Christina Romer was a top White House economist during the Great Recession. As a researcher, she specializes in the Great Depression. She tells us what those disasters can (and can’t) teach us about the Covid crash.
13 July 2020
Aeon: Why won’t the sin wash away? When thinking ethically goes awry
What does this look like in practice? A person with scrupulosity could spend hours a day praying, worrying that he must get his prayers exactly right or his family could be hurt. He wonders with each prayer if he had the right intention or whether some sinful impulse had crept in, so he repeats until it feels right. Or a person worries that a stray comment to a stranger might have led that person to sin, so she spends days tracking down that person to clarify her innocuous comment. Or a person insists on greeting everyone she sees in order to ‘love thy neighbour’, circling back to catch people she missed. Or a person checks and rechecks receipts to make sure he didn’t inadvertently steal from a business by underpaying.
Those with scrupulosity might realise that their actions are atypical – but it’s also atypical to act morally in a morally mediocre world. People who give 20 per cent of their income to charity act atypically too, but that doesn’t make their action an indication of a disorder. So recognising that the actions are atypical is compatible with thinking that these are the actions that morality requires. And their chronic doubt about their actions is also compatible with moral judgments: saints often wonder if they are sinners, and philosophers professionally doubt even the most obvious. [...]
What the person with scrupulosity overlooks is that morality makes multiple demands on us simultaneously. A genuine moral judgment has to consider more than just a single issue at a time. A waiter can give a narrow justification as to why, if all else is equal, he ought to doublecheck that no solvents from the storeroom inadvertently ended up in the food he is serving. But all else is not equal: it was all but impossible for the solvents to end up in the food, and the time spent checking the storeroom is time he could have spent doing other things with some real moral value, such as having a conversation with a lonely diner or helping a parent wrangle kids to the table.
Aeon: Love shouldn’t be blind or mad. Instead, fall rationally in love
As the title of the memoir makes plain, Steiner’s love is deeply irrational, verging on madness. Victims of domestic violence sometimes stay with their abuser out of fear of repercussions and backlash if they leave. This makes sense. But Steiner didn’t stay out of fear. Not initially, at least. When Conor broke a glass frame over her head, slitting open her face, her only thoughts were: ‘Don’t let this happen. I do still love him. He is my family.’ Staying with your abuser out of love, as Steiner did, is irrational because it vitiates prudential – or ‘self-regarding’ – concerns, which are the hallmark of practical rationaling.
As I have argued in my book On Romantic Love (2015), rational love – love that is sane, sound and sensible – is reason-responsive, grounded in reality and consonant with your overall mindset. These are lofty ideals but not unachievable goals. For love to be reason-responsive it must yield to reasons against it – reasons that your love is inimical to your interests. Your interests are those states of affairs that further your overall flourishing, or wellbeing. Performing an unpleasant activity might be in your best interest if it promotes your overall wellbeing. Think pelvic exams, colonoscopies and root canals – or breaking up with someone you are madly in love with. Despite knowing that Conor presented a threat to her safety and wellbeing, Steiner didn’t get out until she had suffered four years of domestic abuse. Instead, she rationalised the beatings and hid her bruises. Her love was immune to reason. [...]
To be consonant with your overall mindset, love must cohere with your beliefs, desires and emotions and not breed internal inconsistency. The love part of love-hate relationships is a paradigm example of love that vitiates this ideal. To love someone is to have a strong desire to promote their interests. But when you hate someone, you don’t want to promote their interests, and probably want to impede them. Simultaneously loving and hating someone thus breeds internal inconsistency, or what is also known as ‘cognitive dissonance’. It’s a kind of defence mechanism, where you often suppress your hatred to avoid the uncomfortable realisation that your relationship is dysfunctional. During her four-year relationship with Conor, Steiner’s rationalisations of his egregious behaviour become increasingly riven with internal contradictions and efforts to suppress her own anger and hatred.
TLDR News: Germany Takes Over EU Presidency: Germany's Plans for Europe, COVID & Brexit Explained
Germany has just taken over the Presidency of the European Council, and important role within the EU. In fact, that role has rarely been more important with Germany leading the union through turbulent times with economic uncertainty, Brexit negotiations and the pandemic. In this video, we discuss Germany's leadership, their plans and their ongoing influence over the union.
FiveThirtyEight: Biden’s Polling Lead Is Big — And Steady
Over the past month, Biden’s lead over Trump has been both incredibly stable and unusually large. Amidst Trump’s unpopular handling of the protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd, Biden’s lead has hovered within a tight band of 8.9 to 9.6 percentage points since mid-June, according to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average.
This is a sizable enough lead that Trump’s reelection chances are in a precarious position. Take what CNN analyst and FiveThirtyEight alum Harry Enten found earlier this month when he looked back at presidential elections where an incumbent was running since 1940. He calculated, on average, a 7-point difference between the final national popular vote margin and the polls conducted four months out. That might sound like a lot of movement — and it is — but the problem for Trump is even if the polls swung toward him by 7 points, he would still trail Biden by about 2 to 3 points nationally. The median difference Enten found, 4.5 points, would leave Trump in even worse shape. [...]
Additionally, Trump got a few favorable polls in Florida and Pennsylvania. In surveys conducted just before the Fourth of July, Trafalgar Group found Trump tied with Biden in Florida and trailing Biden by just 5 points in Pennsylvania. That might not sound like particularly good news for Trump in Pennsylvania, but considering Biden’s average lead there is more than 7 points, anything that shows that lead waning is a win for Trump. However, the fact that Trafalgar is a Republican pollster with a slight bias toward the GOP isn’t great news for Trump, as in many ways these polls offer his best-case scenario, and that scenario still isn’t very good. It has Trump either barely breaking even (Florida) or still underwater (Pennsylvania).
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