An Inane Experiment

I have become increasingly leery of the information I'm getting on the internet. Too often, the facts in news stories don't check out. When they do, they're often presented in an ideologically skewed way. Even something as straight-forward as scientific journalism is presented as an "issue" that has "sides." Over and above the constant barrage of click-ads that suffocate me as I wade through the average online news article, some stories are little more than paid advertisements themselves. Sometimes the ones having paid for the story are people with ideological - as opposed to commercial - motives. There is a wide discrepancy between facts reported on the same issue/event, depending on the news article's country-of-origin. Some stories are not reported in some countries at all.

These are all known challenges of staying informed, I'm not making note of anything particularly novel here. Recently, though, I've felt myself reaching a "tipping point," and the information I come across is no longer appealing in any way. By this I mean to say that it is getting impossible to find news content that has any informational, commercial, or educational value of any kind.

Consequently, I have no desire to continually expose myself to this stuff.

Still, I have to stay abreast of some of the important things going on out there. I can skip most of the day-to-day stuff, but if war breaks out in Canada, or something, i'd prefer to know sooner rather than later. And I don't spend enough time on Twitter for that to be an option here. (Besides, I hate Twitter.)

So, for the next little while, I'm going to try an experiment in search of gaining access to better information. I'm going to start getting all of my news from only the "Business" section of any news source. My reasoning here is as follows.

First, I assume that if a news story isn't significant enough to impact the market, then it isn't significant enough for me to worry about. So, salmonella breaks out in a bunch of Chipotle restaurants = probably important; woman reportedly finds Jesus' foot in her McDLT = probably not important.

Second, as somewhat of a corollary to the above, I assume that those events that are perceptible on the market are the ones most likely to be things I should care about. So, even if I personally don't care whether Taylor Swift puts her content on Apple Music, the fact that the market cares should make me think twice about just writing the whole thing off. (I still might write it off, but I'll at least think twice.)

Third, I assume that "what the market wants" is more important than what political ideologies or groups happen to be screaming about. Sometimes the things that people scream about also happen to be things that the market wants. In those instances, I'll become fully informed of the politics just by reading the business news. Sometimes the market wants things that aren't on anyone's political radar. In those instances, I might very well be able to anticipate political trends before they become "Facebook issues," so to speak.

Maybe this experiment will work, and maybe it won't. I'll find out soon, and hopefully report back to my faithful readership.

Why I Don't Pay Attention To Tyler Cowen's Book Reviews

This morning (November 10th), Tyler Cowen published yet another post about "what he's been reading." Cowen posts many such blog posts. The second most-recent one was published on October 29th. The one before that was published on October 18th. October 5th. September 22nd. A day earlier, on September 21st (that's eight books in two days, plus a few he didn't finish). And so on. And so forth.

Since August, Cowen has claimed to have been reading about forty books - more than that, if I count all the books he admits to not having finished. Forty books in 15 weeks, or about 2.7 books per week. Assuming a modest 300 pages per book, we're looking at about 115 pages per day, and that is in addition to Cowen's typical day teaching courses, writing newspaper articles, reading countless blog posts and popular articles, commenting on them, and acting as the general director of the Mercatus Center. Cowen also watches a lot of movies and television programs, and frequently blogs about them.

By contrast, professional book reviewer Dwight Garner of The New York Times has read and reviewed only twenty books over the same time period, August to today. Cowen reads and reviews twice as many books as a professional book reviewer, in addition to serving as a full-time professor, author, op-ed article writer, and general director of a think-tank.

The average rate at which Cowen reads (books alone) is about 115 pages per day. Yes, this is possible for an avid reader.

But would such a busy person who reads so fast be able to dedicate enough mental bandwidth to write thoughtful and credible book reviews? Personally, I don't think so. I'd prefer a book reviewer read fewer books, but read them more carefully, and it at least appears that The New York Times agrees with me.

Please don't mistake this as a criticism of Cowen.

Zwolinski's Affirmative Consent Red Herring

Over at a website called LearnLiberty.org, Matt Zwolinski has a piece defending recent California legislation that would revoke state funding to institutions of higher learning if those institutions did not add "affirmative consent" language to their sexual assault policies.

In his defense of "affirmative consent," Zwolinski highlights three scenarios in which "no means no" is an insufficient policy because, in some cases, victims of sexual assault cannot say no (footnote omitted for brevity - click through to view it):

Intoxicated: After consuming a significant amount of alcohol in A’s presence, B passes out on the couch. A then undresses B and has sexual intercourse with her. 

Afraid: A and B meet in a bar and go back to A’s apartment. B rebuffs A’s advances. A smiles at B and says, “Look, you’re alone with someone you don’t know, who’s much bigger and stronger, and, for all you know, has beaten and raped several women. Maybe I’m not as nice as I seem.” B is very frightened by A’s remarks and does not resist A’s advances.* 

Incapable: B is a 19 year-old woman suffering from a severe intellectual disability, with an IQ of 59. A is aware of B’s condition, and begins to play a “touching game” with B, involving mutual undressing and touching of genital areas. B engages in this activity without protest.

There's only one problem: All three of Zwolinski's examples are already violations of the "no means no" guideline and existing sexual assault laws. Zwolinski has argued a red herring - nobody who opposes the new California Senate Bill disputes the illegality of any of the above scenarios under current law.

So how does identifying three indisputable violations of an existing law build a case for a new law about new guidelines? It doesn't.

Zwolinski spends the bulk of his article defending the moral validity of the concept of affirmative consent, and on that I definitely do not disagree with him. But who does? As far as I can tell, no one. This amounts to a second red herring - who are all these people who don't feel that they need affirmative consent during a sexual encounter? Who is Zwolinski arguing against, exactly?

There is one final problem with this senate bill, one that Zwolinski suspiciously does not mention in his defense of it: The law holds universities responsible for enforcing affirmative consent policies, even though affirmative consent doctrine is not actually part of the legal definition of consent. Thus, universities' enforcement of this policy presents two threats to democracy.

The first is the fact that the legal definition of consent can be changed without direct legislation to that affect. The senate bill doesn't change the law about sexual assault, it changes the law about publicly funded institutions of higher learning. It requires that universities adopt a certain guideline - one that is different from the exact letter of the law, and one which both Zwolinski and the bill's proponents expect the university to enforce on its studentbody.

Which brings me to the law's second threat to democracy: It turns university administrations into quasi-judicial bodies expected to investigate, try, and enforce sexual assault cases extra-legally. The problem here isn't merely that the law turns universities into judge, jury, and executioner (although, it does). The problem is that all of this is happening without due process of LAW.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why a self-professed libertarian would think this kind of legislation would be an overall improvement to liberty. Perhaps Zwolinski will at some point clarify his thinking here. Right now, though, I just don't get it.

