Yeah, politicians have been manipulating rubes forever. Nothing new.

March 13th of this year is when I first heard about it:

(Fox News Source)

Of course it’s not a good reason, but it’s also not the main complaint. That’s a disingenuous argument.

The problem is that the locations that offer IDs become political footballs.

Imagine that you change the law to require a certain type of ID in order to vote (even though you already have a social security card, it doesn’t count for voting purposes), and that said ID cannot be acquired via mail.

Imagine, then, that the place you go to get the necessary ID is closed down, or intentionally understaffed via defunding/budget cuts. Hours reduced to 10am-4pm Monday through Friday, perhaps, when most people work. The next nearest location may be hours away. It may not be accessible via public transit. It then becomes incredibly burdensome for someone with limited time, transportation, or income to get the necessary ID. Now you’re able to control access to the IDs in lower income areas by shuttering or defunding locations.

This isn’t just a theoretical situation. This occurs.

Now, I think you’ll find that most people are onboard with requiring ID to vote, provided that the barriers to getting the ID do not have a chilling effect on low-income voters.

But that’s not the way things tend to go.

Present a plan that expands access to the ID printing services and watch the resistance to these sorts of policies disappear. Or better yet, mail one to every eligible taxpayer the first time they file a tax return. It’s not particularly difficult.

Cooperation and sharing are just as much “human nature” as selfishness. We contain lots of “natural” impulses, but people will prioritize and grow into those impulses which society most rewards.

It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal. But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state.

(…)

Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before. In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for.

(Full Text PDF)

That’s totally fair, and I agree with you. I probably shouldn’t have used the phrase “high form of humor”. I more meant “worthwhile form of humor”. Even that doesn’t really encapsulate what I mean.

I don’t know. It can be hard to separate brainrot from intelligent comedy, and I laugh at both, myself. I’m not the comedy police or anything, I just don’t want to end up here:

That’s me! Cringe and proud.

You’re not being a jerk, you’re being pedantic.

Ignorant is absolutely the better word, and I should have used it.

I think, however, that people are far more capable of gaining intelligence than we give them credit for. I don’t believe that IQ is assigned at birth, and it’s been shown that the entire idea of IQ testing is extremely flawed.

There are people born with learning disabilities, of course, but that’s a whole other conversation.

Shitposting is just pretending to be stupid/racist/shitty for laughs/attention, right? Pretty low form of humor, if you ask me (no one did), but I’m also guessing a lot of shitposters aren’t just pretending.

I like a laugh as much as the next person, but we can’t sit around going “Why are people in this country so fucking stupid/racist/shitty?” while simultaneously elevating “acting” stupid to some high form of humor. You see how that’s counterproductive, right?

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.” - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.” - Jason Garrett-Glaser

As much as I love these quotes, I think it’s important to qualify them:

Everyone is born stupid, but people can be educated. If we want an educated populace, we must put in the work to create functional systems of education, and celebrate intelligence as a society. It’ll be hard work, and there are plenty of people out there who would prefer to see the masses remain stupid.

“The way Americans regard sports heroes versus intellectuals speaks volumes” An article by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ― Isaac Asimov

There’s a growing body of research from behavioral neuroscience which indicate that wealth, power, and privilege have a deleterious effect on the brain. People with high-socioeconomic status often:

• Have reduced empathy and compassion.
• Have a diminished ability to see from someone else’s perspective.
• Have low impulse control.
• Have an extreme sense of entitlement.
• Have a hoarding disorder.
• Have a dangerously high tolerance for risk.

When you don’t need to cooperate with other people to survive, they become irrelevant to you. When you’re in charge, you can behave very badly and people will still be polite and respectful toward you. Instead of reciprocity, it’s a formalized double standard. When you have status, you’re given excessive credibility, and rarely hear the very ordinary push-back from others most of us are accustomed to, instead you receive flattery and praise and your ideas are taken seriously by default.

Humans have a strong need for egalitarianism; without it our brains malfunction and turn us into the worst versions of ourselves.

Some sources:

Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years

(Abstract) or (Full Text)

Does power corrupt? An fMRI study on the effect of power and social value orientation on inequity aversion.

(Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)

Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence From Visual Attention

(Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)

The Psychology of Entrenched Privilege: High Socioeconomic Status Individuals From Affluent Backgrounds Are Uniquely High in Entitlement

(Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)

Hoarding Disorder: It’s More Than Just an Obsession - Implications for Financial Therapists and Planners

(Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)

On the evolution of hoarding, risk-taking, and wealth distribution in nonhuman and human populations

(Abstract) or (Full Text)

From the APA’s “Journal of Experimental Psychology”:

“Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs” (2019)

(Abstract) or (Full Text PDF)

Further reading on this subject:

“How resource sharing resists scarcity: the role of cognitive empathy and its neurobiological mechanisms” (2022)

(Full Text)

“Empathy moderates the relationship between cognitive load and prosocial behaviour” (2023)

(Full Text)

“Cognitive load and moral decision-making in moral dilemmas under virtual reality: the role of empathy for pain” (2025)

(Abstract)

“The Influence of Cognitive Load on Empathy and Intention in Response to Infant Crying” (2016)

(Full Text)

I don’t entirely disagree with you, here. My concern is that, when engaging with the world in a nuanced (non-dualistic) way, there is rarely a solidly defined “yes or no”, “good or bad” answer.

Evidence can point to positive and negative points of nearly any given thing. Agreeing on the weight of each point is going to dramatically color a given person’s idea of whether something is a net positive or a net negative. This is why I asked you, earlier, about what sort of evidence you’d need to see to sway your opinion.

Boiling it all down to rational or irrational is a fool’s errand in the absence of objective truth.

I’m not going to waste my time on this unless you can answer my very direct question, above.

I’ve been convinced through a great deal of reading over the course of many years. For me to compile it all for someone who by all indications is not receptive to having their opinion changed would be a fool’s errand.

Where did I claim that DEI is rational or irrational? DEI is an evidence-based practice.

Ed: Be sure to look at who you’re engaging with. I have not “changed my argument” as I have only just begun discussing this here.

Never assume rationality in an irrational world. We don’t live in econ 101 class where the assumption of rational actors is used to simplify equations for freshmen.

Putting Rational Actors in Their Place: Economics and Phenomenology

Law and Behavioral Science: Removing the Rationality Assumption from Law and Economics

What sort of evidence would it take to convince you that DEI programs have been a net positive for US businesses?