Internet Dialogues
Arguing in cyberspace is perhaps better than in person. Maybe synthetic arguments are even better. An example included.
I have a penchant for arguing. Not in a belligerent way, but I ride out like an eager and earnest knight when the opportunity arises to joust with words and ideas.1 Given the parameters of my daily life, this usually means I’m consigned to do so on the internet.2 Notoriously, this is a venue where people struggle with civil, constructive argumentation. From behind a screen and keyboard, there is a reflexive urge to unleash a textual torrent of epithets as if one could actually vanquish one’s (quasi)-anonymous interlocutor. Many allege this is a feature of arguing with someone that isn’t physically present. The special slurry of empathy-fostering neurotransmitters and the neural circuits of self-consciousness and self-moderation aren’t actuated by an anime avatar adjacent to a lewd username on X nor even the very dated profile picture of a distant relation on Facebook.
I have some basic ground rules I try to hew to when I engage online. First, I maintain emotional distance. I’d like to think I’m pretty good at this first rule but even my generally serene mind can start flaming with rage if properly piqued. However, even at my most agitated, I’m usually far from the hair-on-fire outraged state (here, I imagine Anger from “Inside Out”) that seems so common on various social media platforms.3 Second, I try to make as few assumptions as possible about my interlocutor. Most of the time, I don’t know who my jousting partner is so I think the best way to maneuver the exchange somewhere more interesting than name calling is to let them tell me what motivates them before I examine his or her motives myself. Even if things start on very adversarial grounds, I want to return the exchange to ideas and strip out the personality. I want to do this whether or not my goal is persuasion. This segues well into my third principle: I like to stick to the facts. I’m truly interested in ideas more than online status games. It’s exciting when someone can present new evidence on a topic that complicates or contradicts my position on something. I’m not afraid of being wrong or correcting myself. Subsequently, I try to set aside posturing and Machiavellian rhetorical strategies.4
It’d seem that the well-described bad rhetorical behavior on the internet and the need for all these ground rules speaks to a general low quality of argumentation there. However, I have trouble envisioning better version in meatspace. This is not as true as for formal debate, but in daily life its unlikely to come across someone more primed for constructive exchange than on the internet. One is certainly less likely to happen across trolls, activists, and bots. Nevertheless, the stakes are quite a bit higher in the real world. In person, we can’t help being more conscious of the risks to status or relationships that arguments create. As bad as it is, the internet is probably the best place for exercising these muscles.5
Given that I’ve invested time arguing online, I figured I’d reproduce some of these here on Substack in a dialogue format. For prudential reasons, I obviously won’t be using any real names. Instead I will borrow names from Cicero’s De Re Publica (aka On the Republic). We’ll see if reader can guess who I am in the dialogue (I’d be surprised if this is difficult). Additionally, I’m not simply reproducing these exchanges verbatim. To add more value to readers, I’ll be heavily editing and/or synthesizing these conversations to provide additional value to readers.
Dialogue: Did the World Grow Rich Ethically?
Setting: After finishing a book on economic growth, Scipio decides to share his excitement about the ideas in the book with a group of internet denizens. Roughly three dozen express a passing interest in Scipio’s announcement. However, one voice, Laelius, engages Scipio, criticizing the ideas promulgated by the book. Laelius expresses an ethical concern about the cost imposed by that nations that appear to have benefitted the most from long-run economic development.
Scipio:
I recently finished this really interesting book by Mark Koyama & Jared Rubin's How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth. It combines popular models of economic development, e.g. inclusive institution à la Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson of Why Nations Fail, Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel (i.e. geography), and Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms (i.e. human capital).
The way Koyama and Rubin’s model balances different explanatory factors is more persuasive in my view than these simpler models, but it sometimes creates more questions than answers. Plus, loading all the known explanatory factors risks having an overfitted model. Nonetheless, it's an improvement on "that one thing that explains everything" (TOTTEE) type arguments that pervade popular tracts. Unfortunately, How the World Became Rich doesn’t function as a how-to manual for leaders in the developing world either. Koyama and Rubin show that the inputs on economic growth are complex and historically and regionally contingent so it seems hard to reverse engineer.
