Australia Has Fallen

Or, "Et Tu, Australia?"

Australia recently passed a sweeping new law setting a binding legal age limit of 16 for at least most social media.  It will take full effect in one year from its passage.  And aside from their notably illiberal and draconian measures during the Covid pandemic (and the fact that they were of course descended from a penal colony), this kind of thing is quite out of character to say the least for a country that has long prided itself on being relatively free-spirited and is quite famous for the saying and attitude of "no worries, mate". 

Mike Males wrote an excellent Substack article from a youth rights perspective, discussing just how wrong and harmful it is for the state to do that to young people.  And we at Twenty-One Debunked agree with him.  But even if you the reader don't agree with him, and are smug about this law perhaps appeasing the illiberal and ageist social-mediaphobes in charge, consider this: it will NOT stop there.  Mark my words, the moment they see that their voodoo didn't really work, they will triple down and expand the restrictions, tighten the age verification requirements, and/or keep increasing the age limit higher and higher.  And this will also backfire on adults as well, endangering everyone's civil rights way beyond anonymity, given the privacy and cybersecurity pitfalls inherent to ALL forms of online age verification that would be even modestly effective. 

What should be done instead is what we have long advocated, as has the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):  a "Privacy First" approach, that is, comprehensive data privacy legislation for ALL ages, which, at a minimum, bans surveillance advertising as well as "dark patterns" and other similarly deceptive and ethically questionable practices.  That will throw the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good.  But of course, Big Tech would NOT like that.

Also, simply adding more "friction" would also make such platforms safer and less addictive overall.

So what are we waiting for?

P.S. Australia has never had any equivalent to America's Section 230, so the fact that they saw the need to "get tough" on social media companies implies that they had just as much of a problem as the USA.  Thus, outright repeal of Section 230 (as opposed to much more nuanced and narrow reforms in regards to personalization of feeds and algorithms) as some ignorant social-mediaphobes have suggested would solve absolutely nothing, and would do far more harm than good. Don't do it!  You have been warned.

UPDATE:  Pari Esfandiari also wrote a great essay about how such a ban will do more harm than good.

The Law Of Eristic Escalation Revisited

Or, "Politics In One Lesson"

There is an eternal law of nature that at once explains just about everything, and even makes politics possible to finally understand. It is called The Law of Eristic Escalation:

Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos

By that, it pertains to any arbitrary or coercive imposition of order, which at least in the long run, actually causes disorder (chaos) to escalate.  Fenderson's Amendment further adds that "the tighter the order in question is maintained, the longer the consequent chaos takes to escalate, BUT the more it does when it does."  Finally, the Thudthwacker Addendum still further adds that this relationship is nonlinear, thus rendering the resulting escalation of chaos completely unpredictable in terms of the original imposition of order.

We see the real world consequences of this in everything from Prohibition to the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs to zero tolerance policies to Covid lockdowns to sexual repression and so much more.  And, of course, especially in the ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age.  Any short-term benefits that these arbitrary and coercive impositions of order may provide is entirely outweighed when they inevitably backfire in the long run.  Miron and Tetelbaum (2009), Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), and Males (1986) illustrate this very nicely in the case of the 21 drinking age.

Perhaps that is why most bans on various things have historically had a track record that is quite lackluster at best.  Ironically, bans tend to give more power to the very things that they seek to ban.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, you finally understand politics.

P.S.  The Dutch seem to understand this better.  They even have a proverb:  "when you permit, you control", which is the antithesis of the American proverb, "when you permit, you promote".  Carl Jung would also likely have a field day with that as well.

Blowing Hot And Cold (Cognition)

In psychology, the concept of "hot and cold cognition" has gained much currency in recent years.  "Cold cognition" is thinking while NOT being swayed by strong emotions, time pressure, and/or peer pressure, while "hot cognition" is thinking when one IS thus potentially swayed in the "heat of the moment".

