This and That (8)

Implicit bias, the twist in the Passover story, and my most controversial opinion

Midjourney: Colorful frogs

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1.

My most recent discussion with Bob Wright is here:

As always, paid subscribers have access to the paywalled section at the end, where we spend an hour (!) discussing a fight that Bob got into with the late, great philosopher Daniel Dennett.

2.

I had a post a little while ago called Implicit bias: All your questions answered. When it came out, the psychologist

Lee Jussim

emailed me with some critical remarks. I responded, and we went back and forth a few times. He then published a post on the topic that included (with my permission) our email discussion. You can find it here.

Has Research on Implicit Bias Produced Anything Important with Any Scientific Certainty?

I’m grateful to Lee for engaging me on these issues and for his gracious and constructive tone throughout. Our main disagreement is this: While I’m critical of much of implicit bias research and very critical about the use of methods such as the IAT (Implicit Associations Test) as racism tests, I also think some implicit bias research is excellent and has led to interesting insights about the mind. Lee agrees with me on the weaknesses but thinks I’m wrong about the strengths. He approvingly cites scholars who recommend abandoning the concept of implicit bias and who describe IAT studies as a “degenerating” line of research. He concludes,

Let’s wait for another 30 years or so before making bold claims about implicit bias, including (especially?) claims based on the IAT.

I disagree, but if you’re interested in the issue, read my article, read Lee’s, and decide for yourself.

3.

I had a wonderful Passover Seder with my sister and her family.

I’ve already been fascinated by a specific part of the Passover story that has to do with the plagues. It’s discussed in an excellent article by Michael David Lukas called Sympathy for the Pharaoh. In case you don’t know the relevant part of the story or need a reminder, Lukas starts with a summary:

As per God’s instructions, Moses and his brother Aaron go to Pharaoh’s court and ask him to free the enslaved Hebrew people. Tyrant that he is, Pharaoh rejects the brothers’ request outright. In turn, God brings down the first of 10 plagues, the transformation of water to blood. On seeing the effects of this plague, Pharaoh seems to reconsider. But his wavering is short-lived. As the King James Bible puts it, “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, neither did he hearken unto them; as the Lord had said. And Pharaoh turned and went into his house.” Pharaoh’s hard-hearted refusal brings on the next plague, frogs. After seeing the frogs hopping around his bedchamber, Pharaoh calls to Moses and asks him to “intreat the Lord, that he may take away the frogs from me, and from my people; and I will let the people go.” God obliges, calling the plague off, but “when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart, and hearkened not unto them.” And so the pattern continues.

But here’s the cool part. After the sixth plague—boils—there is a twist. Pharoah wavers. He doesn’t harden his heart. And then God does it for him. Exodus 9:12:

And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh

God does this heart-hardening to Pharaoh for the rest of the plagues, including the killing of the firstborn sons in which Pharaoh’s own son dies.

As Lukas recounts, the meaning of this has been a great topic of theological debate. Perhaps it was a “necessary demonstration of divine power” (Martin Luther) or punishment for Pharoh’s past sins (Maimonides). Maybe it will forever be a mystery—the “inscrutability of divine will” (St. Paul). Or. maybe, as some secular scholars argue, this strange passage reflects the nature of the Old Testament not as a coherent text but rather as a mishmash of different sources with competing conceptions of the Lord.

I lean towards Martin Luther's interpretation myself—God wanted to show his strength. He says as much to Moses in a later passage of Exodus.

Now the Lord said to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of Mine before him, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son's son the mighty things I have done in Egypt, and My signs which I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord.”

This story illustrates the moral complexity of the Old Testament. When I was a child, I was troubled by the story of the plagues. As a firstborn myself, I wondered what was up with the murder of innocent babies and children. It adds to the discomfort to realize that the slaughter wasn’t a necessary move in a battle against a powerful and evil adversary but rather something that God Himself brought forth to humble the Egyptians and impress the Jews. As Jack Miles puts it in God: A Biography, “God is no saint, strange to say.”

Second, and related to this, the twist is excellent storytelling—it makes an exciting and memorable story even better. As Miles argues, the complexity of God is much of what captivates us in the Bible. If he was really depicted as all powerful, all knowing, and all good, we would have stopped reading these stories long ago.

4.

I’m sometimes asked what my most controversial view is, and I find this difficult.

I do have positions that many people disagree with—about evolution, psychology, religion, politics, and other things. If you watch the video above with Robert Wright, for instance, you’ll see that I defend free speech to an extent that some would find extreme. I believe that universities shouldn’t punish or even investigate a professor who, outside of the classroom, says things that many see as morally reprehensible, such as supporting “race realism” (Amy Wax, University of Pennsylvania) or describing Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians as “awesome” (Joseph Massad, Columbia) Still, I know a lot of people agree with me on this. I’m not alone.

I was reading a discussion of action movies a few days ago, and it occurred to me that I do have one view that, to my knowledge, nobody else in the world shares. It is this: Mission: Impossible III is, by far, the best of the Mission: Impossible series.

I’m surprised, then, that when critics rank the movies of the series, it’s always near the bottom. And here is what Rotten Tomatoes says:

Well, everyone else is wrong. M:i:III has an intelligent plot, great action scenes (a thrilling one in the Vatican), a compelling villain (Philip Seymour Hoffman), twists that surprised me, a clever timeline that begins in medias res and then doubles back at the end, humor, tension—the whole shebang. I enjoy the other movies of the series but, really, none of them come close.

I will never recant. If I’m to be canceled, let it be for this.