Twitter, Privacy and the Past

              Twitter is an excellent place to circulate an idea, but a very poor place to try to discuss an idea.  There are two reasons for this.  The lesser reason is that posts are limited to 280 characters, which obviously is not sufficient to explain a complex concept.  That’s not actually that much of a problem, because (a) you can post as often as you want to, and (b) it is good for us, in discussing ideas, to discipline ourselves to state the essence of our argument in a limited number of words.

              The bigger problem with trying to debate ideas on twitter is that anyone can join in, so  discussions run all over the map.  A productive discussion pushes toward understanding of an issue.  A twitter discussion jumps from one issue to a related issue to a related issue to another, the fourth idea having no relevance at all to the first.   Different people pull the discussion in different directions, so no progress is made in any one direction, and the heart of the discussion is almost instantly torn to shreds by the competing efforts to move it in different directions.   All discussions on Twitter are drawn and quartered, and then the quarters are drawn and quartered, and then the smithereens are drawn and quartered. 

              People who dislike Twitter because it is this way are missing the point; it is what it is—in many ways a wonderful thing.  We have the same problem on Bill James Online, actually; I try to develop an idea, but readers whack it over the head and kidnap it, trying to make my idea the servant of their hobby horse,  leading to the quick destruction of the discussion I had hoped to have.  That’s frustrating, too, but the more people you have in a discussion, the more quickly the discussion is destroyed.  I have 40,000 Twitter followers.  Organized, productive discussions last seconds.  

              So anyway, I was trying to start a discussion on Twitter the other day, which is foolish but sometimes you can’t help yourself.  My initial post was a poll question:

              And then I posted an "Agree/Disagree" poll.  2,191 people responded to the poll, of whom 86% disagreed with me, and 14% agreed, which actually was much better than I would have guessed; I would have guessed that I would get 5-10% agreement.  

              We have started posting my Twitter Feed on the front page of Bill James Online.   My idea in doing this was to try to carry the . . ..

              Discussions on Twitter, by the nature of Twitter, play themselves out very quickly and almost always in an unsatisfactory way.  My idea was to move some of those discussions over to BJOL and see if we can advance the ball a little further.  I didn’t expect people on Twitter to agree with me; nonetheless I still think I am right, and Twitter is not the place to try to explain why. 

              When people are rude to me on Twitter I just Block them; I don’t argue with them first and then Block them, I just Block them.  I think that’s the right way to handle it.  If someone insults you today they will insult you again tomorrow or next week; why would I want to have a relationship with such a person? 

              One of the common responses to my post was along the lines of "Bill James is in his decline phase."  (I would quote someone specifically, but I blocked them all so the tweets no longer show up.)  But when you think about it. . .did I get to be who I am by making arguments that most people would agree with?   When I argued in the late 1970s that won-lost records for pitchers often had little to do how well the pitcher had pitched, did people agree with that?   When I argued that a .240 hitter could be better than a .300 hitter sometimes, did people agree with that?  People thought I was nuts.   90, 95% of the baseball establishment thought I was an ignorant jackass with crazy opinions.   I’m in the decline phase now because I believe things that most people don’t?   That’s just who I am.  If I am to be condemned now for having opinions that everyone knows to be false, let me at least say that this is not a new failing for me. 

              The world is much more complicated than the human mind, billions of times more complicated—and yet we desperately want to understand things.  When we don’t understand something, we feel that we are adrift, that we are in danger because we are lost.  We simplify the world in order to give us a sense of understanding.   We simplify things by leaving out elements of each problem, and this causes us to form conclusions based on careless thought, but which nonetheless almost everybody agrees with.   When facing the darkness of my own mind, I find safety in huddling with others.  I don’t see how anyone could doubt that this is true, because we should all be able to remember hundreds of assumptions about the world that dominated American thinking in the 1960s, but which we now see to have been completely wrong. 

As a society we have a predominant belief about everything, and the predominant belief about each thing is ALWAYS wrong in some ways, because it always leaves out elements of the problem.  As the world changes, as the world adjusts, very often the predominant belief becomes not only wrong in some regard, but wrong in the main.  

