YouSaid · the spoken record

Bryan Caplan

lines on the record: 162
first: 2022-10-20
most recent: 2022-10-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So I had a friend who was a marketing person in charge of publicizing her company's philanthropy. They gave way like $1,000 a year to the Girl Scouts or something like that. And she had $100,000 salary telling everyone about how great they were for giving this money to the Girl Scouts. So I think that's the real story. get maximally cynical. Without denying the fact that there are true believers now in corporate boardrooms who are pushing it past the point of profitability.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It just went away, they wouldn't voluntarily adopt a policy where we give you a right to go and sue us for mistreatment. I think there would still be a lot of propaganda. I mean, here's the general thing you think about this as it's species, of corporate philanthropy, sticking your neck out in favor of a broad social cause, right? I mean, like some of you must say, no, it's self-interest for some reason. It's like, look, the odds that even Apple is going to change the Supreme Court's mind is super low. So I don't think it's that. Basically, what they're doing is a kind of philanthropy. And what's the deal with corporate philanthropy? The deal with corporal philanthropy is you are trying to go and first of all make the public like you, but also you're trying to look good and jockey for influence within your own company, right? And one really striking thing about corporate philanthropy, when you look closer, normally they spend way more resources marketing the philanthropy and letting everyone know, oh, we did all this philanthropy.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. I mean, if those individual corporations could press a button that would immunize them to all employment lawsuits, I think they would press it. When you look at their behavior, they don't just give in whenever they get sued. They have a normal team of lawyers that tries to minimize the damage to the company and pay as little as possible, make the problem go away. So I think really what's going on is public relations. They are trying to be on that team as to whether it's public relations vis- ⁇-vis their consumers or public relations vis- ⁇-vis other people in the executive boardroom is an interesting question. I think these days it probably is more of the latter. We want affirmative action to continue. I think that the real story is that they want to get the status of saying that we are really in favor of this. We love this stuff. But at the same time, if”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're making a bid for status. And if you may, and just remembering in the ancestral environment, we're in these small groups of 20, 40 people, if you go and want to speak, you're saying, I'm one of the most important people in this band here. And if you're not, or if there's a lot of people say that guy is not important, then who knows? They might shove you off the cliff the next time they get a chance. So yeah, watch out.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so a lot of it is just not having stage right. I probably had just a tiny bit of stage fright at the comedy cellar, which normally I would have basically zero. But there was a little bit different because it's like, honestly, most of my anxiety was, am I going to forget something? So everyone's looking at me, and I actually have a joke in the set about how nothing is scarier than staying silent while thousands of people stare at you. So that was a self-referential joke that I've worked in there”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could go and put the same sentence into Google Translate and then back translate it and get another sentence that is synonymous but isn't funny at all. So that was something that I was very mindful of. And then obviously there's things like timing and just being able to read an audience. Being able to read an audience, that's one that I'm more used to. That was what was so hard during COVID is not being able to look at the faces, even of a live audience. It's like, okay, well, I can see their eyes, but I can't tell their emotions or the reactions from their eyes. I don't know whether I should talk more or less about something. Don't know whether they're angry or annoyed or curious or bored. So these are all things that I would normally be adjusting my talk for in normal public speaking. Again, with comedy, it's a bit hard to do. What successful comedians actually do is they tried about a bunch of different ways and then they remember which ways work and which ones don't and they just keep tweaking it and finally when they do the Netflix special they have basically done a b testing”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I felt good about it. The main differences that I realized between the kind of public speaking I was used to doing and what I actually did there. So one is importance of memorizing the script. It just looks a lot worse if you're reading off a note. So that's normally I have some basic notes and then I ad lib. I don't memorize. The only time I have a script is if I have a very time-constrained debate, then I will normally write an opening statement, but otherwise I don't. And again, the thing with comedy is it depends so heavily upon exact word choice.