I Stand by Most of What I Said
Some self-congratulatory smarm
My school (and probably many others) give graduating seniors a chance to put a quote with their picture in the yearbook. I need to have one ready by Friday, so I’m trying a few candidates out this week. This is the first option.1
1.
I’m a pretty thoughtful person, usually. And that’s not just me talking, a teacher of mine said it once to the other teachers.
He was, of course, quick to clarify that he didn’t mean it in the way of “what a thoughtful act of kindness” or anything. Just that it seems like I think a lot. Thesaurusly speaking, I’m pensive, not considerate.
There’s a downside to it, certainly:
But the upshot is that the things I think and say and write are probably closer to correct more often than a lot of people. Especially a lot of people my age. So there’s a lot in my past work that I still feel proud of and agree with.
Of course, I am fallible. In fact, I’m an idiot, in many ways. Probably most teenagers say wrong and stupid things around 50% of the time. My thoughtfulness can only get that down to like 45%, at best.
The other effect of my thoughtfulness is incessant reflection and rethinking. I relive that 45% of stupid conversations and blog posts constantly, trying to stitch together a stronger set of beliefs.
But graduation is a time for celebration, so why not take a bit of time to pat myself on the back for the 55%.
2.
I stand by most of what I said about religion [1, 2, 3].
This was the series of posts which kicked off this blog. When I wrote them, they also kicked off a real stir at school. People complained and were hurt and so on.2
In terms of atheist philosophy, I really only scratched the surface. It’d take me months of intensive study, at least, to get comfortable enough with modern thought to face off against as competent a theist as
, for example.But my political and moral analyses hold up well, I think. For example, this statement of scale is legitimate and probably lacks consideration from thoughtful theists like BB who carelessly push traditionalist apologia:3
To put the significance of these discussions in perspective, it’s worth noting that a conservative estimate for the number of deaths motivated or justified by religion is approximately 195 million. While this figure does fall short of the death toll for something like smallpox (around 500 million), it’s still very much substantial enough to be worth addressing. Anything that takes a number of human lives within an order of magnitude of smallpox deserves our consideration.
And even two years ago, I let my respect for negative freedoms and pragmatism shine through:
State Atheism: An Oopsie
Forcing people to do things is bad, unless they’re about to do some real harm to someone else and your intervention would actually help things. State Atheism, then, is a noble failing. Religion is immoral, yes, but it’s important to consider the practical effects of such a policy. If X is a popular thing, people will more aggressively rally around X when they feel it is threatened.
I want to revisit all these topics, of course, but I think my first pass went relatively well. And it resulted in the existence of this blog, which really would make it worth it no matter how wrong I was.
3.
I stand by most of what I said about marriage.
A couple friends started a podcast and made a number of bad points about marriage. I defended the emotional and financial entanglement that comes with the institution, and waved most of their concerns off as downstream of religion more than anything else:
Feelings about a relationship will always undergo some random fluctuations, and you probably shouldn’t be ending a long-term relationship on a whim. Raising the barrier to leaving makes the relationship that much more secure.
…
Abrahamic religions have a generally weird framing of marriage. It tends to exist—as the podcast puts it—as a license to have sex after years of sexual repression. This is absolutely a weird and bad thing. Organized religion tends to prescribe weird and bad things.
…
Marriages are weird constructions, there’s no doubt about that. But on the whole, people in them are probably better off, and so are their kids.
And then I went on for another few hundred words about ancient Mesopotamia and cultural evolution and so on, before concluding with this veritable gem of an explanation for marriage’s existence:
My guess is that marriage created family units where it became clear who’s job it was to provide for which kids. The kids in tribes that had marriage tended to live to adulthood at a higher rate and grow up better-educated, which gave their generation a leg up over the neighboring tribe without marriage.
And this is before I took any sort of an evo psych black pill!
4.
I should cut this off before it gets too self-indulgent. You get the idea. I wrote these things when I was much stupider and less-well-read than I am now. Still, it seems like I got some important things pretty close to right.
I also, of course, have gotten some important things pretty wrong. Free will, for example. And I’m probably wrong about a lot of the things I think right now. But my track record just isn’t so bad, and I also tend not to face too much serious debate against my ideas, so I don’t have much reason to say things like “yeah, shit, I was wrong” out loud (though it’s definitely been known to happen).
When people criticize things I’ve said to them in the past, they’re usually more upset at the manner than the content of my speech.4 Scott Alexander writes convincingly that the proper response to this sort of complaint is a genuine “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
I like to add “I stand by most of what I said,” for mostly the sake of my ego. It’s not a bad senior quote, huh?
Is it better with “I’ve,” like “I stand by most of what I’ve said?” No, right?
Part 1 was my most read post for a while, until my utilitarian-Zionist manifesto got a bit of attention from an Astral Codex Ten Open Thread.
Or sometimes just at the fact that it’s me saying it. A friend’s (as far as I know, unpublished) response to my marriage article was mostly just “Ari is so privileged, how dare he talk about this.” I mean, sure, but maybe take a crack at object-level argument too? (Probably I’m strawmanning, but only slightly!)