The Costs of Diversity: What Will I Learn?

As you may have heard, I’m collaborating with SMBC‘s Zach Weinersmith on a non-fiction graphic novel on the philosophy and social science of immigration.  Working title: All Roads Lead to Open Borders.  I’m now writing chapter 4, “Crimes Against Culture,” examining the main cultural arguments against immigration. 

Since I take graphic novels very seriously, I’m sticking to my standard methods of quality control.  First and foremost: Read very widely and deeply on each topic immediately before writing.  Sometimes that means a lot of review; other times, I get lost in a completely new literature.  In coming weeks, I’ll be carefully exploring a literature I mostly know second-hand: social science on the costs of diversity, especially ethno-linguistic fractionalization.

Since making clear predictions is a good way to mitigate hindsight bias, I want to publicly make a conjecture about what I’ll learn.  And here it is: Almost all of the alleged “costs of diversity” can just as easily be interpreted as “costs of intolerance” or “costs of identity politics.”

You’ll know more when I know more.

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