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I’m trying to understand why people want to believe that the quote is true. One thought is that it is emotional and there are good reasons for emotions. For example, it makes no sense for any individual to agree to fight in a war against another country but it might be desirable for the society as a whole. In some ways emotion could be a way to harness collective efforts that might allow a group to outcompete but be illogical for the individual. The cost is fountains.

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The "no hope" and "all" parts are hyperbole, shorn of flourishes it's stating a theory that society would benefit from developing human capital all through the bell curve. Implying, as you noticed, that heretofore resources were inefficiently concentrated in developing the best and the brightest.

Now that theory may not be *correct*, but isn't it obvious that GMU's existence is an application of that theory, given the institutional history? That's why it's on the fountain.

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Interestingly, you and 'Anonymous Wyoming LLC, LLC' ( https://betonit.substack.com/p/wilkins-folly/comment/6534760?s=r ) both of you took away narrower interpretations of the quote, but those narrower interpretations are completely orthogonal to one another.

Your interpretation relates to the distribution (natural variation) of people within any given population (i.e. "Don't be obsessed with the best, also invest in the rest!"), while his interpretation relates specifically to a discrete set of demographic categories, and making sure each is represented (WITHOUT saying anything about making sure the left tail of each category's distribution is represented) (i.e. "If it's only white males, it'll probably fail, but with all genders and races, we can really go places!").

Perhaps a feature of a good quote is that it can be interpreted in multiple (possibly incompatible) ways. Or maybe that makes it a bad quote? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Why not try steel-manning this statement? You'd get better answers to your questions.

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Ill give it a shot:

Its seems like a significant portion of America's problems arise from relative differences between "tribal groups". Every ethnicity, state, industry, gender, and ideology has a significant special interest group. The only reason we made progress in the past is because there was always a dominant tribe to override the others, but this is less the case now as minority groups percolate into power.

There are no examples of a large nations successfully governed by a collection of diverse cultural groups, so the claim that there is NO HOPE of solving our problems without including everyone is credible and should engaged with seriously, even if you disagree.

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I am not entirely certain how to steel man this one without saying something that is interpreted very differently than the statement can be. Did you have a particular formulation in mind?

Or could you specify which questions would get better answers, and what they might be? I am rather struggling here.

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To me the simple steel man is to be selectively figurative rather than selectively absurdly literal.

That's because if you just *want* to disagree with something, you're always going to find a way to. Like, in economics, no one ever finds a literal "Pareto optimal" improvement, because someone is always made worse off in the real world. That doesn't mean it's a meaningless concept. That's the sort of standard to apply. Or, Buchanan Tulloch pointed out that in theory unanimous rule was best, but that's just not practical.

Thus, the statement should be read something like:

"We have no (meaning "little") hope of solving our (meaning societal) problems without harnessing (could mean anything from recognizing to making use of) the diversity, the energy, and the creativity of all (meaning major groups of) our people.

Of note:

1. Let's dispense with complaints about the extremes. Sure, "all men are created equal" is not literally true. So what... everyone understands that slogans don't need to be footnoted. No need to bother with purely dilatory com

2. Societal problems... I mean, I'm interpreting that to mean we'd like to have a free, peaceful, prosperous society. That's the basic social problem everywhere and every time.

3.a If we're going to be literal about it, freedom implies and requires diversity. A perfect Nazi society in which all Jews were killed and laws-enforcement withered because everyone thought alike would seem abhorrent rather than free.

3.b There's lots of kinds of diversity some, like economic diversity, are going to be required for a society to function. This can just as easily mean that social and civil respect should be extended to all, because a society that treats some classes/groups as systematically inferior is... going to have problems.

3.c Energy and creativity... obviously necessary to resolving societal problems. Can't have prosperity without them. Without prosperity, one has problems.

At the end of the day, I suppose the simplest point to make is that as a libertarian, I wouldn't want to live in a uniform, boring, and slothful society that makes poor use of its human capital. Nor do I think it sounds like it'd be a very successful one.

On the other hand, a society that has the goal of improving and making use of the abilities of all its people as much as possible, that sounds better.

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I want to push back a bit on that. Firstly, your definition of "harness" is very non-standard:

harness

transitive verb

To put a harness on (a draft animal).

To fasten by the use of a harness.

To bring under control and direct the force of.

Recognizing has nothing to do with it, really. Make use of is probably the broadest you can go. I am willing to accept the societal problems part, although I think he should have said that if he meant it, but he doesn't strike me as the kind of person who thought about, say, supply chain constraints due to tariffs when he talked about problems. I would prefer people actually say "little" instead of "no" when they mean little, but again, he wants to be fancy and dramatic instead of correct.