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're a very pleasant person. Right. Life is funny to me. I like pointing out funny things. I like just using my imagination. A lot of comedies also just imagination saying, look, imagine that it was the opposite way. What would that be like? So anyway, I did get this chance. Well, actually, just to back up again, so during COVID, I did just create a wiki of comedy ideas just on the idea maybe one day I'll go and do stand up comedy. And then the comedy seller actually has a podcast where kind of like Joe Rogan where comedians go and talk about serious issues. I just invited on that. And as a result, I was able to talk my way into getting to perform on the actual live stage of the biggest comedy club in New York. So maybe the world. It was the main thing I could say about my performance is it was me and like nine professional comedians and I don't think I was obviously the worst person.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that was super fun and a big challenge. So I am a professional public speaker. Stand-up comedy is professional public speaking. I was curious about how much transfer of learning there would be, how many of the things that I know as a regular public speaker can I take with me to do stand-up comedy. I'm also just a big fan of stand-up comedy. If you know me personally, I just find life constantly funny.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If that's a male trait, then we need to keep that trait because Right, I mean, that's one where I am very tempted rhetorically to say it's just so sexist to say that it's male to think that things are right and wrong, I think that is a trait of both genders, right? And in a way, I do end the essay saying yes, like, you know, these are not male, not only are they not a male monopoly, they are not uniquely male virtues, they are virtues that can and should be enjoyed by all human beings, right? At the same time, you might say, like, well, but are the virtues equally represented by both genders and say, well, that's an empirical question. We got to look at that.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Half of the time be my way. It's like, well, like, yeah, but like you're only one person. And like, why should well, I mean, like it depends upon what subfield you're in as well, right? So there are actually groups of people really like hanging out in the middle of the night and to say, why is we always have to meet in the middle of the night? Why can't we do it my way? So, well, like you are entering into a subculture that works this way. You could demand that we totally change our way of doing to accommodate you, but it just seems like it is an unreasonable imposition on people who are already here. Now, when you sort of go through the list of different things that people think of as making something a male or a not male field, sometimes people ask things, we'll treat things like just acting like there's an objectively correct answer. That's a male trait.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, there are large areas that are very female dominated and there's no pressure on women to go and change the way that flower arranging is done or cooking, right? So in order to make it more welcoming to men. So this is one where if you had a really high bar for things were unfair unless the following rigorous conditions are met, then you're going to see a lot of unfairness in the world. Although even then that as long as you have an equally high bar for both men and women, I don't think it's going to make feminism any more true in my definition. But I also just say I think these really high bars are unreasonable. If you just had a, if a, if there was a friend who had these kind of bars saying, look, why is it that when we meet for food, we have to go and meet at standard hours of breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Like, I actually like meeting in the middle of the night. Why can't we have...”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that is a lot of what is worth pointing out. So if you're going to put the standard to that level, then it's going to be hard to find differences because, say, there's absolutely no way under the sun to go and teach math in a less male way. On the other hand, to say, well, is it reasonable to expect the whole world to revolve around making every subject equally appealing to men and women? And that's right. So that is just an unreasonable demand. If there's a subject like math that is male dominated, right? The reasonable thing is to say, well, if you want to get in on that, you're going to need to go and become sympatho with the mindset of the people that are already there and then push the margin. You can say that's just so unfair that male ways of doing math are dominant. Or maybe you could say that it's unfair for someone who's just shown up to demand that an entire discipline change its way of doing things to make you feel better about it.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The word inherently is so overused. And it's, I mean, it's one where you say, well, are you saying that inherently X? It's like, well, not inherently X, just you'd have to bend over backwards, move heaven and earth for it not to be so, but I guess it's not really inherent.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are caused by misunderstandings. It's not the other person is going out of their way to hurt you. Probably they just don't see it that way. And if you just insist I'm right, I demand a full apology and admission of your wrongdoing, you're probably going to be losing friends. And it's a bad idea. And the same thing, I think, is going on in workplaces where there is an ideology saying that we should take the side of the most hypersensitive person and this is not a good approach for human beings to get along with each other.