If "If Books Could Kill"... Could Kill

Pretty sure cancel culture is real.

This morning between my shower and my first meeting of the day, I started the latest episode of one of my favorite podcasts—If Books Could Kill.

The premise: Hosts Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamsiri “discuss the airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds.” Basically, they do takedowns of nonfiction books we all know are full of quasi-truths and lazy research, despite (or because of) their mass market appeal. Books like 2006’s The Secret and 1992’s Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and… everything Malcolm Gladwell has ever written.

Literary criticism as entertainment?

Book commentary that is funny?

A deep dive into a niche interest shared in my real life by exactly no one?

All the “English major nerds” (which phrase is a redundancy, I suppose), say it with me:

YES. PLEASE.

I think the podcast concept is genius. IBCK launched in this past November with an episode about the wildly popular 2005 book Freakonomics, which the hosts basically argue is pure trash. I didn’t agree with everything they said about the book, but I also (a) haven’t read Freakonomics and (b) know astonishingly little about economics. So I listened in the elementary school car line, trying not to fall asleep and somewhat absentmindedly discarding the most obnoxious instances of condescension in the episode. I was highly entertained, and I’ve listened to every episode since.

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A note about how my brain works: I’m what you might call a “sifter.” Imagine someone sorting through a pile of stuff inside a recently abandoned house.

Is it junk? Toss it to the side.

Not sure whether it’s valuable? Put it in the “maybe” pile and think on it later.

Is it treasure? Tuck it deep inside your pocket.

But instead of physical objects, I sort through arguments.

Have you tried Dall-E? It’s the image equivalent of ChatGPT. (Both are artificial intelligence.) To create this image, I entered the prompt “an Impressionist style painting of a pile of trash and treasure.” Crazy, right?

I like to do my own thinking, so I silently “contend with” everything I listen to, even in everyday conversations. Not at all in a combative way, just sort of sifting through my database for agreement and disagreement and what seem to be airtight assertions or problematic assertions (based on what I know and what I value, which things are obviously incomplete and flawed).

Some things I hear are mostly trash with a rare treasure of insight. Some things are mostly treasure with the occasional errant piece of trash.¹ Either way, I sift.

I’d rather pick through a bunch of piles for treasure than throw every unfamiliar thing away.

I don’t have to like everything about a person to listen—or agree with everything in an argument to re-consider. I don’t have to engage or not engage based on previous agreement, and I don’t have to accept or reject any premise / person all the way.

I can sift.

Maybe it’s a weird brain hobby, but I think I could make a case for why it’s worthwhile. (I kind of did that here. But I’d also argue that, for it to be worthwhile, you have to take in a lot of diverse information to establish something like a validity benchmark.)

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Back to this morning. The latest episode of IBCK was a critique of The Coddling of the American Mind by

Jon Haidt

and Greg Lukianoff. I have read this book, as well as lots of Haidt’s other work and his newsletter, and last summer I even took part in a poolside book club for Coddling. As my book club buddies can attest, my reactions to Coddling were mixed. Chapter 1, I was sold; Chapter 2, I was dubious; Chapter 3, half and half, Chapter 4, re-convinced… and so on.

Lots of sifting.

Ultimately, I learned a lot from the book (I certainly underlined a lot), and reading it had prompted a fantastic conversation.

The podcast was hopefully going to illuminate that poolside discussion, so I couldn’t wait to listen.

Fast forward to four hours later, when I’m having my hair shampooed in a downtown salon, and I’m so annoyed I can’t sit still. I finished the podcast in the car around 8:30am, and sometime after noon, I have my wet head in a sink and I’m trying to think about other things—like how relieved I am to, soon, shed three inches of hair—but thinking about anything else is impossible. This podcast has gotten under. my. skin.

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If you’ve been here long (or you are my husband), you know I am down for a good debate. Intellectual or policy or ideological or textual, doesn’t matter. YES. PLEASE.

In fact, within the last month I have essentially reversed my position on a fairly significant modern debate. I believed one thing in January, and I believe another thing in March. What changed my mind? Good faith arguments from benevolent arguers.²

Maybe I’m being unfair (or proud), but from where I stand, this doesn’t seem to happen very often.

Here’s what I think happens. People’s “sifters” get shut down.

Maybe Person A starts a conversation or podcast about an issue that could reasonably said to have valid opposing sides. Person A begins in sifter mode, willing to engage nuance and challenge.

Then Person B says something Person A finds objectionable. But rather than stating the case generously (or even neutrally), perhaps Person B overstates their case. Perhaps they exaggerate and extrapolate beyond what is fair.

Person A hates what is happening but understands why only vaguely. She does not (mentally or verbally) articulate as much, but she senses Person B may have a good point buried underneath all that inflated or combative language. She also senses that, somehow, she is being jerked around, so she doesn’t care about that good point.

Sifter mode, off. Defender mode, on.³

Person A is right to think she just had an unpleasant experience. Without slowing down to give it language, she might file away that unpleasant sensation in the same box as the opposing viewpoint itself. The hindbrain takes over, and “That was a bad or unfair argument from a bad or unfair arguer” becomes “That belief is stupid.”