On to your notes:

1: Sure. It doesn't make a quote less stupid, but we accept a base level of stupidity in favor of a certain level of poetry. Fair enough.

2: I kind of wonder why he didn't say "We have little hope of a free, peaceful and prosperous society without..." if that is what he meant. I rather like your version better.

3a: Freedom implies diversity as an outcome, but it doesn't require it, and it neither implies nor requires it over every possible margin. If freedom requires diversity in the number of functioning hearts people have, well, we are screwed. I expect suitably wide ranges of melanin levels in skin are also not required.

3b: Do you really think economic diversity is what he had in mind? Ideological diversity maybe.

3c: Sure, need energy and creativity, but are they really in the same category as diversity? I mean, he could have ended "the diversity, the energy, and the creativity of all (meaning major groups of) our people and house plants." and... yea sure, house plants are good, we want to have different kinds I guess, and they have energy and create things (mostly more houseplants, but O2...) but it is sort of a strange thing to lump into the other category.

The much bigger problem: who is doing the harnessing? Who is the "we" that is harnessing all this diversity, energy and creativity of all our people? That's the subtle drip of poison in the bromide. I doubt he means "All of us by being good and respectful towards each other can make society get along better, and create a free, peaceful and prosperous society."

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I'll push back on a few things:

Yeah, harnessing is an odd and potentially problematic phrase, but interpreting that "we" as something sinister is, I think, a matter of choice. We could equally take "We" to mean a communistic dictatorship or guide to individuals in making whatever choices they are in a position to make. Even in the most libertarian societies I can imagine (which I'd like), I imagine said libertarians will be passing and enforcing laws, dealing with crime, facing economic decisions, etc.

I think mostly I'm arguing for a point of intellectual neutrality on this issue. I haven't looked up much about Walk-ins... maybe he was a right pinko bastard in addition to being a "civil rights leader". Maybe not. But I think one of the nice things about language is that, disembodied and carved into stone, we can argue for a meaning that's both accurate and productive for us, rather than something dark and conspiratorial (or simply stupid and ridiculous).

Finally, say that while freedom in the abstract might not require diversity, I think it is required in practice where our starting point is an already diverse society. That is, we're starting with a diverse group. In skin color, beliefs, abilities, you name it. If we won't make use of or even tolerate that, we're not going to have peace or prosperity.

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I don't think it is too valuable to avoid judging some phrase as stupid and ridiculous. It might even be damaging, considering how many really bad things sound kind of nice when you don't think about them too hard. Much of the current woke hellscape we are in is due to it being hard to argue against "diversity, equity and inclusion" by virtue of how nice they sound. Humans seem to be very susceptible to that sort of thing.

I am all for toleration, and really if he had said "We won't solve our problems unless we first learn to tolerate each other's differences" I'd be in line to give him a high five. That would be a useful principle to keep in mind. Instead he said the sort of vapid, "We had better count to see if you have enough minorities!" kind of thing that is corroding our ability to actually solve problems.

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"We have no (meaning "little") hope of solving our (meaning societal) problems without harnessing (could mean anything from recognizing to making use of) the diversity, the energy, and the creativity of all (meaning major groups of) our people."

If that is what Wilkins meant, isn't it his responsibility to edit his statement to that?

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Absolutely not!

And the reason is a very simple. The historically successful norm of communication is that the "responsibility" of understanding something is jointly shared. Insisting that the receiver has no responsibility to seek a fair interpretation of a statement's meaning seems disingenuous at best. At worst it's the path to the sort of censorship demands we see today, which put entirely too much responsibility on the transmitter of information and gives no agency to the receiver.

The way to get out of the leftist language trap is not to adopt its premises.

On that note, that's kind of my objection to Bryan's post writ large. In form and structure, it's not unlike a critical theory deconstruction of any cherished motto you or I might agree with. Anything can be picked apart if you're willing to throw the right rhetorical shade. But as far as actually furthering any substantive discussion, it's counterproductive.

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But would a caveat- and definition-laden paragraph look as good written on a fountain?

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I'm sorry but isn't it clear that "all our people" means "all races"? As you note, this is a quote from Roger Wilkins, a civil rights leader. The quote mentions diversity. So the question should be is the statement literally true that "our problems" cannot be solved without the help of people from all races? I guess it depends what the problems were he was referencing. If the problems are race relations, then I think the answer is likely that it is factually true; one race cannot solve discrimination and race relations problems alone. While you might not require a person from every race to be involved in finding a solution, you do likely need significant input from people of a number of different races. If the problems are discrete chemistry problems, I guess you could certainly imagine that some of those problems could be solved by a single person of one race.

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That is true only if we infer "our problems" to be "our problems getting along with each other" and not problems like "this bridge won't stay up".