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because of the imperfection of the human mind and the inability to go and get inside another person's head, each person it seems like they're in the right and the other person is in the wrong. And one of the most helpful ways for people to get along with each other is to realize that this is the norm. Most conflicts are caused by misunderstandings, not by deliberate wrongdoing. This is the way the people who keep their friends keep their friends, right? If anytime there's a conflict with a friend, you assume that you're right and your friend is in the wrong and demand an immediate abject apology, you're going to be losing friends left and right, right? And this is what it is a foolish person who does that, if you will. The friendship is more important than any particular issue. This is the way, this is not only my personal view, it is the advice that I give to everyone listening. Keep your friends, bend over backwards in order to keep your friends. Realize that most”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I mean, is it obvious that you want to point that out? I mean, part of what I say is that there are different perceptions here. There are differences of opinion. And if you want to get along with people, a lot of it is saying, well, how does it seem from the other person's point of view? So most obviously, do not assume that the most hypersensitive person is correct. That is, I think, like what so much of the problem with mentorship comes down to is hypersensitivity. So I've got another piece in the book where I talk about misunderstandings and how we have so much lost sight of this very possibility. So there's a conflict between two people who's right and who's wrong. Well, could of course be that one person is the conscious malefactor going bah and the other person is an obvious victim that no one could deny. And that does happen sometimes. But I say much more often the real world there's a misunderstanding where each person”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and offer more, mostly empty threats because it's really hard and something that is this informal to actually scare someone into doing it. You really do need to win them over.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, yeah, like the main one that probably is like this one actually has gotten worse for him and is mentoring, right? So mentoring partly is based upon friendship. I like this person. I like working with them. So I will go and help them to go and acquire more human capital on the job, right? This is one that feminism has visibly messed up and many feminists will in a strange way admit that they have done it while not taking responsibility for the harm. So I've got an essay on that in the book as well. So this is one where, first of all, just looking at the evidence, it is totally standard now for mail managers just to admit that they are reluctant to mentor female employees because they're so worried. And then I go and track down a bunch of feminist reaction to this where they basically just say, I can't believe how horrible these guys are, right? It's like, look, you know, you're asking them for a favor to get mentorship. They're scared. If someone's scared, do you really want to yell at them?”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now as to whether this is actually the right story, I leave that open. This was just more of a thought experiment to understand what could happen here. In terms of how much could this actually explain the unfair treatment of women in society or could it lead in this way, especially if we start off with men being the gatekeepers for most of the business world, for example? The answer is it's totally plausible that it could. That's why we really want to go to the data and see what we actually find. And again, like in the data.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And on average, you're going to think worse of them because you didn't pick them. Basically, there's two filters. They're, I like you because you're my friend, and now I put up with your partner because that person is your partner. So this means is that the women that men are around are going to be the partners of their friends and they're going to like them less and think less of them than they think of their friends. And on the other hand, the partners of women's friends will be men and women will get to know them and say, wow, they're not that great. They're at least kind of disappointing relative to my female friends. So anyway, this is an argument about how the illusion of your own gender being superior could arise.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let me just back up and explain the argument. So, the argument says this imagine that in reality men and women are equally good in absolutely every way, but people are more likely to have close friends of their own gender, which is totally true. So if I remember the essay, I think that for men, close friends, the male-female ratio is like four to one and for women. I think it's like, let's see, I think it's the other way around. I think it's for men. It's like six to one for women, it's like four to one, right? So most people's close friends are of the same gender, right? So you meet these people and they're your close friends, you know them really well. And because you have handpicked them, you're going to think well of them, right? And then the question is, all right, so then what about people of the opposite gender? And what's your interaction with them going to be like? And what I point out is that a lot of the people of the opposite gender that you hang out with will be the spouses of your friends. The partners of your friends.