interest and more just a result of the power of the, of the Jewish lobby in, in, in the U.S. Do you feel that he's incorrect when he says it's not in the U.S. national interest?

You know, what is national interest though? Because it's, it's a very slippery concept. I mean, states have idealistic interests. So when someone says, you know, we shouldn't be party to a genocide, well, that's not an American interest. It's like, okay, well, you have a humanitarian, that's fine. We have that. So, you know, what is sort of like, it's sort of slippery sometimes. Mearsheimer and these realist types, they act like there's a, you know, it's just like, you know, it's sort of redundant. I took a class with Mearsheimer. I was at University of Chicago Law School. So I took a class he was teaching, IR graduate courses. I just said, like, the reductio ad absurdum of this, like, realist philosophy is just like, America should only use it. Okay, enslave the rest of the world, right? Like, threaten to nuke the rest of the world and enslave them. That would be in our interest. But he doesn't believe that.

And nobody actually says that.

So every everyone is operating according to some moral, some kind of moral system. And so, you know, I bring that to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and we debate, you know, whether Israel or Palestine sort of has the moral high ground here. But I think we all sort of bring a moral outlook to these things.

Yeah, that makes sense. I want to segue to a different topic. In our last interview, we talked about your sort of Nietzschean liberalism, sort of liberalism with group differences, not to, you know, crudely summarize, but you, you wrote a blog post a few months ago, uh, about Bronze Age Pervert's new book, uh, titled A, um, A Non-Christian Mythos for the, for the, for the New Right.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm, I'm curious if you can unpack, uh, what, what, what you meant by that.

Yeah, I mean, the, the bad thing— I mean, he's, he's a weird guy. He's genuinely a weird guy. He tells— he like just like sort of trolls me with like these things, these weird conspiracy theories, like, don't let— don't— I'll tell the truth About you and your partner, he said. It's some I don't know who my partner is. I don't even know who he's talking about, much less what he's talking about. And so he's a very sort of weird guy. It's not just it's not just an act. It's not just a performance artist. You know, sort of just you know he's out there. You know, but I'm not you know I I think that like there's a sort of you know there's sort of a rising sort of socialism nationalist economics on the right, which I don't like, which I appreciate Mr. Pervert pushing back on. Yeah, I liked his article about Millay in Argentina recently. And then, you know, I think that the, you know, I think that the pro-life stuff and just this sort of constellation of issues, you know, just anti-biotech and all these other things that go along with it, I think that's harmful. So I like the fact that he's pushing back against this stuff. You know, I read there was a review of his book in Quillette by Oliver Treadley, which I think like did a really— it was a pretty thorough takedown of like sort of just you know, sort of the word games, you know, that he's playing. And so, like, I don't know if it's like the greatest intellectual— you know, Bruce's book is the greatest intellectual achievement. But I do take the idea seriously. And, you know, this is something I should write more about. Maybe I was just too quick to grasp onto Bapst, you know, perhaps, you know, it's something there. But like, there needs to be some kind of, you know, right-wing— I don't want to say even like right-wing, like, uh, thing that's not just, you know, calculating utils, not just sort of rationalism, not just, you know, we're gonna have, you know, the, uh, the charts go up. The charts go up is great. I mean, but it, it needs a narrative. It needs some kind of emotional punch, punch to it. Um, and, you know, that mythos, what exactly is it going to be, is something that I'm still sort of thinking about. Uh, And working on.

One thing you've also been thinking about is, you know, how much truth can the world take, or how true should we be? And you had this one piece where there's this group of people who are trying to sort of reclaim eugenics. And you say, hey, maybe if you want to stick to truth, maybe there's something admirable there. But if you want to win, you're hurting yourself. And so it's this broader idea of Sort of, yeah, how true should you be versus how strategic should you be if you're trying to get across your point?

Well, playing around with words is not dishonest. It's just words. I mean, we can use definitions as we like them. There was this— the point of that piece, I mean, there was a New York Times ethicist article where somebody wrote in and they were like, we worry that embryo selection— or not embryo selection, something— should we abort a baby with Down syndrome? I don't know if they had That test back, or they were gonna or something. But they're like, we worry that this is eugenics. Oh, they were thinking about doing the prenatal testing. I think they hadn't done it yet. And that this like they wanted to know not like is this good for society or good for us or something like that. It was like is it eugenics?

