Bryan Caplan: belief

Transcript context

…Overall, the left tail of society is being compressed, and the right tail is being expanded. Does feminism become more true over time? The answer is that we really need to look at all of the main measures to get an idea of this. With some of the ones that you're talking about, it does make more sense. 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 that even that is a bit more superficially complicated, at least on the surface. The immediate reaction is that society's less fair to men because they do the most dangerous jobs. Although I also say, “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 percent of the workplace deaths” and say, “Well, because they're getting 90 percent of the combat pay.” Broadly construed it’s not mostly actual for combat. So anyway, that's one area where you should be careful. But I can see the possibility there. I do have a section in the book where I go over what's happening over time. What I'll say is, well, one big thing that's happened over time is that people have become very hyper-concerned 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 where society where feminisms become less true over time. Another area that I talk about and which I think really does tip the scales, although again, you really need to go through the book because I do try to work through a lot of different margins… 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. When we go over all 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 and unfairness and another gender that gets to make those accusations.” The gender that has to endure the unfair accusations is men, and the gender that gets to make them is women. Obviously, not all women make them, and not all men receive them. But still, if we're talking about the average fairness of the treatment of men and 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, Dwarkesh! [laughs] 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. When would you say was the flipping point? Was there a particular decade that you thought “unbalanced things are equal now?”…

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