The Loss Of Liberty

The following appeared here, but is now only available here.

They have failed to acknowledge the hurt and pain that such a large part of our community feel. They have again and again shown that they are committed to an ideal of free speech, not to the Silliman community. 

It's difficult to know where to begin here, but let's start with this: Words are a threat to no one's community. If such a community existed that could be threatened by the mere utterance of words, then that community would simply not last very long.

Among the many things that make up a community are logic and ideas. If the free-exchange of logic and ideas must be suppressed in order to foster a community, then it is safe to say that that community is based on lies and illusions. The notion that feelings could override the importance of logical truth - arrived at by a free and robust discourse - is on the one hand infantile and on the other hand narcissistic.

But above all, it is preposterous. And, as the author of the piece, Jencey Paz, herself indicates, it is a threat to free speech.

Using Google's webcache feature, I was able to read some great comments posted beneath the op-ed. Here's an excerpt from "Tony," a self-described gay man:

Being overly sensitive is a weakness, full stop. You must be stronger than those who would do you harm. But you’re not even facing those people. You’re facing allies. When has weakness ever achieved what strength can’t?

Commentator "Patrick" leaves a comment that is damning to the author, if true:

From Yale’s “Intro To Undergrad Education”: 

“Freedom of expression is especially important in an academic community, where the search for truth holds a primary value. In 1975, a committee chaired by the late C. Vann Woodward, one of Yale’s most distinguished professors, issued the Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale, informally called the Woodward Report. This document emphasizes that the history of intellectual growth and discovery demonstrates the need to be able to ‘think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.’ The report acknowledges that such freedom may sometimes make life uncomfortable in a small society such as a college. But it also asserts that ‘because no other institution combines the discovery and dissemination of basic knowledge with teaching, few need assign such high priority to it.’ 

Yale’s commitment to freedom of expression means that when you agree to matriculate, you join a community where ‘the provocative, the disturbing, and the unorthodox’ must be tolerated. When you encounter people who think differently than you do, you will be expected to honor their free expression, even when what they have to say seems wrong or offensive to you.”

 Here's an interesting tweet related to the topic:

Future potential employers googling "Jencey Paz" will think "HR nightmare: don't hire." https://t.co/qYi9IUV3tf

— Thomas L McDonald (@ThomasLMcDonald) November 8, 2015

It would be tempting to "pile-on" here and make Jencey Paz's life a living nightmare, especially since it is the so-called "call-out culture" to which she obviously belongs that tends most often to publicly shame and humiliate people until they are unemployable pariah's. The above post reflects my best attempt at resisting that urge. I do, however, believe that her name ought to be made public and that op-ed recorded in the internet for the future, as a testament to what the loss of liberty looks like as it happens.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.

Low Interest Rates Do What?!?

Just in case you might have forgotten that this is sometimes an economics blog, allow me to indulge in another what-the-heck-is-Scott-Sumner-saying-now post.

At EconLog, he writes:

1. Suppose that on average houses are 68 degrees in the winter, and 78 degrees in the summer. People use heat in the winter, but since they are wearing winter clothing they only heat their house up to 68 degrees. People use AC in the summer, but since they are wearing summer clothing they only AC it down to 78. I think that this is a plausible assumption. House temps then represent the "stance" of house temperature policy, equivalent to the stance of monetary policy. 

2. Suppose that turning up the thermostat makes houses warmer. And turning on the AC cools temps in the summer. Since turning up the thermostat raises temps, consider it analogous to an expansionary monetary policy "gesture". And vice versa for AC. Adjusting the AC or thermostat then represents raising and lowering the fed funds target. 

Bob Murphy's theory of temperature would be that when people are frequently turning up the thermostat, you can expect houses to be relatively warm. And when people are frequently turning on the AC, you can expect houses to be cool. The Sumner theory is that when people are most frequently turning up the thermostats, houses will be relatively cool, even though that action makes them warmer. Bob Murphy's theory is that houses are relatively warm in the winter, because people frequently turn up their thermostats in the winter. Sumner's theory is that houses will be relatively cool in the winter, despite the fact that people turn up the thermostat more frequently in the winter, and despite the fact that turning up the thermostat does in fact make houses warmer, ceteris paribus. Bob Murphy will claim that Sumner contradicts himself on house temperatures.

Before I really tackle this, let me pause to mention the comment I left there. The gist of my point was this: This all depends on when you choose to measure temperature.

• Right before the heater comes on, the house is cold and the heater is off. 
• Then immediately after the heater comes on, the house is cold and the heater is on.
• Next, for a while, the heater is on and the house is warm.
• This is followed by the heater switching off again, but the house is still warm.

You can see that every possible combination of On/Off + Cold/Warm is accounted for above. Depending on the exact point in the cycle we choose to talk about, we can make literally any claim about the state of the heater and the temperature of the house, any claim at all.

And so it is for interest rates. We're not talking about competing "theories" of interest rates and the macroeconomy. Instead, we're talking about one perfectly obvious theory that everyone agrees on, and two completely different ways of talking about it.

That's about as charitable as I can be. Now let's dig in.

One of the things I learned by taking a deep dive into Austrian School economics is that forcing everyone to use special language to discuss your pet topic hurts discourse more than it helps. So, for example, I think Austrians are totally right when they talk about inflation, but the problem is that they use that word to mean something different than everyone else.

So first an Austrian School economist has to say, "Okay, guys! Guys! Guys. Now I'm going to use my private definition of inflation. Ready?" Then he has to make his point. Then everyone else has to translate that point into the language of mainstream economics. Then, if they want to respond, they have to translate their own thoughts into the language of Austrian School economics, then they have to talk to the Austrian School guy. Etc., etc.

This is bad. If you want to make a good point, then you have to embrace the language that everyone else uses. You can't complain that people aren't using the right terminology. I bring this up because Scott Sumner has made this point himself many times at his own blog.

Anywho, back to inflation and the money supply.

If I asked you what the relationship between the heater's on/off switch is to heating your home, how would you respond? Would you say that switching the heater on will warm your house, or will you respond that if the heater is off your house is probably warm? Probably that first thing, right?

Now, if I asked you whether low interest rates increased the money supply and high interest rates decreased them, would you just say, "Yeah, duh," or would you be all, "Well, if the interest rates are low, then money must be tight?"

I'm not saying Scott Sumner is wrong, I'm just saying, why the heck would he ever say the exact opposite of what everyone expects in an effort to sell them on a new concept?

Is he just trolling?

Don't Do Drugs

I often catch a lot of grief for my stance against drug use. My stance is a simple one: Doing drugs will make your life a lot worse, period. People like to raise all sorts of objections to this, but the data that keeps coming in seems to substantiate my beliefs. It is not, however, clear and unambiguous empirical fact. It is a tendency I have noticed, as have many others over the years. If you do not want to see this tendency, it will become invisible to you.