Right.

And I just found that framing interesting because people like I want to do this thing. Is it racist? Like they have the word and they just need to be assured that that bad word that they think that it's bad. That they're not doing. And the, and the, you know, the ethicist, of course, since this is a very common, you know, the thing that all liberals and a lot of other people do to tell them, no, it's not eugenics because it's not coercive and you're not consciously trying to improve the race. And like most Down syndrome, it was funny. It's like most Down syndrome people don't reproduce anyway. So it's like, it's not going to have a eugenic. So it's like, if they, you know, like that is the moral, like distinction. Like if they were able to have like a lot of kids, then it would be eugenics and then you couldn't abort them, right? It was, it's a very sort of weird thing, but it was just like, it was so focused, this ethicist, you know, so focused on definitions. And so like, don't try to reclaim, like just argue for the right thing and don't, you don't need to reclaim words that have baggage, right? You can argue things without the words. The words don't have objective definitions. The word, the words are, a word has a technical definition. And a word also has connotations, right? So like when you call someone an idiot, right, that used to be a clinical term. I bring this up in the article, right? Imbecile, moron. These were clinical terms. Now they have connotations. Now, if you're, you know, your son has mental problems, you don't say he's an imbecile, right? You just don't do that just because the connotations are negative. So this is just sort of a— this is a broad lesson of like what, you know, how people should approach sort of political debates.

Yeah. But it's also, I think you're saying is that these people who are trying to make better people, the Jonathan anomalies of the world, the Malcolm, the pronatalists, or people, they slash we should find a narrative that is captivating other than some data story. Because people have to justify it.

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. I saw this meme the other day that Bryan Caplan tweeted. It was like, you know, nothing, the universe is nothingness. But then it's like, it shows a guy like, I am the entropy miracle of like, you know, billions of years of the, you know, development of the universe. And it's like, yeah, there's like an amazing— there's an amazing story there. Even if it's like fake, if you could— even if you could have like religious stuff that I didn't think was true, right? You just want to sort of handwave and say the AI is God, or, you know, the spacetime continuum, there's always, you know, you're always out there somewhere, or the singularity. But I'm not that against that. I just think Yeah, I think there's a— this is something that people need to sort of think about. The pro-market people, I mean, I think they stick to utilitarian arguments because their utilitarian arguments are good and they're correct and they're a lingua franca. You could always use a utilitarian argument. You could always use it because nobody will say that their ideology will make humanity worse off. Right. So it makes sense in any context. But then, you know, when you rely on that and you have Nothing else. You don't have the emotional thing that really motivates people. I mean, why do people hate DEI? You know, I've recently written about, despite, you know, myself writing a book on the topic, that it's not necessarily the most— it's, you know, like if we're going to be— if our, you know, if our descendants are going to be traveling the stars or extinct in 500 years, I don't think DEI is like one of the 5 or 10 most likely things to determine that. But, you know, it has an emotional punch. I mean, people care about this more than they care about a lot of issues on both sides, the left with the wokes and the anti-wokes too. And so I think like maybe part of this project is like finding the important stuff and then wrapping it in a narrative that gets people excited because you want people focusing on the things that actually matter.

And the important stuff here is markets.

Yeah, biotech progress generally. Yeah, I mean, we should be bettering ourselves and living standards and seeing that as like part of a beautiful story. Right. I mean, I have cultural, I mean, preferences too. I'm pronatalism, you know, all that too. Yeah, absolutely.

But even pronatalism, I think, can be expressed in terms of like a long-term market, like, or at least the health of the economy, right? But the— I hear you express some sympathy for transhumanism, or sort of, you know, really like making technology the sort of spiritual, you know, North Star. At the same time, technology can also be used for you know, sort of anti-market, you know, a great— greater centralization, or, you know, makes, uh, you know, people always used to say that communism wasn't, uh, technologically possible, but with AI it, it, it might be, uh, you know, the sort of central planning, uh, fallacy, of course. But do you worry about that? Is that sort of transhumanism being used for, for, you know, anti-market, uh, ends?