In what passes for pop neuroscience these days, it has become in vogue to claim that while cold cognition fully matures by around age 16 or so, hot cognition takes much longer, often well into the mid to late 20s.  A major proponent of this theory is Laurence Steinberg, who has written extensively on the topic.  One major study by Steinberg et al. can be found here, which compares various ages in various countries on several hot and cold cognitive tests.  (What the authors call "psychosocial maturity" is a synonym for "hot cognition".) And while such a pattern was apparently seen to some extent in the aggregate, when you break it down by country, the pattern breaks down as well.  And the weak results cannot be explained away by individualism vs collectivism, rich vs poor, Global North vs Global South, eastern vs western, or any other obvious societal characteristics.  And notably, the USA was an outlier where instead of hot cognition improving steadily and largely linearly to (and likely beyond) age 30 like most other countries, it began to level off in the early to mid 20s and plateaued from then onwards.  And one of the other countries actually saw a regress (oops!) in hot cognition in the mid to late 20s.  Cold cognition, on the other hand, was generally much more consistent by country, and nearly always leveled off around 16.

It's almost like hot cognition is actually a skill where "practice makes good enough", as opposed to "biology is destiny".  There is far too wide a variation between individuals and societies to seriously argue otherwise.  And even a quick and cursory observation will reveal that most older adults aren't really all that great at it in the real world.  All the more reason to call BS on any claim that young people's civil rights be curtailed in the name of specious junk neuroscience.

As for the tempting idea that the juvenile injustice system (or a third category) thus be expanded to include young adults (ages 18-25 or so), or otherwise going easier on young adults, please allow me to channel the late criminologist James Q. Wilson.  He noted that even if disadvantaged demographics have a "steeper hill to climb" in terms of staying out of trouble, the prospect of punishment actually has greater utility for them to make it easier for them to climb that proverbial hill.  To that I would add, of course, as long as they are not completely incompetent, and it is in the interest of justice to do so.  And treating young adults as non-adults for that purpose is ultimately a trap, a velvet glove to the iron fist of revoking their hard-won civil rights as well.

That said, it is certainly the very height of hypocrisy to try and punish young people of any age as adults when they commit "status offenses" based entirely on age like underage drinking or smoking, curfew violations, and stuff like that which would not be crimes when adults do these things.  All such "status offenses" thus need to be either decriminalized or removed from the law books entirely, just like victimless crimes (or what the late, great Peter McWilliams called "consensual crimes") more generally.  Ageists really cannot have it both ways!

And finally, people of ALL ages really need to use their cold cognition to plan ahead better, to avoid the pitfalls of relying solely on hot cognition in potentially dangerous situations.  We ignore that at our peril.

Tobacco 21 Laws' Benefits Are An Illusion

Another recent study found that while self-reported teen smoking and vaping rates declined after Tobacco 21 laws, biomarker exposure showed mixed evidence at best, implying that fewer young smokers are identifying as smokers (and similar findings for vaping).  Thus, the supposed reductions in smoking and vaping in surveys and sales data are at least largely an artifact of underreporting and cross-border shopping rather than real reductions.  Oops!

Looks like it was all just another mirage, kinda like with the 21 drinking age.  What next, a study that finds that water is wet and the sun rises in the east?

Excellent New Insights From Renowned Sociologist and Youth Rights Activist Mike Males

The renowned sociologist and youth rights activist Mike Males has some excellent new Substack articles debunking the latest moral panic about young people, smartphones and social media.  As we stand at a crossroads in terms of how public policy is evolving (or devolving), his words should be food for thought for any direct or indirect policymaker as well as anyone going to the polls this November. 

And here is what I added in the comments:

Honestly, I would be fine with making schools phone-free IF AND ONLY IF they alao applied the same rules to teachers, staff, and administrators. Fair is fair. After all, they wouldn't want to be flaming hypocrites about it, right? (But we all know these zealots would probably rather drink Drano than apply their double standards to themselves, of course.)