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, sort of the main difference there is that people have a lot more firsthand experience of intergender relations and they spend a lot more time in intergender relations than they spend in all the other ones. So, I mean, the dynamic is probably pretty similar. But in terms of the really negative firsthand experience that men have, probably Hanenya is right about that and that generalizes to bigger issues.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a way, it does sort of violate the women and children first ethos, which is if women complain about something, you aren't supposed to go and say, I disagree, your complaints are unjustified, you're supposed to say, look, what can I do to make it better?”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One sided this conversation is, right? It is a conversation where women have complaints and men mostly just listen in silence, right? Or, of course, men will sometimes complain amongst each other when women aren't around. It's not a real dialogue where women have complaints about men and then men are very eager to say, oh, but I have something I would like to say in rebuttal to that. And a lot of it is this, what he calls women's tears, or you could also just think about the, it's sadness, but mingled with or supported by intimidation of if you don't give me what I want, if you don't pretend that you agree with me, I will be very angry, and I will be fairly sad, and so you should be afraid, right? That is, I think, a lot of what's probably going on with the rhetorical dominance of feminism, which is that people are just afraid to argue about it, to argue against it because you are...”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can sort of feel invigorated by it. We got through this. We resolved something. He says, whereas no guy feels this way about an argument with his wife, right? And that just like what do I need to do in order for this argument to end as soon as possible would be a more normal reaction? And he says this sort of generalizes to a lot of not all social arguments, but one's basically involving someone being offended or angry or hurt, where he says a lot of what's going on is that it is mainly women that are presenting these complaints and that it's hard to deal with it because men don't want to argue with angry women. It just makes them feel bad and it's sort of a no-win situation. So anyway, that is Hanenia's argument. Overall, it seemed pretty plausible to me. I haven't thought about it that much more, but it's one that does seem to make a fair bit of sense in terms of just what I'm writing about feminism. One really striking thing is just how”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, we might want to back up a little bit and explain what the argument is. Yes, so Richard Henenya on his substack has a very famous essay where he points out that in fiction, when there is a mob of angry college students, it's very demographically diverse. But when you look at actual footage, it seems like women are highly overrepresented. And then he generalizes this to saying a lot of what's going on in terms of cancel culture and related problems is that women are the main ones that get angry about these things and people don't know what to do about it. So if I remember correctly, he just says a man can in a way actually enjoy an argument with another man and even if you lose or even it's a physical fight, he says,”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be is just a bit confusing. So it's one where it's useful just to say, all right, well, if women are mistreating women and that's what's making women's lives hard, how do we count that? And I think I would just say we don't have any really good way of counting it and it might be useful to just come up with a new word to describe this kind of thing.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we go back to this definition of feminismless theory that our society treats women less fairly than men, if Society is treating men unfairly, and this is having some negative side effects for women as well. But, you know, it's one where if you really were trying to draw the line and say, well, I mean, like here's actually one of the weaknesses of the definition that I proposed, right? So foot binding in China. From my understanding, the main drivers of foot binding in China were women. So women are binding feet and they're also telling their daughters they have to have their feet bound. Men seem to be probably to care less actually. It was more of an intra-female abuse. This is one where you could say, well, but still you might say that in China women are treated less fairly than men, even though the perpetrators are women. And I think that does actually make sense. And I would just say that the definition that we use in our society isn't really calibrated to deal with that kind of thing. And in terms of what the right way to describe it.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feminism causing unhappiness in the adherents is that it probably doesn't matter most for most self-identified feminists because most people just are not that intellectual and they don't think about their ideas very often. So it's one thing to say, look, if you believe you're going to hell, that you'll be unhappy. And it's like, well, if you believe it once a year, does it make you unhappy? If you remember, oh yeah, once a year, I think I'm going to hell. The rest of the time you don't think it. On the other hand, the person that is all the time thinking, I'm going to hell. I'm going to hell. That person probably will be unhappy. So I think the feminism is very likely to reduce the happiness of people who are feminist elites, who take it really seriously where they're talking about it all the time. That is likely to cause unhappiness. I'd be amazed if it didn't. But on the other hand, for the vast majority of people say, yeah, I'm a feminist. Moving on, I don't think it's too likely to be messing up their lives.