Pyongyang on the Potomac
Note: four of the five websites above are on Substack. I don’t like Substack. But it is so much of a behemoth that people you would least expect, like Nassim Taleb, are dipping their toes. The implications of even him abdicating to the winner of the most recent round of tech roulette are dire — yet another thing I should write about more, when time allows.
I nod my head agreeing with much of what Tyler Cowen says and writes, but the points where he is off are not minor. Here he is a few weeks ago, on a new RCT banning smartphones in the classroom showing (very) modest improvements in grades:
Note with grades there is “an average increase of 0.086 standard deviations.” I have no problem with these policies, but it mystifies me why anyone would put them in their top five hundred priorities, or is that five thousand?
He also points to an older trial from Norway, which had similar results. Cowen frames the bans as tiny gains for unknown and potentially enormous cost. And student comments like the following he found worthy enough to repost:
As an academically successful student in a pretty well ranked high school my recollection was that the entire experience was horrible and torturous and essentially felt like being locked up in prison. The pace of teaching was also so slow that the marginal value add of being in class was essentially 0 when compared to the textbook reading I would do after school anyway.
So… yes it was nice to have a phone and I don’t care if it distracts stupid students from learning.
And here is Rana Foroohar in this morning’s FT, under the headline Trump’s war on America’s schools:
[Randi] Weingarten, those of you reading outside the US could be forgiven for not knowing, is the head of America’s second-largest teachers’ union. In her new book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers, she lays out some of the history of authoritarian backlash against public education and its teachers, from the post-civil war Reconstruction era in the US, to Europe in the 1930s, to Vladimir Putin’s justification of crackdowns on teachers and universities in Russia (“wars are won by . . . schoolteachers”).
She also quotes the Canadian psychologist Bob Altemeyer, who found that a lack of “critical thinking” made people more receptive to authoritarian leaders. As he put it, “the very last thing an authoritarian leader wants is for his followers to start using their heads”. Or, as Trump so memorably put it after a 2016 primary win: “We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”
Reading is going out of fashion, but I would urge the student above, and Tyler Cowen, and everyone else who thinks eaking out marginal gains for top-performing students is worth the cost of “distracting stupid students from learning”, to (re)read Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas or — if they have more time — Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov which served as an inspiration with this passage in particular:
“I challenge you: let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, in order to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it?”
And some may agree (I don’t)! But of course the equilibrium is not in focusing all of the world’s misery into a single person, as it tends to spread out, and you can’t lock up those exposed in a dank basement like the citizens of Omelas did. Rather, those people get to vote, and not in a way you may like.
Pyongyang on the Potomac
Two academics discuss science communication over BBQ and reach the wholly unoriginal conclusion that for increased trust in science, the American research community needs to:
These seemed redundant, as we have been marching towards more openness in science of every kind since at least the early 2000s. Would any scients be able to say, with a straight face, that their average peer projects more certainty, advocates for more gatekeeping, promotes reduced transparency and does not acknowledge controversy as much now compared to the 1950s?
One could in fact, if they were less charitable, blame this newly found openness for the collapse in trust. On one hand you see scientists fighting for clout on social networks, calling each other names, and blowing up small arguments — on the level of angels dancing on the head of a pin — into debates of the century. On the other, everyone and anyone, homeschooled child geniuses and crackpots alike, now has open access to much of specialized scientific literature, and to preprint servers for some samizdat science.
So maybe it is time to own it: yes, openning the kimono has lead to decreased trust in the estabilshment. But was that not the widely understood part of the bargain? I imagine Paul Feyerabend would have been proud of these recent developments.
How did the fellows above come up with the idea that more of the same would help shore up trust? Being academics, they have a reference — to the work of Sheila Jasanoff whose work on “civic epistemiology” is described thusly:
Jasanoff’s research identifies distinctive features of how Americans evaluate scientific claims:
Public Challenge: Americans tend to trust knowledge that has withstood open debate and questioning. This reflects legal traditions where competing arguments help reveal the truth.
Community Voice: There’s a strong expectation that affected groups should participate in discussions about scientific evidence that impacts them, particularly in policy contexts.
Open Access: Citizens expect transparency in how conclusions are reached, including access to underlying data and reasoning processes.
Multiple Perspectives: Rather than relying on single authoritative sources, Americans prefer hearing from various independent institutions and experts.
But of course this is hopelessly outdated, if it were ever true to begin with. Jasanoff herself cautions in the chapter of her book “Designs on Nature” where she describs the concept, that the framework offers conceptual clarity at enormous risk of reductionism, as it does not account for differences across social strata, through time, etc. The book is from 2005 and the research it is based on is even older. The “Americans” described above no longer exist.
Jasanoff’s civic epistemilogies were tied to countries. In the last twenty years these countries have lost ground as unifying social forces to a variety of cultures and subcultures. Her descripton of 2005 America may today better apply to the upper-middle-class across a subset of countries more so than a single nation. In each country, the different epistemiologies are becoming more and more opposed. How could we possibly trust each other?
There may be no way to return the trust in scence to the 20th century levels. But if we were to try, the most obvious method would be a return to gatekeeping. Leave the science to the scientists and let the outcomes speak for themselves. Keep all discord inside conference halls and university cafeterias. Show more decorum and respect, if grudging, to every scientist colleague while being more discriminatory of who is “a scientist”: PhDs from recognized universities only, please.
This would, of course, be a step back and I in no way, shape or form condone a turn of events quite like this — least of all because it would exclude me from the conversation.
Is there a way to stick to the “open science” principles while keeping some modicum of community trust? Being a fan of Costco, their sort of low but effective barrier to entry is appealing. For the uninitiated: Costco charges a modest annual membership ($65, or $130 for their “executive tier”) for the privilege of shopping for premium and premium-mediocre products at incredibly discounted prices. Their only profit is from the membership, as there is little to no margin. But then they also don’t need to spend money on things like advertising, keeping the shelves pretty, or monitoring for shoplifters.
The space between payinh $65 per year and earning a PhD is vast. Whatever the new gate is, it should probably not be degree-based. Maybe have it be a professional society that also takes up interested laypeople using its own criteria. Or a verified subscription to Experimental History. Whatever it is, make it official, make it publich, and make it stick. Then, keep most of the conversation inside the circle. Keep all ambiguity inside the tower, please, just make the tower entrance bigger and charge for entry.
Is this the way? I am not sure. Maybe science doesn’t deserve the public’s trust and attempts to increase it are like plugging tiny holds on a massive damn about to burst. But to those who care, let this be some food for thought.
Of course, every profession has its linguistic pearls.
🍿 May God Save Us (2016) was incredibly hard to watch, with the worst of human nature on full display and no positive characters whatsoever. Maybe you have to be more exposed to Catholicism to appreciate it?
🍿 The Body (2012) was the perfect puzzle-box thriller in which the myriad of small details that tickled your brain for not being quite right or made sense throughout the movie finally click in place minutes before the end and before you know it you want to watch it again. Which I will!