It depends on the context. In China, I mean, they seem to have done a really good job of using technology to oppress their population. I mean, they, you know, facial recognition, Like, so like, take just one issue, right? Facial recognition technology in China, it's used to oppress people. In the US, we go way too far and we have— we're ridiculous. Like, I've written about like medical privacy rules and how they hinder medical research and just bringing the cost down in medicine. So we're so far like in our context, in the context of this, this country, Western civilization in general, we are too much on the side of sort of stagnation and let it— not letting the technology run free. It's theoretically possible that the American government could use facial recognition technology to lock up dissidents. Some very paranoid right-wing people believe that that's a risk, like a serious risk to worry about. I think it's a theoretical risk, but I don't think our institutions would stand for that or we're anywhere close to that. So it really does depend on the context. I think the Chinese are sort of a very unique situation where you have a non-representative government and a society that's good at tech and has a lot of state capacity, But doesn't have like a lot of concerns for individual liberty. And with that combination, yeah, it could be a problem. Yeah, the—

it's interesting going back to sort of the biotech, you sort of— you've been talking about non-surrogacy reproductive technology, etc. What's interesting is in the last few years, there seems to be sort of this rise of reactionary feminism, sort of the Louise Perrys, the Mary Harringtons, sort of this whole cadre of people who started to gain uh, sort of, you know, some, some, uh, some adherence, um, when they talk about sort of, uh, you know, what the sexual revolution has done for, for, you know, women not being as happy perhaps, or not being able to find, find, uh, sort of husbands, or what is done for fertility, or, um, just some negative effects of sort of, you know, second-wave feminism. But it feels like you're sort of, um, stance is contra what they want too. It almost seems like reactionary, reactionary feminism, or, or is that— how would you contextualize it?

Yeah, I mean, those aren't my political allies. I mean, this is sort of why I have a problem with, you know, you sometimes see right-wingers and they're just, uh— yeah, I'll give you an example. So Yarvin, uh, by the way, I'll plug my debate, uh, February 9th. Um, I don't know when's this gonna come out, but there might not be—

It's gonna come out before then, so people should, should go to it. I'm gonna check it out. So yeah, yeah.

So anyways, I bring it up because Yarvin was—he had this article about Rufo.

Did you read that article? I did at the time, but I can't remember. He's basically saying his efforts are futile, or well, something like that.

But it's funny; he's like, "Rufo likes Thomas Paine and the American Revolution." It's like, "That's stupid." I'm Yarvin. I don't like any of that stuff. But like, if Rufo wants to win, he should do XYZ. And my commentary was like, "Why, Rufo? You just said Rufo." is like, doesn't have the same ideas as you, or like he's not on your side. So like, why are you giving him political advice like you're his consultant or something, right? It just— there's this sort of, you know, tendency to collapse everything in the right and left, right and left. And I, you know, I'm not one of those people who says no labels, you know, they're never useful. Uh, but I think there's just— there is a tendency to just sort of like a lot of sort of right-wing discourses about like how friendly you should be to the left and how much you should use power. And I, you know, I say for what. Like, there's some things that I want the right wing to do, and I want some things that I don't want them to do. And so the— yeah, Mary Harrington, Louise Perry. Yeah. Like, yeah. Like, so people like Louise Perry, I mean, I don't dislike Louise Perry personally, nothing personally about them. I mean, but they're not— they don't agree with me on anything. And it's sort of weird. I mean, sort of weird. I see Mary Harrington on like Fox News and stuff. And, you know, it's like, I think it's like she was against Sometimes, like, if you just agree with right-wing people on a few of these hot-button issues, they'll accept you as one of theirs. Because Mary Harrington is anti-trans, you know, she'll go on right— she'll be on right-wing media. I think she's something of a socialist. I don't know if she actually is, but I know she's like— she doesn't like markets and these other things. And then, like, you know, you see the same thing sort of with Glenn Greenwald because they'll support the conservative narrative about Trump and these other things. So, yeah, I mean, that's out there. I'm going to write something more about general. Like, I think that a lot of these social conservatives, they're— they are trying to play 5D chess with society. A lot of them, they will say we can't do X. You know, they're either— they're making a slippery slope argument or they're doing some version of like we're creating a culture that's going to do these other things that are not directly related to the issue at hand. Right. And I don't think there's like much evidence for like what they argue. So like, for example, like the euthanasia issue. Some of them, I argued with this about this with Ross Douthat on Twitter. A lot of them say you're going to create a slippery slope, you know, they're going to start murdering everybody. Well, okay, there's countries in Europe which have had legalized euthanasia for decades and countries where it's completely illegal. And like, they're the ones who have had euthanasia, like the Netherlands, they're not, you know, slaughtering people in large numbers. You tell me where they're less moral than Spain or Italy, which doesn't have euthanasia, right? So this stuff should be, you know, like, or they'll say like, okay, you know, like pornography, you know, you got to ban that stuff like that because it's going to create, you know, you're going to create a socially conservative sort of natalist culture. And it's like, you look at South Korea, right? They ban pornography. They have the lowest fertility rate in the world. There's just no evidence for like these connections that they sort of make between their preferences and these like broader goods that they talk about. So yeah, I think it's sort of like, you know, they're playing 4D chess and they're not really like establishing like what they're— what they tend to argue for.

