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image source I loved Scott Alexander’s post “Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman.” The first thing I got out of it was thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “master morality” and “slave morality” in a new way: I’ll call master morality “excellence” and slave morality “righteousness.” Think of excellence as the virtues that the Ancient Greeks and Romans would have emphasized: strength, intelligence, skill, beauty, truth. Think of righteousness as the virtues distinctly emphasized by Judaism, Christianity and (I think) Islam, especially, humility, love and compassion. Unlike at lea ..read more

image source image source For a long time, major federal policies in the US have been relatively fixed, with modest changes that are treated as apocalyptic by politicians. But now everything is coming unglued and we’ll see what major policy change is really like. That could be terrible, or the unsticking that is happening now may make it possible to push things to much better place, say ten or fifteen years from now. I am a congenital optimist, so take that bias into account, but I think there is hope. To see what one talented and powerful individual can do at the right moment in history, c ..read more

image source Disparate outcomes for different races and sexes can result from several causes: “Animus”: This is a fancy word for “hatred.” It can also include looking down on a group. Unfortunately dividing the world into “us” and “them” is built deep into the human psyche, and can especially easily target racial and sex differences. See my sermon “Us and Them,” and if you are willing to read a long, but excellent book, Robert Sapolsky’s Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. I see animus (or possibly statistical discrimination stereotypes) behind many policies that are stated ..read more

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