@ CK MacLeod:
I suppose whether my account is one-sided, and whether life will go on as it has, are empirical questions--you act on the faith that it will, and I have no such faith: while I concede the possibility, I see it as a fairly low probability, and so probe around for unprecedented moves which may lead to new rules. Which in turn strikes you as apocalyptic and hence anti-democratic (which implies that there are some things that the system, in fact, can't handle--perhaps there are some others worth noting as well).
@ CK MacLeod:
This is what I find most important in your response:
"A closed worldview eventually ceases to function, however – eventually loses contact with social reality. What the political system does, almost spontaneously or perhaps materially, is locate the points of contact in such a way as to hold each side’s larger project hostage to its particular commitments. It may be inherently a coercive and violent process, since sooner or later everyone is forced to accept something “immoral” from his or her own point of view. "
A closed worldview will cease to function, but that may come after it has lost contact with social reality--and it can do a lot of damage in the mean time. (We may disagree over who has the closed world view--I'm not sure what you're referring to.) Your assumption is that the various immoralities we have to accept balance out, but I was trying to address the very means of balancing them, and suggesting that the Left is holding those means hostage. We may have an epistemic gap here: what you see as normal politics on the field of negotiation I see as an attempt by one side to change the field and the rules, and by the other side (my own) to preserve, restore, and re-open the field.
@ CK MacLeod:
The post is up and the discussion has moved on but, having read the posts of Manzi and Levin you linked to, I'll say one last thing.
The place where we have to resist the Left the most fiercely, even at the risk of being called stupid, fascist, or whatever, is in those places where the Left moves beyond arguing for policies that might improve things in some way towards arguments that we are compelled to do x or y. This is a move that it is easy to miss, and I'll give two examples. One is AGW, where, rather than making the reasonable argument that we should keep trying to control and reduce pollution (there is very little disagreement about the harmfulness of smog), they contend that there is really a global crisis which gives us no time to debate and demands that we act now, in unison. The other is gay marriage where, rather than make the argument one might be sympathetic towards, that legal means should be provided to gay couples to stabilize and deepen their relationships, up to and including marriage if they win over a majority, they argue instead that the right already exists, and those who fail to "recognize" it are essentially hate criminals. In both cases, the goal is clear: to take the changes they would like to see out of the political sphere of debate and majority rule into the judicial and administrative spheres, where small minorities can capture crucial and ever growing state institutions so as to act beyond accountability. This power grab is inscribed in their arguments, to which we can therefore give no quarter--we have to be smart enough to notice and dissent, absolutely, from everything in the arguments of the Left that smuggle in this compulsion from Nature. This is far more important than seeming, or even being, open minded about AGW.
@ CK MacLeod:
I suppose if a non-scientist is going to discuss AGW, he can't to much more than quote a reasonably respected scientific authority who makes sense to him. Risk assessment can only be performed within one's field of competence--climate scientists can, I suppose, assess probable effects upon the weather from a variety of sources, keeping in mind how much they must not know about those sources and other sources they don't know about at all; then politicians can factor those risks into another risk assessment regarding the possible effects of various policies, subject to the same provisos; and, of course, more immediate risk assessments of their own future in office if they do one thing rather than another. But those who step over these lines--including scientists lobbying for specific policies based on their scientific expertise--should be very bluntly called what they are: frauds. And, of course, factored into risk assessment must be the various ways free people can improvise in response to crises and all the ways the government can't. The riskiest thing is to impair that power of improvisation.
@ CK MacLeod:
"@ adam:
Speaking of Lincoln, “Have faith that right makes might.” In the meantime, the truth may or may not set you free, but it will out. Oh yeah, and one other quotable quote: We don’t run away because we’re afraid; we’re afraid because we run away."
Science is not about forming coalitions, and it's wrong to enter the artificial reality created by the Left. Let Lord Monckton debunk the gloabl warmists--do we all have to do so? Defending the disinterested, apolitical nature of science is defending science, and that's all we can do. Those scientists who really want to do science and not be prophets may be on our side. Industry and government will always have its uses for science, but only if it's really science, and answers questions put to it by industry or government. The real interesting question is why so many people believe (if they really do believe) that anyone knows what the temperature will be in 2050. If a few hurricances or a hot summer a few years from now will re-start the AGW hysteria, then what we need is not a few of our own irons in the fire, but a diagnosis of the irrationality of public opinion and a hold on its most rational elements--and then we have to hope that the more rational elements will be the more enduring ones. The bigger problem is the collapse of rational risk assessment within public discourse (as Frank Furedi at spiked is always arguing)--if not AGW, then some new disease, or some scare about genetically modified crops, or something else will lead to a panic for political entrpreneurs to speculate upon. It would be better to think about what habits of mind and dispositions might make us relatively immune to such ideological outbreaks, and then figure out how to package and mass produce that political and moral immunity. If a majority really believe that the government can and should save them from the weather (sorry, climate), then we have more serious problems than the unpopularity of conservatives among scientists.