Yeah. I think where you do align with sort of the Louise Paris of the world is, I guess, you care about the birth rate. I don't know if that's, I guess, enough overlap, but I guess how do you see just the context of where feminism is going? someone like RadFem Hitler, where, uh, if that's her name, her page, where does she, uh, like fit in, or where do you see feminism going?

Uh, I, you know, I had her on my podcast. I, I like her personally. I don't know if that she's representative of, you know, much. I, I think that, you know, if at this point, although I, you know, there are sort of these little circles that, you know, there's always these things sort of bubbling beneath the surface. Um, yeah, it's It's far from having a real-world influence, but some kind of like attitudinal, like, you men leave me, leave us alone with our bodies, and like to be otherwise be right-wing in a lot of ways and sort of disgusted with the left-wing culture. I think that's, you know, that is something that would be interesting and worth supporting. You know, at this point, I think it's— we're far, far from that. You see a right-wing woman who's got any kind of institutional support or is making it on TV or like, you know, has like op-eds or is getting, you know, a lot of attention. It's, you know, it's generally either conventionally conservative or actually somebody like Harris or Harrington or Perry, you know, very focused on sort of these, you know, anti-reproductive freedoms or these sort of religious agenda.

Yeah. Relatedly, you linked to a piece in Aporia the other week about how in the baby boom in the '30s or '40s, that was really led by a marriage boom, which was, uh, you know, which— and what led to that was sort of a rise in, uh, in male status. And we even talked about that on the last episode of if you just gave, you know, almost like a UBI for men. Those aren't your words.

Yeah.

Those are mine. But like, uh, if you suddenly increase male, male status relative to, um, relative to women, um, you might have more, more kids. Uh, or, uh, and so obviously that idea is an anathema to many people Um, but it does feel like even Richard Reeves' book, who's a respectable academic, sort of talking about how men are, men are struggling relative to, relative to women. Um, do you see a, uh, a DEI for men or UBI for men at any time in our future, or do you think men are just going to continue to be lower status, um, than women on the kind of immediate—

Well, I mean, there is, you know, there, there is a libertarian answer to this, which is that a lot of these fields, the most, you know, fields that tend to be A lot of women are government, healthcare, education, a lot of government-supported fields. You look at something like welding or like whatever these things, oil industry, these things that like, and you know, it's weird because, you know, status is determined by sort of money and education are like the 2 big things in our society. And women are very good at school. Women are very good at just sitting there turning their paper in on time with good penmanship and getting along with the teacher. And women are, I don't know, 55, 60%, whatever, of college graduates now. So it's like, that's part of the status game that helps them. If you sent 18-year-olds out into the world, you sent men and women, men would make a, you know, barring OnlyFans and like prostitution, right? Not insulting women. I'm just saying like men have more marketable skills at 18 years old. They're going to fund more businesses. They're going to do like the hard stuff that go work on the oil rig, the stuff that pays like tons of money, but it's very, very unpleasant. Like men will go and and do that stuff. Um, so like, yeah, I mean, of all the good reasons to sort of defund education, I mean, that's another one. Just maybe it's— we're wasting young people's lives anyway. Um, and so a lot of the stuff doesn't have to be sort of artificial raising men's status. So through UBI or whatever, you know.