But it is not invisible.

The mortality rate for white men and women between the ages of 45 and 54 with less than a college education increased by half a percent per year between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, according to the study released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And:

“Drugs and alcohol, and suicide . . . are clearly the proximate cause,” said Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics, who co-authored the paper with his wife, Anne Case. Both are economics professors at Princeton University. 

“Half a million people are dead who should not be dead,” he added. “About 40 times the Ebola stats. You’re getting up there with HIV-AIDS.”

A Two-Penny Theory Of Cultural Morality

Imagine two hypothetical cities: San Salvatore and Friedrichsburg.

San Salvatore is a land-locked region where the winters are mild, but the summers are harsh. The growing season here is notoriously fickle because sometimes there are severe droughts, but often when the droughts break, there is severe flooding that destroys crops; the summers can be hot and dry, but if the growing season is too short, then the local crops never reach full maturity and the farmers lose big time. Since it is a large, land-locked area, it never attracted a very large population. Consequently, the sparse but hardy human population ended up being culturally quite homogeneous. They also learned, after many harsh summers, that the survival of all of them depends on a tight-knit community that lends a helping hand when disaster strikes. This tight-knit community had additional upshots: since everyone knew each other, they could all do more or less as they pleased because if anyone got into trouble, the community would step in to enforce the community's moral standards. The standards that evolved were, again, a by-product of a culturally homogeneous community; any significant deviation from local standards could be seen as a signal that Deviant Person X will not be reliable when disaster strikes. The community will, by and large, be unilingual; after all, why speak a different language when so much of your survival depends on your ability to communicate with society at large? So, the community naturally moves in to stamp-out any significant social deviance. Finally, deviants in such a community often feel quite ostracized (because they are).

Friedrichsburg, on the other hand, is a port city, and thus has always enjoyed the attributes of an international commercial hub. The winters can be incredibly cold and harsh, but springtime is beautiful and features ample rainfall, enough to make growing leafy greens and root vegetables relatively easy. For those things that are difficult to produce, the city's ability to trade with far-away regions makes survival a little less touch-and-go. Being dependent on this trade, however, means that the community cannot afford to turn its nose up at people from radically different cultures - they need their stuff! And with a relatively constant churn of international citizens coming to port, trading, and then moving on, their is little reason to build up a great distrust of social deviance. Multilingualism becomes incredibly important in a city like this, since there are many people speaking many languages with whom everyone would like to trade. The more languages one can speak, the more one can trade with other members of the community. Still, people who originate from similar regions tend to congregate at night and form diaspora in order share a bite of traditional cuisine and speak their native tongue to remember "home," wherever it may have once been. There is, after all, a lot of variation within the city at any given point in time. The survival of the community, then, depends on a certain degree of open-mindedness. Those who treat outsiders poorly discourage outsiders from bringing their cargo to port, and that becomes an existential threat for the community. So open-mindedness is not merely a social value, it's an attitude that can impact the economic success of the whole city.

Suppose there is a young man who wants very much to be a good person, and to also be a successful person. Let's call him "Sam." Sam's core personality traits and desires are simply what they are, we shall take them as given. They are a part of his personality.

If Sam were born and raised in San Salvatore, then his desire to be ethical and successful would lead him to certain conclusions. He'd have a strong incentive to pay attention in church, to dress in accordance with local customs, to signal his intolerance of distrustful behavior, to signal his trustworthiness to other locals like him. He'd want to make sure he felt included, like an important member of the community.

If, on the other hand, Sam were born and raised in Friedrichsburg, he might be equally hard-working, honest, ambitious, etc., but the way he might go about making his way in the world would be quite different. He'd need to signal open-mindedness to foster relationships with as many trading partners as possible. He might get too attached to any one church or social group for fear of being deemed insufficiently cosmopolitan.

I make no empirical claims about the above scenarios. I offer it merely as one possibility for how similar people might come to very different ideological perspectives depending on the community in which they exist. If such situations were to exist in the real world, a reasonable person could fully understand the benefits of socially enforced homogeneity in a community that depended on it, while also understanding the benefits of cosmopolitanism in a community that depended on it.

Still, in the modern world, it would seem silly to cling too much to one type of perspective or the other. Most regions in the world are no longer set as being one type of community or the other. While some might argue that the world is now more interconnected and cosmopolitan than ever, the truth of the matter is that today's world is very different from the port cities of old, in several important ways. And doubtless no one would suggest that the average community is as touch-and-go as the old land-locked agrarian societies of days gone by.

So, what we need in today's world is a set of social standards that reflect today's world. Ideally, this would include the best strengths of all possible norms. We ought to be open-minded enough to interact productively with anyone who doesn't threaten us, but not so open-minded that we become tolerant of genuinely destructive behavior. Our social standards ought to be strict enough as to be self-policing, without the need for an expansive (and abusive) police state, but not so strict as to create cultural homogeneity. Finally, the standards ought to be dynamic enough to facilitate our lives as we tackle the next problems of the human condition: environmental challenges, medical breakthroughs, scientific advancement; but not so dynamic that our own personal values aren't anchored to anything concrete and we become narcissists.

Crider And I Disagree To Agree

Recently the great Paul Crider wrote an "oblique" defense of feminism over at Sweet Talk Conversation. It is very interesting and well worth the read, so as they say in the blogging business, "read the whole thing."

Fond as I am of Crider and his ideas, I've never quite been able to warm up to his affinity for feminism - not because I'm hostile to gender equality, but because I don't see feminism as a viable path toward achieving it. In an odd sort of way, I believe Paul's recent blog post articulates most of the points justifying my belief. Even so, his navigation of these points leads him to feminism, and mine leads me away from it.

Paul Crider and I seldom disagree about anything, so I have to wonder: Do we actually disagree on this topic? Well, that sounds like great fodder for a blog post, so let's get to it.

Why Are People Hostile To Feminism?

Crider isn't afraid to tackle the tough issues head-on, which is why he addresses them right out of the gate:

It turns out some folks are really hostile to feminism. Interestingly, this sentiment comes not just from misogynists, but from genuinely nonsexist people. The hostility seems to stem from the conspicuous existence of feminist ideas and feminist people that are absurd. Statements like “All men are rapists”, “All heterosexual sex is rape“, or “Straight white men cannot suffer discrimination” are all statements that have been uttered by feminists. Then there are the disproportionate public shame campaigns, often whipped up on Twitter, like Shirtgate or Nobel laureate biochemist Tim Hunt getting shamed into resignation over some sexist remarks. Shame is a weapon regularly used by feminists, especially against white males who express frustration at romantic difficulty, with epithets like “mouth-breathers, pimpled, scrawny, blubbery, sperglord, neckbeard, virgins, living in our parents’ basements, man-children” all too common (a list supplied by Scott Alexander). Feminists have been behind some truly scary assaults on free speech and due process, especially when it comes to college life and those accused of sexual assault.

