3 Topics Over Dinner

3 Topics Over Dinner is a dinner discussion group that meets on weekends. Links to articles or videos on the internet about 3 Topics, usually unrelated to one another, are posted on the event listing. Attendees read the articles (and other sources if they so wish) or watch the videos to be discussed over dinner. The idea is to be similar to a book club, only with far less reading. The idea is that this required reading / video viewing will be less than 3 hours.

We go to a different nationality restaurant every month, and always restaurants that will do separate checks for a large group, so everyone can pay with their own credit card and we don't have to figure out how to split the check. The restaurants are chosen to be quiet and nice, but not extremely exorbitant. A link to the menu of the restaurant, with prices listed, will always be provided on the announcement.

The restaurants chosen will always be in Manhattan, 77th St or further south.

RSVP's will be limited to have about 8 people at dinner, small enough that everyone can hear one another and we can conduct a single conversation.

The group has been going roughly once a month since 2008. It was formed on meetup.com and has shifted to Eventbrite.

A $5.00 deposit is required to RSVP. This deposit is refunded in cash ten minutes after the event starts. No-shows and latecomers forfeit their deposit.

Monthly Climate Science and Energy Engineering Dinner

"When people actually meet and get to know each other ... what Lincoln called those ‘better angels’ come out. People start recognizing themselves in each other and they start trusting each other, and that’s not just the basis for democracy, but that’s the basis for our long-term salvation." -- Barack Obama

Topic 1: Narrative & Ideology

Alan Greenspan was the US Fed Chair for nearly two decades, and for pretty much that whole time there were not any nationwide recessions. He was very highly respected and his nickname was Maestro. During this time he did espouse some opinions on politics which were very unpopular with some people.

Very shortly after he left office, the catastrophic 2008 mortgage meltdown occurred, and the people who didn't like his politics argued that he should have kept his ideology out of his job.

Greenspan was dragged before congress and grilled, and he made this defense of the use of "ideology" in his work.

Human beings, to function, must have a high-level view of the world and how it works. As we take input from the world, we twist it around to fit into our ideology, and that's how we can make predictions of how our actions will fit the world.

In 2003, Elizabeth Warren, then a professor at Harvard, got her hands on a lot of government statistics on how the median 2-parent, 2-child family was faring in the economy and how their fortunes had changed between 1973 and 2003. She was concerned about an epidemic of bankruptcies in America, and teamed up with her daughter to write a book, "The Two-Income Trap" describing the statistics and building a case that the median family was getting worse and worse off and the system was serving them poorly. I watched an hour-long video of her giving a lecture on the subject, but when I watched the lecture, I was annoyed -- my narrative on economics is profoundly different from hers, and she was revealing the economic data tidbit by tidbit, always to justify her narrative, but not laying everything out in a table where they could be assessed without all that spin.

So I created this webpage where I embedded her video and I read the book and extracted the statistics, laying them out in a table where the data could be assessed more independently of all her spin. (the lecture is an hour long and not required viewing for 3 Topics).

People can't function without a narrative, and people with different narratives often have trouble communicating at all, let alone reaching a consensus.

This Jewish reporter laments what he sees as a "loss of objectivity" and a loss of "honesty" in the press. I think he's mistaken thinking that there ever was an "objective" state of affairs -- what has happened is just a change from one subjective narrative to another. The article is paywalled, a pirate version is here.

After the Nazi holocaust of the Jews in WW2, the consensus in the United States was that, in polite company, Jews were not to be criticized, no matter what they said or did, and anyone who did criticize them was canceled as a "Nazi". Until a couple of decades ago, if a reporter on American TV criticized Israel, it would be the last thing they ever said on the air -- the end of their career that day.

But recently, memories of WW2 have faded, and woke logic has taken over the mainstream media. According to woke rules:

• whoever is whiter is wrong
• whoever is richer is wrong
• whoever has the more powerful military is wrong
• whoever is more aligned with Western Civilization is wrong
• whoever most recently conquered land is a "colonialist" and therefore wrong
• whoever criticizes Muslims, no matter what they say or do, is an "Islamophobe" and therefore wrong

... which leads to the conclusion that anything Hamas does is right, no matter what they say or do, and anything Israel does is wrong.

Topic 2: Iran is Desperate

A couple of years ago, major Arab governments were moving in the direction of recognizing Israel and making peace with it. Since those Arab governments were very hostile to Iran, Iran saw this peace trend as counter to its interests, and launched a war against Israel on October 7th, 2023, through its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Hamas's strategy of deliberately sacrificing the lives of their own civilians was calculated to evoke sympathy, especially among Arab countries, and derail the peace process.

Iran's proxies have largely lost the war, Iran's military stature is weakened, the Iranian economy is in a shambles, and most of the Iranian public is not supportive of the religious fanaticism of the government. The article is paywalled, a pirate version is here.

Topic 3: Harvard Under Fire

Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor with a strong track record of promoting free speech and intellectual tolerance, wrote this op-ed in the New York Times defending Harvard against its attack by Donald Trump.

(Full disclosure): Steven Pinker is my favorite living intellectual and I've read four of his books, including "The Blank Slate", my favorite book.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) rates universities on the basis of free speech, and found Harvard to be the worst in the country in multiple years.

National Review published this rebuttal to Pinker"s arguments.