Yeah.

But I'm not even sure, like, I find the birth rate issue very, uh, it's very— it's sort of mysterious because that's like, you know, it's a theory in that thing, but then in that article. But then I think if you, you know, you would predict that like if you saw a big gender gap in earnings in different countries, like those countries would have higher birth rates, right? You know, and I don't know if we see that. You know, I think I've seen data actually going back to Korea, such a weird country in so many ways, but like they have, I think, one of the biggest gaps in gender gaps in earnings. I'm not sure if that's right. It might have been Japan or something like that. But anyways, I looked into it a little bit and there didn't seem to be any correlation. There didn't seem to be like where men earn a lot more money. And actually, at least some of these socially traditional societies, they more traditional society like Southern Europe and like East Asia, they you know they they they I think they people would say they they have higher male status relative to female. I mean, maybe not. I mean, maybe it's all one global culture, and maybe that's not a good test. I'm not sure. You know, I'm not exactly sure how exactly to think about this.

You in a recent post, you meant you talked about how Um, you know, we like to think that, um, men and women are, are equal in terms of IQ, with some, you know, men of higher variance, but actually maybe men are, you know, a couple points higher or, or something to that effect. Um, but if women are naturally better at school, how important is IQ? Is it just that school is not— like, being better at school doesn't really matter or doesn't equate with the market? Or how do we make sense?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's a correlation. I mean, there's a correlation between school and IQ, you know, but school is, you know, effort and like really just conscientiousness, showing up on time, doing all that other stuff. The market, I mean, you know, the market rewards intelligence, but also, you know, to a large extent, again, going back to doing unpleasant work, like a lot of the things that pay good, like writing doesn't pay good money. Relative to like what a person who's smart enough to be a good writer could be doing elsewhere, because writing is a relatively pleasant, you know, activity rather than being a lawyer at a corporate firm or something, right? It's just— or an accountant or, or, you know, some kind of bureaucrat or something. And so, you know, men have more sort of— well, I mean, I think that this makes perfect evolutionary sense because men want more— want money more than women, want their own money more than women. Right, in order to attract mates. And so, like, yeah, I mean, it's the, you know, the market is not a pure IQ test. It's who's willing to provide the goods and services, which IQ can help with, that people want to buy. And yeah, men tend to do better. I mean, I think that a lot of sort of the gender equality, a lot of it, of the equality to the extent we see it, a lot of it's artificial. It's because of, you know, things like educational credentialism, you know, society artificially propping up things women are good at.

So you say no affirmative action or DEI in education to get it to 50/50 and more just stop artificially inflating sort of credentials.

I mean, I feel like about the way the DEI arguments, it's like, I just think there should be less schooling. I think that's the big one. It's not about whether Asians are 25% or 20% of Harvard or men are 55%. It's like school is robbing young people of the best years of their life and costing a lot of money for no appreciable gain. And people should focus on that. I mean, the other stuff is sort of secondary. And you'll get the knockoff, like I said, you'll get the knockoff positive effects on gender relations potentially.

And so instead of school, what should people be doing? Just going straight to the workforce or other types of experiences?

Yeah, I mean, like, well, there's a, you know, there's a collective action problem and like, it doesn't, I'm not necessarily saying any one person should not go school. If you're like, you know, somebody like me where I don't know, you know, I didn't know anybody growing up and, you know, it was nice to go to sort of elite schools and just meet some people and other things like that, that could be beneficial. And, you know, the credential does matter. So for the individual level, I'm not necessarily giving advice, but we as a society should be discouraging people from going to school. We should be funding it less. We should be, you know, whatever, culturally encouraging, you know, making people aware of opportunities that are out there. You know, what would you do, you know, between 18? I don't know. What do you do when you're out of school? The same thing, right? You do it instead of 22 or 23, you do it at 18. What can you do at 23 you can't do at 18? You know, there's— the world is out there for you.

