Arnold Kling took a break from blogging, but is coming back. But under an explicit set of personal guidelines. About This Blog:
I decided to go with my own blog, rather than return to EconLog, because I want to have total control over the blog content. I want to model a very particular style of discourse, as indicated by the tag line “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree.” In June, I wrote
Suppose we look at writing on issues where people tend to hold strong opinions that fit with their ideology. Such writing can
(a) attempt to open the minds of people on the opposite side as the author
(b) attempt to open minds of people on the same side as the author
(c) attempt to close minds of people on the same side as the author
So, think about it. Wouldn’t you classify most op-eds and blog posts as (c)? Isn’t that sort of pathetic?My goal is to avoid (c). I will try to keep the posts here free of put-downs, snark, cheap shots, straw-man arguments, and taking the least charitable interpretation of what others say. So, if what you most enjoyed about my past blogging efforts were the put-downs, be prepared for disappointment with this incarnation.
I’ve been “around the block” for a long time in blog time. Around ~2002 and forward there was a naive initial moment when the fervor over the “War on Terror” resulted in some post-partisan good feeling, but that faded soon enough. Today the American Left and Right are rather insular when it comes to interaction and linking. Because most of the blogs I follow are science related, any political comments tend to be on the Left liberal end of the spectrum. To me the problem, if there is one, tends to be in the strawman/least charitable interpretation aspect that Kling mentions (aspects of raw and low style are easy to filter). As someone who is not liberal I find it curious when Left liberals fulminate against positions or motives which I don’t really even seen conservatives holding. It seems pointless over the long term, though it can result in greater in-group cohesion, and generate some psychic utils. A converse element are conservative bloggers who rage against ‘secular liberals,’ and routinely false positive me as liberal because I’m secular (the reality is outside of the internet most political liberals are not secular in their religious orientation in any case!).
An interesting issue here is that people who have a particular viewpoint don’t see their own viewpoints as viewpoints at all. Rather, their own viewpoints are positive descriptions of the world. So, for example, I once had an exchange with a reader who suggested that if I express any political viewpoints that would alienate readers, so I should avoid it. When I pointed out that most (though not all) science oriented weblogs seem to express conventional to radical Left liberal perspectives, he conceded the point. Because my own perspectives were at variance with the reader’s, the political posts were very salient, but on other science blogs they probably didn’t register as “political.”
In this vein I had dinner with a long time reader who told me that this weblog had helped shift his own political worldview over the past six years. It was interesting because my own political passions in the proximate sense (i.e., do I care if the president is a Republican or a Democrat?) are attenuated at best to a shadow of what they once were. I have opinions, but my interest in those opinions is rather marginal compared to science or historical topics. Nevertheless you can’t account for how you impact other people.
And that’s the sort of thing I suspect Arnold Kling is aiming for. Long term impact. The main skepticism I have is that are there even enough interlocutors in this domain? He’ll probably have to go solo and slowly accrue a following who shares his own philosophy.