Excellent work, Mike. I would also add about the ageist abomination that is 21 drinking age, the greatest alcohol policy failure since Prohibition, that Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) also further debunked any claim of a lifesaving effect. The supposed lifesaving effect was all a mirage driven by a handful of early-adopoting states, while for the federal coerced states it was inconsequential at best or even perverse. And notably, counterintuitive as it may be, in that study not even the graduated 18/21 age limits for beer/wine vs hard liquor in some states were vindicated either (those states were disproportionately likely to be coerced late-adopters) as any better than a straight age limit of 18. So any age limit higher than 18 was a net loser in the long run, even for the early adopters whose supposed lifesaving effects evaporated after the first year or two. Oops!

Is Drunk Walking Really More Dangerous Than Drunk Driving?

Or, "Why People Absolutely Need to Stop Citing Superfreaknomics, Yesterday"

Talk about losing the plot!

Only someone who has repeatedly read Superfreakonomics would really believe that.  (People are apparently still irresponsibly citing it to this day.)  In that rather tepid and disappointing sequel to Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner, the authors claimed that, at least on a per-mile basis, a drunk person is a whopping eight times more likely (!) to be killed while walking than driving the same distance.  However, there are a number of flaws to that claim.  First, they assume that the proportion of total miles traveled while drunk is the same for walking as it is for driving.  This is dubious because drunk driving is far less common nowadays, and many who would have driven drunk a generation ago now choose to walk instead.  Secondly, it is more realistic to compare the risk per hour of traveling time rather than per mile, since far more miles are traveled by car rather than on foot.  Thirdly, the real-world relative risk for an alcohol-related pedestrian fatality does not rise to statistically significant levels until a BAC of about 0.15, while for driving deaths it begins to rise significantly at 0.05 or even lower, which is a very large difference.  To quote NHTSA in their Alcohol and Highway Safety 2001 report:

One interesting finding...was that the relative risk of involvement in a fatal pedestrian crash did not begin to rise until the pedestrians reached a BAC of .15 to .20. This is consistent with the hypothesis that safe walking is generally easier than safe driving, since the relative risk curve for fatal motor vehicle crashes starts to rise at a much lower BAC.

Finally, there is a significant qualitative difference between the two in that while a drunk pedestrian is unlikely to endanger innocent people, a drunk driver is very likely to do so.  That's precisely why the latter is illegal while the former is generally not, though some states do have laws against public drunkenness (which are typically only enforced if the drunk pedestrian is noticeably causing a nuisance or hazard to others).  We may never be able to determine exactly how risky drunk walking is to the drunk individual, and we certainly know that the risk is not zero.  In fact, the NHTSA report suggests that it can be quite significant at very high doses of alcohol.  There is also a risk of falls when one is "falling-down drunk," which can lead to serious or even fatal injuries.  But all things considered, drunk walking is still a better option than drunk driving at any BAC level. (Not that we are encouraging either!)

In other words, if you choose to harm or endanger yourself, that's your own business in a free society.  But the moment you significantly harm or endanger non-consenting others, such as driving under the influence on a public street or highway, it then becomes everyone's business.  Why is that still so hard for so many people to understand?

Never mind, we already know why.  Because too many people are apparently far too left-brain dominant to see the forest for the trees!  And the very same people who, upon reading or hearing about that questionable passage from Superfreakonomics, will inevitably see such specious reasoning as far more of a green light to drive drunk than as a red light to walk drunk.  Now I don't believe in censorship, but come on now:  if I was the editor of Superfreakonomics, I could see myself "accidentally" deleting that particular part of the book before it got published!