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To keep it in perspective, in terms of what's really going on, this is one where the paper probably actually goes over a bunch of stories and says the obvious ones are all wrong. That would be what especially Justin Wolfers would normally do. And I think he's usually right that simple stories about something like this are wrong. In terms of what I would pursue, if I read through the paper and reminded myself of what they found, then said, okay, well, what will work? I think I would on one end focus on single moms who will become much more common and their lives really are hard. So rise of single motherhood. So I would guess that that is one important part of it. And then I would also be wondering how much of it is actual feminism telling women that you should be unhappy because the world is unfair and then causes unhappiness. And I'm not saying that these are right. I don't know. It's plausible to me. I mean, the main thing I would say about...”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The main thing I know about this is the Stevenson and Wolfer's research on this. The main thing to remember is the magnitude. So if I remember correctly, I think they find that in the 60s women had about a two percentage point advantage relative to men in terms of their odds of saying they're very happy. So if men of something like 25% of men said they were very happy, then like 27% of women in the 60s said that they were very happy. Whereas now it seems like women have something like a 2%age point deficit relative to men. So now if 25% of men say they're very happy, then 23% of women say they're very happy. It's always important in these papers to look at those magnitudes because the media coverage is just going to say, oh, women are miserable now. And it's like it's not the women are miserable now. We're talking like a two percentage point difference. It's a data set large enough for this to actually be meaningful, but we do want.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And again, I would say that it's complicated in terms of willingness to fire. I think employers are much more willing to fire men. And for defects, for insubordination, just on the list, I mean, this is a small one, but I think that it is indicative of broader trend. So people working at workplaces with dress codes, men are much more likely to be dinged on dress code violations than women because for men, there's a definite thing men are supposed to do if you're not doing it. You are in violation. Women, on the other hand, it's like, well, gee, I mean, it seems kind of like that's not what you should be wearing, but I don't want to be the person that says anything about it. And who knows? Who am I to judge what a woman ought to be wearing on the job? But a men, on the other hand, has to needs to be wearing a suit in 110 degree weather. Let's see what was the high this summer over in Austin.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Society. But on the other hand, Yeah, in terms of what life is like for most people, the main way they matter is billionaires just provide awesome stuff. In terms of the story that people tell, it's true that if you just go and look at most classic movies or novels, the main characters are male, right? Even in cartoons, actually, the main characters traditionally have been male. But on the other hand, that is just fiction in terms of daily life. I'd rather have people be really concerned about me in real life, but have my perspective underrepresented in stories than the other way around.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I mean, I guess what I would say is that everybody's got suffering and only a small share of people have any notable success. So like if all that you knew was you're going to be a man or woman, I would say, well, gee, if I'm a woman, then people will sympathize with my suffering, which is almost definitely coming because that's the human condition. Whereas to have admiration for success, that's something where it's just affects a much smaller number of people. I mean, I know that hanging out in Austin among hyper successful people, this may be biasing your sample a bit. But yeah, I do think it's believable that men get more unmitigated admiration for their success. And, of course, there's also differences in the mating opportunities that you get for being a successful man versus a successful woman. So that is there too. But again, this is something that really is only relevant for a very small share of the population.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the book, I do talk about the ethos of women and children first, which is very pronounced. It's not just modern society, but it is a modern society that we can simultaneously have women and children first, but also have a lot of rhetoric about how people don't care about women. It's like, hmm, it's not”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, so again, like, you know, there is the issue well, how are you going to find a guy that wants to have a lot of kids? This is one where I've looked at the data on family size and what determines it. And it seems like while both men and women have in the data seem to have a say on family size, but it just looks like women's traits have a much larger effects. Men are more likely to say, okay, fine, whatever. We'll do what you want to do on family size, whereas women seem to have much more pronounced preferences, which they then tend to get. So, yeah, I think that if I woman, I could have had more kids, and it would have been easy for me to do it. So that would be something that matters to me.