Yeah. But, but at 23, you've, you've got a major in sociology, so you can do a lot. Yeah, exactly. Or gender studies or something. So going back to this concept of of sort of how true society can be. You know, there's been the broader conversation about sort of the race realism, um, versus sort of, you know, colorblindism, um, and the colorblind approach. And sort of, you know, Amy Wax on your podcast, you guys had a debate about it, it was great. She talks, she says it takes a theory to beat a theory, and unless you can have a plausible explanation for why there are group differences, um, then people are going to just call prejudice. And of course Thomas Sowell, you know, says it's it's culture or something. And Nathan went on your podcast, Nick Kaufman, and didn't think that that was a good approach. Where do you net out on whether it's race realism or, you know, versus colorblindism, or just this broader concept of, you know, how— when can you say truths that people don't want to hear versus when should you emphasize other things?

Yeah, I mean, I have become very— this is another thing, you know, you're asking good questions. Because this is another thing I mean to write on. I'm coming more to the position that I took with Amy, which I was sort of ambivalent on, but I've become more to believe in it more as time has gone on. And I think the reason for this is the people who talk a lot about race realism and talk about differences between groups, they tend to have a predictable set of politics. And a lot of people actually Like they think they're the only ones who like know this data or seen the research, and they're not. It's just the people who have a very specific sort of niche sort of political program are the ones who are who are like obsessed with talking about this stuff. So these people tend to be very anti-immigration. They tend to you know prioritize wokeness, all this other stuff. They tend to be more nationalistic, which like I pointed out to confidence, like there's no there's no like necessary. connection between believing in group differences and being a nationalist, right? And then a lot of people believe in group differences, but they're either liberals or libertarians, and they don't find the need to talk about it. And it's a consistent pattern. And why is that? Because I think it's like, I think that they're like, no science— I'm sounding like a leftist, but no science is neutral, right? Whatever you're talking about, it's at the opportunity cost of talking about something else, right? And so I think it's very, very wrapped up in a very, very specific agenda. And, you know, whether you want to talk about it or not is like how interested you are in that agenda. And so I'm not that interested in that agenda at this point. So I, you know, would rather probably not talk about these things.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I— let's transition to, or segue to Curtis a little bit, because I, um, we had him on, on a podcast recently and I asked him, you know, what are you, uh, hoping to discuss with Richard? And one thing he said was that he was plugging the debate as well. And one thing he said is that he doesn't know how to square how Richard, you know, believes group differences and yet is also sort of as pro-immigration as he is. Um, and, you know, there's the clear economic, uh, effect, um, or, you know, reason to have, I guess How do you sort of think about on the immigration side, when is like, what is sort of the cutoff between when someone or a type of person is net positive versus net negative? Or what is the way to think about it?

The, uh, so yeah, that's funny that Jarvin would say that because it's a very conventional critique. I would have thought some kind of higher, you know, sort of higher, uh, uh, level, big brain of how do you, you know, what did you read this, you know, book from 1655 and, you know, doesn't it disprove everything you believe or something like that? But it's a very sort of common critique. I, you know, I think with immigration, I think there's a presumption against, and this is like getting a group difference, like a lot of people believe it. To me, there's a presumption against discriminating against people based on their, where they were born. There's just a presumption against that. Curtis would probably say not, and a lot of these other people would say, would say the opposite. But, you know, I believe that. I don't think, you know, they compare nationalism to family. It's not the same because You know, we get it. I mean, it's obviously not the same because people always care about their family. There's an evolutionary explanation for it. There's a genetic explanation. Some people try to play these games with you know evolutionary psychology. I don't think they're very successful. The and and so there's we start with that presumption, and then you you know if you you know migrators like you say well you know what should Israel and people say oh you're hawkish on Israel. Should you be for open borders with the Palestinians? Like, no, because that will destroy Israel. So it is, you know, that's a presumption. And then with that presumption, it responds to real-world events and, you know, facts on the ground. In the American context, you're getting a lot of migrants who are not that bad. I'm sorry, they have so many videos of these young Hispanics coming to the country. All the videos are You would think they would have videos of them rioting or doing— they have a lot of videos of American inner city, like a lot of crime out there, but they don't have videos of these migrants. It's just like they're taking up space or they're just like walking or they're just coming into the country. You know, there is, you know, Hispanic Americans, you know, the second generation at least do have a higher crime rate. It's not at the level where it's like, you know, civilization destroying or anything like that. anything like that. I mean, it is, you know, a concern. I wanna, you know, but, you know, I'd want tougher, tougher on crime policies, sure. Um, in the Europe, you know, in the European context, it's sort of in between, uh, Israel and the US, where if the US should be, should be open to immigration, and Israel, you should definitely not be open to immigration from your neighbors. Europe is somewhere in between because a lot of these populations are distinct. They do cause a lot of problems. And in that context, I'm You know, so like gung-ho absolutist open borders. So, you know, this is to me is a, you know, it depends on, it depends on the evidence. It's not an absolute either. And these people, these HBD race realist types, you never find that argument. You never find, okay, it's not that bad in America. It's okay in Japan, or it's not okay in Europe. No, they all just want to close immigration. So that shows, I think, that like this, this idea about, you know, just going to the science is really about sort of bringing forward a political agenda.