And finally, research has found that the best ways to reduce the number of drunk pedestrian casualties at the population level are basically the same strategies that would benefit all pedestrians (and cyclists) drunk or sober, most notably reducing speed limits and vehicle sizes, and otherwise improving infrastructure to be more pedestrian-friendly and bike-friendly in general.  We also need to crack down on and stiffen the penalties for hit-and-run crashes and distracted driving as well.  Anything else, in our view, is an Orwellian slippery slope just waiting to happen.

(Mic drop)

How America Lost The Plot

From the ageist and illiberal abomination that is the 21 drinking age and especially its authoritarian enforcement, to drunk driving, to drug policy, to transportation policy, to environmental policy, to foreign policy, to Tobacco 21, and so on, America has well and truly lost the plot long ago on so many issues.  How long ago, you may ask?  Well, roughly 40 years ago, if not even a bit earlier than that.  But how and why did it happen in the first place?  Why can't our "leaders" (and many of those who keep voting for them) ever seem to see the forest for the trees?

In the book, The Master and His Emissary:  The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist (2009), the author delves into the familiar idea of the left vs right hemispheres of the brain.  Only unlike the usual surface-level analysis in that we see in pop neuroscience, this one is a real deep dive into the truly resounding implications of these brain differences for society and civilization.  Ten years later, it was even made into a documentary, The Divided Brain (2019), by McGilchrist himself along with award-winning documentary filmmaker Vanessa Dylyn, et al.

To summarize:  the two hemispheres of the brain each see the world and process information in fundamentally different ways:  the left brain is more reductionistic in thinking, while the right is more holistic in thinking.  The left is more logical, analytical and detail-oriented, while the right is more creative, intuitive, and sees the bigger picture.  The left is more linear, while the right is more non-linear.  The left sees the map, while the right sees the territory.  And so on.  While both sides are of course quite valuable and necessary, the brain functions best overall when the right brain is in charge.  The left is a great servant, but a terrible master, hence the title of the book.  And Western culture has, for thousands of years, oscillated between favoring the overall relative dominance of each of the two hemispheres.  In recent centuries and decades, as in some other historical periods as well, we have become far too left-brain dominant, with very negative consequences, according to the author.  Not only does the left not really know what the right is doing, but at least half the time the left doesn't even know what the left is doing!  The left brain has thus essentially hijacked society, and that in turn leaves us "increasingly incapable of grappling with critical economic, environmental, and social issues, ones that shape our very future as a species", as the documentary would put it.  I am largely oversimplifying what he said, of course, but that is the basic gist of it overall.

One obvious reason for this excessive left-brain dominance could be due to poorly-designed education, of course.  But another could be that the left brain is faster in terms of processing speed than the right, and the pace of life is undoubtedly much, much faster nowadays than even the recent past.  Though the latter would be more of a chicken-or-the egg question. 

(And to all of the political conservatives and reactionaries who try in vain to shoehorn all of this into their silly left-wing vs right-wing political spectrum, like that one guy on The Daily Sceptic did recently, please get your own ideas.  This book, by a renowned Oxford scholar, truly thoroughly transcends such a naive interpretation of politics.)

A-ha!  That really explains a LOT!

Clearly, the USA (and a good chunk of the world as well, but especially the USA), has only gotten more, not less, left-brain dominant since roughly 40 years ago.  We as a society have been reactively lurching from crisis to crisis, moral panic to moral panic, trend to trend, fad to fad, idol to idol, and propaganda to propaganda, throwing at each whatever left-brained nostrums seem like a good idea at the time without really thinking it through.  But try as they may, the map is NOT the territory.  And their reductionist "solutions" invariably affect not just this thing over here, but also that thing over there, and that other thing all the way over there, and so on.  Oops!

One thing's for sure:  As the late, great Buckminster Fuller famously said, you cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that got us into that problem in the first place.  Unfortunately, not nearly enough people have gotten the memo, it seems.

UPDATE:  Looks like McGilchrist has a sequel to the aforementioned book, titled The Matter with Things, as well.  Food for thought. 

A brain divided against itself cannot stand.