This is what has happened to the assumption that we must preserve every kind of document. . . .businesses must preserve all the records of their creation of a new product, in case the product fails in some horrible way and a lawsuit results.   You must preserve your financial records in case the IRS wants to look at them in six years, and if you are involved in some lawsuit and a friend e-mails you about the case and you delete the e-mail, you may well have violated the law.   These laws made some sense when we adopted them in the 1970s.   They’re out of control now, and they are causing far worse problems than they are helping to solve.  

I should stress that most of the 86% who disagreed with me on Twitter were respectful and made clear, logical points, and I’ll get to those in a little bit.  By far the most common argument was that we need to preserve records  for the benefit of historians.   As one genius put it, "Cap Anson agrees with you."  What, do we only know about Cap Anson’s misdeeds because he was legally required to save his e-mails?   Not e-mails, then. . . .letters or contracts or documents.   Was he legally required to save any of that?   Did that make any difference?  Did he escape the scrutiny of history because he was not legally required to save the information that would condemn him?  

"And this man calls himself a historian!" one man tweeted.   Well, no, I don’t; I never self-identify as a historian, although I probably have done so some time in the fairly distant past, but whenever anyone describes me as a historian or introduces me as a historian, I always try to say "No, I am not a historian."  To me, a historian is a person who has a PhD in history and writes about historical issues as his primary calling.  I don’t have the historical education or the command of research methods that I would think a historian should have, and I do a lot of different things other than write about history. 

But let us suppose for the sake of argument that I DID consider myself a historian.   Would it follow then that I must believe that we as a society should always do what is best for historians?  As a historian, am I forbidden from saying that what is in the best interests of historians is not always in the best interests of society?   As a historian, am I required to believe that when the needs of historians conflict with the interests of good government, we must do what is best for the historians?

I think that not only am I not required to believe that, but that it unethical to believe that, even though most people do think that way.   Bankers think that what society should do is whatever is best for the bankers.  What is good for General Motors is good for the country.  

We then proceed to the question:  is the essential effect of these legal requirements to preserve everything in case there is a dispute. . . .is the essential effect of that policy to benefit historians?

Obviously that is NOT the essential effect.  The essential effect of the policies that everything must be preserved is to warehouse weapons for political and legal conflict.  The White House is required to produce documents that Judge Kavanaugh created in his twenties, on the theory that he may have said something that was in some way related to the legal definition of Torture, or even, God forbid, shudder, cross your heart, kiss your crucifix, to "Roe vs. Wade".   Not just those; why, he may have said something stupid and inappropriate about any of a thousand subjects.  Inquiring minds want to know.  We will read every word he has written in his adult lifetime for failings that he may accidentally have revealed.

This is not "history"; this is political warfare.   Peter Strzok and the semi-attractive woman that he was Strzoking must produce every e-mail of their professional lives and their torrid passions, in case there is "evidence of bias" in there somewhere.   This is not "history"; this is political warfare.  Hilary Clinton should have been indicted, so we are told, because she carefully deleted and meticulously destroyed her backlog of a few million e-mails.  This is not "history"; this is political warfare.

The government requires you to keep your tax records for seven years and to produce them on demand.   Is this for historians?  If you are in business and you are sued, the law will require you to produce every e-mail, every record associated with the allegedly faulty product.   This is not "history"; it is an effort by the lawyers to bring businesses more under the control of the lawyers. 

Defending these burdensome laws because they are necessary for historians is disingenuous; this is not about historians.  That is not the essential effect of these rules, nor is it their purpose.  It’s about having weapons for combat.  The law requires that you preserve a record of your failings as a weapon of some vaguely anticipated conflict. 

But is that a good idea? Certainly some of my twitter followers think that it is a good idea.  "Bill, this is a lifetime appointment," said one follower, as if it was self-evident that this type of combat was a good idea because it was a major appointment.  "There could be evidence in there about torture," said another.   The importance of the seat, in the minds of many, justifies whatever is done to fight about it. 