I agree. Those certainly are some attractive reasons to eschew what Crider calls "the ideological impulse" toward feminism, aren't they?

Crider then takes this reasoning right where he needs to: He acknowledges that not all feminists are guilty of these things, but that it's impossible to suggest that the ones who really are guilty aren't "true" feminists. In other words, Crider acknowledges that feminists who do and say bad things are just as representative of feminism itself as are feminists who do not do and say bad things.

Feminism takes all kinds, good and bad; and the fact that feminism includes knaves along with other people is not a mark in favor of feminism. So this is two strikes against feminism right out of the gate: (1) Some feminists are knaves; (2) Feminism necessarily includes knaves.

At this point, a "feminism skeptic" ought to be looking for some attractive reasons to embrace feminism, reasons that are attractive enough to overcome the fact that the label itself will group you in with a significant number of knaves. What does Crider have to offer in that regard?

Feminism As A Lens

Crider's first point in feminism's favor is that it serves as "lens" through which to view and understand the world:

...[F]eminism should be viewed as a lens through which one views the world, bringing certain issues into sharper focus though also inevitably obscuring other details with particular biases. There is no lens-free option; without some kind of lens (theory), the world is a hopeless blur of disordered sensory data. Pretending to go sans-lens is simply to fail to acknowledge or even be aware of the lenses through which one does in fact peer. With a particular lens comes, in addition to a perspective and accompanying biases, a set of tools for understanding and deconstructing problems. This is acute for feminism, as one of the purposes of feminism is to highlight assumptions of a certain kind (gender).

Unfortunately, Crider never mentions why this particular lens is a better or more valuable lens than any other. So while it may be true that seeing the world through feminist eyes brings certain issues into sharper focus, the reader is left alone to wonder whether the view we end up with is more reflective of reality or less.

Indeed, every ideology brings certain issues into sharper focus, including ideologies almost universally understood to be negative. For example, anti-Semitism is a lens through which certain issues are brought into sharper focus, but the result is an unfair and heinous antipathy toward members of a particular ethnic group. Since we can all agree that anti-Semitism is a bad lens, we must generally concede that to justify any particular lens, we'll need some kind of evidence or argument that the "picture" we're getting from that lens is one worth seeing.

Too often, many accept on assumption the value of ideological feminism, which has come to mean not merely gender equality, but also a whole host of additional values. For example, the Feminist Women's Health Center lists among its core values a commitment "to reproductive freedom and justice," i.e. the belief that aborting a human fetus is a human right. If that were the only feminist organization that grouped pro-life abortion values in with broader feminism, then we might disregard it as an outlier - but it's not. The message is clear: Women who oppose abortion, but support gender equality simply aren't feminists.

And there is a long list of similar issues, all equally unnecessary to the over-arching goal of gender equality. Feminists are expected to favor Title 9 legislation. Feminists are expected to favor mandatory and ever-increasing amounts of maternity leave at an employer's or government's expense. Feminists are expected to favor government-provided day care. We need not conduct a deep dive into each of these issues to simply note that feminism is often articulated as a package-deal. If you're not all-in, you're not a feminist. (Unless, of course, the over-arching goal of ideological feminism is not gender equality at all.)

True, some feminist groups attempt to advocate pro-life feminism or libertarian feminism, but these groups are mostly outliers that are not representative of mainstream feminism. In some cases, as with pro-life feminism, they are single-issue groups promoting one non-feminist value (like opposition to abortion) ahead of the "rest" of the feminist agenda.

Whatever we might say about these outlying groups, they are few-enough and far-enough-between to warrant the following observation: If the feminist lens tends to bring "certain issues" into focus, then those issues are in somes cases illiberal and in almost all cases left-leaning.

How likely is it that viewing the world more often from the left results in an objectively more accurate picture, especially when it sometimes puts you at odds with the right to free speech? Unless you're a demagogue, not likely at all.

Fuzzy Feminism

Let's pause for a moment and consider two important concessions Crider has already made against feminism: First, that they are often enemies of free speech (I agree), and second that they are often against free markets, right-to-life viewpoints, and other non-leftist policy preferences (I agree). In light of that fact, it seems increasingly difficult to justify feminism as a means toward a more accurate view of the truth.

On some level, Crider seems to be agree with me on this, because his next set of points argues against orthodoxy. He writes that all ideologies are a "living conversation," and concludes that "The boundaries of what lies within and without the tradition become established by common understanding, but the boundaries are blurry and can move over time."

He goes further:

As a conversation, it is a category error to view feminism in toto as either true or false, right or wrong. Feminism contains too many voices contradicting one another at various levels for any blanket judgment to be meaningful. The feminist positions and behaviors above are often used to condemn feminism as a whole, but of course there are feminists who don’t hold those beliefs.

Once again, I agree. However, if something can neither be true or false, right or wrong, in toto, then how can it be viewed as good or bad, or indeed worthy of defense or worthy of condemnation?  What, in the end, is Crider actually defending?

What follows is a long discussion about the multitude of feminist "varieties," and how they should all count as feminism in the same sense that Catholic and Protestant are both Christians. One easy objection to this point is that comparing feminism to a religion ultimately defeats Crider's argument against orthodoxy.

But a more important criticism is this: The sexes ought to be equal for reasons of basic human dignity, not for metaphysical reasons. Any justification of feminism that can only be justified metaphysically is bound to be rejected by anyone whose views are rooted mainly in physics.

What I mean is, I think it's simply unfair to assign a lower legal value to a woman than to a man. I think this creates a systemic prejudice against a population that ultimately cannot be overcome through "just living your life." This isn't a metaphysical belief about fairness, it's a physical observation of legal outcomes. It's an empirical matter. We don't need a conversation about "what is justice?" in order to make our legal treatment of the sexes blind and equal. It's incumbent upon advocates of gender-superiority to make the case that systemic inequality is more just than equality.

Crider warns us right at the outset of his blog post: "I would like to defend feminism in a more direct and full-throated way, but I could only do so for my particular kind of liberal feminism." But since metaphysics broadly - and Crider's "epistemic virtue" in particular - are highly personal and individualized, I'm still left wondering, what is Crider actually defending?

He next warns us about the dangers of tribal thinking - a warning that I strongly agree with - but this is an odd warning to provide in the context of the defense of a particular tribe. He rightly implores feminists to root-out its worst arguments and dispense with them, but then suggests that non-feminists are not in a position to understand the extent to which it is already happening. Maybe not, but any ideology that has not yet rid itself of terrible arguments (or the aforementioned inclinations against free speech and non-leftist politics) is not ready for endorsement by any person who considers himself or herself a careful thinker. If feminism still has work to do on the inside, let it do its work before its insiders ask the rest of us to accept it as a worthy endeavor.