Case Closed: Tobacco 21 Laws Don't Work

The latest study of Tobacco 21 laws shows they were a resounding....DUD in terms or reducing young adult smoking, vaping, or smokeless tobacco use rates in the USA.  Being published in a famously anti-tobacco journal, Tobacco Control, the authors of course wanted to put a positive spin on it though nonetheless, as shown below (emphasis ours):  

Results Although we did not find evidence that state T21 laws were associated with cigarette, smokeless tobacco or ENDS [i.e. vapes] use overall, the federal T21 law was associated with lower use of all three tobacco products by 0.39–0.92 percentage points. State flavour restrictions were associated with lower use of cigarettes by 0.68 (−1.27 to –0.09) and ENDS by 0.56 (−1.11 to –0.00) percentage points, but not with smokeless tobacco. A three-way interaction revealed that state and federal T21 laws together were associated with a lower prevalence of ENDS use among 18–20 years, but there were no differences in cigarette use from both policies combined versus either alone.

Conclusion State and federal T21 laws are broadly effective at reducing adult tobacco use, while state flavour restrictions specifically lower use of cigarettes and ENDS.

Got that? The state level laws were useless, period, but the federal Tobacco 21 law passed in December 2019 was somehow "broadly effective" because it appeared to trivially reduce tobacco/nicotine product use by not even a full percentage point.  Never mind that that latter was not enforced until well into 2020, enforcement still remained spotty for a while, and that its passage coincided with two major confounds:  1) the EVALI (vaping illness) outbreak that, while clearly due to adulterated black market THC vape products, was fearmongered by the mainstream media to include all vape products, and 2) the COVID-19 pandemic that, for better or worse, seemed to discourage smoking and encourage quitting, since many people feared that smoking made them more vulnerable to the virus.  But no, it HAD to be due to the Tobacco 21 law, because reasons.  Or something. 

Even flavor restrictions were more effective than Tobacco 21 laws!

So how many IQ points did YOU lose from the mental gymnastics of reading all for the above quoted article abstract beyond the stuff in bold?  The study was behind a paywall of course, so we couldn't delve further into it, granted.  But even a cursory reading of the abstract shows that the Tobacco 21 laws are a joke, and not a very funny one at that.  And worse, it may have even driven some young vapers (back) to smoking, which would clearly be a net public health loss.  But try convincing the zealots of that!

These unimpressive findings dovetail nicely with other studies as well.  As for whether raising the tobacco/nicotine age limit from 18 to 21 reduces the use of such products among people under 18, the evidence for that is very weak and mixed at best.

As for the few previous studies that did appear to find statistically and practically significant effects from the Tobacco 21 laws, those apparent results are most likely a result of short-term effects as well as an artifact of confounders like cigarette tax hikes.  

(Cigarette tax hikes, which mean higher prices, are in fact one of the most effective and cost-effective ways to reduce smoking at the population level, though they still have their limits of course.  And while they may be classist, at least they are not ageist, and they don't blatantly violate anyone's civil rights.)

Regardless, even if Tobacco 21 laws were ever proven to be effective, Twenty-One Debunked would still oppose them on principle, as we believe that in a free society worthy of the name, civil rights inherently supersedes "public health".  That is true in regards to tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, or anything else.  

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  A few older studies have found modest but significant decreases in retail tobacco sales following the raising of the smoking age to 21 in early adopter states like California and Hawaii.  And another study found no change in overall ever or current smoking among California 18-20 year olds, but did find a modest decrease in daily smoking among that age group relative to 21-23 year olds (whose daily smoking actually increased three years later) in the same state.  This of course echoes Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) as well as Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), Males (1986), and Dee and Evans (2001) in regards to the 21 drinking age.  That is, endogeneity, early-adopter effects, short-term effects, and seesaw/delay effects all appear to be at play here.  The supposed miracle turned out to be a mirage all along, in other words.  Thus, especially in light of the most recent study discussed in this article, there were really no benefits that cannot be alternatively achieved with higher cigarette taxes and/or better enforcement of the previous 18 age limit, and if anything the 21 age limit appears to be counterproductive in the long run.