Additionally, I think if he meant "all our people" to mean "all races" he would have said "all our peoples" which would be more correct, grammatically.

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Late to the party on this one, but if you don’t attend you miss the possibility of an interesting conversation. So, Bryan, are you still here? Because I have to say, as much as I respect your reasoning in general, I think you are literally being too literal.

Is Wilkins’ statement literally false? Absolutely, for all the reasons you stated. However, is it also inspirational in a positive sense? Absolutely. Why? Because even on a casual reading (the kind of reading you seem to think is wrong?) the statement evokes a disposition to, at the very least, consider that the solution to our problems could come from the contributions of a diverse set of people. On the margin, it makes one feel like, “Hey, maybe I should listen to what this person has to say, rather than writing them off completely, because of their race, gender, educational attainment, <fill in your favorite other category of discrimination here>.” Want to write people off anyway? Ok, fine. But as for myself, and I suspect many others, we will follow the spirit of Wilkins’ statement. And I suspect the reason for that is, because even though it is not literally true, Wilkins’ statement is “in the ballpark” true. What does that mean? It means that it is true, in general, if you relax the constraints put upon it by a literal interpretation of the meaning of the words that comprise it. Specifically, if you relax the constraints put upon by ‘no hope’, ‘our problems’ and ‘all our people’, and you make the statement specific to yourself, you get something like: ‘I have a better chance of solving some of my problems by taking advantage of the diversity, the energy, and the creativity of some of the people around me.” Is that revised statement literally true? Again, maybe not literally, but it is pretty close. If you don’t think so, then I would be very surprised, since the revised statement, touches on some core economic concepts such the benefits of trade, the division of labor and the distributed nature of human knowledge and expertise. Notice that the revised statement, although it is perhaps closer to being literally true than Wilkins’ original, is not very inspiring. Not going to rally very many people with that one. But loosen the constraints and generalize and you get Wilkins’ much more inspiring statement. Why that should be the case is beyond my current pay grade. (However, if I were to speculate, it probably has something to do with the degree to which the statement engenders strong positive emotions. Again, how that happens is beyond me.)

Which brings me to another observation, literal truth rarely inspires. Here’s another statement that is positively inspirational but not literally true: “all men are created equal.” Literally false. Even if you take ‘men’ to mean male humans instead of humans in general, it is still literally false. But, boy, is it positively inspirational. Let’s go through the exercise again and relax the constraints put upon by the words. What you end up with is something like: “I should treat people with some basic respect and any rules that I think are fair should be applied equally to myself and others.” Again, the revised statement is not very inspirational. In fact, it is so mundane as to be boring.

If you want literal truth, then mathematics and logic are your friends. If you want not quite literal truth, but at least something that is empirically tethered, then science is your friend. But if you want to inspire people to act in positive, pro-social ways, then rhetoric, poetry, literature and the performing arts are your best bets. All you need to do, is not be so literal.

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Did Wilkens every say anything noteworthy? Is this just a case of picking the least dull thing he ever said?

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I agree with MikeDC. Here are my questions.

Regarding your points #2 and #4: why can't "solve our problems" mean what most English-speakers would take it to mean? Few would interpret it as "all problems" or "some problems" (which makes it sound arbitrary). To me it sounds like "make progress towards finding solutions to our problems in some order, starting with the most pressing ones."

Regarding #5, doesn't the law of Comparative Advantage tell us this is false? Even the best and the brightest are better off if the rest of us in the other end of the ability spectrum also produce, as long as we can trade or find other means to share.

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I both agree with Bryan's point about neurotypical folk being able to be just as critical and open minded as folks on the spectrum, but im gonna be honest. I operate and work in a very liberal and social desirability driven space (I'm a non-binary therapist in a blue city with an active progressive agenda within therapy spaces) and generally the only people I find who are capable of discussing the ideas on this blog (and ones similar to it) without falling into an emotional tantrum are fellow autistics.

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Hark, hark, neurotypicals: "Neurotypicals are fully capable of setting aside sugar-coated slogans and seeing the world clearly." But just as drug addicts are fully capable of getting clean, yet our expectations for them are low, so we expect the neurotypicals to continue to wallow in treacle.

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Bryan Caplan’s War on Cliches!

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These sorts of slogans are annoying. If you criticize them, you get accused of autism or maybe some underlying motive. Don't we need the creativity and energy of autistic people anyway?

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I think you could also take the quote to mean that all our people in a university setting is not all people. It is only the people allowed in the institution who have been selected to help and if you don't allow everyone the opportunity to help then problems will not be solved.

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The statement is the kind of pabulum one would expect from someone trying to win over the mindless and emotionally driven. Meaningless drivel and essentially dangerous when taken literally.

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I agree! Signed - a creationist ;)

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