Feminism As A Set Of Ideas

At the end of Crider's post, he lists a set of concepts - developed within the feminist framework - that he says are worth "taking seriously regardless of worldview." A few of them are concepts that I myself cannot and will not take seriously, but I will leave that matter aside for a moment.

The real argument against that list of concepts is that each and every one of those concepts can be "taken seriously," and even fully accepted without the feminist label. To suggest that feminism is worthy of defense merely because it has resulted in a few good developments seems to me to be as misguided as accepting German nationalism merely because German culture has provided many important contributions to humankind. I accept the value of Beethoven's music without having to call myself "German at heart" or some such thing.

So the conclusion is obvious: The label really is superfluous. There is no need to accept a label like feminism. There appears to be no inherent value in the label itself. So long as you accept valuable ideas as being valuable, and reject bad arguments as being bad, then you're on the right track. Who could possibly disagree with that?

What conclusion does this lead Crider to make?

Though I’m a feminist myself, I don’t believe everyone must identify as a feminist. People will always have idiosyncratic reasons for both attachment to and disaffection from certain identities. And I have seen enough nonfeminist nonsexists in the wild to believe that the fruits of feminism can be enjoyed without universal identification under the F word.

Aha. So Paul Crider and I agree with each other after all. I thought so. :)

Concert Review: The Winery Dogs

Touring in support of their new album, Hot Streak, the Winery Dogs stopped in Dallas, Texas last night to give fans a taste of their live show. 

The venue was The Gas Monkey Live! theater, which I had never been to before. The venue itself was a rather pleasant surprise, hidden within a slightly-less-developed part of the metroplex near Dallas Lovefield Airport. Decorated with 19th Century throwback wall paper amid gothic mirrors and taxidermied hunting trophies, the theater stretches out from the main stage. It's lined with two elevated VIP areas for fans who prefer to sit during shows, and has several bars situated throughout the theater to serve drinks without creating long lines. The stage itself is elevated maybe 4 or 5 feet above the audience and is bookended with large screens, which receive a constant feed from live cameramen filming the show. The stage is set up with a rather elaborate lighting system, and a projector screen in the rear, giving the venue a sort of "big arena" feel, despite the intimate layout.

As I was waiting in line to enter the venue, I stuck up a conversation with a fellow fan. He said he was there to see the opening act, Kicking Harold, and that he'd actually never heard of the Winery Dogs before. I admitted that I'd never seen Kicking Harold before, and we both were a little taken aback by each other, and laughed. But on his passionate description of the band, I realized I had something to really look forward to in the opening act - which is a refreshing change from many other shows of this side, in which a well-connected local band ends up getting the opening slot, only to give a local-quality performance.

And Kicking Harold did not disappoint! From the opening chords, the band immediately took me back to the mid-90s music scene, when rock music was still witty, groovy, hard-hitting, melodic, and had youth appeal. In fact, after a couple of songs, I started to realize just how far pop rock has fallen in the last 20 years; that may be a topic for another blog post, but for the time being, it should serve as a testament to Kicking Harold's set. By way of comparison, Kicking Harold hold stylistic similarities to, say, Treble Charger or Eve 6. The overall vibe is decidedly punk/alternative rock, but it's delivered with sleek hard rock sensibilities. Add9 chords abound, and all three instruments deliver the goods with a respectable level of aggression. By the third song in, Kicking Harold had won the crowd over, which is fairly remarkable, considering that most Winery Dogs fans were there to see three of the "shreddiest" musicians in the business. And Kicking Harold, while awesome, is not much of a shredder's band. That, however, didn't stop them from closing their set with a genuinely badass Rush medley. By the time they left the stage, the audience wasn't just warmed up, we were on fire.

Finally, it was time for the Winery Dogs themselves. Just before they took the stage, I noted a few interesting things about their setup. 

First, Richie Kotzen was playing two of his signature Cornford half stacks, which surprised me since I was under the impression that he was touring with Marshalls. Boutique Cornford amplifiers, especially when paired with a Telecaster, deliver an incredibly rich guitar tone that is nonetheless a little on the low-gain side of the spectrum (especially by modern standards). The sound was stunning, and helped me understand just how much of a blues player Kotzen can be when he wants to be. 

Second, Mike Portnoy's drum set seems to have grown substantially since the previous Winery Dogs tours. This fact ought to appeal to the Portnoy fans in the audience, because he is really using the full drumkit in these songs.

Finally, I had known already that Billy Sheehan ran a two-amplifier setup to get his bass tone, but I hadn't realized what a fairly complicated setup that is. Last night, he was playing two bass amps with, I believe, five speaker cabinets and a rack full of gear.

The band kicked things off with "Oblivion," and "Captain Love," the first two songs from the new album. That set the stage for a night of predominantly new music, which was great news for me, since I was anxious to hear how the new songs translated in a live context. The verdict on that question, by the way, is "resoundingly well." At one point, Kotzen paused to ask whether anyone in the crowd had any "personal favorites" from the new record. "Devil You Know!" someone shouted, to which Kotzen replied, "We're not ready for that one yet. Next time around, I promise." 

I was pleased that the band even played "Think It Over" and "Regret," which stand out for being two electric piano songs on an otherwise guitar-driven set. The latter was brought out during the encore, and the rendition was, in a word, phenomenal. Kotzen began on the electric piano, and as the song reached its final crescendo, he moved over to electric guitar for a stunningly emotional solo and a big finish.

Instrumentally, the band was at the top of their game. Several extended solo sections allowed each player to show the audience what they do best. Mike Portnoy's drum solo, in particular, stood out for its wit and charm. I won't spoil the "surprise" feature to that drum solo (although I'm sure it's been revealed already by fan videos on YouTube), but suffice it to say it was both a big change from Portnoy's Dream Theater days, and a charmingly modern take on the drum solo.

Being the guitar player that I am, I was anxious to get a close look at some of Richie Kotzen's more challenging licks in hopes of figuring out "how the heck does he do that?" Having gotten about as close a look as I'll ever get, I can faithfully report: I still have no idea. His playing remains as fresh and innovative as ever. 

The Winery Dogs have been getting some amazing press about their live show, and having finally seen them up-close-and-personal myself, I'm glad I got to find out what all the fuss is about. The reports are not exaggerated. They put on an excellent show, and in particular I think it's interesting to see this particular snapshot of the band as it exists today. They've clearly started to find what it is that sets them apart as a group of live performers, and I imagine their live show will continue to grow and develop by the end of this tour and into the next.

There are still plenty of upcoming dates, so my advice is to hunt down some tickets to the show nearest you. It is well worth it.