Laelius:
Scipio, aren’t you being a bit myopic? There are certainly many rich countries, but the real question we should be interested in is whether this developmental process was fair. I think the historical record is clear that it wasn’t. Western empires and nation states enriched themselves through exploitative means: colonization, slavery, corruption-and-social-unrest-by-design, and other insidious schemes. The grand narrative of world uplift by benevolent Westerners and their market capitalism is a nice bedtime story, but it elides the real source of Western wealth: violence and plunder.
Scipio:
Oh! Laelius, I would never deny the past misdeeds of various Western nations and the costs such actions have imposed on other places across history, but there is nothing unique about the behavior of Westerners in this regard. History has been a miserable affair. It can be argued the scale of Western exploits was larger, but following this argument to its end leads to strange conclusions. For if you think the industrial revolution is owed to exploitation, then it is exploitation that has made many previously poor countries now rich. In some ethical systems, this would make exploitation a moral imperative.
Alternatively, it makes a greater deal of sense to separate exploitation from the development. It seems more likely that exploitation has imposed more costs than bestowed benefits on those who have practiced it in the long-run, and the Western nations that experienced rapid development after the Industrial Revolution did so despite their exploitative practices. This seems supported by the fact that many of these malign institutions and practices were sloughed off as development continued to ramp up. Additionally, the advantages of trade and the transfer of technology have quite visibly revolutionized life in countries recently characterized by squalor.6
Subsequently, I think viewing exploitation as central to the trajectory of civilizational development over the past several hundred years is significantly more myopic and perhaps cynically destructive. Smarter people than I have sought to rigorously study these questions and the evidence for your claims is in short supply. Take for example a recent study from economists Richard Hornbeck & Trevon Logan, which found that “emancipation [the freeing of American slaves] generated aggregate economic gains worth the equivalent of a 4% to 35% increase in US aggregate productivity (7 to 60 years of technological innovation).” Generally, there is both theoretical and economic evidence to suggest the institution of slavery comes at a greater cost than benefit.7
Laelius:
I’m not one to deny evidence presented by experts without reason, Scipio. I can accept the small findings of these bean counters, but I fear there are things other than beans to count and the things right under our noses may not be the most important! There are many poor nations blessed with vast natural riches and the only thing holding them back appears to be the orientation of the rest of the developed world towards them! What do the bean counters say about this!?
Scipio:
This is an excellent point to raise. I’m no expert myself, but I do think the bean counters have a persuasive rebuttal in this case. They call it the “resource curse” or the “paradox of plenty.” Countries with abundant and easy-to-extract natural resources like oil in an otherwise developed world economy are not incentivized to diversify their economies but rather to depend on exporting their natural riches. Internally, this incentivizes fierce political competition to control these high-value resources, increasing the risk of violence and instability. Whoever does emerge as able to control the resources of interest is likely to enjoy outsized riches and be incentivized to misuse them to further expand or entrench his or her political and economic power. Meanwhile, establishing an economy around a single or a few resources makes it vulnerable to changes in prices and can increase the value of the country’s currency in ways that make its other resources less competitive in global markets.
The extent to which this phenomenon describes what’s going on in various underdeveloped yet resource rich countries is an empirical question that can be answered on a case-by-case basis. Nonetheless, the observation of the phenomenon itself should disabuse us of the notion that there is a coordinated and intentional effort on the part of advanced nations to keep developing nations poor. It’s difficult to see what incentives there would be for such an effort or how it would be coordinated.
Laelius:
This “resource curse” seems like a convenient excuse to me. Advanced nations can buy up the natural resources and wash their hands of concern about the impoverished nation they buy from. Further, how are we to know the root of the so-called “resource curse?” What if the resources aren’t to blame, but a preceding political corruption is? And I think we can blame a great deal of entrenched political corruption in the Global South today on nations like America.
Scipio:
I’m not sure we can wholly blame advanced nations for the domestic politics of various underdeveloped nations. This seems to ignore the agency of political actors even after adjusting for historical grievances and geopolitical constraints. However, I do concede that the concept of the “resource curse” has some limitations and the origin of the “resource curse” is perhaps not wholly owed to the resource itself. There are of course many resource rich nations like America or even nations substantially dependent on sales of a resource like oil, such as Norway, that have nonetheless escaped this curse. However, I think the concept only applies to nations trying to industrialize and grow in a world where other nations have already completed such processes. The trajectory of history has been unfair to these underdeveloped nations in this regard. What’s to be done about such things? Maybe this imposes more obligations on advanced nations to help bolster the institutions of underdeveloped ones. Is this paternalistic though? Doesn’t this risk the interference that you’ve identified as malign? Plus, these underdeveloped nations also have the benefit of hindsight. Shouldn’t we expect them to choose to develop inclusive institutions that foster growth and diffuse political and economic power?