1) When conservatives dive into science and draw out the political implications they tend to come back with conclusions most people don't want to hear and public conservatives would be embarrassed to discuss. For example: Charles Murray and John Derbyshire argue that ongoing research in human biology will establish human inequality as an irreducible fact of human nature and hence provide scientific "testimony" against attempts to secure equal outcomes in society. They may be right, but who wants to talk about it? I don't--we already have good enough arguments against egalitarian social engineering without having to tell people that, anyway, a lot of you are best suited for the simple stuff. But what if we don't talk about it ("we" being politicians and those who urge arguments upon them)--are we guilty of "epistemic closure"? Global warming is a popular theory, even among those who would reject attempts to address it in a serious way, because it offers a pleasing narrative of sin and redemption, or sin and deserved punishment--such narratives satisfy our resentments, and make the believer a principled critic of lesser breeds of humans. Conservatives who are uncompromising in their science will likely bring back sterner stuff which tells us we cannot be the beautiful people we would like to think we might be.
2) It is very well known how comfortable leftists are with using social scientific theory to generate policy ideas, and how uncomfortable conservatives are with same. Liberals and leftists look at society as a great big barrel of problems to solve, and themselves as the solvers--this is what smart people do, define problems, gather data, and propose solutions that close up all the loopholes. Conservatives see people themselves as problematic--so, conservative social science, like the Federalist Papers themselves (which might, actually, be better called "political philosophy"), is concerned with balancing interests, providing rules for the safe practice of freedom, and finding ways to make power line up with accountability. These kinds of approaches always look extremely limited and hence "anti-intellectual" to liberals and leftists--they don't address "root causes" or offer "systemic change."
Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued long ago that social science should be used to measure the effects of policies (and, therefore, to predict possible consequences), not to generate policies, which should be the result of deliberation among citizens and their representatives who operate with a very short and clouded epistemic horizon. Moynihan was pretty smart, but the people who follow his advice will look stupid to those who don't, and I don't see what we can do about it.
Was that off-topic? I haven't time to delve into that whole Manzi-Levin tussle.
@ CK MacLeod:
I suppose whether my account is one-sided, and whether life will go on as it has, are empirical questions--you act on the faith that it will, and I have no such faith: while I concede the possibility, I see it as a fairly low probability, and so probe around for unprecedented moves which may lead to new rules. Which in turn strikes you as apocalyptic and hence anti-democratic (which implies that there are some things that the system, in fact, can't handle--perhaps there are some others worth noting as well).
@ CK MacLeod:
This is what I find most important in your response:
"A closed worldview eventually ceases to function, however – eventually loses contact with social reality. What the political system does, almost spontaneously or perhaps materially, is locate the points of contact in such a way as to hold each side’s larger project hostage to its particular commitments. It may be inherently a coercive and violent process, since sooner or later everyone is forced to accept something “immoral” from his or her own point of view. "
A closed worldview will cease to function, but that may come after it has lost contact with social reality--and it can do a lot of damage in the mean time. (We may disagree over who has the closed world view--I'm not sure what you're referring to.) Your assumption is that the various immoralities we have to accept balance out, but I was trying to address the very means of balancing them, and suggesting that the Left is holding those means hostage. We may have an epistemic gap here: what you see as normal politics on the field of negotiation I see as an attempt by one side to change the field and the rules, and by the other side (my own) to preserve, restore, and re-open the field.
@ CK MacLeod:
The post is up and the discussion has moved on but, having read the posts of Manzi and Levin you linked to, I'll say one last thing.
The place where we have to resist the Left the most fiercely, even at the risk of being called stupid, fascist, or whatever, is in those places where the Left moves beyond arguing for policies that might improve things in some way towards arguments that we are compelled to do x or y. This is a move that it is easy to miss, and I'll give two examples. One is AGW, where, rather than making the reasonable argument that we should keep trying to control and reduce pollution (there is very little disagreement about the harmfulness of smog), they contend that there is really a global crisis which gives us no time to debate and demands that we act now, in unison. The other is gay marriage where, rather than make the argument one might be sympathetic towards, that legal means should be provided to gay couples to stabilize and deepen their relationships, up to and including marriage if they win over a majority, they argue instead that the right already exists, and those who fail to "recognize" it are essentially hate criminals. In both cases, the goal is clear: to take the changes they would like to see out of the political sphere of debate and majority rule into the judicial and administrative spheres, where small minorities can capture crucial and ever growing state institutions so as to act beyond accountability. This power grab is inscribed in their arguments, to which we can therefore give no quarter--we have to be smart enough to notice and dissent, absolutely, from everything in the arguments of the Left that smuggle in this compulsion from Nature. This is far more important than seeming, or even being, open minded about AGW.