Perhaps the argument from Person B felt bad to Person A because it was unfairly or poorly expressed, not because the point itself was bad. The result is that confirmation bias⁴ kicks in for Person A, all attempts at meaningful conversation end, and Person A is left with a bad taste in her mouth—unpleasant enough to cause Person A to hesitate before entering sifter mode the next time. Or, eventually, ever again.  

Maybe, the relationship suffers from this exchange; definitely, the practice of civil dialogue does.

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In a Freakonomics takedown, the stakes are low. Listening to that episode, I really didn’t care whether I agreed or what I didn’t understand or what the hosts didn’t know or got wrong. And frankly almost every sentence in that book The Secret IS malarkey, so my strongest reaction to that episode was disbelief that the book was ever published in the first place.

Something about today’s Coddling episode felt different, and while my hairstylist moved on to my conditioning treatment, I came up with several reasons why.

1. The book’s subject matters to me, so I’m predisposed to curiosity. Coddling is about cancel culture on university campuses and, more broadly, the ways reactionary activism against uncomfortable ideas encourages a new level of fragility in contemporary young people (i.e. professors avoiding difficult subject matter because students will be offended/upset).⁵ Because I teach (and raise) young people and because of the way Haidt’s theories illuminate public discourse on a larger scale, I think it’s an important topic.

2. I trust Coddling was written in good faith. Haidt is a smart guy, not a pseudo-intellectual trying to make a quick buck by packaging half-baked theories and calling it a book. *Cough—Gladwell—cough cough.* I’m certain Haidt gets a lot wrong (error is baked into the kind of social psychology theorizing he does, the same way error is baked into science), but I think the opinions he voices are essential for healthy public debate. All the informed, good faith opinions are essential.

3. And at least Haidt makes his arguments civilly. In this episode of IBCK, the hosts seem really… bullyish? They sound like two kids at a middle school cafeteria table sneering at the hopeless geek in the corner. Only, that description is too generous, because it’s not just Haidt’s argument that’s maligned but his morality. Not just “is this true?” but “is this guy a good person?” It’s implied that a person with an opposing view cannot still be smart and well-intentioned. Here, the hosts of IBCK aren’t just sneering at the kid across the cafeteria, they’re implying he doesn’t deserve to sit in the cafeteria with them at all.

Does no one hear the irony? All the methods Michael and Peter criticize in their chosen books (bias, generalizations, insufficient evidence) are the same methods they use to respond to those books.

I mean, DOES NO ONE HEAR THE IRONY? Michael and Peter (who are, by the way, wildly intelligent by any measure) argued that cancel culture isn’t real…

by attempting to cancel someone.

At least in this episode, there was no sifting.

I mean, z-e-r-o sifting. As if Haidt had not one single brain cell in his head or a little toe’s worth of integrity.

I listened the whole way through, feeling like I was going to choke on the atmosphere of smugness. Please, listen to five minutes of it and tell me the vibe isn’t just mean.

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I guess this is somewhat silly to write about because a statistically insignificant number of you will have listened to this podcast and/or read this book. Maybe I just needed to vent.

But I do think my reaction to the snobbery I heard—the snobbery of smart people I'm curious to learn from—says something about the way we’re all often experiencing public commentary. I liked these guys. I wanted to hear what they had to say. If, even in that hospitable position, I find a the tone of an argument repugnant, what happens when I’m predisposed in the other direction? (Sifter mode, off.)

I almost never watch broadcast news, but in the past two days I have heard takedowns on two different channels about the same issue, one by a conservative and one by a liberal.⁶ Predictably (because tv news fuels the rage machine that, in turn, fuels tv news), their arguments were shallow and emotional and—this is the crazy part—practically identical. Weird, right? Opposing takedowns that rely on shallow logic and incendiary language are virtually indistinguishable from one another.

I heard one of these diatribes while in a restaurant with my family, and it took all my concentration not to stand up and yell to the other listening patrons,⁷ “SIFT!!!! ARE YOU GUYS SIFTING? IF YOU PAY ATTENTION YOU WILL SEE THAT THIS ARGUMENT IS VERY BAD! VERY BAD INDEED!"

(I’m kidding because I just now made up the sift idea… but I did want to shout something.)

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Here’s an embarrassing admission: I’m genuinely scared to publish this. There is a 107% chance my (good faith!) critique goes completely unnoticed. But this is the internet, where Michael Hobbes is an influential person, and the fearful and weak lady inside me irrationally imagines a scenario in which Michael Hobbes gets a hold of my little reflection and publicly tears me to shreds.⁸

I’m not saying that’s ever going to happen. I’m just saying… should I really be so afraid that it could?

1. Probably the vast majority of things are a combination. An off-the-cuff hypothesis: We can’t perfectly understand reality, so nothing is all treasure. But some things are all trash.

2. It seems worth pointing out that I had to first be willing to expose myself to said arguments.

3. Also an apt 6-word description of marital spats.

4. “Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out and prefer information that supports our preexisting beliefs. As a result, we tend to ignore any information that contradicts those beliefs.”

5. There are absolutely (at least) two valid takes on this IMO. It opens up a complex debate about who is allowed to exercise free speech and the difference between censorship and common sense protections against, say, hate speech.

6. not my categories

7. An important detail here is that we were in a very rural area where most people’s allegiances were readily on display.

8. Note that I said “me,” not “my argument.” Because tearing apart my argument would be… fine? If they want to podcast about Between Two Things, I will be brave.