Do I Offend?

The last eight months have seen four episodes where many people on Twitter called me a bad offensive person, often via rude profanity, sometimes calling for me to be fired or arrested. These four episodes were: sex inequality and redistribution, chances of a delayed harassment complaint, morality-induced overconfidence on historical counterfactuals, and implicit harassment in A Star Is Born. While these topics have occupied only a small fraction of my thought over these months, and a much smaller fraction over my career, they may have disproportionate effects on my reputation. So I’ve tried to pay close attention to the reasons people give. 

I think I see a consistent story. While in these cases I have not made moral, value, or political claims, when people read small parts of what I’ve claimed or asked, they say they can imagine someone writing those words for the purpose of promoting political views they dislike. And not just mild views that just a bit on other side of the political spectrum. No, they attribute to me the most extreme bad views imaginable, such as that I advocate rape, murder, slavery, and genocide. People say they are directly and emotionally traumatized by the offensive “creepy” feeling they get when they encounter someone with any prestige and audience seeming to publicly promote views with which they strongly disagree.

Some plausibly contributing factors here include my sometimes discussing sensitive topics, our increasing political polarization, the ease of making mobs and taking words out of context on Twitter, increasing ease of making new accusations similar to previous ones, and my terse and analytic writing style combined with my adding disclaimers re my allegiance to “correct” views. There’s also my following the standard poll practice of not telling those who answer polls the motives for those polls. And I’m a non-poor older white male associated with economics in general and GMU econ in particular; many see all these as indicators of bad political views. 

Digging a little deeper, trauma is plausibly increased by a poll format, which stokes fears that bad people will find out that they are not alone, and be encouraged to learn that many others share their views. I suspect this helps explain complaints that my poll population is not representative of my nation or planet.  

I also suspect bad faith. Long ago when I had two young kids, they would sometimes pick fights, for example on long car trips. One might start singing, to which the other would complain. We might agree that singing is too much for such a small space. Then the first might start to quietly hum, which we might decide is okay. Then first might hum more loudly and triumphantly, while the second might writhe, cover their ears, and make a dramatic display of suffering. 

Similarly, I suspect bad faith when some a) claim to experience “harassment” level suffering due to encountering political views with which they disagree, and yet are fine with high levels of sex, violence, and profanity in TV & movies, b) infer indirectly from my neutral analytical text that I promote the most extreme views imaginable, and c) do not notice that such claims are both a priori implausible and inconsistent with my large corpus of public writing; they either haven’t read much of it or purposely mischaracterize it. 

The idea of a large shared intellectual sphere wherein we can together analyze difficult topics holds a strong appeal to me. The main criteria for consideration in such a sphere should be the coherence and persuasiveness of specific relevant arguments. When evaluating each arguments, there is usually little need to infer distantly related positions of those who offer arguments. Usually an argument either works or it doesn’t, regardless of who says it or why.

I try to live up to such ideals in how I write and talk. I hope that many who read and follow me share these ideals, and I appreciate their support. I’m thus not favorably inclined toward suggestions that I stop discussing sensitive topics, or that adopt a much more elaborate disclaimer style, or that I stop asking my followers questions, to prevent others from being traumatized by hearing their answers, and or to keep followers from finding out that others share their opinions.

Added 29Dec:  I did 4 follow up polls to probe tendencies to take offense, focusing on the Nazi case. Respondents said the fraction of tweeters who actually wish Nazis had won WWII is tiny; 63% said it is <0.1%, though 4% gave >10%. And 79% said that this Nazi fraction is <3% among those “who mention `Nazis’ neutrally in a tweet, without explicitly praising or criticizing them, and who explicitly claim otherwise”, though 10% said >15%. Also, 58% said that for a tweet to be considered “offensive” or “harassment”, it would need to suggest a chance >50% that its author actually wishes Nazis had won WWII. However, 10% gave a threshold of <3% and 19% gave one <15%.

Finally, 43% gave a <3% “chance the author of a Twitter poll which asks about chance world would have been better off had Nazis won WWII, actually wishes that Nazis had won WWII”. However 20% gave a chance >50%, and 37% gave a chance >15%.

A obvious conclusion here is that, even among those who respond to my twitter polls, a substantial fraction have set hair-triggers for offense. For example, it seems >20% say merely asking if the world would have been better off if Nazis had won justifies a high enough chance of a Nazi author to be offensive. Explicit denials may help, but if the offended are much more vocal than are others, a vocal choir of objection seems largely inevitable.

This makes me wonder again if the “silent majority” might benefit from juries or polls which show them that the vocal offended are a minority. Though that minority will likely also express offense re such juries or polls.

Added 28Jan: A recent burst of outrage on the Star is Born episode confirms this account to some extent.