Laelius:
Scipio, this “resource curse” talk is a distraction from the obvious cases of historical exploitation for which there must be some form of redress. Where is there an account of the damage wrought by colonialism and imperialism? The rough correlation between the conquerors of the past and the enjoyers of abundance today seems too pressing to ignore.
Scipio:
Again, I think we’ve established that this correlation is spurious. Given the ubiquity of exploitation, it is simply a function of survivorship bias in the historical record. In other words, atrocities and iniquities were distributed across all human societies, it is just the ones that reached escape velocity for other reasons end up being the ones we look back at to chide.
As I have already hinted, the Koyama and Rubin book that started this discussion examines claims about the effects of colonialism. The finding do not neatly support a narrative of grievance. The research they review indicates that colonialism’s effects on economic development were heterogeneous. There are some cases where colonialism was solely exploitative and likely has had some negative effects on long-run development. However, they also find that certain types of colonialism, such as the British kind, tended to initiate and/or nurture institutions and customs that have promoted long-run development. Should struggling places welcome a salutary paternalism on this basis? Or is the preservation of sovereignty and independence preferable even if the developmental course is more circuitous?
Laelius:
I see nothing salutary in the history of colonial relations. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. I simply think we cannot measure the untold and deep damage of the West’s exploitation.
Scipio:
I appreciate your concern for the iniquities of history. I hope I’ve not seemed dismissive of them.
To close, I just hope to emphasize that despite our base nature, we have managed to accomplish amazing things as a species. This prominently includes the historical track record of long-run economic development. I think understanding the forces that drive growth are enormously critical. Continuing our pace is paramount if we are to be prepared to solve whatever problems we face in the future. If we hope to maintain the quality of life in advanced places and improve the quality of life in less advanced places, everywhere must grow! With that, I shall speak no more. I’ll let an impressive visual stand as my final word on this matter.
Hopefully, readers appreciate this little experiment in dialogue. If so, I will produce more. I do enjoy the format, though the ways I’ve gone about this is possibly superannuated. Increasingly, people are having exchanges with artificial discussion partners. I haven’t done a ton of this, but this was modeled pretty effectively by Tyler Cowan, who used generative AI technology to interview Jonathan Swift.
Although we seem to be in a time where persuasion via reason has a disappointing and discouraging track record in our body politic, I would like to renew confidence in the value of the adversarial exchange of ideas. Obviously, rigor and accuracy are important too. I will strive to raise the level of rigor and complexity presented while still keeping the essential points understandable. I will also strive for a balanced argument where both positions can be effectively steel-manned. I’m also always open to correction and feedback.
I honestly don’t seek to trigger arguments with the agitatable denizens of cyberspace, it just happens. Arguments find me. This is not unique to me. I simply embrace it.
I’m a parent to young children and an introvert so I don’t frequent intellectual salons or come across many other opportunities where civil but adversarial exchanges are likely to be had and appropriate for the time and place.
Not all of this is authentic of course. We may also be somewhat too sensitive to such displays. See this study.
There are times when I feel that using certain rhetorical strategies is necessary to move a debate to a more constructive place. This depends on the interlocutor. For instance, appeals to credibility often carry a lot of weight for people. I don’t really put much store in this unless I have nothing else to go on. I prefer to present and/or evaluate the best available evidence if it can be readily obtained and processed.
There is a strong contingency of people who view arguing online, especially about politics, as a cringeworthy and gauche affair. This view is often associated with neo-stereotypes about one’s Boomer uncle on Facebook. It is also shared by a lot of affluent urban professional who have zero interest in sharing any authentic opinion online for fear of even the slightest social or professional penalty. Obviously, I’m not aligned with these camps due to my quasi-autistic tendencies, though I appreciate prudent online engagement.
For a closer look at this argument, I recommend Noah Smith’s “Nations don't get rich by plundering other nations.”
Very nicely articulated. I feel like I have had this debate myself several times.
Hopefully you'll do one of these for your review of Caste!