Yeah, that makes sense. And the, um, but on the illegals, uh, someone had this stat recently, like 12 million illegals over, over a certain, you know, a short period of time. Like, at what point do you think it's— it becomes— starts to become a, uh, an issue? Or what is the right way of thinking about the right, uh, amount of immigration?

I don't know. I mean, it's, it's, it's numbers. I mean, it's numbers times, you know, it's numbers and diversity. Like, if they're all from one place, you know, it's cultural cohesion. If they're You know, something like Islam, a very distinct religion. They, you know, they marry within each other. They have these cultural practices that set them apart from the rest of society. I mean, you're creating a different kind of society when you bring in, you know, a large Muslim population. You're not really when you're bringing in a Hispanic population to something like the United States. And then like we have a lot of, you know, Asian immigration too. And so there's like all these groups that are— so the numbers, I'm not concerned about numbers. I mean, if it was a billion or something, you know, Yeah, but I don't see evidence that, like, we're falling. And, like, you know, the things people talk about, like, you know, a lot of the things that people talk about are things I see as sort of having low-hanging fruit solutions, like the cost of housing, or, like, you know, like, you know, the crime. I think there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in crime. We talked about, like, facial recognition technology, which you basically can't use, which could actually, you know, Jennifer Doleac had a good paper on DNA surveillance and, like, how just, like, taking the DNA of criminals and like doing database checks and like just, you know, getting them scared to get arrested again, like how big of a like effect that has on recidivism rates. So I think there's just like the things that people complain about at this point in time. I mean, they're just, there's stuff that is, are solvable with relatively easy solutions. And I think people should focus on those.

Yeah. Makes sense. I want to segue, you know, gearing towards closing here, going back to your debate with Curtis in a, in a couple of weeks. Where— what are you hoping to get out of the debate, or where are you, uh, wanting it to go? What do you want to discuss?

Yeah, I, I don't want to give— I sort of don't want to give away too much because I think that's sort of like if he just tells you his argument and I tell you my argument, like we've had— we've sort of had the debate already. Um, and so it's gonna be fun. Yeah, I just— people should just show up.

And, uh, well, maybe another way, another way of asking maybe is like, what do you think is Curtis's, uh, contribution? Um, or yeah, where do you put Curtis as a As it— like, what has he contributed to the discourse to the extent that we— it's influential?

Yeah, I mean, I think some of the stuff on, you know, like, you know, sort of, you know, how executives function, how governments function, I think some of that stuff is valuable. I mean, I think that the sort of the, you know, just like to the extent that he brings actually group population differences, you know, a lot of people talk about that now, but he was, you know, pretty early. talking about that stuff. Yeah, I mean, Curtis has made some contributions. I think that, like, I think I was probably closer to him and a lot of his fans 5 to 10 years ago, and I'm not there anymore. And which, that's what I think actually just sort of makes the debate so interesting. So yeah, that's why I'm looking forward to it.