Situationism And Libertarianism

Long-time Stationary Waves readers know that I am critical of paradigms because they limit our ability to allow for alternate explanations. So while Situationist analysis feels like a good way to analyze social psychology, it's easy to abuse it to the point that it becomes a "just-so" story. I was relieved, then to read a statement Philip Zimbardo makes in his book The Lucifer Effect suggesting that we look first at Situational factors, then consider Dispositional factors only after you've exhausted the Situational analysis. I like this because it displays an admirable dose of intellectual humility; Zimbardo doesn't say he has all the answers, but he does claim to have some.

Meanwhile, as I "practice at home" a little, I have been discovering how powerful Situational anlysis can be. In particular, keeping the overall situational context in mind when evaluating observed behavior has the effect of making me a much more forgiving and empathetic person by discouraging me from drawing unfair conclusions about people.

I have paired this perspective with something David Henderson recently wrote:

When I deal with angry cops, I think of how I dealt with my father when he got irrationally angry. I pictured him as a big angry bear. You don't morally judge a bear; he does what bears do. I didn't morally judge my father--or, at least, tried not to appear to judge him in the moment. I just treaded carefully.

Situationism is a good piece to add to Henderson's already-good advice because it reminds us that, in some other situation or in a slightly different set of circumstances, we're the bear.

That's one example of how Situationism pairs well with libertarian ethics. There are more. Today at EconLog, Bryan Caplan published a wonderful post about the adverse impact of what he calls the "social undesirability bias," which I have noticed but never fully articulated. It's an excellent post, so please do read the whole thing. Down below it, commentator "Ben Kennedy" writes:

Sometimes I feel that some of the stronger anti-state Libertarian rhetoric falls into this category. One can easily immerse themselves in the opinion that not only is government incompetent, it is essential merciless gang of thieves that parasitizes society etc etc. Of course there is some truth to this position, e.g. the insights of public choice theory. However, the case is regularly overstated - I'm pretty sure the nice lady in the children's section of my local library is not an evil parasite (and most policemen are perfectly nice people as well)

Kennedy is probably right that "some rhetoric" falls into this category, and yet look at his counter-examples. Notice anything special about them? They are strongly steeped in dispositional analysis. The government can't be "parasitic," because, after all, many nice people he knows work in the library or on the police force.

It's a powerful comment, but it is made much weaker by a situational understanding of the state. Tasked with burning books, would the nice lady at the library quit her job, drag her feet, or acquiesce without even so much as question? If that seems like a silly example, then let's pretend she's not a librarian, but a county clerk, and let's pretend she's not asked to burn books, but to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Now the "libertarian" orientation of the librarian goes against my own personal view, but the result is clear: The nice lady doesn't quit. She drags her feet and makes a big stink over it, then ultimately goes back to her job and complies with the law.

If you think this doesn't matter because, hey, she can go sit on a tack because gay marriage is the law now, sucker! then you're missing the point. For two hundred years, gay marriage was against the law, and county clerks enforced that law. They were all nice people in a rotten situation, and that rotten situation was the state.

As for nice police officers, I've met them, too. But I've also seen the evidence: there are a lot of nice people sticking up for other nice people who did bad things in rotten situations.

Situational analysis allows us to understand why people do the things they do, but it doesn't exonerate them. If you know that, say, being a prison guard is a high-risk situation in terms of making people do bad things, and you decide to become a prison guard anyway, long before those situation forces exert themselves on you, then you're morally culpable. That's true for the same reason that a heroin addict is morally culpable for his addiction long before he's actually addicted, because the risks of heroin injection are already widely understood.

Ultimately, pairing Situationism with libertarianism makes good intuitive sense, provides a way to come to clear moral decisions without unnecessarily antagonizing good people, and consistently works with traditionally libertarian ideas like public choice theory and behavioral economics.

Err On The Side Of Morality

I don't remember the quote exactly, but at some point Ayn Rand wrote that there are "sundry libertarians" who accept Objectivism's conclusions but reject either Objectivism's metaphysics or its epistemology, I forget which.

I don't want to comment on that, specifically, but the quote came to mind when I started reading this post from Robert Murphy. Reaching for a "gotcha" against open borders advocate Alex Tabarrok, he remarks that if you don't think it's okay to use guns to prevent immigration, then you must also not think it's okay to use guns to defend yourself in any other context. The gist of Bob's point is that, on some level, we all accept the use of violence as a deterrent against being attacked, so when Tabarrok claimed that doing so is morally problematic with respect to migration, Bob moved in for the "kill."

The ensuing comments made it clear that Bob's view is a common one, and that view basically boils down to, hey, if you violate the Non-Aggression Principle against me, then I will make you pay! My problem with that is that it seems to violate the spirit of the NAP. The whole point of this principle is to highlight the fact that a peaceful society requires little more than clearly defined rights coupled with a society full of broadly well-intentioned individuals.

The NAP is not, as some people seem to believe, a justification for surrounding your property with mines and hungry alligators in a moat and daring someone to trespass. That kind of attitude might be consistent with the NAP, but it is fully bereft of the kind of thoughts a non-aggressive person should probably have.

In other words, it accepts the Non-Aggression Principle, but rejects its metaphysical underpinnings.

It sometimes seems that there are a great many of us who view issues this way. That whole Civil War thing is another classic example: it's clear that, despite the rhetoric, human slavery was a major component of the Civil War. If one were to defend the Confederacy for all those technical states-rights reasons, that person might have a consistent and logical argument in his or her favor. But still: SLAVERY. You know?

If you're escaping a major moral indictment on a philosophical technicality, then you might have the better argument, but you're still immoral. Our purpose as moral agents in a society is not to push the boundaries of moral reasoning in order to get ourselves off the hook, but rather to err on the side of morality.

Album Review: The Winery Dogs - Hot Streak

I've been struggling for about a week now to figure out how to write a review of the new Winery Dogs album, Hot Streak. The struggle I'm having is that the album is so good that I don't just want to write "a" review, I want to write the review that needs to be written.

If I wanted to write "a" review of the album, then I'd do what other reviews appear to be doing: I'd start with a brief synopsis of how the band came together (there's a bit of music history in that story), mention the respective band members' musical pedigrees, make a big deal about their musical chops, mention that this is their second album, and then say something to the effect of, "The Winery Dogs continue on a hot streak, indeed! Yuk yuk yuk..."

I don't fault other reviewers for writing that sort of thing, but my criticism is that nothing in those reviews gives the reader any incentive to take an involved and critical journey into Hot Streak and come to a real appreciation for what they've managed to accomplish here.

I'm not even sure that I myself can write a review like that - hence my aforementioned struggle. But, I'm going to try, so here it is...

And Now, For The Review...

People write a lot about Richie Kotzen, Billy Sheehan, and Mike Portnoy, because all three musicians are famous for being technically proficient players. Furthermore, it's not as if any of them has worked very hard to reduce their reputation for being that way - and why should they? But their reputation for technique follows them, and makes up part of the "context" in which the listener hears new Winery Dogs music.