UPDATE 2:  Even the CDC's very own 2022 study found mixed and ambiguous effects of Tobacco 21 laws, and such effects sometimes even appeared to differ by race as well (in favor of whites, with null or even perverse effects on young people of color).  Oops!

UPDATE 3:  Another recent study found that while self-reported teen smoking and vaping rates declined after Tobacco 21 laws, biomarker exposure showed mixed evidence at best, implying that fewer young smokers are identifying as smokers (and similar findings for vaping).  Thus, the supposed reductions in smoking and vaping in surveys and sales data are at least largely an artifact of underreporting and cross-border shopping rather than real reductions.  Oops!

The Journey-Destination Problem

What we call the "journey-destination problem" is the fact that journeys are often much more dangerous than destinations.  For example, there is the fear that lowering the drinking age to 18 would, even if better overall in the long run, would still have adverse unintended consequences in the short run.  And we at Twenty-One Debunked address that fear head-on in our proposal to lower the drinking age to 18.

First and foremost, lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 (in line with the rest of the world, and a good chunk of American history) is NOT a radical change at all.  So any (real or imagined) fears related to lowering it even further below 18, or abolishing the age limit altogether, do NOT apply to lowering it to 18.

Secondly, it is NOT like the (real or imagined) fears of suddenly legalizing something that was previously completely illegal for everyone.  Alcohol in its various forms has been broadly legal, tolerated, and openly advertised for most of recorded history.  It is the "devil we already know", basically.   So "same as before, but without the arrests or injustices" is actually pretty close to accurate here.

Thirdly, simple and practical things like raising the alcohol taxes and cracking down harder on drunk driving, drunk violence, drunk and disorderly conduct, and stuff like that, would basically render any feared unintended consequences academic in practice. This is true whether the drinking age is lowered to 18 gradually OR suddenly.

Fourthly, it's not the 1970s or 1980s anymore.  America is almost a completely different country now in so many ways, including for drunk driving.  The original, albeit still fatally flawed, crisis-based justification for coercively raising the drinking age to 21 in the 1980s is itself grossly outdated and basically academic now in the 21st century, hence the need for the pro-21 crowd to invent new, ever more specious and spurious justifications (such as junk neuroscience, and a perversion of the precautionary principle) for keeping it at 21, because reasons.

And finally, it is ultimately a matter of principle, as it is fundamentally a civil rights issue, far more so than it is a public health and safety issue.  Not everything can be reduced to crude utilitarianism, after all.  "Let us do evil, that good may come" is always and everywhere a trap, a lesson that is unfortunately too often learned the hard way.

(Mic drop)

One Of These Countries Is Not Like The Others

 A picture is worth a thousand words.

(Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Which country is the obvious outlier here?  Take a guess.  Oh yeah, the very same one with the legal drinking age of 21, of course: the USA.

Once the envy of the world, up until early to mid-1990s, the USA made enormous progress in traffic safety overall, only to stall out and lag behind relative to the rest of the rich world, and eventually even regress on an absolute basis from 2010 onwards.  Why? Because we failed to see the forest for the trees.  We prioritized drivers over pedestrians, speed and convenience over safety, "bigger is better", and so on.  Larger vehicles, higher speeds, and poor design of both vehicles as well as roads/streets became the norm, going in generally the opposite direction as the rest of the world.  All while piddling over the usual wedge issues of things like age restrictions.

In other words, America's pharisaical culture of fear and safetyism strains out a gnat, while swallowing a camel.  Move along, nothing to see here....

P.S.  To anyone who says that this somehow why the USA "needs" to keep the drinking age 21, well, then, you completely missed the whole point of this article.  And thus you may need your head examined.