As a nation, we have wandered into a horrible place in terms of political cooperation leading to good government. I am not suggesting that this policy of forcing people to retain records which may embarrass them is wholly responsible for that—but it sure as hell is not helping.  It is contributing to the problem in a very major way.

What is "the problem"?   The problem is that our political leaders, having divided themselves sharply along idealogical lines, would rather fight than govern.  The main motivation is no longer to pass legislation that helps the American people nor to supervise its implementation; it is now to gain more power by embarrassing one’s political opponents.   This is not right.  It’s sick.  It’s perverted.   It is a perversion of the responsibilities of political leadership.  

These rules, that one must preserve a record of one’s actions in the event there is a mistake, are a product of that mindset.  I can see that, looking at it from the standpoint of a world in which such regulations did not exist—the world of 1970--that it might seem like there would be great benefits to having access to a full record.   In practice, it has not only not been a great benefit; it has been a great disaster.   All we do is fight about what was done wrong before.  The idea that we join hands across the aisle, that we trust one another and move forward. . . .it’s gone. 

Judge Kavanaugh, in seeking confirmation to the Supreme Court, will attempt to put his best foot forward.  He will attempt to look his best.  This is a normal thing.   A man or a woman, going on a first date, will try to look his or her best—which means, not the way that one "normally" looks.  Is this wrong?  A person going on a job interview, or a person meeting the potential in-laws for the first time, or a person invited to a party among those he does not know well, will attempt to present their best image. 

I can hear the response shouting in my internal chamber:  THIS IS NOT A BLIND DATE!   THIS IS A LIFETIME APPOINTMENT TO AN IMMENSELY POWERFUL POSITION!   Yes, of course, but some principles apply regardless of the specifics.  There are certain questions you do not ask on a first date.   Have you ever been a slut?  Have you had any disastrous relationships in the past?  Have you ever been in jail?  Do you have a drug habit?  How much money do you make?  You don’t ask these things, if you are trying to build a relationship of trust and co-operation.  The woman or man will tell you these things when it is the appropriate time to tell you; if he doesn’t, you might want to get out of the relationship.  That’s up to you; it’s choice.  

The point is, coercion is antithetical to cooperation.  If you use coercion, you will not have cooperation.  Period. 

And this principle is the same, whether in politics or personal relationships:  If you depend upon coercion for understanding, you will not have cooperation.  What we most need in politics is to rebuild trust among the various wings of the political establishment.   This crazy, asinine business of forcing people to retain private records and then searching through them for embarrassing failures is enormously destructive of potential cooperation.  

This is only one of four reasons that it is not a good policy.   There are four others:

1)       It is wasteful,

2)      It erodes and destroys privacy,

3)      It inhibits frank and productive discussion, and

4)      It reduces our ability to outgrow our mistakes.   

It is wasteful on a grand scale.   It isn’t wasting millions of dollars in the economy every year; it is wasting billions.  No one really knows how many billions, but no one would argue that it isn’t billions.  It clearly is. 

I had many stupid opinions when I was younger.  You did, too, although you may not have recognized them, but you did.  It is a better world in which we can quietly move away from these.  It was a better world when people did not have to produce a record of the stupid opinions they had when they were younger. 

So I lost the argument, on Twitter, and I will lose the argument here, but I still know that I was right.   Historians can survive without private e-mails.  There is a line that Carlyle wrote in The French Revolution, to the effect that countless words about the French revolution are now rotting in libraries all over the world.   They must rot, he said, and then the history of these events can be written.  I feel the same about these private documents:  they must rot before history can be written.

What we are doing, as a society, is wasteful and destructive, and it interferes with the work of historians, and in time, people will begin to see that this is true.  In the 1960s there was a single state legislator, in Nebraska, who would argue that college athletes were professionals in fact and should be paid.  He would introduce legislation to this effect, to require the Nebraska football team to pay their players, and he would lose by a vote of however many it was to one, and then the next year he would re-introduce the same legislation.   As far as I know, he was the only person in the country who saw where this was headed and was trying to get there ahead of the curve. 

I am not the only person who sees the problems that we have created for ourselves with unnecessary, compulsory record-keeping; I got 14% in the poll.   I’ll open this up for comments tomorrow.