However, there is another part of the "context" that doesn't get written about quite as often: all three players, in addition to being some of the most gifted players in rock music, happen to have some serious jazz chops. Kotzen and Sheehan have explicitly explored jazz fusion on previous records and in prior bands. While Portnoy may not have done so, there's no denying that he has referenced jazz music many times in the course of his prog-metal career. 

I bring this up because, when you really dive deeply into Hot Streak, you start to notice its strong jazz underpinnings.

Nowhere is this more evident than on the album's title track. While the crux of the song is a set of straight-ahead, crashing power chords and rhythms, the band uses the spaces between the "important parts," to jettison into some admirably crazy jazz soloing. This culminates in what might be the standout solo of the album - maybe "solo of the year," if they gave awards for this sort of thing - from Richie Kotzen, near the end of the song.

Then there's the explosive, improvisational character of the music, an attribute that is driven home, song after song, by the drumming. While it's easy to criticize Dream Theater's back catalogue for being a little over-rehearsed, Mike Portnoy seems to have overcome all that with the Winery Dogs. This is especially true of the new album. The other criticism Portnoy recieves is that he "over-plays," and while those who are inclined to make that criticism will find plenty to object to on Hot Streak, the band really wouldn't "work" if he played any differently. He injects each track with an explosive energy that seems to elevate (no pun intended) the other members of the band to a degree of explosiveness that is not always there in their prior work. But, more than that, the improvisational feel in his drumming makes each song unfold like a controlled explosion the likes of which I have only really heard before in that other jazz-inflected rock band, Living Colour.

Just when you think that this is all Mike Portnoy has in his tool kit, however, he takes things way down for songs like "Fire" and "Think It Over," keeping the spirit of the songs in mind. In particular, his work on "Think It Over" is some of the most thoughtfully under-stated work of his career, involving some tasty hi-hat work that punctuates rhythm and lyrics alike.

Richie Kotzen, for his part, is in fine jazz form. I really enjoy the fact that he doesn't hesitate to play some deliciously jazzy electric piano and keyboards all over Hot Streak, especially since my favorite track on the previous record was the piano-inflected "Regret." Still, he never over-does it, so the band keeps their feet planted firmly in the kind of hard rock that appeals to their audience. As for his guitar playing, Kozten breaks out some phrasing we haven't heard from him since his work with Virtu and the Kotzen/Howe albums. I love this side of Kotzen's playing, so it's a delight for me to hear him break it out. Kotzen's having ditched the pick for a few years now, has managed to really develop his finger-style playing. His touch on the strings, combined with his Telecaster-into-a-Plexi setup gives his playing a bright top-end sparkle that we don't typically hear from shredders these days.

One great upshot of this, is that it leaves a midrange wedge large enough for Billy Sheehan's bass playing. This is so important, and so different from some of Sheehan's previous work, which I feel has often been diminished by a guitarist dominating the band's midrange spectrum and decreasing the listener's ability to really appreciate the Sheehanisms going on at the bottom-end. Indeed, Hot Streak, even more than the Winery Dogs debut album, manages to put Sheehan's tone right where it needs to be, and the result puts us in a better position to love what he's bringing to the table.

And what he happens to have brought is a groovy, R&B or maybe funk vibe to the overall sound. The contrast between Sheehan's overtly rock bass tones and the sort of jazzy, soul-music vibe in the bass lines on this album plays against type and expectation, and that very much works in the band's favor. It's like a series of pleasant surprises that unfold with each subsequent track.

This jazzy quality is present in each of the players' performances throughout the Hot Streak album. It is such a delightful surprise from a band that one expects to deliver straight-ahead, 80s-inflected hard rock. On one level, it makes each song more explosive, and on another level, it makes things so much tastier than they would be if they just stuck to the basic rock songwriting that made each of them individually famous.

Explosive and tasty - that's what you get with Hot Streak. The deeper you dive, the tastier it gets. There is no question that this is the best album I've heard this year. The Winery Dogs have put together a really great record, and I look forward to catching their nearest stop on their nation-wide tour.

Stop Writing Articles Like This

Today I read - partially, at least - two different articles on two different topics, both with the same problem. I'm not going to do the authors of those articles any favors by linking to them here, instead, I'll just tell you was that one article was a subjective rating of fast food sandwiches, and the other was an argument against buying an Xbox One. If you want to go hunt these piles of garbage down and read them for yourselves, that's the only hint I'll give you.

Both articles were written in a sort of, "Oh my god, I'm so hilarious, I'm so fed up with the way the world is, I just can't take it anymore" rhetorical style. It's supposed to be funny, but it's not. It's weirdly self-absorbed, containing, as it does, the assumptions that the reader cares about the subject matter in exactly the same way the author does, that the reader is largely incapable of coming up with as many "hilarious" sarcastic comments about the subject matter as the author is, and that the reader cares more about the author's commentary than information about the purported subject matter.

People just need to stop writing articles like this. Readers don't read articles to collect a list of tepid zingers about the Quarter-Pounder With Cheese. They might care about the Quarter-Pounder With Cheese, but the zingers are beside the point.

Now, you could argue that people don't care about my opinion, either, so why put it on my blog? Well, for one thing, my blog doesn't appear in anyone's Google News feed - not even my own. For another thing, nobody reads my blog, so that's a red herring.

Anyway, if you have information or analysis to share with the world, please do so. But I'm not reading your news articles for the affectation, I'm reading for the information and analysis. Behave accordingly.

Musical Existential Crisis - Part Two

Part One here.

Lady Gaga has a lot of musical integrity. We used to know this because she ripped off Bjork's award ceremony wardrobe. Bjork has artistic integrity, and Lady Gaga is doing the same kind of stuff, so it stands to reason that if Lady Gaga is dressed in the trappings of a great artist, she must be a great artist, too.

But these days, Lady Gaga isn't wearing food. Instead, she's all dolled-up in throwback glam and making records with Tony Bennett, and this is what tells us she has musical integrity.

The pairing of Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett isn't lost on me, but unless you keep up with these things, you probably haven't considered how bad this new, third flavor of the old grift really is. The record companies can only survive by insisting that there is no musical existential crisis. What they don't realize is that the very fact that Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett would un-ironically record an album together is all the proof anyone needs of the existential crisis.