@ CK MacLeod:
I suppose if a non-scientist is going to discuss AGW, he can't to much more than quote a reasonably respected scientific authority who makes sense to him. Risk assessment can only be performed within one's field of competence--climate scientists can, I suppose, assess probable effects upon the weather from a variety of sources, keeping in mind how much they must not know about those sources and other sources they don't know about at all; then politicians can factor those risks into another risk assessment regarding the possible effects of various policies, subject to the same provisos; and, of course, more immediate risk assessments of their own future in office if they do one thing rather than another. But those who step over these lines--including scientists lobbying for specific policies based on their scientific expertise--should be very bluntly called what they are: frauds. And, of course, factored into risk assessment must be the various ways free people can improvise in response to crises and all the ways the government can't. The riskiest thing is to impair that power of improvisation.
@ CK MacLeod:
"@ adam:
Speaking of Lincoln, “Have faith that right makes might.” In the meantime, the truth may or may not set you free, but it will out. Oh yeah, and one other quotable quote: We don’t run away because we’re afraid; we’re afraid because we run away."
Science is not about forming coalitions, and it's wrong to enter the artificial reality created by the Left. Let Lord Monckton debunk the gloabl warmists--do we all have to do so? Defending the disinterested, apolitical nature of science is defending science, and that's all we can do. Those scientists who really want to do science and not be prophets may be on our side. Industry and government will always have its uses for science, but only if it's really science, and answers questions put to it by industry or government. The real interesting question is why so many people believe (if they really do believe) that anyone knows what the temperature will be in 2050. If a few hurricances or a hot summer a few years from now will re-start the AGW hysteria, then what we need is not a few of our own irons in the fire, but a diagnosis of the irrationality of public opinion and a hold on its most rational elements--and then we have to hope that the more rational elements will be the more enduring ones. The bigger problem is the collapse of rational risk assessment within public discourse (as Frank Furedi at spiked is always arguing)--if not AGW, then some new disease, or some scare about genetically modified crops, or something else will lead to a panic for political entrpreneurs to speculate upon. It would be better to think about what habits of mind and dispositions might make us relatively immune to such ideological outbreaks, and then figure out how to package and mass produce that political and moral immunity. If a majority really believe that the government can and should save them from the weather (sorry, climate), then we have more serious problems than the unpopularity of conservatives among scientists.
Two things to consider here:
1) When conservatives dive into science and draw out the political implications they tend to come back with conclusions most people don't want to hear and public conservatives would be embarrassed to discuss. For example: Charles Murray and John Derbyshire argue that ongoing research in human biology will establish human inequality as an irreducible fact of human nature and hence provide scientific "testimony" against attempts to secure equal outcomes in society. They may be right, but who wants to talk about it? I don't--we already have good enough arguments against egalitarian social engineering without having to tell people that, anyway, a lot of you are best suited for the simple stuff. But what if we don't talk about it ("we" being politicians and those who urge arguments upon them)--are we guilty of "epistemic closure"? Global warming is a popular theory, even among those who would reject attempts to address it in a serious way, because it offers a pleasing narrative of sin and redemption, or sin and deserved punishment--such narratives satisfy our resentments, and make the believer a principled critic of lesser breeds of humans. Conservatives who are uncompromising in their science will likely bring back sterner stuff which tells us we cannot be the beautiful people we would like to think we might be.
2) It is very well known how comfortable leftists are with using social scientific theory to generate policy ideas, and how uncomfortable conservatives are with same. Liberals and leftists look at society as a great big barrel of problems to solve, and themselves as the solvers--this is what smart people do, define problems, gather data, and propose solutions that close up all the loopholes. Conservatives see people themselves as problematic--so, conservative social science, like the Federalist Papers themselves (which might, actually, be better called "political philosophy"), is concerned with balancing interests, providing rules for the safe practice of freedom, and finding ways to make power line up with accountability. These kinds of approaches always look extremely limited and hence "anti-intellectual" to liberals and leftists--they don't address "root causes" or offer "systemic change."
Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued long ago that social science should be used to measure the effects of policies (and, therefore, to predict possible consequences), not to generate policies, which should be the result of deliberation among citizens and their representatives who operate with a very short and clouded epistemic horizon. Moynihan was pretty smart, but the people who follow his advice will look stupid to those who don't, and I don't see what we can do about it.
Was that off-topic? I haven't time to delve into that whole Manzi-Levin tussle.