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your identity. But still, if you could put that aside, what would you want to be? It's a tough question. So you can say, well, women have a harder personality, a harder personality because of higher neuroticism. They've also got higher agreeableness, so that gives them some other advantages in terms of getting along with other people. Like, for example, men's disagreeableness makes it hard for men to despite their tongues and shut up when someone's saying something you don't like. I think that is easier for women to do. And as you may have noticed, having to shut up and bite your tongue while someone around you says something stupid you don't like is actually a big part of life that is that's one thing now in terms of things that I feel that I would get out of being a woman just being able to have as many kids as I wanted that would matter a lot to me right so I only have four kids right now if we're totally up to me yeah I would have had more kids and I think as a woman it would have been easy to do right”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when unfairness, where there's no human being that does it, that seems like a very strange idea to me just at the get-go. It's like, well, so who was unfair to you? The universe is unfair. It's like, well, I mean, I think the correct term there is unfortunate, not unfair. Although then I would, so that aside, I would say it's a really interesting question. Like, who actually has better lives just as a matter of biological endowments, men or women? In terms of demonstrator preference, I think the overwhelming result is that most people just want to remain whatever gender they're born in. So this is not actually transgenderous, and this is like a genie wish if you could change your gender just with a wish, costlessly perfectly. People just want to stay with whatever they have because it's part of their identity. It's some kind of endowment effect status quo bias, whatever, right? But then if you say, okay, yeah, right, fine. Like you just want to stay whatever you were because that's...”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, although you might remember what Alex Tabarak says about these very things, which is that you can go to India, have people pushing paper straws on you, and yet the streets are still totally covered in trash. And the pushing the paper straws probably actually distracts people from the much more serious problem of horrible trash, right? And again, I don't know enough about India to speak with any confidence here. But if you go and learn radical feminism in Western Universities, come back to India and start complaining about how we need to have more female CEOs in a country where you have millions of female infanticides per year. I think it probably is like the paper straws problem where you are so focused on a trivial problem that maybe is not even a problem at all. At the same time, you are that anger blinds you to an actual really serious problem that's going on again, like, but you know Indy better than me, I could be wrong.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The feminist movement, as we know it, and places like China and India, where I just don't see that being really angry about Exaggerated or false complaints about unfairness, unfair treatment of women in the United States is going to do anything for infanticide in India. Correct me if I'm wrong, Dorkesh. Do you see much influence of Western feminism on infanticide in India?”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say that when the arguments are crazy, then it's not clear that shifting the Overton window actually happens. That may be where you discredit it or discredit the other view. In particular, I think what I say in that part of the book is that people generally confuse being radical with being unfriendly. And most of the harm that is done to radical causes is due to the unfriendliness rather than the radicalism. And that case, I would say, yeah, well, feminism has a definite friendliness problem. It is not a movement that goes out of its way to go and make other people feel like they are respected. And even if you disagree with me, I want to be your friend and listen to what you have to say. And maybe we could go and come to some understanding. I think it is a movement where the main emotional tenor of the elites is we are totally right and anyone who disagrees had better watch out. So I don't, so I think that there is a discrediting of it. The other thing is just that I think there's too much cultural separation between”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Possible again, I think the problem is that it does discredit a lot of the reasonable points because they just don't focus on the really big issues. So the amount of time that American feminists spend on female infanticide in China and India, could it even be 1% of the rhetoric? It's just not something that they care about. So I would say that there's more harm being done just by the sheer distraction of putting so much emphasis upon either small or exaggerated or just reverse problems that bother feminists in the first world while ignoring not just ignoring but while just making by causing indirectly causing people to forget or neglect actual serious problems in some other countries.