Tony Bennett: A Primer

The success of this marketing campaign hinges on the audience's belief that Tony Bennett is a "jazz singer." No one who happens to know otherwise is young enough to care about popular music anymore, except for weirdos like me, and Wikipedia, which states (emphasis added):

...Bennett began his career as a crooner of commercial pop tunes. His first big hit was "Because of You", a ballad produced by Miller with a lush orchestral arrangement from Percy Faith. It started out gaining popularity on jukeboxes, then reached number one on the pop charts in 1951 and stayed there for ten weeks,[31] selling over a million copies.[30] This was followed to the top of the charts later that year[31] by a similarly-styled rendition of Hank Williams's "Cold, Cold Heart", which helped introduce Williams and country music in general to a wider, more national audience.[32] The Miller and Faith tandem continued to work on all of Bennett's early hits. Bennett's recording of "Blue Velvet" was also very popular and attracted screaming teenaged fans at concerts at the famed Paramount Theater in New York (Bennett did seven shows a day, starting at 10:30 a.m.)[33] and elsewhere.

It wasn't until later that Bennett got into jazz, evidently because his musical director didn't think his [Bennett's] career would last long otherwise. What happened next?

The result was the 1957 album The Beat of My Heart. It used well-known jazz musicians such as Herbie Mann and Nat Adderley, with a strong emphasis on percussion from the likes of Art Blakey, Jo Jones, Latin star Candido Camero, and Chico Hamilton. The album was both popular and critically praised.[8][44] Bennett followed this by working with the Count Basie Orchestra, becoming the first male pop vocalist to sing with Basie's band.[8] The albums Basie Swings, Bennett Sings (1958) and In Person! (1959) were the well-regarded fruits of this collaboration, with "Chicago" being one of the standout songs.[8][10]

In other words, in order to establish his reputation as a "jazz singer," Tony Bennett didn't actually decide to play some jazz. Instead, he simply hired a bunch of real jazz artists to play on his albums - to dress himself up in the trappings of jazz integrity - in order to lend him the reputation of having played with a bunch of jazz greats while merely churning out another couple of albums of pop standards.

What followed was a series of disappointing decades for Bennett, but in the 1990s he was able to capitalize on the New York club scene's brief fascination with swing dancing (probably fueled by the success of Harry Connick, Jr.). Remember "Jump, Jive, and Wail?" This was very good luck for Bennett, and he made a good PR move by booking a performance on that TV show that used to be big with the grunge crowd, MTV Unplugged, during which he sang duets with a bunch of then-popular artists like K.D. Lang and Elvis Costello.

When his career again started to slow down, guess what Bennett did. If you guessed, "He released an album of duets with then-popular singers," you're absolutely correct. He released the aptly named Duets album. Five years later, he followed-up with another aptly named album: Duets II.

Lady Gaga appeared on Duets II. We can consider Cheek to Cheek to be, essentially Duets III. No word yet on Duets IV, but don't count him out yet.

At this point, I hope you are sensing a pattern. The most obvious pattern here is that Bennett has a tendency to latch onto popular contemporary artists and use their popularity to boost his own ticket sales. This is not the mark of a musical innovator. This is also not the mark of a jazz singer. It's the mark of someone whose music career is based on adorning the trappings of great musicianship.

Now, I'm not going to say that Bennett is a terrible singer. He has a nice voice. But "having a nice voice" is not really the same thing as "being a jazz singer." Bennett doesn't write his material, he sings essentially a list of cover songs called "the great American songbook." These songs, however much you might enjoy them, are not representative of jazz as a genre. They're basically old pop songs, like "Camptown Races."

Or "Born This Way."

The Grifters

Lady Gaga could have recorded an album with Rosie Gaines or Lalah Hathaway, but she didn't. There is no shortage of famous jazz singers out there, many of them absolutely brilliant. But if Lady Gaga recorded an album with Lalah Hathaway, it would have lacked something important: the widely held opinion, based mostly on a marketing deception, that Tony Bennett is a jazz singer.

In other words, even though there are a lot of great jazz singers out there who genuinely could have helped Lady Gaga establish her artistic credibility (and from whom she could have actually learned something), none of those singers are "famous for being jazz singers." I mean, they're famous among jazz fans, but the public doesn't really know who they are.

The public does know who Tony Bennett is, and the public has been told - mostly by Tony Bennett - that he is a jazz singer. So that's what they believe. And if Lady Gaga does an album with someone who we're told is a jazz singer, then that gives her the reputation boost she's looking for.

What exposes the existential crisis here is that Lady Gaga's attempt at establishing artistic credibility isn't a genuine attempt to gain some, but simply an attempt to capture the trappings of artistic credibility. It's more important to Lady Gaga that you think Tony Bennett is a jazz singer than the veracity of that claim. The Last Psychiatrist might suggest that this is a narcissistic move. But he's not blogging anymore, so I can't know for sure.

The press for this album was full of quotes like this one, from NPR: "Frere-Jones also points out that Lady Gaga is more than pop spectacle; she can really play piano and sing." Think about that. One of the most important elements propping up Lady Gaga's claim to musical integrity is the fact that she, a professional musician, can "really" play an instrument and sing.

And in case there were any doubt, she recorded an album with Tony "I'm-a-jazz-singer-honest!" Bennett to prove it.

Behold, The Existential Crisis

None of this would matter in a world in which people understood that this was just a couple of saccharine pop artists putting on big-kid clothes and pretending to be real artists. That's not new - remember when The Moody Blues released Days of Future Past and tried to shock the world into believing that they were more than just a pop group? 

No, of course you don't remember. The Moody Blues aren't part of Rolling Stone Magazine's official anthology of rock and roll. The record companies, Lady Gaga, Tony Bennett, and the part of your soul that secretly needs you to believe that "it's all subjective" are all counting on the fact that you don't remember any of the many past instances of pop stars trying to pretend to be artistically credible. The moment you realize that you fell for the same cheap trick - again - is the moment the existential vacuum opens and gobbles you up.

Wait, think about it for a second. If it all really were subjective, then why the hell would Lady Gaga need to convince you of her artistic credibility? If it were all a matter of personal taste, then what's with all of those Duets albums that Bennett keeps pumping out? Why is Rob Thomas' biggest hit the same as Carlos Santana's biggest hit?

The secret part of your music fandom really wants musical integrity to matter, it needs that in order to function properly. You need your music to be more than a matter of personal taste because, to you, it really.

And all I'm saying is that there's nothing wrong with the fact that you want your music to have real integrity; but that you need a theory of aesthetics if you want that musical integrity to be real.

But, piece-by-piece, your sense of aesthetics has been picked apart by calculated marketing propaganda... Tony Bennett is a jazz singer... The Beatles were not a boy band... The Moody Blues were such good writers that they could score symphonies.. The Strokes are "amazing"... Elvis Presley invented rock and roll... no one had ever played guitar like Jimi Hendrix until Jimi Hendrix... and so on, and so forth, until now you're forced to actually believe all this crap because the integrity of your own personal music collection depends on it.

...And yet, if I subject your music to my (personal, private, individualized) theory of aesthetics - thereby threatening its integrity - the only response you can muster is, "It's all subjective!!!"

Which, by the way, is the one thing the record industry needed you to believe in order to convince you buy whatever the hell they wanted to sell you today.