Totally. And maybe we'll segue another or close with another topic that you've written about a few times, which is the effective altruism movement. You had a great post about why EA will be woke or die that I often recommend, because part of it's about EA, but part of it's just about what happens to groups as they grow and as certain voices come in, and certainly groups that are predicated upon truth and rationality, but end up being sort of warped. And then they have this tough decision to make, which is, do they make some people really upset, or do they stick to their to their value, or do they sort of concede their values? And it's interesting because effective altruism has had 2 major blows in the last year and a half. One was SBF being seen as the poster child for everything that's wrong with EA, sort of utils maximizing and even willing to commit crimes to do that. And then the second one was OpenAI, where there was sort of rumored— sort of the perception is that there was somewhat of a coup somewhat on EA grounds. And the justification was that AI was a risk to humanity, or AGI was a risk to humanity, and thus firing Sam Altman was utility maximizing. And so, yeah, I'm curious for any commentary on effective altruism. You're sympathetic to a lot of it because it's great thinking. It's inspired a lot of other great thinking as well. What's your take here?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of EAs, they center around the AI issue. And I'm just— I feel so divided about this. I do think that if, like, the world doesn't end in, like, 5 years, EA is going to have sort of egg on its face because, you know, these people are just worried. And, you know, you can't sort of keep that up forever. They can't just keep delaying the apocalypse. Religions do that. But, you know, I don't think— for EAs, I think that, you know, people will start questioning, as is inherent in its nature. And so, yeah, we're going to have to see sort of how this AI thing shakes out. I mean, they're going to look very prescient if there is some kind of major thing between now and the end of the world. If there's some moment where we realize that, oh, things are going haywire and something very strange is happening. I think Tyler said that EA had peaked. I think that EA's sort of destiny, it's not like a— you shouldn't think about it like a political movement the way you think about sort of libertarians or something like that, or like a conservative movement or something. Because it's— I think it real— I think that like if you're going to focus on effectiveness, you're going to avoid controversy. Like a libertarian or, you know, wokes or whatever, they're going to go and they're going to fight for the thing they want because they think they want many people opposed strongly. Like a lot of the EA stuff, I think like where the leverage is to make the world a better place is often where people aren't thinking about the issue much. It's like, oh, like, do charity this way instead of that way, or like, change this little regulation that's gonna, you know, harm— you know, that's been harming technological development. Um, and so Scott Alexander, uh, had— I think he, he linked to some website that listed some recent accomplishments of EA, and they were, you know, they were impressive, and I hadn't heard about any of them, uh, until then. And maybe that's You know, if EA wants to do good, it can sort of do good in the shadows. I think it's, it's probably not going to be a sort of a trendy— and, you know, there's cost to that because if you're just sort of doing things sort of behind the scenes, you know, you're not really building and becoming a giant movement or whatever. But I think that's sort of the limit. That's the, that's the sort of inherent limitation of just focusing on, you know, just completely being utilitarian and focusing what's what's effective, you're not going to inspire people, but that's okay. You could do some good things in the meantime.

Yeah, that's a good place to wrap that issue. Um, we're at time now, so, uh, um, since we're closing, the, the debate is February 9th with Curtis Yarvin. People should check it out.

Yeah, and Anna Khachania, or whatever, however you pronounce her name, the Red Scare girl, is going to be the, uh, moderator.

Yes, and the book is Origins of Woke. Is there anything, uh, top of mind related to our, our conversations that we, you didn't get to that you wanted to make sure to get to?

No, you did a pretty thorough job of covering sort of what's on my mind right now. So yeah, good job with that, Erik. Just, yeah, people should subscribe to the Substack and follow on Twitter, and all the essays that I've been foreshadowing will be coming in hopefully the next weeks and months.

Yes, I'm a paid subscriber, and I recommend listeners subscribe as well. Richard, always a pleasure, and until next time.

Appreciate it. Thanks, Erik.

Upstream with Erik Torenberg is a show from Turpentine, the podcast network behind Moment of Zen and Cognitive Revolution.

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Turpentine is a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more covering tech, business, and culture, all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We're the network behind the show you're listening to right now. At Turpentine, we're building the first media outlet for tech people by tech people. We have a slate of hit shows across a range of topics and industries, from AI with Cognitive Revolution to Econ 102 with Noah Smith. Our other shows drive the conversation in tech with the most interesting thinkers, founders, and investors like Moment of Zen and my show Upstream. We're looking for industry-leading hosts and shows along with sponsors. If you think that might be you or your company, email me at erik@turpentine.co. That's erik@turpentine.co.