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so that is a much better argument. I would say that if we think about most of Europe, areas like that, then I think that it's very similar to what's going on. But then I go over to India and China and just think about plausible rates of female infanticide, right? So those are ones where I think it is very likely that overall the treatment of women in Indian and Indian China is more unfair than that of men. Saudi Arabia, I'm almost sure that it is. In terms of is the US providing a useful corrective for the world while messing up things in the US?”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To stand on. This is the kind of book that I liked to write where I really say, let's just calm down and just go through every issue separately, wave each one on its merits. And yes, so there's a bunch of points where someone could say, why do you conceive that? That makes your argument weaker. So yeah, I concede it because it's true. Right. And then at the end, I have my overall judgment. But I will just say that the number of books that are written in this terrible modern style of lawyerly reasoning where you basically have a thesis that you just try to defend in every possible way. I don't write books like that. I try to write books where they are honest and self-reflective and where if there's some weakness in what I'm saying, I don't just acknowledge it if someone points it out. I try to be the first person to reveal it so that people feel like they can trust me. But it's my own conscience. I don't feel right when I say something.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so one of the things I say in the book is that while there's a bunch of ways where you can say that women were treated less fairly in earlier decades, but I also say there's some that are probably more important overall where women are treated worse. The main one is paternal support for children, where in 1940 the odds that you could count on the biological father of your children to help you to raise them was maybe 90%. Now it's probably more like 60%, 70%. So that's one of the main ways that I say that women probably are treated less fairly than men. And the unfairness has gotten worse over time. So again, just understand this is not the kind of book that most people are used to where someone argues like a lawyer and they just say, look, I've got 20 arguments for what I'm right and everyone who disagrees with me is stupid and doesn't have a like.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Women or society, I say that this climate of false accusation and intimidation is what really tips it. It didn't have to be this way, Torcash, right? We could have just had conditions change without a whole lot of flinging of wildly inaccurate accusations, but that's not the world we're in.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another one that I talk about, and which I think really does tip the scales, although again, you need, really need to go through the book, as I do try to work through a lot of different margins. But I think the one that really does settle it against feminism in today's age is precisely the level of false feminist accusations about unfairness. And so if the way that I put it is when we go over all of the objective measures, then you say, well, it's close to a wash in terms of which gender is treated more or less fairly overall. But then you realize, yes, but there's one gender that has to endure a whole lot of grossly exaggerated hyperbolic accusations on unfairness. And another gender that gets to make those accusations, right? And the gender that has to endure the unfair accusations as men and the gender that gets to make them is women. Obviously, not all women make them, not all men receive them, but still, if we're talking about the average fairness of the treatment of men.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Construed is not mostly actual for combat. So that's so, anyway, that's one where you should be careful. But at least, I mean, I can see the possibility there. I do have a section in the book where I go over what's happening over time. So what I'll say is, well, one big thing that's happened over time is the people have become very hyperconcerned with the mistreatment of women, which means that feminism is becoming less true as a result because when people are really hyper concerned that they might be unfair to someone, they are even less likely to be unfair to them. So I think that's one thing that where feminism has become less true over time.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The left tail of society, yes, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The right tail is being expanded. Just feminism become more true over time. And the answer is we really need to look at all of the main measures to get an idea of this. So some of the ones that you're talking about, it does make more sense. So as jobs become less physically dangerous, then at least you might say that things are less unfair to men. Although in the book, what I say is even that is a bit more complicated, superficially at least, on the surface, the immediate reaction is it is less society is less fair to men because they do the most dangerous jobs. Although, and I also, yeah, but they get monetary compensation for that. So all things considered, you probably shouldn't think of it as unfair. It's something where it's reasonable to say, hey, wait a second, how come men are the ones that are enduring 90% of the workplace deaths and say, well, because they're getting 90% of the combat pay broadly.”
2022-10-20 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source