The internet is a great and terrible thing. I say this often. We are inundated with a dramatically larger \(N\) of events to process and, thanks to social media, a larger audience to say it to.

I don't claim that the UC does a good thing by spouting largely empty declarations of support. I agree that it's trivializing, condescending, and mostly devoid of meaning, particularly when we seem to stand in solidarity with every cause that comes our way to demonstrate that we are caring, compassionate, and informed citizens of this world. I remember back in April when the #bringbackourgirls hashtag in support of the kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls exploded on Twitter--for two days. We offer our solidarity when it is easy, convenient, and painless, and move on with our lives.

All the same, I think there is something valuable in the exercise of directing attention to events, causes, and ideas that otherwise would have slipped our notice. How many of us would have noticed, much less bothered to care for 30 seconds or 5 minutes, the shootings at UNC had they not blown up our social media newsfeeds? Maybe I am being cynical and underestimating my peers when I say probably very few. We notice because someone tells us to; we forget when the next new thing crowds for our attention.

So in some senses, sure. The UC does not stand in solidarity, the UC does not think carefully about what it means to be a Muslim in the United States or

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Context: The Crimson | UC Passes Act of Solidarity in Light of UNC Shooting. But first, Scott Alexander writing in Slate Star Codex | I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (himself quoting Chesterton):

There are a lot of people who say "I forgive you" when they mean "No harm done", and a lot of people who say "That was unforgiveable" when they mean "That was genuinely really bad". Whether or not forgiveness is right is a complicated topic I do not want to get in here. But since forgiveness is generally considered a virtue, and one that many want credit for having, I think it's fair to say you only earn the right to call yourself 'forgiving' if you forgive things that genuinely hurt you.

To borrow Chesterton's example, if you think divorce is a-ok, then you don't get to "forgive" people their divorces, you merely ignore them. Someone who thinks divorce is abhorrent can "forgive" divorce. You can forgive theft, or murder, or tax evasion, or something you find abhorrent.

I mean, from a utilitarian point of view, you are still doing the correct action of not giving people grief because they're a divorcee. You can have all the Utility Points you want. All I'm saying is that if you "forgive" something you don't care about, you don't earn any Virtue Points.

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Sunday, The Crimson reports (edit: ...and the UC finally gets around to publishing), the Harvard

Ross Douthat (no relation) has a great piece in the New York Times yesterday, profiling (and stereotyping, yes) the three kinds of anti-vaxxers you meet (if, y'know, you're the sort of person who meets lots of anti-vaxxers):

So the philosophical issues are tangled: Just as the anti-vaxx idea cuts across the partisan divide, so do the reasons for its flourishing cut across ideological visions of how best to organize society, how people should relate to the local, the national, the corporate, what kinds of dissent are healthy and what forms we should prefer dissent to take. This is good news, in a way, because (to return to where I began) it makes the issue very unlikely to ever polarize along partisan lines. But it also makes it a hard phenomenon to wrestle into submission, because however misguided it’s

I was having an interesting discussion over dinner the other day with my aunt and cousins, which began as a relatively minor complaint about the propensity of Agents of SHIELD screenwriters (yes, I only just discovered this show) to use real science words in absurd ways, rather than making things up. At some point, the conversation had morphed into something about the general habit of filmmakers to publish misleading science as if it were plausible. (I found myself attempting -- but failing -- to communicate a point better made by Eliezer Yudkowsky in his post Science as Attire.) Some of us were of the opinion that this was a pretty bad thing that should probably stop; others didn't see much harm in it, so long as it was in works that were clearly fiction (false-science documentaries another matter entirely.)

My aunt, in the latter group,

"It's fiction, and it's art. If you're watching it as an audience and as a scientist, then it means one thing to you, but if you're just watching it as an audience, the science doesn't really matter, unless it's somehow important to the plot. Besides, anyone who's getting their science education from movies should really educate themselves better."

My one cousin and I had spent some time pushing against this head-on, without much success, when my other cousin tried a different tactic:

"You two, you're framing the stakes wrong. Mom, what would you say about a movie, clearly fiction, which had some offhand scenes involving domestic violence in a light that made it seem acceptable, or even normal? I mean, it's clearly fiction, and the screenwriter isn't an expert or adviser on